Reflectivity is a crucial notion in the Kierkegaardian view of Christianity; reflectivity contrasted with immediacy turns out to be of paramount importance in several portions of Kierkegaard's work. The theme that true immediacy is impossible for the case of the contemporary disciple and the Teacher (Christ) is developed in Philosophical Fragments: the paradoxical Historicity/Eternality of the Incarnate Deity renders immediate cognition impossible and reduces the case of the contemporary disciple of the Teacher to a state similar to that of the discipleat-second hand) It will be the burden of this paper that the crucial notions of immediacy and reflectivity which are so important to the overall Kierkegaardian Christian view are first developed, interestingly enough, in some of S.K.'s work on the aesthetic realm, Either/Or and "Diary of the Seducer". A brief overview of the importance of these notions from a Christian point of view follows, with a digression into their original philosophical development in Kierkegaard's earlier work. A final section will complete the argument and attempt to tie these two strands of Kierkegaardian interpretation together.
The concept of reflectivity is of crucial importance to Kierkegaard because it is the very apparatus he uses to help establish the dialectic through which one is enabled to make a leap into Christianity. What Kierkegaard terms in Philosophical Fragments "offended consciousness" -that is, consciousness which is offended by the seeming paradox of the Teacher's divinity and mortality -finds itself involved in an "acoustic illusion" with regard to this Primal Paradox. The offended consciousness cries out to the Paradox (according to Kierkegaard): "You are Paradox! You are irrational!" and receives in reply "I am Paradox! I am irrational!" from the source of the problem. Such a dialectic, involving an echoing back and forth of the statement of paradox, may ultimately lead to submission -a bestowal of the Paradox -if one makes the leap of faith into Christianity. The witness finds the God within him by leaping wholeheartedly into the Paradox. As Kierkegaard writes: "All that the offended consciousness has to say about the Paradox it has learned from the Paradox, though it would like to pose as the discoverer, making use of an acoustic iUusion. ''2 This refiectivity, so crucial to the relationship between the Teacher and the