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In context, Kierkegaard is distinguishing between abstract future-oriented and concrete present-oriented responses to suffering. The passage from which Biden quotes is taken from Kierkegaard’s The Gospel of Sufferings in Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, in a discourse /1 https://twitter.com/philosophybites/status/1350805707755552768
on Mt 11:30 which asks “how can the burden be light if the suffering is heavy?” He argues we have two main options in response to our personal suffering. We can either wait for a beneficial outcome that may never come, or see our suffering as strengthening us in the /2
here-and-now. We can either get lost in future abstraction, which may console us momentarily but ultimately leave us forlorn, or we can face it head-on. Kierkegaard personifies these two responses: “When sagacity consoles a sufferer, it proceeds like this. /3
It says, ‘It will turn out all right and after a while will be beneficial.’ Meanwhile sagacity uses the moment to leave. It is similar to the physician’s visiting the patient and saying, ‘After a while’—and then leaving. The patient can never get hold of the physician and hold /4
him to his words as a deceiver, because the physician sneaks away. But when faith comforts a sufferer, it sits down with him and says, ‘The suffering is beneficial to you—just believe it. This is something that can be understood immediately by faith. Therefore I would like to /5
stay with you so that you can vent your anger upon me if I am speaking untruthfully…’” (p. 238). The point is not to ignore the abhorrent character of the suffering, or (if it has temporal remedies) what is actually needed to cure/fix/address it. For the one who has faith /6
“humanly comprehends how heavy the suffering is,” and does not pretend it is not in fact suffering. Rather, the point is that “when in the dark night of suffering sagacity cannot see a handbreadth ahead of it,” the attitude of faith does not need to await a happy outcome /7
before marching stoically forward. This is worth comparing to Kierkegaard’s Repetition, which contrasts hope and repetition: “For hope is a beckoning fruit that does not satisfy… but repetition is the daily bread that satisfies with blessing.” More generally, Nietzsche’s /8
famous quote from Twilight of the Idols comes to mind: “Out of life’s school of war: That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.” Of course, there are difficulties in using any passage as a pat response to suffering, but the length of Kierkegaard’s discourses here and /9
elsewhere on the subject, and his interesting use of faith’s personification as “sitting down with” the sufferer, prepared for him or her to “vent anger upon” faith, suggests this is not the kind of hasty response he intends. I don’t get the sense it is for Biden, either. /10
