GENIUS FORUMS

I think it is a mistake to think of Kierkegaard as an existentialist.

The existentialists have misinterpreted Kierkegaard so that he can be understood to agree with them.

At no stage does Kierkegaard ever go beyond reason.

That is, his "faith" is entirely based in reason, even though he uses poetic language which can make it sound otherwise.

I think K had a major problem with Faith as he spent most of his life considering why his Father, a devout man was so depressed......shouldn't he have been happy in the presence of God. I agree K uses reason and logic to bring him to the edge of the precipice, but he concludes that when reason and logic reach their conclusion it requires an act of Faith to go on.
K made it clear that it was not the teachings of the Gospels that was important but rather, the actual example of the life of Jesus and he also gave his life to God in much the same way ie he ignored his ill-health and his poverty to fervently defend what Christianity should be .This is against reason and logic and this is how he took his leap of faith. He died young. This is where he went beyond reason

But yes he was no existentialist.it all became silly after his death
This is what I believe, but I am open to correction

Natan wrote:I agree K uses reason and logic to bring him to the edge of the precipice, but he concludes that when reason and logic reach their conclusion it requires an act of Faith to go on.

Faith in what? That is the question.

I say he had faith in reason. He went where reason indicated him to go.

he ignored his ill-health and his poverty to fervently defend what Christianity should be .This is against reason and logic and this is how he took his leap of faith. He died young. This is where he went beyond reason

Is it not reasonable to give your life over to truth? I think it is. Reason tells you that it is.

Is it more reasonable to live a lying life? No, it's not. Reason tells you that it's not.

"Worldly reason" is limited, since it is reason with its arms and legs cut off. It doesn't deserve to be called "reason". But the reason of the spiritual thinker does not have these limitations.

Kevin Solway wrote:

I say he had faith in reason. He went where reason indicated him to go.

what is the relationship between reason (external intellectual stimulation) and the physical sensitivity of the organism?

I tried to find out how and why people see Kierkegaard as a 'founding father' of existential thought.

From an article called Soren Kierkegaard and Existentialism by Gerhard Rempel, the following reasons are given:

Kierkegaard has no philosophical system; that would be contrary to his thinking and approach. But in his Concluding Unscientific Postscript there are some propositions that point the way:
1. All essential knowledge concerns existence.
2. All knowledge, which does not relate itself to existence, in the reflection of inwardness, is essentially viewed contingent and inessential knowledge; its degree and scope is indifferent.
3. Objective reflection and knowledge has to be distinguished from subjective reflection and knowledge.
4. The objective way of reflection leads to objective truth, and while the subject and his subjectivity becomes indifferent, the truth also becomes indifferent, and this indifference
is precisely its objective value; its objectivity is either a hypothesis or an approximation. Subjective knowledge requires personal appropriation. In subjection truth becomes
appropriation, inwardness or subjectivity. In fact, the only reality which an existing being can know otherwise than through some abstract knowledge is his own existence. Here it
is necessary that the existing subject should plunge itself into its own subjectivity.
6. Only ethical and religious knowledge is therefore essential knowledge; they alone are essentially related to the fact that the knowing subject exists; they alone are in contact with reality. In them alone truth and existence coincide.
7. The essential truth is subjective or internal; or "truth is subjectivity".

Although in my view truth is absolute, ultimately, the road leading to understanding this as such is definitely subjective and existential. This is how I see Kierkegaard vs existentialism.

[Edit: improved link to original]

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It's helpful to remember that Kierkegaard makes his public entry into philosophy on the heels of Hegel -- it is Hegel through and through that Kierkegaard is fighting in his first public works -- Hegel, the last great "systemacizer." In fact, of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, it has been called "the end of philosophy" and of Hegel himself "the last philosopher." What was/is meant by this is that no philosopher past him will ever again posit an entire "System" for the unfolding of everything, and one that stays so tightly to itself and covers within it everything that has come before it; predicts what shall happen after. The old definition of philosophy is over with Kierkegaard.

Kierkegaard is disgusted with such a System; pleads willing ignorance that such a thing can exist; and further and most importantly, he chafes under the notion that Hegel's Absolute or World Spirit is trying to realize itself through human consciousness, as though humans within this are so much passive fodder for this Absolute Mind. In this sense, Kierkegaard breaks systems, returns all such process to the individual, and in this sense he serves as this breaking point between this historic Objective believing in Systems of the past and makes the turn to Individual Mind henceforth. Existentialists have every right to claim of Kierkegaard a signal moment in the history of philosophic thinking -- that moment that crushes all Systems and places the burden of thought upon the Individual alone.

