1.1
Taking a critical-hermeneutic position
The exploration is based on
scientific research, using topics within social science theories of the
individual human being, social institutions and society, which are discussed
within the framework of both Norwegian and international research. The
scientific theoretical position can be characterized in my opinion as
critical-hermeneutical. This meaning that my access to this field of research
is not neutral, but builds on a pre-determined understanding of the individual
human being, institutions and society.
1.1.1 A critical stance
The critical stance is drawn from
Kierkegaard’s existential philosophy and Buber’s dialogical philosophy which I
read in the light of Honneth’s recognition theory. Honnett (1996, 2001) has
studied the possibilities for humans to realize themselves and has developed a
theory of recognition which is built on amongst others Mead’s social and empirical
psychology, which stresses the importance of social relations for developing a
practical personal identity. Our need for recognition, argues Honnett, has an
anthropological characteristic because the individual cannot develop a personal
identity without recognition. Our identity is completely dependent on
recognition. Faced with the personal and social shame related to sexual abuse,
many of my informants struggle both with and for recognition. Heidegren (2002)
argues that without a minimum of recognition it is impossible to answer the
question: “Who am I?” This question is
also the focus of concern for Krill (1990) in his reflections on the importance
of practical wisdom in the helping professions, and argues that being
recognized as an individual, means receiving appreciation to ones worldview and
taking responsibility of being the creator of ones worldview.
Kierkegaard (1849/1980) is important
in this dissertation because of his focus on self in early modernity. He
argues, by using a negativistic dialectic method, that the possibility to
realize the disparity in our relation to ourselves lies in the feeling of
meaninglessness and hopelessness: “Despair is the misrelation in the relation
of a synthesis that relates itself to itself” (1849/1980: 15). The self
involves a self-relation understood as a relation that relates to itself. But
at the same time, this self-relation is concrete. Kierkegaard means in my
opinion that in the process of becoming a self, the individual is divided when
it is not built on a relationship to God; it is both for and against itself at
the same time. Kierkegaard goes to state, according to Taylor (1989) that overcoming this despair depends
on a transformation through a new stance towards oneself and this depends on
our relation to God. Relating to oneself is what we do when we have a
conscience; it is here that we are both for ourselves and against ourselves.
This existential chaos of being for and against oneself at the same time and in
fear of condemnation is according to Tillich (1952/2000) quite different from
when one fears meaninglessness, and is one of the major differences between the
Reformation and the Late-Modern Age. Taylor
(1989) argues that in order to understand this predicament within the self; we
must try to grasp the structures of the self through self-knowledge. A person
can only attain self-knowledge if one is able to defeat inner resistance. The
self according to Kierkegaard is a relation in which one relates to oneself.
This implies in my opinion that the self is not a permanent condition which
cannot be changed, but relating to oneself gives the opportunity of distancing
oneself from oneself and thereby makes change possible. This becomes clearer in
my opinion through Buber (1923/2006, 1951/1999) when he speaks of the movement
between I-Thou relationships and I-It relationships.
The ordinary, everyday difficulties that clients encounter should
receive as much attention as crisis situations. Kierkegaard’s and Buber’s philosophy
requires in my opinion us to pay attention to specific contexts and particular
persons. An existential-dialogical approach entails paying greater attention to
the everyday events of life and the particularity of the persons involved.
Additionally, a relationship implies ongoing interaction rather than intervention
under emergency circumstances. Human existence is a complex of many events, all
of which form individual identity. It is this complex identity that is
activated in a relationship. Human life cannot be reduced to particular
incidents or the moment of decision making. Buber’s dialogical philosophy
recognizes the commonplace and the pivotal and both should be embraced in
social work practice and ethical discussion.
Kierkegaard’s and Buber’s philosophy can help to establish a conceptual
shift or perhaps join an already existing movement away from an emphasis on
governing principles, specifically autonomy or other models that focus on the
person involved. This movement is a deviation from the mainstream movement
characterized by empirical observation, rationality, and belief in the effects
of therapy, towards a recognition and incorporation of the individual persons’
values into social work practice.
