Reading: An Introduction to Soren Kierkegaard
An Introduction to the Philosophy of Soren Kierkegaard
The following is how the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy introduces us to Soren
Kierkegaard.
Søren Kierkegaard (1813—1855)
Søren Kierkegaard is an outsider in the history of philosophy. His peculiar authorship
comprises a baffling array of different narrative points of view and disciplinary subject matter,
including aesthetic novels, works of psychology and Christian dogmatics, satirical prefaces,
philosophical "scraps" and "postscripts," literary reviews, edifying discourses, Christian
polemics, and retrospective self-interpretations. His arsenal of rhetoric includes irony, satire,
parody, humor, polemic and a dialectical method of "indirect communication" - all designed to
deepen the reader’s subjective passionate engagement with ultimate existential issues. Like
his role models Socrates and Christ, Kierkegaard takes how one lives one’s life to be the prime
criterion of being in the truth. Kierkegaard’s closest literary and philosophical models are Plato,
J.G. Hamann, G.E. Lessing, and his teacher of philosophy at the University of Copenhagen
Poul Martin Møller, although Goethe, the German Romantics, Hegel, Kant and the logic of
Adolf Trendelenburg are also important influences. His prime theological influence is Martin
Luther, although his reactions to his Danish contemporaries N.F.S. Grundtvig and H.L.
Martensen are also crucial. In addition to being dubbed "the father of existentialism,"
Kierkegaard is best known as a trenchant critic of Hegel and Hegelianism and for his invention
or elaboration of a host of philosophical, psychological, literary and theological categories,
including: anxiety, despair, melancholy, repetition, inwardness, irony, existential stages,
inherited sin, teleological suspension of the ethical, Christian paradox, the absurd,
reduplication, universal/exception, sacrifice, love as a duty, seduction, the demonic, and
indirect communication.
Retrieved from http://www.iep.utm.edu/kierkega/
Sparks notes is a publisher of abridged literary works. They have done a great job of getting us
inside of Kierkegaard’s thinking in his work entitled Fear and Trembling. It is a consideration of
the sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham as recounted in the Biblical book of Genesis. I think it will
give you an understanding of what were Kierkegaard’s most intriguing insights into human
nature. -RZ
SØREN KIERKEGAARD (1813–1855)
Fear and Trembling
Summary
Fear and Trembling centers on the biblical story of Abraham. Abraham, childless after 80
years, prays for a son. God grants his wish, and Abraham has Isaac. Thirty years later, God
orders Abraham to kill his son. Abraham prepares to kill Isaac, but at the last second God
spares Isaac and allows Abraham to sacrifice a ram instead. Fear and Trembling includes four
different retellings of the story, each with a slightly different viewpoint. In the first version,
Abraham decides to kill Isaac in accordance with God’s will. Abraham convinces Isaac that
he’s doing it by his own will, not by God’s. This is a lie, but Abraham says to himself that he
would rather have Isaac lose faith in his father than lose faith in God. In the second version,
Abraham sacrifices a ram instead of Isaac. Even though God spares Isaac, Abraham’s faith is
shaken because God asked him to kill Isaac in the first place. In the third version, Abraham
decides not to kill Isaac and then prays to God to forgive him for having thought of sacrificing
his son in the first place. In the fourth version, Abraham can’t go through with killing Isaac.
Isaac begins to question his own faith due to Abraham’s refusal to do what God commanded.
In the rest ofFear and Trembling, Kierkegaard examines his four retellings of the story of
Abraham, focusing on the religious and the ethical. Kierkegaard claims that the killing of Isaac
is ethically wrong but religiously right. Kierkegaard also uses his retelling of the Abraham story
to distinguish between faith and resignation. Abraham could have been resigned to kill Isaac
just because God told him to do so and because he knew that God was always right. However,
Kierkegaard claims that Abraham did not act out of a resignation that God must always be
obeyed but rather out of faith that God would not do something that was ethically wrong.
