Kierkegaard on the Paradox of Feminist Progress

"There really is something to the view that one ultimately finds a bit more self-sacrifice among women," observed Kierkegaard in a late journal entry. This, he continues "is no doubt because they live quieter and more withdrawn lives and thus a little closer to ideality; they don't as easily acquire the marketplace measures used by men, who get right to the business of life. What saves women is the distance from life tht is granted them for so long ... This quieter life means taht women are sometimes more loyal to themselves than men are, since men are demoralized from boyhood by the demand to be like others, and become completely demoralized as youths, not to mention as men, by being taught all about the way things are in pracital life, in reality. It is this very competence that is ruinous. If girls are brought up in the same way, one can say goodnight to the whole human race. And women's emancipation, which tends toward this very sort of education, is no doubt the invention of the devil" (*Kierkegaard's Journals and Notebooks,* NB11:159).

Kierkegaard's opposition to women's emancipation has been interpreted by many as an expression of sexism. A careful reading of the passage above, and related observations sprinkled throughout Kierkegaard's authorship, makes clear, however, that the issue for Kierkegaard is not whether women are inherently capable of living up to the standards 19th-century society applied to men, but rather the effect that applying those same standards to women would have on the larger society.

This paper argues that Kierkegaard believes women's emancipation is "an invention of the devil" not because he believes women are in any way inferior to men, but because he believes (rightly or wrongly) that the gender stereotypes of his day served to protect women from the corrupting influences of what he calls "worldliness." Kierkegaard believed it was necessary that some portion of humanity be protected from "worldliness" in order to preserve basic human decency, and, more importantly fundamental Christian values such as neighbor love. To expose women to the same sort of socialization to which men were exposed would result, according to Kierkegaard, in a demoralization of women parallel to that of men and a loss to the larger society of the positive values that serve as a foundation for any harmonious community. 

This paper argues that Kierkegaard, while famously politically conservative, was actually progressive in his views on the inherent equality of men and women. More importantly, it argues that Kierkegaard's views on the nature of masculine and feminine gender stereotypes and the processes of socialization that resulted from these stereotypes, when sufficiently appreciated, can serve as a point of departure for the emancipation of both sexes from these artificial and limiting stereotypes, and can point us in the direction of genuine social progress.