This is what happens when people claim of a thinker categorical possession of his thinking. Now, everything this thinker thought must be protected as in concert with one's own take, and unalert arguing like this takes place. Willful Ignorance, too. One needs greater mind for the subtleties, and greater willingness to identify the thoughts of the thinker that do indeed depart from your own. This needn't destroy what you originally found so compelling about this thinker's thoughts. They are, after all, his thoughts that compel you, and only the weak minded assume to occupy the whole person as the actual point. This is hero-worship of the most pernicious degree, and personally, I'd think Kierkegaard would be disgusted with it; might even accuse you of not having gotten him at all. No one ought to abdicate their individual reasoning process to people, or wholesale to that person's thinking.

So when Kevin writes:

I say he had faith in reason.

. . . . this is willful ignorance. To come out of a study of Kierkegaard and claim this is paltry and clinging and willfully ignorant. That a person uses reason in order to discuss the nature of faith; to give you reasons to have faith; or to show you within bright reasoning the distinctions between reason and faith is not an exercise in faith. It's an exercise in reason, of which you are correct in assuming Kierkegaard's high capacity and regard. It's not that hard: A person can use reasoning in these ways to discuss faith, identify faith, even encourage faith, but this is not faith itself. How can you claim to have read and understood Kierkegaard and come out with this, Kevin? Kierkegaard is slapping his forehead over you. You'd probably strike him as one of those "systemacizers" who has abdicated his thinking life in favor of another person or another system, and clinging and struggling to fit everything into this container, running out of fingers to plug all the holes in this rickety, leaking dyke, which is what all systems were to Kierkegaard.

Kierkegaard does not have "faith" in reason. He has knowledge of it, and he uses and operates it brightly and well -- and he uses it and operates it to describe where it leaves off, and faith (the unreasonable) begins . . . .

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( . . . a second day of synchronicity for you and I, Diebert . . :)

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cosmic_prostitute wrote:what is the relationship between reason (external intellectual stimulation) and the physical sensitivity of the organism?

I don't know why you call reason "external". What is it external to?

Reason is what makes the thinking being what it is. It is the essence of the thinking being.

By "physical sensitivity" I presume you mean something like sensitivity to light, or sensitivity to heat. Reason makes sense of all these sensed things.

Natan wrote:He was happy to go against reason

Please provide a clear example of where Kierkegaard has happy to go against his own reason. That is, show in what manner he did not follow his own reason.

You will find that Kierkegaard always follows his reason.

That goes against all worldly reason/logic.

In this forum we are not interested in "worldly reason/logic". We are only interested in reason and logic. The former is like a midget wiithout arms, legs, and head.

KS wrote

Please provide a clear example of where Kierkegaard has happy to go against his own reason. That is, show in what manner he did not follow his own reason.

I did not say his own reason, but the leap of faith he took would be against your reason/logic, or do you agree that if the subject reasons that a leap of faith is the logical step....then it is logical .Wouldn't you argue he acted emotionally?

ie Is all logic/reason subjective?

Kierkegaard was not a philosopher, but he was a clever arguer. He was first and foremost a believer in a Christian God and he died for his Faith........What followed is the usual human corruption of an Ideal

Pye wrote

Kierkegaard does not have "faith" in reason. He has knowledge of it, and he uses and operates it brightly and well -- and he uses it and operates it to describe where it leaves off, and faith (the unreasonable) begins . . . .

I agree with this and it is well said

Pye wrote:

A person can use reasoning in these ways to discuss faith, identify faith, even encourage faith, but this is not faith itself. How can you claim to have read and understood Kierkegaard and come out with this, Kevin?

Kevin has already made plain the distinction between looking (reason) and leaping (faith). His point was that in no way did Kierkegaard make his leap blindly, which cannot be anything other than completely true.

Most of the misunderstandings of Kierkegaard's position on reason and faith come from taking his earlier pseudonymous works, such as "Concluding Unscientific Postscript", too literally. One always needs to keep in mind that these earlier works were exploratory in nature and didn't necessarily reflect Kierkegaard's real thinking.

Kierkegaard does not have "faith" in reason. He has knowledge of it, and he uses and operates it brightly and well -- and he uses it and operates it to describe where it leaves off, and faith (the unreasonable) begins . . . .

Why did Kierkegaard not have faith in repeatedly stabbing his own foot?

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Pye wrote:Kierkegaard breaks systems, returns all such process to the individual

Yes, that is essentially what philosophy is. Nietzsche was also such a philosopher.

Anything less is nonsense.

Hegel was an academic rather than a philosopher.

So when Kevin writes:

I say he had faith in reason.

. . . . this is willful ignorance.

My point was not that Kierkegaard had perfect faith in reason - but that he never rejected reason, and he sought to follow it.

It's not that hard: A person can use reasoning in these ways to discuss faith, identify faith, even encourage faith, but this is not faith itself.

