Kierkegaard and the Problem of Truth and Religious Diversity (original) (raw)
Related papers
Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2022
The subject of this two-part article (the second part will be published in KSYB 2023) is the bearing of Søren Kierkegaard’s writings, and of their reception, upon the development of Religionswissenschaft or the comparative study of religion. This first part opens by taking account of Kierkegaard’s own awareness of, and relationship to, “non-Christian” religions (Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, religions of China, etc.), including his late reading of Schopenhauer; then considers Kierkegaard in juxtaposition with his contemporary F. Max Müller, the Sanskritist and foundational pioneer of comparative religion, and the two men’s contrasting relations to F.W.J. Schelling; and finally examines the interest taken in Kierkegaard by William James, Max Weber, and Gerardus van der Leeuw as early twentieth-century contributors through three different disciplines to the study of comparative religion.
2016
This project presents a comparative philosophical approach to understanding key elements in the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard by juxtaposing his works with the philosophy and theology of the Eastern Orthodox Church.. The primary aim of the project is to look at three key areas of Kierkegaard’s philosophy that have been either underrepresented or misunderstood in the literature. These three areas are: Kierkegaard’s views on sin and salvation, Kierkegaard’s epistemology, and Kierkegaard’s philosophy of personhood. The dissertation ends with an epilogue that briefly explores a further area where this comparative approach might provide fruitful results, namely Kierkegaard’s views on collective worship. I argue that the revolutionary nature of Kierkegaard’s break with prevalent views in the Western Christian traditions (Protestantism and Roman Catholicism) have not always been fully appreciated due to the fact that he is most often read through the lens of either Western Christianity o...
The Posited Self: The Non-Theistic Foundation in Kierkegaard’s Writings
Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2015
We may correctly say that Søren Kierkegaard is one of the most influential Christian-religious thinkers of the modern era, but are we equally justified in categorizing his writings as foundationally religious? This paper challenges a prevailing exclusive-theological interpretation that contends that Kierkegaard principally writes from a Christian dogmatic viewpoint. I argue that Kierkegaard’s religion is better understood as an outcome of his philosophical analysis of human nature. Conclusively, we should appreciate Kierkegaard first as a philosopher, whose aim is the explication of human subjectivity, and not primarily as an orator of Christian orthodoxy.
Kierkegaard on Faith and Desire: The Limits of Christianity and the Human Heart
Kierkegaard on Faith and Desire: The Limits of Christianity and the Human Heart, 2021
This dissertation analyzes and evaluates several major productions by Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855). It focuses on three works Kierkegaard authored under pseudonyms – Either / Or (1843), Fear and Trembling (1843), and Philosophical Fragments (1844) – and the non-pseudonymously authored Works of Love (1847). The dissertation argues that for Kierkegaard, Christian faith is a distinctive capacity of the individual human being that enables the individual to organize their desires and pursue the good life in a way that is qualitatively superior to what is available outside of Christianity. Through exegesis of Kierkegaard’s works, the dissertation identifies two elements of Kierkegaard’s presentation of Christian faith that recur throughout his authorship. The first is an axiom that undergirds Kierkegaard’s conception of the good life, namely that for the best possible life to be lived (that is, the Christian life), a person must ultimately be individually responsible for their own happiness or unhappiness. The second is a complex juxtaposition between Christianity and alternative, non-Christian worldviews (collectively called ‘Paganism’ by Kierkegaard) which Kierkegaard performs to provoke his reader into making the decision to affirm Christianity. If, with the assistance of God, the individual does so (that is, has faith), their desires and motivations are reorganized to enable a higher form of happiness and a new form of moral engagement (love for the neighbor). The dissertation characterizes this juxtaposition through a stagecraft analogy: the mechane, a crane that lifts a theater actor to simulate flight. The analogy highlights the relationship of asymmetrical dependence between Kierkegaard’s accounts of Christianity and non-Christian alternatives. For an actor to take flight (happiness) with the mechane (Christianity), the hoist (faith) that suspends them must be supported by a tension force from the ground (‘Paganism’). Faith requires awareness that the theological and anthropological scaffolding that makes Christian faith possible is transcendent and distinctive. But at the same time, to avoid compromising the transcendence and distinctiveness of faith, the individual cannot completely foreclose the possibility of that which Christianity negates, for example, through rational proofs or research into the historical origins of the Christian tradition.
Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook , 2023
This second part of a two-part article (the first part of which appeared in the Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook 2022) surveys the varying uses made of Kierkegaard’s writings by four twentieth- and, in two of their cases, also twenty-first century contributors to Religionswissenschaft: Joachim Wach, Mircea Eliade, Wendy Doniger, and Bruce Lincoln, all four of whom happen to have taught at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Far from being irrelevant or being regarded as a theologically-inclined persona non grata by comparatists of religion, Kierkegaard was embraced in three main capacities by these influential contributors to the field: as a datum (mostly in the history of theology and/or philosophy), as a theorist, and, in one case, as an existential soulmate. In Lincoln’s case, the reduction to memes—the memeification—of certain ideas ascribed to Kierkegaard comes under consideration.
Kierkegaard's Deep Diversity: The One and the Many
Kierkegaard and Issues in Contemporary Ethics, 2020
Kierkegaard’s ideal supports a radical form of “deep diversity,” to use Charles Taylor’s expression. It is radical because it embraces not only irreducible conceptions of the good but also incompatible ones. This is due to its paradoxical nature, which arises from its affirmation of both monism and pluralism, the One and the Many, together. It does so in at least three ways. First, in terms of the structure of the self, Kierkegaard describes his ideal as both unified (the “positive third”) and plural (a “negative unity”). Second, he affirms a process which brings together unity, as implied by the linear notion of “stages”, with plurality, in the form of “spheres of existence” (aesthetic, ethical, and religious). And third, the culmination of the process implies that we should embrace both a unified dialectic (“Religiousness A”) alongside the plural remnants of the ethical/aesthetic, that is, both the infinity of the former and the finitudes of the latter. Unsurprisingly, while Kierkegaard describes those who are able to exemplify his ideal in practice as “always joyful,” he also considers the ideal to be “extremely hard, the hardest task of all.” This is why those such as Hubert L. Dreyfus are wrong to claim that it provides an experience of bliss; on the contrary, those who realize it “are always in danger.” As I shall show, one form this danger takes is that it threatens to dirty the hands of those who manage to uphold Kierkegaard’s ideal. Moreover, it does so in ways that, I claim, tend to be missed by Kierkegaard himself. Nevertheless, the danger is also essential to the creativity of his approach, and I conclude by pointing out how this creativity makes it capable of tackling one of the profoundest challenges in contemporary ethics: that arising from what just war theorists call a “supreme emergency.”
The Age of Enlightenment brought about the emergence of rationalism, or the theory that knowledge should be based on objective reason rather than more traditional sources, such as religious beliefs. During the Enlightenment, in Denmark, Lutheran Christianity was firmly planted as the official state church. It was against these two influences of rationalism and state-instituted Christianity that Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) penned his work from Copenhagen titled Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments in 1846, noted by theologian Roger E. Olson as "perhaps Kierkegaard's most systematic statement of his philosophy" against these influences. To provide a historical understanding of Kierkegaard’s impetus for writing his Postscript, key theories and events from the Enlightenment period and immediately following—specifically those in and around Denmark—are briefly summarized. Attention is then focused on Kierkegaard’s pushback in his Postscript to these theories and events. Finally, Kierkegaard’s philosophy in his Postscript about the traits that inhabit a true and authentic Christian, over and against these theories and events, are explored. Kierkegaard's Postscript captures the heart of his existentialist philosophy about what it means to be a true and authentic Christian.