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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2009
The Alleged Turning Point in European Philosophy
Existentialists, especially those who follow either Heidegger or Jaspers, find a great deal objectionable in what they variously call ‘scientism’, ‘scientific rationalism’, and ‘positivism’. In this article I shall discuss one of the alleged defects of scientific rationalism, that it recognizes only one kind of truth—the kind that existentialists call ‘objective truth’. ‘One great achievement of existential philosophy,’ writes William Barrett, ‘has been a new interpretation of the idea of truth in order to point out that there are different kinds of truth, where a rigid scientific rationalism had postulated but one kind: objective scientific truth.’ Not only scientific rationalists but traditional metaphysicians from Plato to Aquinas and Hegel are judged to be equally at fault here: they too have failed to recognize any truth other than the objective variety. It was Kierkegaard who for the first time effectively challenged the assumptions shared by scientific rationalists and traditional metaphysicians. Kierkegaard, in Barrett's words, ‘had to re-open the whole question of the meaning of truth … his stand on the question may well have marked a turning point in European philosophy.’
1 Barrett, W. and Aiken, H. (eds.), Philosophy in the Twentieth Century (from here on abbreviated as PTC), Vol. 2, p. 149.Google Scholar
2 Irrational Man (from now on abbreviated as IM), p. 152. Enormous claims for Kierkegaard's merits are by no means uncommon m the literature. Thus D. F. Swenson asserts that Kierkegaard ‘belongs to all time and all humanity, just as surely as do Plato and Aristotle, Spinoza and Hume and Kant and Hegel’ (Introduction to Geismar, Eduard, Lectures on the Religious Thought of Soren Kierkegaard, p. xviiGoogle Scholar) and the ‘skeptical God-seeker’, Sidney Hook, tells us that ‘existentialist theology has put forward its finest modern flower in Kierkegaard’ (The Quest for Being, p. 132).
3 The Journals of Kierkegaard,. p. 261 (Entry 813).
4 PTC, Vol. 2, p. 150.
5 IM, p. 156.
6 p. 19. Like Barrett and other existentialists, I am assuming throughout this article that Kierkegaard may be identified with Johannes Climacus, the pseudonymous author of Concluding Unscientific Postscript and Fear and Trembling. Such an identification has been questioned by several writers, most recently by ProfessorMcKinnon, Alastair in ‘Kierkegaard's Irrationalism Revisited’, International Philosophical Quarterly, June 1969CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I do not feel qualified to take sides on this question of Kierkegaard-scholarship. If Professor McKinnon is right some sentences in the present essay would have to be reworded but nothing essential would be affected. I am concerned with the soundness or otherwise of the doctrine that truth is subjectivity as it has been interpreted by contemporary existentialists who regard it as a momentous contribution. Whether or how far Kierkegaard himself really believed it or any of the other theories proposed in the pseudonymous writings is quite another matter.
7 Concluding Unscientific Postscript (from now on abbreviated as CUP), p. 20. William Barrett is full of praise for this statement of the ‘central issue’ of religion. ‘The fact,’ he writes, “is that Kieikegaard stated the question of Christianity so nakedly, made it turn, so decisivtly about the individual and his quest for his own eternal happiness, that all religious writers after him seem by comparison to be symbolical, institutional, or metaphorical.’ Barrett adds that later religious existentialists, with the one exception of Unamuno, failed to ‘match Kierkegaard's passion or his passionate cleaving to the central issue’ (IM, pp. 156–7).
8 CUP, p. 156.
9 CUP, p. 26.
10 CUP, p. 179.
11 CUP, p. 182. There is not a similarly clear pronouncement on the state of the objective evidence for immortality, but it seems fairly plain that Kierkegaard did not think of the traditional proofs for immortality any more favourably than of those in support of God's existence. He does remark in one place (CUP, p.155)that ‘systematically, immortality cannot be proved at all’.
