D. Worlds Apart
IV. Pedagogical Considerations
Throughout Kierkegaard’s works, emotions are taken very seriously as a core aspect of self.
Robert C. Roberts identifies an Aristotelian vein in Kierkegaard’s thinking with respect to emotions, pointing out the central importance of “educating the emotions.”45 In The Seducer’s Diary, an ‘emotional education’ of sorts also takes place; however, in keeping with the twisted nature of the seducer’s activities, that which is thereby learned cannot be said to benefit the learner. The educational process does, on the other hand, provide a textual basis for exploring the
44 Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers 5, 224. [5634]
45 Robert C. Roberts, “Existence, Emotion, and Virtue: Classical Themes in Kierkegaard,” in The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, ed. Alastair Hannay and Gordon D. Marino (Cambridge, England: UP, 1998), 179.
Roberts states that Kierkegaard’s writings are “all about proper and improper emotions and action, and he stresses, as strongly as Aristotle does, the role of choice in acquiring and exemplifying these. If we may paraphrase Aristotle as saying that genuine existence, or subjectivity (when it is truth, and not just
‘subjectivity of a sort’) is proper pathos.”
nature of the ‘instructional methods,’ so to speak, that can effectively change emotions, as well as how changing the emotions changes the self.
Johannes adopts the language of education when describing the scenes between the two
‘couples’: Cordelia and Edward plus Johannes and Cordelia’s aunt. This configuration also forms a
‘love square,’ as opposed to the paradigmatic ‘love triangle.’ In common with Goethe’s
Wahlverwandtschaften, which also contains a foursome, the initial pairings are soon exchanged for others; however, the innovation of The Seducer’s Diary is that the reconfiguration happens not because of elemental forces of nature but rather by the design of Johannes the Seducer, who possesses knowledge of human nature that removes the mysteriousness of attractions, both romantic and other. He merely wishes to arrange matters to seem as though impersonal forces were the cause:
She must owe me nothing, for she must be free. Only in freedom is there love; only in freedom are there diversion and everlasting amusement. Although I am making arrangements so that she will sink into my arms as if by a necessity of nature and am striving to make her gravitate toward me, the point nevertheless is that she should not fall like a heavy body but as mind should gravitate toward mind.
Although she will belong to me, yet it must not be in the unbeautiful way of resting upon me as a burden. She must be neither an appendage in the physical sense nor an obligation in the moral sense. (360f.)
The seducer’s practice is a powerful yet restrained display of agency which forms a stark contrast to the relationships portrayed in Die Wahlverwandtschaften, in which characters are propelled hither and thither by forces which they are inadequate to oppose. (Cordelia’s ineffectual suitor is accordingly named “Edward,” like the character in Goethe.) One reads Goethe to witness the aesthetic tour de force on display in the novel, not in order to learn about the human psyche. His charaters are not equipped with a plausible psychology, whereas Kierkegaard goes to great lengths to provide a reconstructible set of reasons for characters’ thoughts and actions, grounded in their histories, so that his characters can function as adequate simulations of interpersonal dynamics.
