Kierkegaard has already addressed reward-seeking and avoidance-of-punishment as barriers to willing the Good in simplicity. In Chapter 6, he adds “Egocentric Service of the Good” to the list:
“Furthermore it must be said that the man who wills the Good and wills its victory out of a self-centered willfulness does not will one thing. He is double minded.”
“Suppose a man wills the Good simply in order that he may score the victory, then he wills the Good for the sake of the reward, and his double-mindedness is obvious, as the previous section of the talk has sought to point out. Actually he does not care to serve the Good, but to have the advantage of regarding it as a fruit of conquest.”
“He wills that the Good shall triumph through him, that he shall be the instrument, he the chosen one. He does not desire to be rewarded by the world – that he despises; nor by men – that he looks down upon. And yet he does not wish to be an unprofitable servant. The reward which he insists upon is a sense of pride and in that very demand is his violent double-mindedness.”
In a sense, as Kiergegaard points out, this could be considered another type of reward-seeking – in this case the reward being the sense of pride one gets from doing the Good. This, perhaps, is where Kierkegaard gets close to St. John of the Cross when he speaks of rejecting “spiritual rewards” or “consolations.” If the focus is on any type of good feeling – if the focus is on the self in any way – one is not willing the Good in simplicity.
Towards the end of this chapter, Kierkegaard talks about the individual who does not seek worldly rewards for doing the good, nor does he fear worldly punishment for not doing the Good, and yet he still hasn’t achieved single-mindedness:
“...this double-minded person is not so easily recognizable on earth. He does not will the Good for the sake of reward, for then he would have become obvious in his aspiration or in his despair. He does not will the Good out of fear of punishment, for then he would have become obvious in his cowardice, in his shunning of punishment, or in his despair, when he was not able to avoid it. No, he wishes to sacrifice all, he fears nothing, only he will not sacrifice himself in daily self-forgetfulness. This he fears to do.”
Egocentric service of the Good is characterized by a lack of self-forgetfulness.