Abraham knew that killing Isaac was ethically wrong, but he had faith that God would spare his
son. Abraham decided to do something ethically wrong because having faith in God’s good will
was religiously right. Kierkegaard claims that the tension between ethics and religion causes
Abraham anxiety.
Kierkegaard argues that his retellings of the story of Abraham demonstrate the importance of a
“teleological suspension of the ethical.” Teleological means “in regard to the end.” If you are
hungry and you eat something with the goal of no longer being hungry, then you made a
teleological decision: you acted, by eating, so as to achieve the end of no longer being hungry.
Abraham performs a teleological suspension of the ethical when he decides to kill Isaac.
Abraham knows that killing Isaac is unethical. However, Abraham decides to suspend the
ethical—in other words, to put ethical concerns on the back burner—because he has faith in
the righteousness of the end (or telos) that God will bring about. Abraham’s faith that God will
not allow an unethical telos allows him to make what seems to be an unethical decision.
Abraham puts religious concerns over ethical concerns, thus proving his faith in God.
Analysis
Fear and Trembling details the relationship between the ethical and the religious in much the
same way that Either/Or details the relationship between the aesthetic and ethical. In Either/Or,
the aesthetic and the ethical are not entirely opposed. In Fear and Trembling, the ethical and
the religious are not directly opposed either. However, the tension between ethics and religion
produces anxiety. Abraham feels anxiety because it is his ethical duty to spare Isaac and his
religious duty to sacrifice Isaac. Ethics are for the good of the many, and they transcend an
individual’s personal aesthetic concerns, but Abraham recognizes that his personal relationship
to God transcends his social commitment to ethics. If Abraham had desired to kill Isaac, this
would have been both immoral and irreligious. However, Abraham doesn’t decide to kill Isaac
for personal aesthetic reasons or for social ethical reasons. Abraham decides to kill Isaac
because of Abraham’s personal faith that God will not actually allow Isaac to die.
Kierkegaard believes ethics are important to society but that only an individual can approach
God, and an individual can only approach God through faith. Kierkegaard argues that
Abraham’s faith in God was a faith that God wouldn’t really make Abraham kill Isaac. If
Abraham had not had enough faith, he would have refused to kill his son. Abraham’s faith
allowed a teleological suspension of the ethical. Kierkegaard uses this story to illustrate strong
faith. Abraham’s faith was tested by God, and Abraham passed the test. In this way
Kierkegaard attempts to draw a distinction between the blind obedience required by the church
and the true faith of the individual. Kierkegaard would argue that if Abraham had only been
willing to kill Isaac because God ordered him to do so, this would have demonstrated
obedience, not faith. Instead, the Abraham of Kierkegaard’s retelling is willing to kill Isaac
because of his faith that God won’t actually make him kill Isaac. This sounds like a paradox, or
an inherently contradictory situation. However, the seeming paradox highlights the distinction
between faith and belief. Abraham has faith that God won’t make him kill Isaac, but that doesn’t
mean he believes it. To believe something is to be assured of it; to have faith requires the
possibility that you will be proven wrong. If Abraham genuinely believed that God wouldn’t
make him kill Isaac, the sacrifice would be no kind of test. However, Abraham cannot be fully
assured that his son will be spared. He must have faith that Isaac will not die, even though
he believes that he must kill him.
Kierkegaard illustrates one of the essential paradoxes, or seeming impossibilities, of ethics. An
ethical system consists of rules that are established to promote the welfare of large groups of
people. However, sometimes the rules actually harm people, and following a rule may help one
person but harm ten. Ethical systems are created to achieve certain ends, but humans lack the
ability to see into the future. Therefore, no one can be completely certain of how to reach these
desired ends. Faith in God answers this uncertainty because it removes the burden of
prediction. Faith involves the teleological suspension of the ethical, in which faith allows one to
believe that an unethical action will actually result in a better end. Humans alone have no
access to this kind of information, only God does. Therefore, humans must put their trust in
God whenever doing so conflicts with society’s ethical systems. The decision to do this
produces anxiety because a person can never know if he or she has passed the test until the
test is complete. Kierkegaard thinks anxiety is a negative feeling, yet it can be taken as a
positive sign that one is pursuing the correct relationship with God.