Johannes’s description in the above passage of gravitating minds is dissonant with several other places in the diary where he is dismissive of female intellect, but such inconsistencies are typical of the aesthete.46 If one interpretation fits his purpose at one moment and another at the next, he is not inclined to be overly punctilious. It suits his pursuit of the infinite to keep all possibilities open. Many of the dismissive passages are part of a rationalization of his ethically questionable behavior, whereas numerous places in the diary demonstrate that what makes Cordelia so able to be seduced in this way is precisely her intellect; moreover, that that is what Johannes develops in her: “She must be strengthened within herself before I let her find support from me. […] She herself must be developed within herself; she must feel the resilience of her soul; she must come to grips with the world and lift it.” (360) Notably, however, this passage uses passive grammatical constructions that allow Johannes to go unmentioned. He calls Cordelia’s responses to the curious social situations which he engineers “exercises that must be done” (351), yet he disavows his own role in bringing them about. The use of the first-person plural pronoun
“we” in the following passage is interpretable as Johannes’s attempt to obscure his personal
involvement behind a vaguely defined company which might perhaps include the entire foursome, or perhaps his agronomical persona as a separate entity from himself:
This is the first false teaching: we must teach her to smile ironically, but this smile applies to me just as much as to the aunt; for she does not know at all what to think of me. But it could just be that I was the kind of young man who became old prematurely; it is possible; there could be a second possibility, a third, etc. Having smiled at her aunt, she is indignant with herself; I turn around and, while I
continue to speak with the aunt, I look very gravely at her, whereupon she smiles at me, at the situation. (351)
It might seem like an odd variety of confession for Johannes to call his own teaching “false,” since that immediately suggests he is leading her astray. The text, of course, contains precisely that suggestion. However, there is also an explanation for why Johannes would describe it that way.
46 Johannes states that “the woman is the weaker sex” (339); the ethicist is the one who asserts that “woman is just as strong as man” (Kierkegaard, Either/Or II, 113).
The teaching is not false in the sense that it is ineffective in reaching its aim. From Johannes’s perspective, it is not only the teaching that is false: he is teaching Cordelia to be false herself. To smile ironically is to have two opinions of a situation, one on display, the other hidden. Once Cordelia learns to do this, she is no longer transparent, and in that sense there is a falseness in her smile.
This is more evidence that this is no ordinary seduction, for here the seduced, not just the seducer, is false. Another of Johannes’s pedagogical reflections gives a hint as to the dynamic between the two of them: “But now she is going to learn what a powerful force erotic love [Elskov]
is. […] And this will take place through me; and in learning to love, she will learn to love me; as she develops the rule, the paradigm will sequentially unfold, and this I am.” (377) Learning not only to love in general but also to love Johannes specifically involves becoming similar to him:
Cordelia develops the reflective capacity of the aesthete. Additionally, the educational aspect operates in both directions, at least according to Johannes: “My love affairs, therefore, always have a reality [Realitet] for me personally; they amount to a life factor, an educational period that I definitely know all about, and I often even link with it some skill or other.” (346) The idea that the relationship with Cordelia produces no more than the nebulous “some skill or other” is likely to produce ethical repugnance in the reader: a skill, a mere tool for the seducer’s repertoire is an impact entirely out of proportion to the impact on Cordelia; this goes against the widespread belief that there ought to be mutuality in a relationship of this nature. On the other hand, there is reason to suspect that the impact on Johannes is greater than he himself claims. One of
Johannes’s entries tells of a conversation in which a licentiate friend of his tells about the girl to whom he has become engaged:
He confided to me that she was lovely, which I knew before, that she was very young, which I also knew; he finally confided to me that he had chosen her precisely so that he himself could form her into the ideal that had always vaguely hovered before him. Good lord, what a silly licentiate — and a healthy, blooming,
cheerful girl. Now, I am a fairly old hand at the game, and yet I never approach a young girl other than as nature’s Venerabile [something worthy of veneration] and first learn from her. Then insofar as I may have any formative influence upon her, it is by teaching her again and again what I have learned from her. (390f.)
The contrast between the conception of men and women on display in this passage versus the one above gives a good idea of the capriciousness of Johannes’s mind. These vacillations between idolization of and condescension towards women blur the distinction between teacher and student — even, one suspects, inside his own head. The dual directionality of the educational aspect of the diary parallels the likewise mutual attentions inherent to the erotic. To have personal involvement to this extent also has implications for evaluating Johannes’s degree of detachment — from Cordelia, from the situation, from his own emotions — at the end of the seduction. This is significant because Cordelia’s personality changes over the course of the relationship, showing that infatuation makes one susceptible to alterations at a basic level of self and raising the question of the incident’s effect on Johannes.