Meet Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

January 23, 2002

Hello everyone,

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813–1855) was a Danish religious philosopher who rejected Hegel’s rational solution to ultimate, absolute truth. Our previous mention of the 1967 existential movie Cool Hand Luke notes the root word existence, hence existentialism, and the existential obsession with the nature of life itself: that life is essentially its own reward or curse, depending on how one looks at it.

Kierkegaard is regarded as the first existential theorist, yet in a sense, he was not the first to expound this concept. Though existentialism itself is a distinctly 19th and 20th century literary/philosophical movement, it antecedents can be found in elements of the Bible, the mentality of Socrates, and many other historical figures of renown, including French philosopher and Christian apologist Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), who rejected the extreme rationalism of René Descartes, the philosopher famous for uttering Cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am).

For our concerns today, we will examine existentialism through Kierkegaard’s eyes. He certainly did not view life as being nearly hopeless, an absurd fact that inadvertently ended only in “non-life” and nothing more, going by our text’s definition last week. To be fair, however, it should be noted that in our contemporary use of the word, existentialism is usually seen as a Godless philosophy, thanks to Kierkegaard’s successors, men such as Nietzsche (most famous for his “God is dead” statement), Heidegger (an agnostic and advocate of life’s meaninglessness), and Sartre, whose atheistic and pessimistic views of life fit nicely with humanism and Marxist theories.

Kierkegaard did not view Christianity as being a narrow, “one mold fits all” reality. This is not to say that he rejected the Bible, far from it in fact, but that, unlike Plato and subsequent philosophers who felt that the greatest ethical good was to strive to achieve moral perfection and that each such person would resemble the next, Kierkegaard contributed to our modern theological concept of “finding one’s calling.” He insisted that the highest good of an individual was to find his or her own vocation in life, or as he wrote in his journal: “I must find a truth that is true for me . . . the idea for which I can live or die.” So what did he mean by this? Well, I don’t suppose anyone but he truly knows for certain, but we shall see what we can uncover.

First, he believed in subjectivity, that is, that one’s own convictions and acting on those convictions constitutes moral truth more so than a rational set of systematic standards. In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard, taking a certain poetic license or artistic liberty, brought to light Genesis 22, in which God commands Abraham to take his only son Isaac and offer him as a human sacrifice. Kiergaard maintains that when God made this apparently unreasonable and unethical demand, moral truth was found in Abraham’s obedience to God, as opposed to an objective moral standard, and this was, in the end, Abraham’s redemption. Kierkegaard felt an individual must make a “leap of faith” into Christianity, which is a walk ultimately riddled with paradoxes, mysteries, and filled with danger and risk. Who could deny the painful moments of doubt and uncertainty, or the stunning beauty and terror of the mysteries revealed by faith? In a parallel vein of thought, I cite a quotation from the late Arthur C. Custance in my Monsieur Renaissance : la page des citations: “We do not simply decide to believe, having been convinced by factual evidence. We first grasp the truth, being enabled by the Holy Spirit, and then the external evidence for the truth suddenly takes on new significance. Thus we ‘understand’ by faith. Anselm said, ‘I believe in order that I may understand’ whereas Abelard said, ‘I seek to understand in order that I may believe.’”

Kierkeegard also wrote much of facing dread (the fear of “nothingness”), suffering in the Christian walk, and of course, the single most distinguishable existential theme: the free will and freedom of choice of humanity, distinct from plants and animals, for which each person must accept the ultimate responsibility, commitment and accountability necessarily intertwined in the process. To Kierkeegard, dread was God’s way of calling each person to a fully committed life.

Dr. Hubert L. Dreyfus, Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Berkeley, writes in the Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia Deluxe entry “Existentialism” of subjectivity:

All existentialists have followed Kierkegaard in stressing the importance of passionate individual action in deciding questions of both morality and truth. They have insisted, accordingly, that personal experience and acting on one’s own convictions are essential in arriving at the truth. Thus, the understanding of a situation by someone involved in that situation is superior to that of a detached, objective observer. This emphasis on the perspective of the individual agent has also made existentialists suspicious of systematic reasoning. Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and other existentialist writers have been deliberately unsystematic in the exposition of their philosophies, preferring to express themselves in aphorisms, dialogues, parables, and other literary forms. Despite their antirationalist position, however, most existentialists cannot be said to be irrationalists in the sense of denying all validity to rational thought. They have held that rational clarity is desirable wherever possible, but that the most important questions in life are not accessible to reason or science. Furthermore, they have argued that even science is not as rational as is commonly supposed. Nietzsche, for instance, asserted that the scientific assumption of an orderly universe is for the most part a useful fiction.

Wow! So many thoughts and ideas, so many ways to conceive this universe in which we live and the creature called man. In a sense, Kierkegaard forged his own synthesis between logos and sophia, rationality and intuitive knowledge. (To read more, see D. Anthony Storm’s Commentary On Kierkegaard.) In the next newsletter I will introduce you to another person, the contemporary author Kathleen Norris, who was reading the writings of Kierkegaard when she was just sixteen and finding something of herself in them. I could say so much more about this gifted poet, seeker, and “Johnny-come-lately” to the Christian faith, but I will save my sentiments until the next edition.

God bless,
Eric

“Without faith it is impossible to please God.” (Hebrews 11:6)

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