Kierkegaard vs Hegel - Objectivity, Subjectivity, and Faith

The following is a paper I submitted during my undergrad studies at Calvin College. I hope you find it beneficial and that it clarifies some of the nuances existing between thinkers like Kierkegaard and Hegel.

I'd like to note, however, that if you wish to make use of my work, remember to cite your sources, including this webpage. The general rule of thumb is this: whenever you use anything, even an idea or concept, that you did not come up with yourself, use proper citation. The integrity of your project is too important to risk through acts of plagiarism.

So cite any and all sources you end up using. Yes, even if it's a paper posted by some schmuck on an online blog somewhere.

Cheers.

Philosophy 333

James Sellers

10/11/13

Writing Assignment #02

Kierkegaard often disagrees with Hegelian ideas. In this case, he disagrees with Hegel's definition of what constitutes truth with regard to the question of Christianity as truth. Hegel would say that truth is an absolute and objective certainty; this certainty is possible through having complete knowledge in its final form. Kierkegaard pseudonymously disputes this idea through Climacus when he asserts that truth as objective certainty has no power to transform the subject as an individual, and neither is it conducive to the passion and inwardness that are important conditions for truth relevant to the subject as an existing individual. For these reasons, Climacus states that truth is subjective and that how the subject relates herself to truth has greater significance than what she relates herself to. This comes to expression in the passage in Concluding Unscientific Postscript that compares the virtuous pagan praying to an idol and the nominal Christian who prays to the true God. In this paper, I will explore what truth means both objectively and subjectively and what these different interpretations mean for the definition and location of truth that Climacus wishes to espouse.

Climacus understands objective truth as a mutual agreement between thinking and being (189). Essentially, one's thinking must correspond with reality, or what is, and vice-versa; the subject must approach truth without biases of any kind, and the subject's beliefs must correspond to what factually is the case. For Climacus, however, this two-way agreement falls short. It turns Christian truth into mere approximation, whereby Christianity, were it to ever be proven as objective truth, would become a mere obligation instead of the object of passion, an abstraction instead of a personal reality. Additionally, this agreement between thinking and being does not take into account the problem of flux that is inherent to human existence:

“If, in the two definitions given, being is understood as empirical being, then truth itself is transformed into a desideratum [something wanted] and everything is placed in the process of becoming, because the empirical object is not finished, and the existing knowing spirit is itself in the process of becoming. Thus truth is an approximating whose beginning cannot be established absolutely, because there is no conclusion that has retroactive power” (189).

By this account, truth has only partial reality as approximating abstraction and not as a timeless reality. If truth as a two-way correspondence between thinking and being is the ideal, then it will always be in a process of approximation.

These problems with the objective account lead Climacus to reject it in favor of a subjective account. Climacus suggest that people think of truth not as an abstract approximation external to the subject to which she must comport herself dispassionately, but rather something that the subject reflects upon inwardly in order to exist in subjectivity. In other words, the question is not necessarily what human beings believe, but rather how they relate themselves to what they believe; the issue is how human beings can live in truth in a subjectively authentic manner. The divergence of the objective and the subjective comes to a head when Climacus writes:

“When the question about truth is asked objectively, truth is reflected upon objectively as an object to which the knower relates himself. What is reflected upon is not the relation but that what he relates himself to is the truth, the true. If only that to which he relates himself is the truth, the true, then the subject is in the truth. When the question about truth is asked subjectively, the individual's relation is reflected upon subjectively. If only the how of this relation is in truth, the individual is in truth, even if he in this way were to relate himself to untruth” (199).

Climacus does not necessarily deny the existence of objective truth as something to which the subject must relate herself. However, he goes one step beyond this, stating that the manner of subjective relation to objective truth is more important than the content of the subject's beliefs. If the question is whether or not one can have knowledge of God, the objective relation to truth encounters the problem of approximation, whereby objective knowledge of God deliberates dispassionately in the hopes of somehow proving God objectively. This is problematic, however, because “God is a subject and hence only for subjectivity in inwardness” (200).

The subjective relation, on the other hand, has personal and urgent reality for the subject. Climacus endorses this mode of relation. An objective seeker of God can only approximate the truth of God as an idea, but a subjective seeker of God is infinitely concerned with how she relates to truth. The person who knows the truth objectively but relates to the truth impersonally prohibits truth's genuine, transformative effect in her life. But the person who, while objectively in untruth, relates to it in truth allows herself to experience truth nevertheless on account of her intensely personal and authentic passion and need. If the question is where more truth can be found, in the objective relation or in the subjective relation, Climacus feels that the answer reveals itself in the comparison of the nominal Christian with the virtuous pagan:

“If someone who lives in the midst of Christianity enters, with knowledge of the true idea of God, the house of the true God, and prays, but prays in untruth, and if someone lives in an idolatrous land but prays with all the passion of infinity, although his eyes are resting upon the image of an idol—where, then, is there more truth? The one prays in truth to God although he is worshipping an idol; the other prays in untruth to the true God and is therefore in truth worshipping an idol” (201).