Kierkegaard as abridged by Sparks Notes retrieved
from http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/kierkegaard/section2.rhtml
Reading: Video: A non-Christian Approach to Kierkegaard
The following link will take you to a YouTube introduction from a non-Christian to Kierkegaard’s
core concepts. This will help you to see how a non-Christian reacts to the issues the
Kierkegaard raised in his philosophical writings.
As you watch this, ask yourself what difference does it make in grasping something of
Kierkegaard if one does not share his belief in the Christian faith?
Reading: Kierkegaard's Fear And Trembling
The following is an excerpt drawn from a discussion of Keirkegaard’s philosophy retrieved
from http://www.iep.utm.edu/kierkega/
b. Fear and Trembling and Repetition
The next two books in the pseudonymous authorship, Fear and Trembling and Repetition, are
supposed to represent a higher stage on the dialectical ladder - the religious. They are
supposed to have moved beyond the aesthetic and the ethical. Fear and Trembling explicitly
problematizes the ethical, while Repetition problematizes the notion of movement. Fear and
Trembling reconstructs the story of Abraham and Isaac from the Old Testament. It tries to
understand psychologically, ethically and religiously what Abraham was doing in obeying an
apparent command from God to sacrifice his son. It apparently concludes that Abraham is "a
knight of faith" who is religiously justified in his "teleological suspension of the ethical." The
ethic in question here is the civic virtue championed by Judge Wilhelm in Either/Or -
corresponding to Hegel's Sittlichkeit [customary morality]. The end for which this ethic is
suspended is the unconditional command of God. But such obedience raises difficult
epistemological questions - how do we distinguish the voice of God from, say, a delusional
hallucination? The answer, which induces fear and trembling, is that we can only do so by faith.
Abraham can say nothing to justify his actions - to do so would return him to the realm of
human immanence and the sphere of ethics. The difference between Agamemnon, who
sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia, and Abraham is that Agamemnon could justify his action in
terms of customary morality. The sacrifice, however painful, was demanded for the sake of the
success of the Greek military mission against Troy. Such sacrifices, for purposes greater than
the individuals involved, were intelligible to the society of the time. Abraham’s sacrifice would
have served no such purpose. It was unjustifiable in terms of prevailing morality, and was
indistinguishable from murder. The ineffability of Abraham’s action is underscored by the
pseudonym Kierkegaard chose as author of Fear and Trembling, namely, Johannes de silentio.
But while Fear and Trembling is supposed to have moved beyond the aesthetic and the ethical,
its subtitle is "a dialectical lyric." Although its subject matter is ineffable and its author silent, it
effuses aesthetically on its theme. It ends with an "Epilogue" that asserts that, as far as love
and faith go, we cannot build on what the previous generation has achieved. We have to begin
from the beginning. We can never "go further."
Repetition begins with a discussion of the analysis of motion by the Eleatic philosophers. It
goes on to distinguish two forms of movement with respect to knowledge of eternal truth:
recollection and repetition. Recollection is understood on the model of Plato's anamnesis - a
recovery of a truth already present in the individual, which has been repressed or forgotten.
This is a movement backwards, since it is retrieving knowledge from the past. It can never
discover eternal truth with which it was previously unacquainted. In contrast, repetition is
defined as "recollection forwards." It is supposed to be the definitive movement of Christian
faith. The pseudonym Constantin Constantius congratulates the Danish language on the word
"Gjentagelse" [repetition], which more literally means "taking again." The emphasis in the
Danish, then, is on the action involved in the repetition of faith rather than on the intellection
involved in recollection. Christian faith is not a matter of intellectual reflection, but of living a
certain sort of life, namely, imitating [repeating] the life of Christ. Despite this verbal analysis of
the difference between recollection and repetition, the characters in Repetition fail to achieve
religious repetition. The pseudonymous author fails in his attempt to repeat a journey to Berlin,
and the "young man" who has been "poeticized" by love seems to move in the direction of the
religious, but ultimately gets no further than religious poetry. He becomes obsessed with Job,
the biblical paradigm of repetition. He substitutes the book of Job for the beloved he has
rejected, even taking it to bed with him. But in the end the "young man" turns out to be no more
than a fiction invented by Constantius as a psychological experiment. He falls back into the
realm of aesthetics, of mere possibility, a figment for the psyche rather than the spirit.
