We’ve been thinking about negative theology / apophatic theology with Derrida’s Sauf le nom, the idea of characterizing the divine by negating predicates: wise without wisdom, powerful without power.  It is a kind of language/translating.  It is a being-together or gathering together of singularities (46) that is not just that of a subsuming under a concept.  A translation is not the original text, but a kind of post-script (Post Scriptum 47).  But to say negative theology is a language is difficult because subject and predicate remain indefinite, as well as what the copula is doing.  What little we have in negative theology can be manifested readily enough with examples/analogies from exemplary texts like “The Cherubinic Wanderer,” though as Leibniz notes with Angelus Sileisius there are difficult metaphors inclining almost to godlessness, and so the opposition between the logical and poetic, conceptual/metaphorical seem to blend in this type of writing as a “calling into question (Derrida, Sauf le nom, 49)” of binary oppositions. 

When Kierkegaard writes using pseudonyms, does this mean we play roles in writing and acting, so that there is nothing graspable behind it, like the biography of Jesus according to Mark, Matthew, Luke or John, but not an autobiography of Jesus, Socrates, etc?  Kierkegaard’s extensive use of pseudonyms—such as Johannes de silentio (author of Fear and Trembling), Johannes Climacus (Philosophical Fragments and Concluding Unscientific Postscript), Anti-Climacus (The Sickness Unto Death), and others—indeed serves as a deliberate strategy of indirect communication, which can be interpreted as enacting “roles” in writing and acting, thereby rendering the author’s true intent or essence somewhat ungraspable or mediated, much like the biographical accounts of Jesus in the Gospels (by Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John) or Socrates through Plato’s dialogues, rather than direct autobiographies from those figures themselves.

This method aligns with his existential emphasis on subjectivity, inwardness, and personal appropriation of truth, where objective or direct conveyance of ideas risks reducing them to detached knowledge rather than lived existence.  Kierkegaard did not merely hide behind pseudonyms for anonymity; he crafted them as fully realized personas or “heteronyms” (distinct from simple aliases, as they embody unique worldviews, styles, and psychological depths).  Each pseudonym represents a specific “stage” or perspective on life:

• Aesthetic (e.g., the seducer in Either/Or’s first volume, attributed to “A”).
• Ethical (e.g., Judge William in Either/Or’s second volume).
• Religious (e.g., de silentio’s exploration of faith in Abraham’s sacrifice, or Anti-Climacus’s Christian ideals that Kierkegaard admired but felt unqualified to claim directly).

By “playing” these roles, Kierkegaard stages a polyphonic authorship—described as a “vast novel” where voices interact dialectically—encouraging readers to navigate contradictions and choose their own path, rather than accepting a singular, authoritative voice.

This indirectness employs irony, parody, and fiction to provoke “double reflection”: not just understanding the content, but reflecting on how it applies to one’s own existence.

Direct communication, in his view, fails for ethical-religious truths because it treats them as communicable facts, bypassing the individual’s passionate commitment.  The “nothing graspable behind it” aspect arises because the pseudonyms inhibit direct access to Kierkegaard’s personal beliefs. Readers cannot easily attribute views to him (e.g., is the despair in The Sickness Unto Death Kierkegaard’s own, or Anti-Climacus’s idealized Christianity?). This creates a performative layer: writing becomes an act of masking, where the “real” author recedes, much like an actor on stage.

However, it’s not absolute nothingness—Kierkegaard later provided a meta-reflection in signed works like The Point of View for My Work as an Author (1848, published posthumously), where he claims a unified religious purpose behind the pseudonyms, though even this is debated as potentially ironic or incomplete.

Just as Jesus left no autobiography—his life and teachings are filtered through the evangelists’ perspectives (Mark’s emphasis on suffering, Matthew’s Jewish fulfillment, Luke’s universalism, John’s divinity), creating varied, indirect portraits—Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms mediate his ideas through fictional lenses, preventing a straightforward “autobiography” of his philosophy.

Socrates wrote nothing; we grasp him via Plato’s dialogues (e.g., ironic in early works, more doctrinal later), Xenophon’s accounts, or Aristophanes’ satire, with no direct voice from Socrates himself. Kierkegaard explicitly draws on Socrates in his dissertation The Concept of Irony (1841, signed but engaging pseudonymity indirectly), using Socratic irony as a model for his own method: questioning without asserting, to unsettle and draw out the individual’s truth.

In all cases, the “graspable” essence is elusive because it’s enacted through roles or intermediaries. For Kierkegaard, this underscores that authentic existence isn’t a fixed biography but a process of becoming—through leaps of faith or choices—resisting reduction to a graspable “behind.” It restores “weight to the individual” (as in our prior discussion) by forcing readers to confront ideas personally, without relying on authorial authority.

This performativity in writing/acting implies that human communication, especially of profound truths, is always role-bound and indirect, echoing existential themes where the self is not a static “thing” but a relational, ungraspable synthesis.

