page_title: Double-mindedness
section_title: In Kierkegaard
hierarchical_section_title: Double-mindedness / In Kierkegaard
caption_attribution_description: The good samaritan (after Delacroix) nl: De barmhartige samaritaan (naar Delacroix)
context_page_description: Double-mindedness is a concept used in the philosophy and theology of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard as insincerity, egoism, or fear of punishment. The term was used in the Bible in the Epistle of James. Kierkegaard developed his own systematic way to try to detect double-mindedness in himself.
context_section_description: Kierkegaard asked himself:  Do I want to be a Christian or not? Do I want to be a preacher or not? Do I want to be a teacher or not? Do I want to get married or not?  All these questions have to do with the future. Many were willing to give him advice but he felt the decision was ultimately his own. Individuals fear making a decision because of external opposition but this need not stop one from making a decision so long as one has the capacity to learn through experience whether the decision was a good decision for one's self.
  David F. Swenson was born in Sweden October 29, 1876 and his family moved to America in 1882. He became a professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota in 1917 and was very interested in the writings of Søren Kierkegaard. He ended up translating many of his books into English. At the time, America's human population was increasing and the same question asked in the Psalms was asked by people like David Swenson: "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" (Psalms 137:4). Below are several quotes from Kierkegaard's book, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, published on March 13, 1847 where he tried to answer that question.
  There were brazen teachers of brazenness who thought that justice was to do wrong on a large scale and then to be able to make it appear that one nevertheless willed the good. Thus they had, so they thought, double advantage, the wretched advantage of being able to do wrong, of being able to have their will, of letting their passions rage, and the hypocritical advantage of seeming to be good. But in ancient times there was also a simple wise man whose simplicity became a trap for the quibbling of the brazen; he taught that in order to be really sure that it was the good one willed, one should avoid even appearing to be good-presumably lest the reward should be tempting. Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, Hong p. 37
  What is your frame of mind toward others? Are you in harmony with everyone-by willing one thing? Or are you divisively in a faction, or are you at loggerheads with everyone and everyone with you? Do you want for everyone what you want for yourself, or do you want the highest for yourself, for yourself and for yours, or that you and yours shall be highest? Do you do unto others what you want others to do to you-by willing one thing? This willing is the eternal order that orders everything, that brings you in harmony with the dead and with the people you never saw, with strange people whose language and customs you do not know, with all the people on the whole earth, who are blood relatives and eternally related to divinity by eternity's task to will one thing. Do you want a different law for yourself and for yours than for others; do you want to have your comfort in something different from that in which every human being unconditionally can and will be comforted? If a king and a beggar and one of your peers came to you at the same time, would you in their presence dare with bold confidence to assert what you want in the world, with bold confidence to assert wherein you seek your comfort, positive that his Royal Majesty would not disdain you even though you are an inferior, positive that the beggar would not go away disheartened as if he could not have the same comfort, positive that your peer would rejoice in your bold confidence! Alas, there is something in the world called an alliance; it is a dangerous thing, because all alliances are divisiveness. It is divisive when the alliance excludes the commoner, and when it excludes the nobleman, and when it excludes the government worker, and when it excludes the king, and when it excludes the beggar, and when it excludes the wise, and when it excludes the simple soul-because all alliances are divisiveness in opposition to the universally human. But to will one thing, to will the good in truth, to will as a single individual to be allied with God-something unconditionally everyone can do-that is harmony. Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, Hong p. 144
  The first type of double-mindedness
caption: The Good Samaritan
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