Broken

'The self must be broken in order to become itself', says Kierkegaard. The self must be broken: what do you think that means? Have we been broken? Are we broken enough?

We need to be brought to our knees in order to understand Kierkegaard, W. says. We need to intensify our despair, to despair over it. Yes, that's what we need: to double up despair, to set despair against despair.

Ah, but this, too, is a danger. For we are liable, in such extremity, to set ourselves defiantly against the task of becoming ourselves. We tend to that defiance in which we glory in the particularity of our despair, using it as a badge of our excellence. I am my wound, we say to ourselves. I am my suffering. 

Of course, W. has always believed that I am his wound, and that I am his suffering, but it comes to the same thing: he hasn't despaired enough. If he is to grasp the true measure of his despair, understanding it as sin, and then moving to the opposite of sin, that is, faith, then I am the idol he has to smash. He must move beyond localising all his troubles, the cause of his despair, in my presence in his life.

But how can he do that? There must be some part of him that loves his despair just as he loves me, for he does love me, W. says.