Put simply, actions speak louder than words. The pagan who prays with life-transforming intensity feels the effects of genuine faith, which inwardly spurs him to action, whereas the Christian who goes to church out of a sense of obligation and prays dispassionately feels no such effects of genuine faith and is not inwardly prompted to action. The pagan likewise struggles with uncertainty and takes hold of faith, while the Christian settles for a mere approximation of God. Acknowledging the truth intellectually is by itself an insufficient belief, because belief must be practiced to have effectual value. What one believes must be reflected in one's actions. As an example, Climacus considers the figure of Socrates, who was willing to die for belief in immortality. “He stakes his whole life on this “if”; he dares to die, and with the passion of the infinite he has so ordered his life that it might be acceptable—if there is an immortality” (201). So with regard to the prayers of the virtuous pagan and the nominal Christian, the transforming power of their beliefs decides whether a subject is in truth or not. As such, the truth ultimately lies in the subjective. Climacus supports this conclusion further when he states that the objective emphasis is on what is said and the subjective with how it is said (202). “At its maximum,” he writes. “this 'how' is the passion of the infinite, and the passion of the infinite is the very truth. But the passion of the infinite is precisely subjectivity, and thus subjectivity is truth” (203). In this way, it is preferable (according to Climacus) to pray to a false god in truth rather than praying to the true God in untruth.

With truth being located in subjectivity, Climacus provides a definition of this truth: “An objective uncertainty, held fast through appropriation with the most passionate inwardness, is the truth, the highest truth there is for an existing person” (203). This means that past a certain point, objective knowledge becomes suspended for the subject, and the infinite passion of inwardness grows stronger in this objective uncertainty. The subject thus chooses objective uncertainty, fueled by infinite passion. Climacus observes that this definition also expresses what it means to have faith. Without a sense of objective uncertainty and risk, one does not need something like faith. “If I am able to apprehend God subjectively, I do not have faith; but because I cannot do this, I must have faith” (204). Only in the absence of objective certainty can something as hopeful as faith occur. Praying in truth thus means to let faith guide one through inward passion in how one relates to one's beliefs.

In short, Climacus concerns himself primarily with the authenticity of the subject's relation to objective truth. The orientation of the subject and the power of a belief to transform the subject in a real and life changing way ultimately makes the most important difference. Truth is thus found in subjectivity, in the heart of the believer as her beliefs drive her to action. The Hegelian idea of absolute knowledge becomes unattainable to the subject, but this very suspension of objectivity brings faith's value to light. In this sense, Climacus implies that Christianity as truth does not lend itself easily to the modern understanding, but is rather something best understood through the genuine and earnest practice of faith.

Works Cited:

Kierkegaard, Søren. Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Hong ed. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1846. 189-204. Print.

Kierkegaard-Crop Rotation and the Aesthetic Life

Phil 333

James Sellers

09/26/13

Writing Assignment#01

The aesthetic life is lived in pursuit of the interesting and the rejection of boredom. As such, it is no simple matter to be an effective aesthete capable of generating interest from mundane subjects. Certain mental acrobatics must be involved. In “Crop Rotation,” the outline of a strategy to ward off boredom is proposed, in which Author A (who is possibly Johannes himself) prescribes a life infused with change and guided by a method. This method is crop rotation, the rotating of one's aesthetic crops, the varying of the soil in which amusement and interest may grow. This method is utilized in “Diary of the Seducer” by Johannes in his relationship with Cordelia. He manipulates, strains and elongates the affair in order to extract as much interest from it as possible, all in accordance with the strategies defined in “Crop Rotation.”

There are correct and incorrect ways to rotate crops. Traveling abroad because one's homeland has become familiar to the point of being boring does not solve the issue, and the boredom of country life is not effectively combated by simply moving to the city. This change is extensive, a changing of fields through which one hopes the soil will yield better crops. But changing the soil in an immediate sense will not accomplish much; reflectively varying one's methods of grain cultivation from this soil will. Through an intensive pursuit of change, interest can be grown in mundane soil, if one is resourceful enough. Limiting oneself to a single field, while restrictive, prompts resourcefulness that can give rise to interest.