Buber’s dialogical values arise from the recognition that social work
should reflect living, dynamic, human existence rather than metaphysical abstractions,
and to bridge the distinctions between theory and practice. Buber’s dialogical
philosophy is in my opinion a radical shift which moves from the universal to
the concrete and from the past to the present; in other words, from I-It to
I-Thou. Buber does not start from some external, absolutely valid ethical code
which one is bound to apply as best one can to each new situation. Instead
Buber starts with the situation and I find
Buber especially important in this study because of the significance he places
on the dialogue. A person who saddles oneself with guilt towards another person
or with shame towards oneself, and represses these emotions, may fall into a
neurosis and seek help with a therapist. If the therapist is only concerned
with the microcosmos of the patient (an Oedipus complex or an inferiority
feeling) and treats the patient accordingly, than guilt and shame might remain
foreign. Buber (1951/1999) argues that:
A soul is never sick alone, but there
is always a between-ness also, a situation between it and another existing
being (1951/1999: 21).
It
is this situation between one person and another which Buber argues is the crucial
starting point. For the therapist to be able to heal the pain felt by the
patient, one must creep into the soul of the patient, so to speak, and starts
where the patient is. This will often result in being visited by vagrant pains,
e.g.; from ones one childhood or unsettled emotions from ones past. This is the
state of being where the meeting between therapist and patient can begin and
the dialogue develops into a healing process. Buber (1957/1999) agues in my
opinion that the most a therapist can do for a patient is to make life possible
for the other, if only for a moment (øyeblikket).
The existential element in the healing process means that the patient is given
the possibility for self-healing, which Buber argues is the same as teaching.
Buber calls this successful cure for the “exchange of hearts” (1951/1999: 20)
Kierkegaard has long been viewed as the father of existentialism, but there are some
drawbacks in using him:
- Some will argue that the issues
raised by existential philosophy can safely be viewed as “solved” and thus
no longer in need of attention. Another reason might be in my opinion that
the texts of Kierkegaard are often excluded from the concept of existential
philosophy of more practical reasons; his writings are just too difficult
and abstract for many readers (Westphal and Matustík 1995).
- Some will argue that
Kierkegaard is a religious thinker and not really a philosopher.
Kierkegaard also called himself first and foremost a religious thinker.
The fact that secular thinkers like Heidegger, Sartre, Habermas and
Derrida all have engaged themselves in Kierkegaard thoughts, resists the
claims that he is not a philosophical thinker (Westphal and Matustík
1995). In my opinion, reading his texts philosophically, without
consideration to his religious aspects, can be done only to a certain
extent. In my opinion, reference only to his theological goals would still
not be sufficient, since both theology and philosophy “degrades
Kierkegaard to a handmaiden” (Theunissen 2005: viii). Some philosophers
are sympathetic to his religious interests, while others are not. In my opinion,
Kierkegaard is both a religious and a philosophical thinker.
- Kierkegaard has been understood
as being irrational, meaning that he seems to deny that the world can be
comprehended by conceptual thought, and often see the human mind as
determined by unconscious forces (Evans 1995). In my opinion, Kierkegaard’s
irrationalism can be seen as a protest against a contingent interpretation
of reason’s necessity (Westphal and Matustík 1995).
- There is a perception that
Kierkegaard represents an anti-social, apolitical individualism that is
worse than useless in the search for community, communication, and
cooperation in a world where violence, abuse, hatred, and neglect signify
on a daily basis not only their absence but the cost of their absence. In
my opinion, Kierkegaard’s individualism can be seen as a protest against a
particular mode of human togetherness that he calls by such names as
Christendom, the public, the present age, and even the herd. This
individualism can also in my opinion be seen as the flip side of a
thoroughly relational conception of the self, and is beginning to be seen
as having interesting ramifications for social theory and practice (Marsh
1995).
