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September 25 - September 25, 2020
Hegel believed that “Reason” is the best method of finding out the truth. But getting there was a complicated process. When you employ reason to investigate the world and its human inhabitants, you frequently end up with conclusions that seem utterly opposed. THIS ANNOYING FACT OF REASON PRODUCING CONTRADICTIONS IS A GOOD THING, BECAUSE THEN YOU ARE FORCED TO MEDIATE BETWEEN THE TWO AND SO ARRIVE AT A SUPERIOR “SYNTHESIS” OF BOTH. This synthesis cancels out the superficial conflict between contradictions, preserves the element of truth in both and so helps advance the inevitable progress of
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Hegel argued that we need both mental concepts to categorize and explain the world of things as they appear to us, and things to give us something to think about. This means that “reality” must consist of both thoughts and objects, so the words “exist” and “real” take on rather odd all-inclusive meanings in Hegelian jargon.
Philosophers had too long concentrated on the idea of “humanity” and ignored the fears, desires, thoughts, dispositions, neuroses and commitments of individual human beings.
For Kierkegaard, discovering the “truth” is not just about finding out how things are. It’s more a matter of making a commitment and taking specific kinds of action. Philosophy has to be more than just a calm search for objective truth.
Kierkegaard’s work is an “anti-philosophy” that rejects virtually the whole canon of Western philosophy with its emphasis on what is universal and objective, and on what can or cannot be known. Kierkegaard is playing a wholly different “language game” to Hegel. This makes it very difficult for anyone to analyze or criticize one in the terms employed by the other.
Kierkegaard saw that most people were content to be absorbed into the everyday world of marriage, career and respectability. Most people follow the normal practices of their society. If the society is Christian, then they go to church. If it is communist, then they dutifully attend party meetings. That doesn’t make them hypocrites, because they have probably never thought of questioning the social and economic pressures that govern their daily thoughts.
“Everything must be reduced to the same level by producing a phantom, a monstrous abstraction, an all-embracing something that is nothing, a mirage, and that phantom is ‘the public’.”
They are contented members of the “public” but lack any real personal freedom, because they have allowed others to decide how they should live.
The aesthetic life is, in the end, a series of repetitive experiences that gradually lose their allure, because every individual has a sense of the eternal which this sort of self-indulgent life can never satisfy.
“Existence” is much more than just something you are born with. It is something you have to strive for, usually by distinguishing yourself from “the crowd”, which may be biologically alive but doesn’t “exist”.
For a belief to be “rational”, some kind of proof or valid argument is usually presupposed. A belief based on faith, however, has more to do with a personal commitment, and usually appeals to some kind of transcendent authority.
Some philosophers and theologians suggest that reason and faith together can form solid foundations for religious belief. Others insist that the two are inherently incompatible.
Those “apologetic” theologians who insist that reason and faith can be reconciled are sometimes called “natural theologians” or “compatibilists”. They often argue that God’s existence can be proved with reason. “Natural Theology” goes back at least as far as Plato (427–347 BC) and Aristotle (384–322 BC), who both appealed to transcendent entities like “The Good” and “The Unmoved Mover”.
A true Christian is rarely happy or complacent. Kierkegaard’s Christianity was like that of his father – a religion of guilt, anxiety and suffering. Christianity had to be a total way of life, which meant that it was impossible to be both a true Christian and a successful member of society. So absolute were its demands that the true Christian must necessarily be an “outsider”.
“Attempts to prove God’s existence are an excellent subject for a comedy of the highest lunacy.” Kierkegaard makes the point time and again that it is impossible ever to prove that anything exists.
“As long as anyone exists, he is essentially an existing individual whose essential task is to concentrate upon inwardness in existing; while God is infinite and eternal.”
“Our age is essentially one of understanding and reflection, without passion. Nowadays, not even a suicide kills himself in desperation. Before taking the step he deliberates so long and so carefully that he literally chokes with thought. He does not die with deliberation, but from deliberation.”
