The Logic of Subjectivity: Kierkegaard's Philosophy of Relilgion

190 Pages·1984·13.532 MB·English

by  Louis P. Pojman

The
LO·GIC
of
SUBJECTIVITY
Kierkegaard's Philosophy
of Religion
Louis P. Pojman
The University of Alabama Press
Copyright © 1984 by
The University of Alabama Press
University, Alabama 35486
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
The following published articles have been used in this work with the
permission of the publishers: "Christianity and Philosophy in
Kierkegaard's Early Papers," inJollrnal of the History oj Ideas (January
1983); "Kierkegaard on Faith and History," in International Journal Jor
Philosophy of Religion (Summer 1982); and "The Logic of Subjectivity, ..
in Southern Journal oJPhilosophy (Fall 1981), vol. XIX, number 1.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Pojman, Louis P.
The logic of subjectivity.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Kierkegaard, S0ren, 1813-1855-Religion.
2. Christianity-Philosophy-Hist ory-19th century.
l Title.
B4378.C5P64 1983 230'.044'0924 83-1053
ISBN 0-8173-0166-6
to
Trudy, Ruth, and Paul
Contents
Preface
IX
Bibliographical Note and Abbreviations xv
1. INTRODUCTION and ORIENTATION 1
The Christian Purpose of Kierkegaard's Authorship 1
Christianity and Philosophy in Kierkegaard's Early Papers 4
Kierkegaard's Conception of Human Existence 13
2. ATTACK on OBJECTIVITY 22
Kierkegaard as Philosopher 22
A Critique of Rationality 26
The Failure of Objectivity: Analysis of Book 1 of
Concluding Unscientific Postscript 35
3. SUBJECTIVITY and EPISTEMOLOGY 54
The Domain of Subjectivity 55
Kierkegaard's Epistemology 60
Subjectivity and Truth 63
Conclusion 72
4. FAITH and the STAGES OF EXISTENCE 76
Faith in the Stages of Existence 77
87
5. 'FAITH' in PHILOSOPHICAL FRAGlvfENTS
87
The Climacus Writings
'Faith' in Philosophical Fragments 90
103
Critique of Kierkegaard's Volitionalism
Vll
CONTENTS
V111
6. 'FAITH' in CONCLUDING UNSCIENTIFIC
POSTSCRIPT and LATER PAPERS 118
'Faith' in Concluding Unscientific Postscript 118
'Faith' and 'Hope' in Kierkegaard's :{-ater Papers 126
7. A JUSTIFICATION of CHRISTIAN FAITH 131
8. Conclusion 144
Appendix: Kierkegaard on Indirect Communication 148
Notes 155
Selected Bibliography 167
Index 171
PREFACE
My thesis is simple but controversial: Kierkegaard is a philosopher, a thinker
who uses arguments, develops concepts, and employs 'thought projects' to
establish conclusions. He is a rationalist, who makes use of reason even if it is
to show reason's limits. He does not offer systematic, orderly syllogisms
whose premises wear their meaning on their sleeve. The main lines of his
arguments are often diffuse, devious, and difficult to state precisely, let alone
follow. He purposely uses poetic devices, indirect communication, parables,
pseudonymns, anecdotes, and metaphors to make his points. All this has led
many scholars either to deny that he is a philosopher or to undermine that
aspect of his work, seeing him primarily as a "kind of poet," religious thinker,
or existentialist antiphilosopher "with no opinion of his own."
Furthermore, Kierkegaard has been known as an antirationalist, even as an
irrationalist, who eschews the use of reason in coming to religious faith.
There is some truth in the charges of such scholars. It is probably not too
much of an exaggeration to say, as one of the foremost Kierkegaard scholars
of our day does, "Whatever philosophy or theology there is in Kierkegaard is
sacramentally transmitted in, with, and under poetry"; but it is, I think, more
than an exaggeration to go on to say, as this scholar does, that, for
Kierkegaard, "subjectivity is all the truth there is" and his work is a piece of
"anti-philosophy," "a piece of rhetorical exhortation masquerading as discur
sive presentation. It is not an attempt to describe subjective truth in objective
terms."l
In this work I will challenge this thesis. I will try to show that although
Kierkegaard often uses indirect forms of communication and does exhort as
much as argue, he has a message to communicate which is founded in a belief
in objective truth. He claims that the goal of his work is to reach what he calls.
the "highest truth," objectively and eternally true, though not accessible by
normal objective processes-not directly, at least. I will try to show that there
is more reasoning in Kierkegaard than is usually realized and that his work is
an exercise in giving "reasons why there are no reasons," so that there are
grounds for pursuing the truth through subjectivity, a very specific kind of
subjectivity, chastened by reason and experience.