Why
do I then choose to use Kierkegaard’s existential philosophy as a viewpoint in
this study? The first answer to this question is personal, the next is
historical. My first encounter with Kierkegaard’s writings was in 1995 as a new
master student in social work. I had a year before incurred an illness called
Morbus Meniere, a persistent hearing and balance disorder located in the inner
ear. This illness made me feel despair when I daily had dizziness spells.
Before choosing the theme for my master degree thesis, my mentor gave me the
advice to read Sickness unto Death by
Kierkegaard (1849/1980). His advice was not incidental, but closely connected
to his perception of my life situation. I felt while reading this book that it in
many ways spoke to me. I had enormous problems understanding the text, and
still do after years of studying it, but at the same time I felt a connection
with something larger than myself. Like standing inside the Sistine Chapel in Rome or listening to Johann Sebastian Bach’s Die Kunst der Fuge. The experience was overwhelming and inspired me
to write my master degree thesis with the title “Ways to Self-Understanding.
Some Basic Problems in Social Work” (Pettersen 2001. My translation). I
have read Sickness unto Death over
and over again since then and still find it one of the most important books in
my life together with Being and Time
by Martin Heidegger (1926/1962). These are books that have changed my view of
living and being, and who I am.
Heidegger
was in the center of my focus when I applied in 2003 for approval to study and started
to write a PhD dissertation in social work. The title being A Facticity-Hermenutical Analysis of Shame,
was both highly theoretical and philosophical, and was not approved. The
subject was found too philosophical. I rewrote my application and changed its
direction more towards social sciences, but still keeping a focus on an
existential-dialogical perspective which has influenced me as a social worker.
The application was this time approved and the result of five years further
studies, explorations, readings, and writings follow within these covers.
The
second reason for choosing Kierkegaard’s existential philosophy as a
perspective on social work is historical. Existentialism as a philosophy has
its roots in the intense sense of alienation, where Kierkegaard is regarded as
the founder. Struggling to define the meaning of individual identity in the
wake of the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution and the Napoleonic
Wars, Kierkegaard emphasised the essential aloneness of human beings, our
inevitable experience of anxiety, and our search for meaning by taking responsibility
for ourselves, even by embracing pain and suffering. That bare outline makes
this seem harsh and uncompromising, but it is essentially an affirmative and
optimistic attitude, which regards human beings as possessing infinite
potential (Sim 1994).
Kierkegaard
dismissed in my opinion the theoretical approach towards reality and focused
instead on individual existence. He related his thinking to religious problems
but his largest influence was not within theology, even though he had a certain
influence on Protestants in Europe in the 20th century.
Kierkegaard has also had in my opinion a certain influence on phenomenology by
rejecting the abstract system of thinking in the philosophy of Hegel.
Kierkegaard’s phenomenology has in my opinion its origin in the naked existence
which gave the possibility of being solved in his theological belief.
A
pioneer in actualizing Kierkegaard’s thoughts within this new philosophy called
phenomenology was Edmund Husserl. His phenomenology represents a will to go directly to the object being
explored, to the phenomenon. Phenomenology focuses first and foremost against
the natural scientific explanation of reality. There are many forms of
experience that fall outside the sphere of natural sciences that still are of
interest for humans to understand. Despair is in my opinion one such
experience. Heidegger (1926/1962) argues that despair is a form of “Dasein”, or
being, which he calls inauthentic Dasein: “we call this everyday, undifferentiated character of Dasein averageness” (1926/1962: 69). Heidegger
argues that Dasein starts as a phase where we flee or hide from ourselves
(Heidegger 1926/1962: 229 and 234). Authentic Dasein, as a Being-in-the-world
implies exposing who we are, where we are, when we are there. But this
Being-in-the-world implies that one starts out by fleeing or hiding. Sartre (1943/1958) uses the concept of bad faith (French: mauvaise foi) to describe our fleeing from recognizing what we are.