12 CUP, p. 513.
13 CUP, p. 38.
14 CUP, p. 189.
15 CUP, p. 188.
16 CUP, p. 384, my italics.
17 CUP, p. 191.
18 CUP, p. 495.
19 CUP, p. 159.
20 CUP, p. 337.
21 CUP, p. 342.
22 CUP, p. 432.
23 Whether Kierkegaard really meant that Christians must believe in self-contradictory statements is a much-debated question among Kierkegaard commentators. Garelick, H. M., in his The Anti-Christianity of Kirkegaard (The Hague, 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, forcefully argues that this is precisely what Kierkegaard meant. With some qualifications this is also the view of Allison, H. E., ‘Christianity and Nonsense’, The Review of Metaphysics, 1967Google Scholar, reprinted in J. H. Gill (ed.), Philosophy-Today, No. 1. The view that Kierkegaard did not regard the assertion that God ‘fused with an individual man’ as a self-contradiction and that it is mistaken to think of him as an irrationalist is defended in Soe's, N. H. ‘Kierkegaard's Doctrine of the Paradox’, in Johnson, H. A. and Thulstrup, N. (eds.), A Kirkegaard Critique (Chicago, 1962)Google Scholar, and in McKinnon's, Alastair articles ‘Kierkegaard: “Paradox” and Irationalism’, Journal of Existentialism, 1967Google Scholar, ‘Believing the Paradoxs: A Contradiction in Kierkegaard?’, Harvard Theological Review, 1968, and ‘Kierkegaard's Irrationalism Revisited’, op. cit. In ‘Kierkegaard on Faith and Reason’ (Sophia, April 1969), L. T. Howe argues that for Kierkegaard ‘Christ is the Absolute Paradox not because reason is challenged, but because in every relationship to him, passions are offended. Out of passionate concern for salvation men look for the One who will come in power and glory; he comes, but in lowliness and humiliation.… He who would redeem suffers at the hands of men, is humiliated, and dies in agony on the cross as a criminal’ (pp. 20–21, Howe's italics). Howe bases this interpretation largely on Training in Christianity, but in fact Kierkegaard develops the same point in several other writings, e.g. in The Sickness Unto Death, pp. 216ff. I do not dispute that Kierkegaard does in certain places offer an account of the supreme paradox along the lines sketched by Mr. Howe, but Kierkegaard also and especially in his most influential writings like CUP very definitely treats the paradox as something that offends our reason. The quotations given in the text which are entirely representative of a great many other passages in Kierkegaard's writings should make this abundantly clear.
24 Fear and Trembling, p. 109. Kierkegaard adds ‘that is, the only convincing conclusions’ which is not at all the same thing. However, here and elsewhere Kierkegaard appears to assert that the conclusions of the passions are both reliable and convincing.
25 CUP, p. 116.
26 CUP, p. 181, Kierkegaard's italics.
27 Ibid.
28 CUP, p. 406. On the next page Kierkegaard further elaborates this idea: ‘If I take the uncertainty away … then I do not get a believer in his humility, in fear and trembling, but I get an aesthetic coxcomb, a devil of a fellow, who wishes, speaking loosely, to fraternize with God, but who, speaking precisely, stands in no relationship to God whatever’ (p. 407).
29 CUP, p. 188.
30 CUP, p. 182.
31 Ibid.
32 CUP, p. 115.
33 CUP, p. 189, Kierkegaard's italics.
34 CUP, p. 178. This entire passage is italicized by Kierkegaard.
35 CUP, p. 181.
36 CUP, p. 179.
37 CUP, p. 180.
38 CUP, p. 181.
39 P. 182, Kierkegaard's italics.
40 PTC, Vol. II, pp. 149–50.
41 CUP, p. 163.
42 Ibid.
43 CUP, p. 115.
44 CUP, p. 155. My italics.
45 The Journals of Kierkegaard, p. 355 (Entry 1021).
46 I have refrained from commenting on Kierkegaard's remark that there is ‘more truth’ in being subjectively than in being objectively in the truth. This remark appears to imply that the two are the same sort of thing and that we may say of a man who is subjectively in the truth no less than of one who is objectively in the truth that he is right—only more so. This is absurd. However, Kierkegaard may have meant no more here than that he prefers sincere and involved people who are mistaken to those who are right but who lack inwardness.
47 What matters is passion: ‘The scribbling modern philosophy holds passion in contempt; and yet passion is the culmination of existence for an existing individual—and we are all of us existing individuals' (CUP, p. 176).
48 CUP, p. 152 n.
49 Barrett, IM, p. 152.
50 For a discussion of redefinitions in science see Nagel, Ernest, ‘Some Reflections on the Use of Language in the Natural Sciences’, The Journal of Philosophy, 1945CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Waismann, Friedrich, How I See Philosophy (London, 1968), pp. 181ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.
51 IM, p. 153. Barrett's italics.
52 Existence and Freedom (Evanston, 1961), p. 7, Schragg's italics.
53 CUP, p. 32.
54 CUP, p. 175.
55 CUP, p. 174.
56 CUP, p. 175.
57 In a moving passage Kierkegaard distinguishes between the ‘subjective’ madness of the person who is infinitely concerned but not about the right object and ‘the much more inhuman madness' of those who are totally devoid of inwardness. ‘One shrinks from looking into the eyes of a madman of the former type lest one be compelled to plumb there the depths of his delirium; but one dares not look at a madman of the latter type at all, for fear of discovering that he has eyes of glass and hair made from carpet-rugs; that he is, in short, an artificial product’ (p. 175). Kierkegaard is at his best when he exposes the tendency of many of his contemporaries to do almost anything in order not to have to make contact with their own deeper feelings. To this extent but only to this extent is it correct to regard him as a forerunner of Freudian psychoanalysis. Probably because of his overwhelming concern with religion Kierkegaard contributes very little of interest about the ature of the repressed emotions.
58 CUP, p. 117.
59 CUP, p. 540.
60 CUP, p. 188.
61 This will no doubt depend on what is meant by ‘absurd’. If Kierkegaard means something weaker than self-contradictory there may be no problem here. In one place he speaks of the paradox as ‘the improbable’ (CUP, p. 209) and this is something that human beings are quite capable of believing. However, if the paradox consists of statements which the believer knows to be self-contradictory, ‘believing the absurd’ becomes an unintelligible expression.