Until recently, analytic philosophers have not taken Kierkegaard seriously
as a thinker. He has been left to the poets, Existentialists, theologians, and
psychologists. After an introduction to Kierkegaard's work as a philosopher
by James Collins (The Mind of Kierkegaard) and Heywood Thomas (Subjec
tivity and Paradox) in the mid 1950s and Herbert Garelick's provocative
monograph, The Anti-Christianity of Kierkegaard in 1964, little was done in
IX
PREFACE
x
this area until the late 1970s. The leading Kierkegaard scholars were the
ologians (Dupre, Hirsch, Holmer, S10k, Sponheim, and Thulstrup) and liter
ati (Auden, Grimsley, and Henriksen). If they were philosophers, they were
not in the analytic tradition (Elrod, Malantschuk, Mackey, Swenson, and
Taylor).
In the last few years, articles have begun to appear by analytic philosophers
concerned with the arguments used by Kierkegaard in his works. Philoso
phers such as Robert Adams, J. Donnelly, Stephen Evans, Paul Edwards,
Alaister Hannay, Earl McLane, and Gregory Schufreider have published arti
cles dealing with specifically analytic concerns: conceptual analysis, the use of
argument, and the structure of theory. My book, which reflects the concerns
of these writers, is in the same tradition, and has profited from these writers
far more than I have been able to show in the text.
This work is offered as a comprehensive examination of Kierkegaard's
ingenious attempt to construct a Christian philosophy-or, as he put it, a
"Christian epistemology." In this regard there are two interesting features to
his thought. First, he develops self-consciously Christian ideas out' of the
rudiments of secular concepts. His treatment of 'dread' and 'despair' in The
Concept of Anxiety and Sickness unto Death are good examples of this strategy.
With this in mind, we shall examine the concept of 'faith' in chapters 4 and 5.
The process of Christologizing secular concepts, infusing them with a po
tency they didn't appear to have at first glance, is interrelated with the second
important feature ofKierkegaard's philosophy: the strategy of constructing a
framework in which the move into Christian faith is shown (albeit indirectly)
to be eminently reasonable. In many ways what he does is similar to what
Paul Tillich in our own day has called the' correlation method' of theological
jnquiry, where Christian faith is seen as the answer to questions which arise
within the deepest moments of human existence.
I have no objection to calling this study an exercise in philosophical theol
ogy; however, the emphasis is on the philosophical structure ofKierkegaard's
thought, especially the arguments inherent in the Climacus writings. Hence it
would be more accurate to describe this work as a philosophical analysis of
Kierkegaard's philosophy of the Christian religion.
I claim that Kierkegaard was, among other things, a philosopher, a Chris
tian prulosopher, concerned with explicating and defending the Christian
faith at the same time he sought to win his fellow Danes for the faith. Why
should these two purposes be separate? His published works may be seen as
an endeavor to construct a reasonable case for Christianity. Indeed, I shall
argue that if his analysis is correct, it follows that Christianity is the only
reasonable world view for a rational person to accept and integrate into his
eXIStence.
Preface
Xl
With regard to this apologetic strategy, Kierkegaard has both a positive and
a negative thrust: Positively, he develops a theory of the stages of existence
which consummate in a leap offaith into the Christian form of life. He works
out a phenomenology of human consciousness wherein the quest for authen
tic selfhood leads inevitably to the Incarnation. Negatively, he offers an inge
nious, quasiskeptical argument that denies reason in the name of reason and
opens the way for an acceptance of subjectivity whose logic leads to Christian
faith as the only way left.