Taylor (2007) argues that Kierkegaard
developed his existential philosophy in “high time”, early modernity, which was
characterized by the breaking away from God. Buber (1958) on the other hand,
represents “secular time”, the late modernity, characterized by the breaking
away from factual social realities and being more concerned with individual moral
choices and the creation of social identities in everyday life. Buber is
therefore important in this dissertation because of his focus on the significance
of identities that can be transformed, not through a relationship with God, but
through the dialog. Gunzberg (1997) argues that genuine meetings which occur in
a dialog can be used in relation to the healing process, the creation of new
identities. Buber’s dialogical approach to psychotherapy is important in my
understanding of how therapeutic work acts to construct new biographies and
identities. Buber (1958) argues that when the door to self-knowledge springs
open, it does not lead us outside of morality, but into the inner parts of it.
We are then inside the ethics of man; the ethics of human identity, standing
halfway between the light and the darkness. In my opinion, this darkness is not
the darkness which Kierkegaard speaks of in period of early modernity and is
characterized by despair, which Kierkegaard understands in my opinion as being
oneself (or not oneself) without God, but more in terms with the late modernity
of Heidegger which is characterized by “Nothingness”. The darkness of Nothing
and its relationship to human identity, understood as being who we are where we
are (Dasein), can in my opinion (Pettersen
2001) be understood in the words of Heidegger:
In the clear light of the Nothing of anxiety the original openness of
beings as such arises: that they are beings – and not Nothing. But this “and
not Nothing” we add in our talk is not some kind of appended clarification.
Rather, it makes possible in advance the manifestness of beings in general. The
essence of the originally nihilating Nothing lies in this, that it brings
Da-sein for the first time before beings as such… Da-sein means: being held out
into the Nothing.
(1929/1998: 90-91).
Heidegger’s (1926/1962 §§ 58-60,
1929/1998) understanding of Nothing is according to Krell (1993) developed from
Kierkegaard’s concept of anxiety, which in my opinion is not fear of this or
that but a dissatisfaction in ones life where one realizes that one has been
thrown into the world and that ones life and death is an issue one must face.
Sartre (1943/1958) argues that while Kierkegaard describes anxiety as standing
face-to face with freedom, Heidegger describes anxiety as standing face-to-face
with Nothing. These two descriptions are not contradictory, but instead the one
implies the other. It is in my opinion in this kierkegaardian anxiety that one
finds oneself face-to-face with the freedom (Nothing) of the possible
impossibility of ones own existence. This is in my opinion also a postulate
made by Hegel (1812/2004), when he argues that pure Being and pure Nothing are
the same and can be exemplified through our experience of anxiety. When we are
anxious, we realize that anxiety is not Nothing but on the contrary so real
that it may paralyze our entire existence. But when anxiety disappears, we
realize that it was Nothing. Nothing for Heidegger comes to be the name for the
source of for all that is dark and difficult to understand in human existence,
but also of the openness of Being as such and the brightness of whatever comes
to light, as in the uncovering of having been sexually abused (which is the
context in this dissertation). In my opinion, this is where Buber places the
ethics of human identity, standing halfway between the light and the darkness. After
one finds one’s self and becomes one’s self, something even more difficult
starts, namely holding on to one’s self. This does not mean in my opinion that
one must constantly torment oneself with the idea that knowledge of the
darkness of sexually abuse cannot be removed, but instead remain visible in the
clear light of being one’s self; not as a victim of sexual abuse, but holding
on to ones identity as a survivor.
Heidegger goes on to explain that
Nothing is not an object nor is is any being at all. Nothing does not occur by
itself nor does it exist along side beings.
For human Dasein, the Nothing makes possible the manifestness of beings
as such. The Nothing does not merely serve as the counterconcept of beings;
rather, it originally belongs to their essential unfolding as such. In the
being of beings the nihilation of the Nothing occurs (1929/1998: 91).