“The more inventive one can be in changing the mode of cultivation, the better; but every particular change comes under the general rule of the relation between remembering and forgetting. The whole of life moves in these two currents, so it is essential to have control over them” (233).

If remembering and forgetting are principles by which change can be used to combat boredom, then the interpretation of one's own life and experiences are the key to crop rotation. Remembering the past selectively in a poetic sense means recalling experiences strictly in an interesting light, censuring the past to make it interesting instead of boring; the aesthete turns her life into an entertaining spectacle. Thus she can sow seeds in the soil of her experience and forget unpleasantness, which is an obstruction to the generation of interest. This art of forgetting through how one remembers is the standpoint towards reality which is most conducive to the rotation of crops, and thus the preferred mode of living for the reflective aesthete. However, this stance also means that the moment must be enjoyed with restraint, never pursued to the point of completion. The longer and more drawn out an interesting affair is, the more effectively boredom can be avoided. This is how Author A believes one can have a cake and eat it too (234).

This art of remembering through forgetfulness mentally seals the aesthete off from influences of boredom, but only if she can avoid the hindrances of the boring status quo. This means that anything which could distract one from the rotation of crops must be cut out, including friendship, marriage, and vocation. Being trapped in any of these relationships imposes a sense of obligation, which is restrictive and therefore boring. However, friendship, marriage and vocation can be enjoyed as long as they are not pursued to their fullest. For example, an acquaintance you are on good terms with can be useful in generating new possibilities of interest. And while a married couple have climbed so high in their relationship that they have nowhere to go but down, an engaged couple can enjoy a degree of eroticism before it grows stale (238), though the relationship should ideally last no longer than six months. Just as the moment can be suspended and enjoyed with restraint, a relationship can be drawn out with similar effect. In this sense, relationships have utility and represent potentially fertile soil for the growth of crops.

But just as she varies her soil, the aesthete herself must be varied (239). In order to extract as many possibilities of interest from her experiences as possible, the aesthete must be in control of her mood, able to foresee which mask will benefit her most for any given occasion. Summoning any feeling at will is impossible, but with practice, the aesthete can use moods to manipulate people, situations and even herself, toward desired ends.

This will help her to see the accidental in the arbitrary, to derive enjoyment from normally uninteresting situations. In engaging the arbitrary, it is possible to extract satisfying, accidental meaning. Going to the same church every week may be arbitrary, but counting the tiles in the stain glass windows can be entertaining and therefore gives the whole experience an accidental value. The aesthete should therefore always be on the lookout for the accidental (240).

These strategies for the preservation of interest and the avoidance of boredom are adopted by Johannes in the “Diary of the Seducer.” His relationship with Cordelia, as well as his entire sense of perception, is governed by these rules. In his April 20^th entry, Johannes writes that “One has to restrict oneself, that is a main condition of all enjoyment” (267). This restriction he speaks of is the principle of limitation that is necessary for the intensive pursuit of interest, as well as the restraint vital to the art of forgetting through selective remembrance. In the previous April 14th entry, he describes the state of his soul as a ship about to plunge into the ocean. But despite the power of the waves, he sits above in the crow's nest, observing the tension below as a grand spectacle. This represents the reflective aesthetic state of mind during the process of crop rotation, in which one's own experiences become sources of entertainment.

Before his engagement to Cordelia, Johannes injects himself into her life indirectly through the presence of Edvard, a young man infatuated with the girl. “We are firm friends now, Edvard and I” (287). Johannes' friendship with Edvard is the kind of friendship endorsed by the method of crop rotation; Johannes is befriending Edvard strictly because the boy is of use to him in his manipulation of Cordelia, and the depth of their relationship ends there. Johannes does as crop rotation prescribes and avoids friendship as a genuine obligation, because that would be boring. Likewise when considering the prospect of his intended engagement with Cordelia, he dismisses marriage upon the basis of its ethicality. “The damnable thing with an engagement is always the ethical side. The ethical is just as boring in life as it is in learning” (305). Johannes never intends to marry because it is ethical, and ethics are restricting, and anything restricting is boring. His standards for relationships, both in terms of friendship and marriage, are those espoused in “Crop Rotation.”

