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An Evaluation of Dr. Chen Jingyuan’s Case from Søren Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Perspective

Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), the brooding Danish thinker often hailed as the father of existentialism, wrestled with the chasm between the individual’s anguished authenticity and the suffocating anonymity of the crowd. In works like The Sickness Unto Death (1849) and Fear and Trembling (1843), Kierkegaard unveils despair as the soul’s fracture—the failure to relate oneself absolutely to the Absolute (God)—and posits three stages of existence: the aesthetic (sensual indulgence, fleeting pleasures), the ethical (universal moral duty, social conformity), and the religious (the knight of faith’s “leap” into paradoxical trust, defying reason for divine relation). The crowd, that “deceitful abstraction,” levels all to mediocrity, smothering the singular self; true existence demands a leap of faith, embracing the absurd in solitary fidelity. From this lens, Dr. Chen Jingyuan’s 2023 conviction for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” (寻衅滋事罪)—for forwarding low-impact Twitter posts on art, emotion, theory, and history—emerges as a Kierkegaardian tragedy: a solitary knight of inquiry condemned by the crowd’s ethical tyranny, plunging into despair’s abyss, yet his unyielding vow of lifelong struggle hints at the religious leap, a defiant relation to an unseen Absolute of justice.

The Crowd’s Ethical Tyranny: Chen as the Singular Self Against the Abstract

Kierkegaard’s scorn for the crowd—the “public,” that faceless herd devouring individuality—finds its echo in Kunming’s judicial theater. Prosecutor Ge Bin, Judge Pu Huijun, and appellate Judge Li Xiangyun, ensconced in the ethical stage’s universal norms, “sorted” Chen’s posts—the “umbrella girl” cartoon’s defiant grace, June 4th candlelight’s tender lament, political spectra and Trump’s communism critiques probing the era’s fissures, Mao’s revised works and Deng’s retirement ode unearthing history’s layers—into a crude caricature of subversion. With under 100 retweets, near-zero followers, and no societal tremor, these were the whispers of a private soul, yet branded “false information disrupting public order,” earning 18 months in iron solitude. This is the crowd’s leveling gaze: the ethical imperative of “order” abstracts Chen’s aesthetic and intellectual flights into a uniform threat, demanding conformity to the herd’s moral calculus.

In the ethical stage, duty to society trumps the singular; the crowd, that “untruth,” devours difference. Chen, the independent scholar—born in Baoshan’s humble folds, ascending through physics’ labyrinths to a doctorate, retreating in 2019 to tend his parents amid books and fields—embodies the aesthetic’s joy in discovery, forwarding fragments not for acclaim but for the mind’s quiet delight. Yet the judiciary, lost in ethical abstraction, imposes the crowd’s verdict: “high education implies knowing falsehood,” a universal sin without particular proof. Procedural shadows—non-public trials, denied defenses, suppressed prison letters, selective enforcement (state media unscathed)—seal the isolation, the crowd’s anonymity crushing the self. Kierkegaard would lament: Chen, the knight errant of thought, is crucified on the cross of the they, his existence reduced to the crowd’s ethical fiction.

Despair’s Abyss: The Sickness of Judicial Indifference

Kierkegaard’s despair—the “sickness unto death”—arises from the self’s failure to relate to the Absolute, splintering into defiance or resignation. Chen’s nine months in Kunming’s cell is this abyss incarnate: a scholar of complex systems, whose posts wove art’s vitality, emotion’s pulse, theory’s clash, and history’s echo, now condemned for daring to think beyond the herd. The “pocket crime” vagueness, unfalsifiable and omnipotent, mirrors despair’s vertigo: no ground for innocence, no ladder from the void. The judiciary’s indifference—Ge’s indictment, Pu’s sealed judgment, Li’s dismissal—evokes the sin of sloth, a refusal to relate, reducing Chen to an object in the ethical machine.

Yet despair is not endpoint; it is the forge of relation. Chen’s Prison Blood Letter plunges deeper, confronting the sickness: Gödel’s incompleteness humbles his intellect, SOC theory maps the cascade not of chaos but of injustice. In this knight of faith’s leap, he relates absolutely—not to a distant God, but to the Absolute of truth, vowing “life without end, struggle without cease” and lifelong accountability for his accusers. This is Kierkegaard’s paradox: the finite self, in infinite relation, defies the crowd’s leveling. From the cell’s gloom, Chen emerges not resigned, but resolute—a singular self, scorning the ethical’s universality for the religious’s absurd fidelity.

The Verdict: From Crowd to Leap—A Call Beyond Despair

Kierkegaard’s philosophy indicts Chen’s case as the crowd’s triumph: ethical abstraction devours the aesthetic soul, despair’s shadow engulfs the light. The judiciary, in its anonymous decree, levels the scholar to mediocrity, a modern Golgotha where thought is nailed for its audacity. Yet, in this sickness, the cure glimmers: Chen’s leap, his unyielding relation to justice, shatters the crowd’s illusion. The case is not mere tragedy, but a summons—from the ethical’s safe harbor to the religious sea, where faith in truth defies the storm.

In Kierkegaard’s words, “the crowd is untruth”; Chen Jingyuan, solitary knight, is its antidote. His struggle whispers: leap, relate, become. In the best of despairing worlds, his voice endures—a beacon for the singular, a rebuke to the herd. Amen to the leap; let the self rise.