No one can say what the being of
beings is for certain, because we are all included in the beings historical
conditions for concealment. Heidegger (1961/1997) calls this for
self-concealment (German: Seinvergessenheit).
He argues that self-concealment lay between the two forms of being which he
calls What-Being (German: Was-Sein)
and It-Being (Das-Sein). Heidegger (1976) exemplifies this further in
his analysis av Plato’s allegory of the cave. He argues that It-Being is being
in its existential and original form outside of the cave, while What-Being is
beings predicative form (an assertion) inside the cave. According to Heidegger,
uncovering what is “inside the cave” and coming out in the light demands that
one turns completely around; a turning point in a person’s life.
Kierkegaard calls this turning point
for the moment (Danish: Øieblikket)
and bases his description of this turning point in Plato’s dialog called Parmenides. This dialog consists of nine
hypotheses, where the two first have to do with the transformation of ones
thoughts from diversity to unity which takes place in the ascent out of the
cave (Greek: anabasis). The seven
last ones have to do with the transformation of ones thoughts from unity to
otherness, and takes place in descending into the cave again (Greek: katabasis). In the third hypothesis,
between the ascent and the descent, Plato speaks of a transcendental (which I
understand as above or beyond what is expected or common)
turning point or transition (Greek: metabolé).
It is this turing point where Kierkegaard places the moment (Greek: exaifnés)
and describes it as a strange placeless and timeless point in ones being. The
moment seems to indicate in my opinion a starting point (Greek: ex) where change can happen suddenly
(Greek: to exaifnés) in two
directions, standing still (hvile) or
movement (bevegelse). The moment is
in between standing still and movement; outside of time and place. From this
moment, change from standing still to movement and from movement to standing
still takes place.
The sociological concept of identity
is in my opinion crucial in an analysis of shame in a setting of late modernity
(Giddens 1990) and this practical identity has to do with which form of life
one finds meaningful, that is to which degree one able to substantiate ones
self in a given situation (Heidegren 2002). Since situations we
live in throughout a lived life are often very different, people find it
practical to have multiple identities, making it possible to have; an
occupational identity, a parent identity, a spouse identity, a child identity,
a leisure identity, and so forth, because these different situations bring
about different social relations which form our practical personal identity.
Bauman (2002) agues that Kierkegaard viewed identity as a prison which we
mistake for being shelters. For the sake of freedom, individuals need to break
out of these prisons. This had to be done, according to Kierkegaard, by
destroying ones false identity and rather becoming who one always already is. I
agree with Bauman (2002) when he argues that today these self-made prisons are
seen rather as responses to the breakdown in those basic elements in society
which were characteristic for the “solid modernity” in Kierkegaard’s time, such as; a manageable world, a reason
for living, and ready justifications for ones actions. This was an age of
“mutual dependency, mutual engagement, production and servicing of mutual
binding and durable bonds” (Bauman 2002: 139). Bauman (2000) calls the modern
age of today for a “liquid modernity”, characterized by a dis-engaged society
and with an identity which is indecisive, inconclusive, and in the end
self-destructive. The question here is what kind of identity trace shameful
burdens leave on a trail of self-exploration and -development.
Søren Kierkegaard
1813-1855 Danish philosopher. He died at the early age of 43, but managed to
write in his lifetime a total of 28 books, thousands of pages of notes. During
the last few years of his life he fought a battle with the Danish church by
writing a newspaper in ten publications called The Moment (Øyeblikket).
His complete works were first published in 1901-06, and revised in 1920-36 in a 15 volume edition.
The revised version was published again in 1962-63 in 19 volumes. A new
edition of his complete works is now being published in Denmark together with research
volumes to accompany all his writings. It is an enormous publication, the
largest in Denmark’s
history, comprising over 50 volumes.
Honneth (1995) argues that there are
three forms of recognition: primary relationships (love, friendship); legal
relationships (rights); and community of value (solidarity). 