Again I ask you faith in what?

Faith must be in something. And faith should always be in truth, as indicated by reason.

Faith should always be in truth, as indicated by reason.

This can also be called "Faith in reason", since truth is always indicated entirely by reason.

You can call it a "leap", or an act of faith, to go from reason to the truth that is indicated by reason. But that leap is made with a faith in reason.

Feel free to challenge this assertion if you can.

Kierkegaard does not have "faith" in reason. He has knowledge of it, and he uses and operates it brightly and well -- and he uses it and operates it to describe where it leaves off, and faith (the unreasonable) begins . . . .

Regarding any kind of a "leap": Explain why you think reason does not indicate that one should not take such a leap, and explain why you think reason does not indicate what one might expect after having taken the leap.

To me, it sounds as though you are just repeating the academic scripts about Kierkegaard, without any understanding.

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Kevin writes:

Faith should always be in truth, as indicated by reason.

and

Feel free to challenge this assertion if you can.

With pleasure. Why would faith be necessary for something that one takes to actually exist? [certainty/truth]. This cannot even be supported by a generic dictionary definition ("belief in something for which one has no proof") much less Kierkegaard's explanation of it.

This was the crux of the discussion, yes?

Again I ask you faith in what?

Ask the faithful. For Kierkegaard, his faith was in God. That's the "what" there. The only truth he claims surrounding this is in his own subjective movement toward it, and not the thing itself.

Nevertheless, if you are not supporting Kierkegaard with your definition, nor a garden-variety dictionary, at least you have made it clear how you mean to use the word faith, incoherent as it is.

If we use that dictionary, or Kierkegaard for that matter, you have put truth in a position of uncertainty. Makes no sense, Kevin, for you yourself are certain of the truth. This makes yours knowledge and not faith.

Perhaps there is a misty sentiment attached to the holding of faith that you wish to transfer to your warm and dedicated feelings for truth . . . ?

I don't know . . . at present, it's just incoherent . . . .

To me, it sounds as though you are just repeating the academic scripts about Kierkegaard, without any understanding.

Don't do this, Kevin. No one taught me Kierkegaard much less what to think about him.

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Pye wrote:Kevin writes:

Faith should always be in truth, as indicated by reason.

Why would faith be necessary for something that one takes to actually exist? [certainty/truth]. This cannot even be supported by a generic dictionary definition ("belief in something for which one has no proof") much less Kierkegaard's explanation of it.

My dictionary gives the definition "Complete trust".

That is what I mean by faith.

One would never have faith in something one didn't take to actually exist. . . . not unless one was an utter fool.

One can only have complete trust (faith) in those things one knows with certainty to be absolutely true.

Again I ask you faith in what?

Ask the faithful. For Kierkegaard, his faith was in God.

I don't think you know what Kierkegaard meant by "God", so you're not saying anything here.

You might as well be saying "His faith was in #-+##@".

You yourself are certain of the truth. This makes yours knowledge and not faith.

Faith is required in what you know to be true.

The reason we have so few geniuses is because people do not have faith in what they know to be true.

[Damn, I just made-up another quotation on genius]

Pye
Ask the faithful. For Kierkegaard, his faith was in God.

KS
I don't think you know what Kierkegaard meant by "God", so you're not saying anything here.

So KS what did Kierkegaard mean by God?

KS
Faith is required in what you know to be true

No Faith is required in what you believe to be true

To clarify (yes it should all have been in one posting) To know something absolutely that cannot be known is delusion (ie suicide bombers) . To believe in something that cannot be known is Faith..........There has to be the tiniest grain of doubt with which the believer leaps.........or else he leaps to the wrong place

Natan wrote:So KS what did Kierkegaard mean by God?

I read him to be meaning Reality, or Truth. The Infinite.

KS wrote:Faith is required in what you know to be true

No Faith is required in what you believe to be true

This is logically impossible.

If you only "believe" something, in this context, it means that you don't know with certainty that it is absolutely true.

Now, if you don't know with certainty that something is absolutely true, then you can't have complete trust in it - unless one is a fool (who leaps before he looks). And not having complete trust means not having faith.

For this reason it is impossible for a sane, intelligent, responsible person to have proper faith in something he merely believes to be the case.

To know something absolutely that cannot be known is delusion

Yes.

To believe in something that cannot be known is Faith.

To believe in something that you do not know is to take a stab in the dark. (The same as taking an "educated", or not so educated, guess)

If you do this you will inevitably stab your own children.

To leap without looking is fatal. You take your whole family with you to their deaths.

There has to be the tiniest grain of doubt with which the believer leaps.........or else he leaps to the wrong place

Why?

I wrote
So KS what did Kierkegaard mean by God?

KS
I read him to be meaning Reality, or Truth. The Infinite.

