The Dialectic of Moods: Emotions and Spirit in Kierkegaard and Mādhyamika Buddhism

Abstract

Kierkegaard's dialectic of existential stages can be analysed into a dialectic of moods, emotions and spirit. The "stages" of the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious are characterized by affective and motivational states, which can be differentiated according to their intentional objects, and their orientations towards self, others, worldliness, other-worldliness, temporality and eternity. Kierkegaard's dialectic requires movement from self-absorbed moods in the moment to emotional concern for others over time. Emotional feelings for others are initially indexed to oneself, yet progress towards spirit requires detachment from oneself so that concern is purely for the sake of others. This detachment is achieved by means of an "inverse dialectic" of consciousness of one's own sin, despair, repentance, intensification of despair, and faith in the forgiveness of sin. This faith requires that the individual "become as nothing before God" - which consists in acquiring a sense of one's distance from the divine. Christian faith is the generic antidote to the suffering inherent in all moods and emotions, since "becoming as nothing before God" amounts to the erasure of egotistical attachment to one's moods, self-regarding emotions, worldly identity, and temporality. The ultimate goal of the dialectic is absorption into the absolute love of the Christian God, which can occur only through grace. There is an apparently similar dialectic in Mādhyamika Buddhism, from afflictive mental states to spiritual joy, which prescribes specific antidotes for particular mental afflictions and a generic antidote for all mental afflictions.