'Lightness' in Dante and Kierkegaard

This difference in the manner of the lightness obtained by both the pilgrim of Purgatory and the knight of faith is highlighted by the rationality of ethical contemplation which initially diverge, but converge at the suspension already insinuated. The downward pull on Dante's pilgrim is the carnal nature of the desires of the will and the self's supplication to that nature in search for freedom. Kierkegaard, on the other hand, seems primarily concerned with the gross intellectualism of his contemporaries. Johannes often laments that when the final movement of faith comes beyond the act of infinite resignation by which one gains an eternal consciousness "a monstrous anxiety grips [his soul]" and he cannot make the movement of faith: "I cannot shut my eyes and plunge confidently into the absurd."¹² The first movement is "a purely philosophical movement" but Abraham "believed by virtue of the absurd, for all human calculation had long since ceased."¹³ He continues, "whoever loves God without faith considers himself, but whoever loves God with faith considers God."¹⁴ The problem is that the final movement of faith into which the knight of faith becomes suspended in the eternal (while still in the finite) cannot be accomplished by the "clever" philosopher because of its fundamental absurdity.¹⁵

Although Johannes may push back against the import of neo-Platonic intellect in Dante, there lies a critical unity to the lightness for both the pilgrim and the knight of faith: the personal center.¹⁶ An aporia is found at the heart of both as it is with the essence of any personal being, but first, there lies a distinction in the nature of this cosmological center in which we gain suspension. Dante is lightened by the seeming stability of a transcendent Center governed by an Intellect beyond rationality (the Intellect is necessarily ordered). A Dante relates to Beatrice: "I now see clearly that our intellect / cannot be satisfied until that truth enlighten it / beyond whose boundary no further truth extends" ( Pd 4.124-126). Johannes' knight of faith on the other hand is lightened in the seeming instability of the Center as it is deprived of the stability given by Reason and appears itself to be bound to the very absurdity of contingent experience itself. Moevs writes of Dante and his milieu: "In a medieval context, meaning or value must thus be grounded in the transcendent, not the contingent. Any meaning recognized in the contingent and ephemeral—in the world—must be ground in the non-contingent and transcendent [...]."¹⁷ This, however, is the trend which Kierkegaard sees collapsing around him, and turns upon its head.

Nevertheless, both Dante and Johannes converge again on the lightness with which the pilgrim and knight of faith reenter the finite world. The circle of gluttony ends with a strikingly Augustinian blessing: "Blessed are they / whom grace so much enlightens that appetite / fills not their breasts with gross desires, / but leaves them hungering for what is just." The pilgrim's will is freed first by its conformation to a holy will, and then gained back entirely in the garden of Eden. The knight of faith, on the other hand, is freed first by the recognition of the fundamental absurdity of ethical rationalism at the awe-inspiring feet of faith. But both reenter back a finite world with the freedom originally sought. For the knight of faith, even "a freedom from care as if he were a reckless good-for-nothing."¹⁸ Both have a will, being suspended in relation to the eternal center, with reenters the finite having been completely resigned or surrendered to the will of God which gifts them back the freedom originally sought.