Kierkegaard the Fool

Kierkegaard (hereafter K.) takes up the gauntlet on the side of voluntarism in its long-standing debate against intellectualism. Most if not all of K.’s arguments proceed from the assumption of the existence of God , and to the extent to which this assumption is granted, he is fairly convincing in his aim to show that the only viable way to knowing God and thus living an authentic life is through subjective passion.

K. claims that System corresponds with conclusiveness, but is diametrically opposed to existence, as by definition existing is ongoing. He foresees an infinite regress in the reflection required by System, such that objectivity is incapable of ending reflection. Therefore, necessarily there is a gap that requires a leap. Systematic thinking is necessarily unending by requiring a never-ending series of systematic thinkers who are able, respectively, to include past thinkers conclusively, but never themselves. For K., this chain can only be completed by someone, “who himself is outside existence and yet in existence, who in his eternity is forever concluded and yet includes existence within himself,” viz., God.

K. uses the bible story of Abraham to illustrate the importance and meaning of faith. K. assumes that the will of God, arbitrary or not, is good a priori; this leads to K.’s paradox of faith exemplified by Abraham. Abraham’s blind obedience to God’s will shown by Abraham unquestioningly proceeding in following God’s commandment to use his only son Isaac as a holocaust directly contradicts the moral or ethical.

“For faith is this paradox, that the particular is higher than the universal—yet in such a way, be it observed, that the movement repeats itself, and that consequently the individual, after having been in the universal, now as the particular isolates himself as higher than the universal.”

There is no way out of this paradox as it has been defined because any sign of reluctance, or, if Abraham had been allowed by God to carry out the execution, any sign of repentance would be turning back to the universal (the ethical).

The fallout from this line of reasoning are the following claims: the truth is on the side of one whose, “infinite passion of his need of God, feels an infinite concern for his own relationship to God,” as opposed to those who attempt to seek God objectively ; one postulating God is necessitated by the embrace of God with “the ‘category of despair’ (faith),” itself resultant of one’s “dialectical contradiction bring[ing] his passion to the point of despair,” ; subjectivity becomes the truth because the passion of the infinite is the truth and this is precisely subjectivity, and therefore subjectivity alone is decisive, and seeking objectivity is a fool’s errand.