c. Philosophical Fragments, The Concept of Anxiety, and Prefaces
In June 1844 Kierkegaard published three pseudonymous books: Philosophical
Fragments, The Concept of Anxiety, and Prefaces. Philosophical Fragments, the first book by
the pseudonym Johannes Climacus, tackles the question of how there can be an historical
point of departure for an eternal truth. This picks up from Constantius' discussion of the
difference between repetition and recollection. But Johannes uses the perspective and
vocabulary of philosophy, rather than Constantius’ aesthetic irony. He introduces the paradox
of the Christian incarnation as the stumbling block for any attempts by reason to ascend
logically to the divine. The idea that the eternal, infinite, transcendent God could
simultaneously be incarnated as a finite human being, in time, to die on the cross is an offense
to reason. It is even too absurd an idea for humans to have invented, according to Climacus,
so the idea itself must have a transcendent origin. In order for humans to encounter
transcendent, eternal truth other than through recollection, the condition for reception of that
truth must also have come from outside. If we have Christian faith, it is Christ as teacher who is
the condition for receiving this truth - and he is conceived, precisely, as an incursion of the
transcendent deity into the realm of human immanence. There can be no ascent to this truth by
reason and logic, contra Hegel, who tries to demonstrate that "universal philosophical science"
ultimately reveals "the Absolute."
The emphasis Climacus places on the paradox of the Christian incarnation, together with his
assertion that this causes offense to reason, have prompted many to the view that Kierkegaard
is an "irrationalist" about Christian faith. Some take this to mean that his view of faith is
contrary to reason, or transcendent of reason - in either case, exclusive of reason. Others have
sought to find means of reconciling Climacus' claims with some more extended notion of
reason. It is important in considering these issues to distinguish Kierkegaard’s position from
that of his pseudonym, and to take into account the point of view from which this consideration
is made. Kierkegaard’s main aim in having Climacus make these claims is to undermine the
idea that philosophical reason can be used as a scala paradisi. His principle target is
Hegelianism, but he is also trying to distinguish pagan (especially Platonic) epistemology from
Christian epistemology. We must also bear in mind that under the influence of Christian faith,
all experience is transfigured ("everything is new in Christ"). This includes the experience of
reason, as well as ethics and aesthetics. Ethics, for example, might be teleologically
suspended in faith, but is recouped within Christian faith - though it comes to have another
meaning. It is no longer merely customary morality, but is the morality sanctioned by Christian
love, which is deontological, centered on spirit rather than sympathy, self-sacrificing, and is
mediated by God (the "third" in every love relation). Similarly aesthetics is transfigured under
Christian faith, from self-serving reflections confined to the realm of possibility, to the beauty
inherent in altruistic self-effacing acts of love. Reason itself comes to have another meaning
under Christian faith, so that it no longer takes offense at the paradox, but recognizes its
necessity given the exigencies of relating the transcendent to the immanent without reduction.
Reason is recontextualized within existence, rather than being elevated to absorb the whole of
existence. Prefaces: Light Reading for Certain Classes as the Occasion May
Require reinforces the polemic against Hegel's speculative ladder of reason. Although much of
its content is devoted to satirical broadsides at J.L. Heiberg, H.L. Martensen, and the popular
press in Copenhagen, its starting point is the paradox of philosophical prefaces articulated in
the preface to Hegel’s The Phenomenology of Spirit. Hegel’s assumption is that a philosophical
work should be a sort ofBildungsroman - a narrative by means of which the reader’s
consciousness is dialectically developed in the course of reading. If we assume the reader is to
learn something from the process of reading the book, then he or she will not be in a position to
understand the conclusions of the book until they have worked their way through the content.
