Reflections on Kierkegaard's "Fear and Trembling"

If I am to accept Kierkegaard’s leap of faith – the actions of infinite resignation and wholly identifying oneself with the object of faith, Jesus (that is, making the God-man my paradigm for existence, the category by which I identify realities, truths, moralities, etc., and the lens by which I perceive all things epistemological and ontological) – must I also accept Kierkegaard’s notion that this act is meaningful by virtue of its identifying me as an individual, by eliminating me as a member of the mediated (as Hegel puts it) class? Kierkegaard elevates the man who, leaving the rational and logical behind (the mediated class), engages the absurd commitment to a particular relationship (i.e. makes a leap of faith) despite – and perhaps because of – the lack of verifiable evidence or reasoning to justify the commitment. However, Kierkegaard’s perception of the absurd is entirely subjective, as its very nature implies that naturally (that is, to the natural man) the evidence-less leap of faith should look ridiculous! Therefore, it cannot be shared by a community, but must be an entirely personal commitment.

Obviously, this grinds me a little because I can’t stand the abuses this notion has received in 20’th century American Evangelicalism. It also worries me as it seems to make particular religious claims (i.e. Jesus is the absolute, only way to God) irrelevant, and allows for pluralism and, as Kierkegaard himself proclaims, the subjectivity of truth. So, what must be said of Papa Sǿren?

First, Kierkegaard is right, I believe, to identify Jesus as the object of faith and the defining paradigm for existence. He is the icon by which we perceive reality, and all our decisions, actions, patterns of thought, etc., operate under this assumption, whether consciously or unconsciously. This is the leap of faith, the infinite resignation of rationality as subordinate to the commitment to Jesus. The notion that this must be a subjective decision, however, does not seem necessary, as part of the leap must be identifying oneself as a member of the body of Christ, and therefore part of the “absurd family,” the covenant community. If it is an act of infinite resignation to surrender reason for the sake of one’s subjective calling to love and believe in Jesus, is it not an even greater resignation to abrogate that calling, setting it aside in favor of the calling of the family? This greater resignation does not involve the ceasing of love for or belief in Jesus, but identifies it as the absurd resignation of those who receive the same calling (Calvin’s “effectual call” of grace). This shared calling does not make it any less absurd, nor does it imply that it is less risky, less demanding of individual devotion, etc. It merely implies that one’s leap of faith is not made alone, but by an intra-responsible group.

There are rebuttals that may be made to my statements, but I’ll forego them for now.

The second issue is pluralism, which Kierkegaard himself rejects but his heirs in secular existentialism and postmodernism do not. The subjectivity of truth comes from Kierkegaard’s notion that the object of faith becomes the paradigm for engaging all things in existence, and so for Martin Luther King the object of faith is civil rights and equality, but for Adolf Hitler the object of faith is Aryan supremacy. Both have existential value for each individual, and as such are individualized truths. This is the flip-flopping of the traditional philosophical model, essence before existence, into the existential-philosophical model, existence before essence. The individual who exists comes to define his or her own essence for Kierkegaard and his progeny, rather than the “essence of mankind,” with all of its philosophied trappings and absolute systems, working out its particular existences. This must be answered in almost the same way as the last issue, because it overemphasizes the importance of the individual while ignoring the very corporate nature of the covenant family. However, this also has greater application to all areas of life.

Kierkegaard’s process is this: Individuals possess innately their immediate desires. This is infantile immediacy, and is fulfilled by gratification. This, however, is a base feeling, and must be made subject to rational, logical mediation, which will provide the proper synthesis between opposing immediate desires or concepts. This is the state of natural, mature man – rationally and scientifically able to exist by creating new syntheses out of opposing theses. However, Kierkegaard proposes that a higher immediacy exists outside this rational stage (thereby making it “irrational” and “absurd”), and that the truly great heroes make this leap into the irrational by virtue of their infinite resignation of the rational for the sake of shifting their paradigm of existence from reason and logic to the new object of their faith. However, Kierkegaard ends the process at this stage of infinite resignation, with which I am dreadfully uncomfortable.

Consider the Bodhisattvas of Buddhism. These are people who have reached Nirvana, but return to provide assistance to those still journeying. This is similar to my perception of the stage Kierkegaard fails to see. Once the infinite-individual resignation has occurred, it must give way to an infinite-corporate resignation that identifies itself with the community. This does not occur because of a perceived reward, the avoidance of punishment, the logic of systematized doctrine, or as an individual calling, but rather as an identification of oneself as a part of a whole. The whole expands with each application: a whole family, local church, community, universal Church, state, nation, species, living organism, item in creation. Thus, the subjectivity of truth must give way to the “objectivity” of truth, or the “assigned-objectivity” of truth. The act of assigning truth to a given idea results from the conclusion of the whole, which can occur any number of ways (i.e. unanimous vote, coercion, some type of bureaucratic legality, etc.). In Christian circles, this assigned-objectivity occurs in the counsiliar decisions symbolized in the Nicene Creed, for example. In politics, this is the statement that all men are created equal. In economics, this is the resolution that laundering is a punishable crime. These examples, of course, can occur out of the lower, mediated stage (pre-leap of faith), the stage of reason and logic. However, they can be given fuller meaning and improved upon in the assigned-objectivity stage, whereas unnecessary systems still in the mediated stage may be filtered out and discarded.