As the Derrida of “Sauf le nom” might say, in reading Kierkegaard we “get” what the author is doing but we are essentially doing apophatic or negative theology because Kierkegaard the individual is ultimately ineffable and so we work at triangulating him rather than subsuming the individual under a universal concept. We do the same thing trying to triangulate the historical Jesus behind the agendas and biases of Mark, Matthew, Luke, John, and Paul.

This interpretation captures the intersection between Derrida’s deconstructive apophasis in “Sauf le nom” and the hermeneutic challenges of engaging Kierkegaard or the historical Jesus. It emphasizes how reading or reconstructing such figures involves a negative theological gesture—affirming through negation, saving the name while excepting its full presence—to avoid subsuming the irreducibly individual (the ineffable “who”) under universal concepts or categories. This “triangulation” acknowledges biases, mediations, and absences, aligning with Derrida’s themes of différance, the trace, and the undecidable.

In “Sauf le nom,” Derrida explores negative theology (apophasis) as a discourse that speaks of the divine or transcendent by unsaying attributes—e.g., God is “not this, not that”—yet paradoxically “saves” the name as a placeholder or trace that points beyond language. This is not mere negation but a performative event: naming enacts a mystery, invoking a “beyond being” (epekeina tēs ousias) that resists totalization.  As we said, it is a calling into question of binary opposition like philosophy/poetry; concept/metaphor, etc.

The title’s pun (“save the name” / “except the name”) underscores this: we “get” the gesture (a hyperbolic affirmation) but confront the ineffable, where the name defers essence through alterity and heterogeneity.

As Derrida notes, apophasis involves a “step not beyond” (pas au-delà), triangulating the unsayable via detours, much like a prayer or hymn that circles without capturing.  Applied to reading Kierkegaard, this Derridean lens reveals how we “get” the author’s indirect communication—pseudonyms as roles enacting aesthetic, ethical, or religious stages—but the individual Kierkegaard remains ineffable, a “secret” that eludes direct grasp. Derrida explicitly nods to Kierkegaard in “Sauf le nom” (p. 65), referencing the opening of Fear and Trembling (under pseudonym Johannes de silentio) as an apophatic moment: the text begins with ellipses and repetitions, unsaying to evoke Abraham’s unspeakable faith.

We triangulate Kierkegaard by navigating these voices (e.g., Climacus’s irony vs. Anti-Climacus’s ideality), negating universal concepts (e.g., “Kierkegaard as existentialist”) to approach his subjective inwardness without subsuming it. This mirrors negative theology: Kierkegaard the individual is “not” fully his pseudonyms, “not” his signed works, yet their interplay saves a trace of his religious purpose, as he later reflects in The Point of View.

Attempting a direct “biography” would violate this, reducing the singular self to a Hegelian universal.  The analogy to the historical Jesus is apt and extends this apophatic triangulation. Just as Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms mediate without autobiography, the New Testament sources (Mark, Matthew, Luke, John, Paul) offer biased, agenda-driven portraits—Mark’s secretive messiah, Matthew’s fulfillment of Jewish prophecy, Luke’s universal savior, John’s logos incarnate, Paul’s crucified redeemer—without a direct “I” from Jesus. Biblical scholars engage in a form of negative theology when reconstructing the “historical Jesus”: negating legendary accretions, cultural biases, and theological overlays to approximate the ineffable figure behind them.

This involves triangulation—cross-referencing sources, Q hypothesis, criteria of dissimilarity (e.g., sayings “not” fitting Jewish or early Christian contexts)—but the result is always deferred, a trace rather than essence.

Apophatic theology explicitly informs this: the Incarnation posits Jesus as both fully human (historically accessible) and divine (ineffable, beyond comprehension), where God’s “wholly other” nature intersects history paradoxically.

We “get” the evangelists’ and Paul’s intents, but Jesus the individual evades subsumption under the concept of certainty.  Derrida’s framework amplifies this: naming “Jesus” saves the historical event while excepting the divine secret, resisting idolatrous totalization. Quests for the historical Jesus (e.g., by Schweitzer or Crossan) thus perform apophasis, circling the unsayable without closure, much like Derrida’s hymn-like detours.

This Derridean-Kierkegaardian approach restores “weight to the individual” (as in our earlier discussion) by privileging the ineffable over universals—whether in psychology (triangulating subjective experience beyond causal narratives) or history. It critiques subsumption: Hegel’s system or modern historicism risks erasing singularity in abstraction. Instead, triangulation via negation fosters ethical responsibility: we must appropriate the text personally, as Kierkegaard demands, or encounter the divine historically, as in Christology. Yet, as Derrida warns, this is undecidable— the “moment of madness” in faith or reading, where the name hovers between presence and absence.

We do something similar in philosophy of education where a child’s grade isn’t just the result of an evaluation of a single piece, which would merely create the illusion of a result, but the triangulation of multiple assessments of multiple products using a variety of instructional strategies to approximate a general competency (e.g., is beginning to; with assistance; proficiently; expertly employs 5 senses language in writing).