The positive strategy seems an appropriation of Hegel's thought in the
Phenomenology of Mind, but for a diametrically opposed purpose (as Mark
Taylor has shown in his Journeys to Seljhood: Hegel & Kierkegaard). The
negative strategy is reminiscent of and, I believe, derives from Kant's work,
where he denies reason in order to make room for faith. Kierkegaard ad
vances Kant's thought in a way that Kant would never have dreamed. My
study will concentrate on this second feature ofKierkegaard's work, though I
shall say something about the stages at the end of the first chapter and again in
chapter 4. I have written on this in another place. 2
The plan of this study is founded on a hypothesis that there is an overall
argument in the Climacus writings (and reflected and supported in
Kierkegaard's private papers and other writings) that may be formulated in
the following form:
1. There are two opposing ways to approach the truth: the objective and
the subjective ways.
2. The objective way fails.
3. Hence the only appropriate way is the subjective way.
4. Christianity is the subjective way oflife that meets all conditions for the
highest subjectivity.
5. Hence Christianity is the appropriate way to teach the truth.
These are the bare bones of the argument that underlies the plan of this
book. The concepts 'truth', 'subjectivity', 'objectivity', and their cognates
will be examined in the following chapters, and the argument will be devel
oped chapter by chapter and brought to a climax in the final chapter ("A
Justification of Christian Faith").
This present work is critical-not always favorable to Kierkegaard. I have
tried to treat his work sympathetically but with a sharp eye for underlying
assumptions, entailments, missing premises, and logical form. While recog
nizing the polemical stance of the "melancholy Dane" in the face of a spirit
less Christendom, which no doubt caused him to exaggerate his claims at
various points, in the last analysis I have wanted to know what Kierkegaard
has to say to us today with regard to faith. Extricated from his historical
situation, does he have a message for us? How valid is his argument for the
PREFACE
XlI
reasonableness of the leap of faith? If I have dealt too harshly with
Kierkegaard at places, it is because I take these questions and Kierkegaard's
work with utmost seriousness. I offer my critique with no sense of having
said the last word on the subject, but rather to raise the discussion to a higher
plane. Let those who believe that Kierkegaard can be defended take this study
as a challenge to do just that. '.
Although most of this book is directed to the Climacus writings, I have
used material from the Papers and other writings where the context warrants
their use in providing further support or illustrative material for the issue at
hand. This work is necessarily selective, and giving the full picture of
Kierkegaard's thought is still far from accomplished Nevertheless, I believe
common threads run through his works, and that what I have outlined is
based on weighty evidence. 3
A synopsis of this work is in order. In chapter 1 I orient the reader to some
of the fundamental, background ideas in Kierkegaard's thought. I point out
the Christian presuppositions that motivated his thought; show how these
concerns arose in his university days, when he wrestled with the relationship
of Christianity to philosophy; and give an overview of his anthropology,
suggesting that it outlines an argument for the existence of God and showing
how the theory of the stages of existence fits into his teleological view of
man.
In chapter 2 ("Attack on Objectivity") I begin an analysis ofKierkegaard's
use and critique of reason. I analyze several of his attacks on the use of reason
and try to show how he approaches the subject. The second main section
deals with one of his attempts to give reasons why there are no reasons for
religious knowledge: his analysis of the relationship between faith and history
in the Climacus writings. I also offer a brief discussion of his criticisms of the
apologetics of his contemporaries, and point out Kierkegaard's 'cognitive
disjunct principle', which I claim is central to his work and has largely gone
unnoticed in the literature.
In chapter 3 ("Subjectivity and Epistemology," which might well be la
beled "The Way of Subjectivity") I analyze-more closely than anyone has
done heretofore-Kierkegaard's epistemological foundations and show how
his theory of subjectivity fits into this broader framework. In the second main
section of the chapter I argue that there are at least three versions of the
doctrine in his works: what I call the Socratic, Platonic, and necessary-condi
tion versions. Most commentators have noticed only the Socratic version,
but the Platonic version may be more prominent on closer scrutiny.
In chapter 4 ("Faith in the Stages of Existence") I show that the concept
'faith' is polymorphous in Kierkegaard's works, and I trace some strands of