Kierkegaard believed in a Judao-Christian type of God

KS wrote:
Faith is required in what you know to be true

I wrote
No Faith is required in what you believe to be true

KS wrote
This is logically impossible.
If you only "believe" something, in this context, it means that you don't know with certainty that it is absolutely true.

Now, if you don't know with certainty that something is absolutely true, then you can't have complete trust in it - unless one is a fool (who leaps before he looks). And not having complete trust means not having faith.

For this reason it is impossible for a sane, intelligent, responsible person to have proper faith in something he merely believes to be the case.

I disagree with you. The Tao that can be known is not the Tao (I think you like the Tao) Or if you prefer ......... Abraham believed in God but if he knew God so well the whole sacrifice of Isaac business would have been pointless.there has to be even a grain of doubt.....You need Faith to have faith, not knowledge

I wrote
To know something absolutely that cannot be known is delusion

KS
Yes.

I wrote
Quote:
To believe in something that cannot be known is Faith.

KS
To believe in something that you do not know is to take a stab in the dark. (The same as taking an "educated", or not so educated, guess)

Kierkegaard knew that Abraham's hand was stayed. This is why we have the story of the Patriarch , so he knew up to a point yes, but he still had to believe a) in the example of Abraham and b) that God would be there for him, when he took his own leap of Faith

I wrote
There has to be the tiniest grain of doubt with which the believer leaps.........or else he leaps to the wrong place

KS
Why?

I have explained this. Its a leap of FAITH not a leap based on knowledge.Knowledge doesnt leap as you imply....it crawls on its belly..where there is ground.whwre there is no ground it stops in fear of ridicule/self doubts etc

..and yes even harm.

To me faith is just where a set of memories, when they are caused to be activated in concert, have a particularly strong emotional value correlation and interconnection synergy.

Perhaps 'faith' evolves out of the mental flux where the brain has a particularly high positive or negative flag on the index values of a particular concept. Alternatively the brain might add together the value flags, which then causes the "index level concept" - which is a more generalised higher level concept than the brains 'images' or "non-emotional knowledge" - to have a high relative value to the other data streaming through the brain.

This mental action flavours the content of thoughts directed to the conscious brain, the frontal lobes. Where an index level concept is caused to repeatedly be activated and appears as a thought, then it becomes integrated with more and more of one's memory as a result, and thus when a conscious experience is occurring the brains searching systems more easily find these index level memories and will firstly tend to bring those to consciousness from pre-programmed 'habit' - the brains reflex mechanism.

The concept "faith" describes the emotional feeling that occurs with the formation and repeated use of these index level concept memories. Faith is a feeling just like everything else we experience.

Different people will be caused by the synergy of their local or group environmental causes and our evolved herd behaviour systems, to develop a large number of very similar index level concepts. Such concepts, when communicated, become memes and can also move from the realm of the subjective to the relatively objective. Of course they will only be objective to the those who share or can fit similar index concepts into a synergy with their many other pre-existing index concepts. It is difficult to break or reverse the value tag of these index concepts (talk to a Christian for instance) but they can be broken where the receiver is caused - usually only by repeated negative conflict between these stored concepts and the persons experiences of reality - to disregard the emotional values attached to the index concept in question and then to repeatedly make use of this otherwise they will be caused to reform the old value.

Natan wrote:

I wrote
So KS what did Kierkegaard mean by God?

KS
I read him to be meaning Reality, or Truth. The Infinite.

Kierkegaard believed in a Judao-Christian type of God

There are two different understandings of God within the Judao-Christian tradition: the exoteric and the esoteric.

My understanding is the esoteric one, and I reject the exoteric. Kierkegaard's understanding was also of the esoteric variety.

The Tao that can be known is not the Tao

Only those who know the Tao can say that. And since you don't, you can't say it.

he still had to believe a) in the example of Abraham and b) that God would be there for him

The only thing you have to believe is the truth. Anything else is nonsense.

Its a leap of FAITH not a leap based on knowledge.

A leap that is not based on sure knowledge is a leap based on ignorance. This is the sure way to condemn innocent people to death.

Knowledge doesnt leap as you imply....it crawls on its belly

You are only speaking for yourself there.

My own knowledge travels in huge leaps and bounds that traverse entire world-systems without any effort.

I said
The Tao that can be known is not the Tao

KS Said
Only those who know the Tao can say that. And since you don't, you can't say it.

Forgive my ignorance kevin, what is the Tao then? Please define it for me

On the other issues we will have to agree to differ..you with the power of your knowledge and me with the power of my Faith (I know what I'd rather have.)

.but I do agree with you that Kierkegaards understanding was of the esoteric variety. He also wasn't interested, and in fact detested what followed, the churches, the morality, the rubbish!