By the time they reach the end they will be conditioned by what they have read to understand
the conclusion. But a preface presents the conclusions to the book at the outset. It is really an
anticipatory postface rather than a preface. The reader will really only be able to understand it
after having read the book. It is meant for orientation of the reader on embarking on the voyage
of self-development represented by the book. But if it is a direct bridge into the book, the
subject matter itself, then it is really part of the book rather than a preface. If, on the other
hand, it stands radically outside the book, then it can’t be a bridge into the book and is
redundant. This gap between preface and book parallels the gap Hegel draws between
"particular philosophical sciences" (such as aesthetics, and history of philosophy) and
"universal philosophical science" (logic). The former must be used as a contingent starting
point, commensurate with the limited knowledge of the reader, as a point of induction into logic.
The particular can retrospectively be subsumed within the universal, but cannot be expanded
to become the universal. It has been claimed, in accordance with this position, that if the reader
understands the preface to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, he or she understands the whole
of Hegel’s philosophy. But the condition for understanding the preface is already to understand
the whole of Hegel’s philosophy. The pseudonymous author of Prefaces, Nicholas Notabene,
is a pedant whose wife has forbidden him to be an author. He takes an author to be a writer of
books, and with cunning sophistry decides to write nothing but prefaces "which are not the
prefaces to any books." Notabene's prefaces are analogues of human immanence - no amount
of expansion will make them bridges to the transcendent. All human immanence is a "preface"
to the divine. Only once the divine has come to us (in the incarnation or through direct
revelation) can we retrospectively understand the status of our prefatory lives as mere
prefaces. For Kierkegaard there is only one book - the bible. We are never "authors" of books,
but only readers of "the old familiar text handed down from the fathers." On the same day as
he published Prefaces Kierkegaard also published On the Concept of Anxiety by Vigilius
Haufniensis [Watchman of the Harbor - namely, Copenhagen]. Its subtitle is "A Simple
Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin." It is supposed
to be a serious counterweight to the "light reading" ofPrefaces. But it forms part of the same
polemic against immanent human efforts to reach the divine. From the points of view of
psychology and theological dogmatics it elaborates the theme of the sermon appended
to Either/Or - that against God we are always in the wrong. Sin is inescapable. Sin ultimately
consists in being outside of God. Only Jesus Christ, the God-man, is not in sin. Sin
consciousness comes into being as part of human psychological development. It is absent
from the innocent immediacy of childhood. It awakens with sexual desire - when we want to
possess another. Desire is here understood as a lack that we want to fill. Possession, or
incorporation of the other, is thought to be the way to fulfill the desire. In erotic love it feels as
though part of ourselves is outside of us, and needs to be reintegrated (as in Aristophanes'
explanation of love in Plato’s Symposium). This is the beginning of self-alienation and the loss
of innocent immediacy. Self-alienation is a necessary stage on the way to becoming a self. A
self is a synthesis of finite and infinite, temporal and eternal, body and soul, held together by
spirit. Only with the diremption of these aspects of the self, through self-alienation, does spirit
arise. But spirit can only achieve the synthesis of self if it acknowledges its absolute
dependence in this task on God ("the power that posits it"). Long before it gets to this stage,
the person feels anxiety in the face of self-alienation. Anxiety is an ambivalent state, "a
sympathetic antipathy and an antipathetic sympathy." It is the intimation of the delights of
freedom, but also of the dread responsibility that is a consequence of freedom. Like vertigo, it
is the simultaneous fascination and fear of the abyss - a hypnotic possibility of falling that
induces the dizziness to actually fall. The main arena for the exercise of freedom is in
becoming a self. But this requires alienation from one's immediate sensate being, taking ethical
responsibility for one’s relations to other people, and acknowledgement of one’s ultimate
dependence on God. Each of these entails risk - and hence anxiety. One of the risks involved
is the possibility of falling prey to the demonic. A key definition of this notion is "self-enclosed
reserve" [Indesluttethed] - a state in which the individual fails to relate to an other as other, but
returns into him or herself in narcissism or solipsism. Kierkegaard feared that his convoluted,
indirect writing could be his own form of the demonic, and ultimately opted for more direct
forms of communication.