His manipulations of Cordelia are an excellent example of controlling moods. During the engagement, it becomes a priority to draw out the tension of the relationship for as long as possible to yield the maximum amount of interest. For this reason, Johannes attempts to balance Cordelia's disposition between two extremes, her cool of disillusionment with the relationship and her warm erotic desire for him. “In this wrestling, her womanliness is matured. I could use conversation to inflame and letters to cool, or conversely. The latter alternative is in every way preferable” (322). When he fears that she is drawing too far away, he draws her in with eroticism, and when she is too near, he pushes her away with distant behavior. The aim is to keep Cordelia in suspense until she breaks off the engagement herself (which happens six months into the relationship, in accordance with the policy on engagements in “Crop Rotation”), all the while engendering in her a sense of her own power over him. In keeping the relationship alive within this field of tension for as long as possible, Johannes generates interest, rotating his crops intensively in a single field.

Johannes is also adept at finding the accidental within the arbitrary. Before Cordelia breaks the engagement, there is an entry where Johannes is sitting on a fence with a cigar, observing the movements of a fisher-girl as she carries firewood. There is nothing that makes this scene special except for Johannes' internal comments, which attempt to paint the situation as more colorful than it likely is. “Maybe you are not a real fisher-girl but an enchanted princess; you are the servant of a troll; he is cruel enough to make you fetch firewood in the forest. That's how it always is in fairy stories” (337). Johannes is highly attuned to the potential interest of every moment, even when not contemplating his larger projects. Instead of a boring fisher-girl, an enchanted princess, and the firewood in her arms is the demand of a cruel troll; all accidental things yielded from an arbitrary situation, demonstrating that Johannes' state of mind is constantly engaged in the act of crop rotation.

If “Crop Rotation” is the proposed method of combating boredom, then “Diary of the Seducer” is the application of that method. Everything Johannes does is motivated by a pursuit of the interesting. He is so dedicated in his practice of the art of remembering and forgetting that he has lost himself within that mental framework, to the degree that the success of his own project leaves him feeling lost and melancholic. At the end, the only thing left to him is to reflect (375). It is ironic that for all the work and manipulation Johannes does to increase the longevity of interest, he cannot control moods in a way that yields lasting interest. No matter how hard he fights reality for every scrap of amusement, he has no underlying source of happiness or contentment. Since Johannes' life is the life of crop rotation in practice, the result of his project with Cordelia is a demonstration of the aesthetic life's ultimate failure to provide the satisfaction that it promises.

Works Cited:

Kierkegaard, Søren. Either/Or. Penguin ed. London: Penguin Books, 1843. Print.

Simone de Beauvoir, God, and the Blank Canvas of Values

Being an existentialist, Simone de Beauvoir once said that values exist in the world only because we attribute value to them. The world and everything in it, the trees, the creatures, are a blank canvas upon which we paint.

I thought about this as I took time out of my busy day to sit outside and smoke my pipe. It was warm and balmy today. Even though I personally dislike warm weather, nature loves it. People were out and about, playing and talking. The ants were working and exploring, and the trees were basking in the sunlight as they blossomed after a prolonged winter. The stones beneath me were warmed by the sun.

I sat and thought about these ants and these trees, about the wooden bench I sat on and the stone beneath it. In themselves, these things have no value. They are just inert matter waiting to be cognized and given importance. People often step on ants and think nothing of it, or they cut up stone and wood into shapes meaningful for them. The ants and the wood and stone themselves mean nothing and have no value except in what potential value they present us with in the act of cognizing them.

Then I thought about a lack of cognizance. I thought about no humans being around to attribute value to these things. It was a world like that blank canvas, still, unrealized, dead. It was a cold and dark world.

Then I thought about God, and I realized that even if the canvas was blank, it had a craftsman who imagined a wealth of possibilities for it. In themselves, the ants and the wood and the stone mean nothing, but they are loved by God. He attributes the quality of being beloved to them, and this makes them cognizable to us as having values beyond their functional use. But more than this, it opens up the possibility that we might see the world as its craftsman sees it, as something beloved. Even in a world without cognizance, value exists, the value of love and preciousness.

As a rational being, I may paint upon this canvas either great or terrible things. But nothing that is not contrary to love is without value, nothing is nothing in itself, because everything is loved. And because of this, I wish to love everything, even though my capacity for this kind of universal love is imperfect. I love the ants as they crawl on me; they are my sisters in the order of creation. I love the wood of the bench and the trees as they afford me comfort and beauty. I love the stone beneath me as it holds me steadily.

But even as I attempted to love the world around me as God loves it, I realized that I felt intruded upon by the person sitting across from me. I should love that person just as I love the ants and the wood and the stone, but it is more difficult for me, being someone who finds comfort in solitude. The imperfection of my love is laid before me; is it a challenge to overcome? A lesson to be learned? Or is it enough to attempt to love the world as God loves it?

Until next time, this is the Idiot, signing out.
-The Idiot