Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)




I.
 Kierkegaard and Individual Responsibility





Søren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher and theologian who reacted to the idealism of the Romantics and to Hegel's "historicism" by arguing that we as individuals are responsible for our choices. His emphasis on responsibility owes much to the earlier work of Kant (1724-1804), but he developed this emphasis in new ways. He became highly critical of society and of attempts to give rational answers to religious questions that cannot have such answers.





Kierkegaard saw the claims of Christianity as both radical and fundamentally irrational. He saw the basic claim that Jesus rose from the dead, for example, as either being false--in which case it should be rejected--or true, in which case its implications are staggering. The implications of this claim are so profound that remaining neutral about its truth seemed to him gravely irresponsible. We must decide such matters of faith, he thought, but such faith questions lie outside the reach of reason (as Kant had proposed). Deciding such questions must, then, be an act of the will rather than reason, and we are responsible for our willful choices.








II.
 The Nature of Truth





Because fundamental religious questions lie outside the reach of reason, we will never be able to establish the Truth (absolute truth) about them in any convincing way. Searching for such absolute Truth, Kierkegaard thought, should not be our goal. In stead, we must seek individual subjective experience, the "existential situation." In this there is meaning. Meaning is intimately individual, and the individual struggles against "the system" (society and its values) in search of it.





Kierkegaard argued that meaning is subjective. What really matters, what is most meaningful, is personal, not objective, in nature. It is necessary to distinguish between the philosophical question of whether God exists and the individual's personal experience of that question. In confronting such a question, each of us is alone. No one can answer it for us, and no attempt to find the Truth will yeild successful results. The question is fundamentally a matter of faith.








III.
 Stages of Life





Kierkegaard distinguished between three stages on life's journey. These are three different ways of approaching life, three different ways of living. He called them the aesthetic stage, the ethical stage, and the religious stage.





The aesthetic stage is where we all begin. At this stage we see the purpose of life as our own happiness. We live for the moment and try to increase our enjoyment. We begin life as slaves to our own desires and moods. If something fails to excite us, if it bores us, we assume it to be bad. This life can become meaningless, and we can begin to experience angst--a generalized sense of dread or emptiness. When this happens there is hope. This angst can prompt us to leave this stage for the next one. The choice to leave this stage, though, must come from within us. No one outside can impose it or help us take this step.





The ethical stage comes when we begin to make constitent moral choices and approach life with seriousness. (Kierkegaard's discussion of this stage seems heavily dependant upon Kant's duty ethics.) The significance of this stage does not lie in the particular morl choices that we make, but in our decision, our choice to have an ethical opinion at all.

After some time at the ethical stage, according to Kierkegaard, some people relapse into their former "reflective" life at the aesthetic stage, but others move on to the highest stage of all, the religious stage.





Kierkegaard called the move to the religious stage the "leap into the abyss." This move embodies a concious decision to let go of our desire to grasp objective reality. One who takes this step must choose faith over aesthetic pleasure and over the illusion of order that characterizes the ethical stage. This "letting go," this "lead into the abyss," is also, according to Kierkegaaard, a leap into the arms of God.








IV.
 Kierkegaard's Legacy





While Kierkegaard has been tremendously valuable to the history of Christian theology, he has also had a significant impact on western philosophy more generally. Existentialism, a philosophical movement that spread widely in the twentieth century, was to a great extent a reaction to Kierkegaard's intense probing of his religious faith.