Reading: Advice to Christian Philosophers by Alvin Plantinga
So on all these disputed points in philosophical anthropology the theist will have a strong initial
predilection for resolving the dispute in one way rather than another. He will be inclined to
reject compatibilism, to hold that event causation (if indeed there is such a thing) is to be
explained in terms of agent causation, to reject the idea that if an event isn't caused by other
events then its occurrence is a matter of chance, and to reject the idea that events in the
physical world can't be caused by an agent's undertaking to do something.
And my point here is this. The Christian philosopher is within his right in holding these
positions, whether or not he can convince the rest of the philosophical world and whatever the
current philosophical consensus is, if there is a consensus. But isn't such an appeal to God
and his properties, in this philosophical context, a shameless appeal to a deus ex machina?
Surely not. "Philosophy," as Hegel once exclaimed in a rare fit of lucidity, "is thinking things
over." Philosophy is in large part a clarification, systematization, articulation, relating and
deepening of pre-philosophical opinion. We come to philosophy with a range of opinions about
the world and humankind and the place of the latter in the former; and in philosophy we think
about these matters, systematically articulate our views, put together and relate our views on
diverse topics, and deepen our views by finding unexpected interconnections and by
discovering and answering unanticipated questions. Of course we may come to change our
minds by virtue of philosophical endeavor; we may discover incompatibilities or other
infelicities. But we come to philosophy with prephilosophical opinions; we can do no other. And
the point is: the Christian has as much right to his prephilosophical opinions, as others have to
theirs. He needn't try first to 'prove' them from propositions accepted by, say, the bulk of the
non-Christian philosophical community; and if they are widely rejected as naive, or pre-
scientific, or primitive, or unworthy of "man come of age," that is nothing whatever against
them.
Of course if there were genuine and substantial arguments against them from premises that
have some legitimate claim on the Christian philosopher, then he would have a problem; he
would have to make some kind of change somewhere. But in the absence of such arguments-
and the absence of such arguments is evident-the Christian philosophical community, quite
properly starts, in philosophy, from what it believes.
But this means that the Christian philosophical community need not devote all of its efforts to
attempting to refute opposing claims and or to arguing for its own claims, in each case from
premises accepted by the bulk of the philosophical community at large. It ought to do this,
indeed, but it ought to do more. For if it does only this, it will neglect a pressing philosophical
task: systematizing, deepening, clarifying Christian thought on these topics. So here again: my
plea is for the Christian philosopher, the Christian philosophical community, to display, first,
more independence and autonomy: we needn't take as our research projects just those
projects that currently enjoy widespread popularity; we have our own questions to think about.
Secondly, we must display more integrity. We must not automatically assimilate what is current
or fashionable or popular by way of philosophical opinion and procedures; for much of it
comports ill with Christian ways of thinking. And finally, we must display more Christian self-
confidence or courage or boldness. We have a perfect right to our pre-philosophical views:
why, therefore, should we be intimidated by what the rest of the philosophical world thinks
plausible or implausible?
These, then, are my examples; I could have chosen others. In ethics, for example: perhaps the
chief theoretical concern, from the theistic perspective, is the question how are right and
wrong, good and bad, duty, permission and obligation related to God and to his will and to his
creative activity? This question doesn't arise, naturally enough, from a non-theistic perspective;
and so, naturally enough, non-theist ethicists do not address it. But it is perhaps the most
important question for a Christian ethicist to tackle.
Reprinted from Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers vol. 1:3,
(253-271), permanently copyrighted October 1984. Used by permission of the Editor. New
preface by author. Journal web site: www.faithandphilosophy.com
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Reading: Video: R. C. Sproul on Kierkegaard
The link below will take you to a video examining the Christian philosophy of Kierkegaard by
RC Sproul. Dr. Sproul is a Christian theologian who has spent a great deal of his life in helping
non-specialists understand the difficult concepts of the Christian faith and those who are
Christian thinkers, such as Kierkegaard.
