Faith, self-transcendence, and reflection

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion

Volumn 51, Issue 2, 2002, Pages 121-138

  De Nys, Martin J ^a  

^a GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 37649015356     PISSN: 00207047     EISSN: 15728684     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1014420229544     Document Type: Article

References (49)

1. Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 203, 240. Johannes Climacus uses these terms to define truth in relation to subjective reflection. He then says that this definition "is a paraphrasing of faith".
2. See Postscript, pp. 379-380. Johannes Climacus does make this statement about Chris-tianity. But one must be mindful of the distinction Climacus makes between Religiousness A and Religiousness B. In each he discusses Christianity. The discussion in Religiousness A considers Christianity in abstraction from that which distinguishes it from religion in more general terms and renders it distinctive. The discussion in Religiousness B is of Christianity in its distinctiveness. Whatever is true in the first discussion is also true in the second, but the reverse does not hold. The statement that Christianity presents an existence communication rather than a doctrine belongs to the first discussion.
3. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 405.
4. See Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, ibid., p. 400.
5. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Ibid., p. 408.
6. See Postscript, pp. 475-479. This is the point of the comments, in the discussion of suffering, about a man's decision to take a holiday with his family to the amusement park. If an activity like this needs to be and is understood as occurring in the context of the absolute commitment, then even a trip to the park can be an act of serving God. But then one is also no longer pursuing, in this instance, relaxation just for its own sake. This is what Climacus means by "dying to immediacy".
7. Postscript, Ibid., p. 225.
8. Postscript, Ibid., p. 433.
9. See C. Stephen Evans, Kierkegaard's Fragments and Postscript (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities, 1983), p. 171.
10. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 461.
11. See Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, ibid., p. 527.
12. See Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, ibid., p. 554.
13. Soren Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, edited and translated by Howard and Edna Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), p. 159.
14. See Merold Westphal, "Religious Experience as Self-Tanscendence and Self-Deception", in Philosophy of Religion, edited by Melville Stewart (Sudbury: Jones and Bartlett, 1996), p. 266.
15. C. Stephen Evans, Kierkegaard's Fragments and Postscript, pp. 42, 43. "The ethicist may believe in and relate to God, but he does so essentially through his relation to himself. . . . The religious exister relates to himself through his God relationship instead of relating to God through his relation to himself".
16. Westphal, "Religious Experience as Self-Transcendence", p. 266.
17. Westphal, "Religious Experience as Self-Transcendence", Ibid., pp. 267-276.
18. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 192.
19. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Ibid., pp. 197, 198.
20. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Ibid., p. 192.
21. See Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, ibid., p. 199. Climacus speaks here of a "mediation" between subjective and objective reflection, meaning something different by that term than the sense I mention earlier. In general, Kierkegaard uses "mediation" for several purposes and in several senses. One just needs to carefully examine the context to determine the exact use and meaning of the term.
22. See David J. Gouwens, Kierkegaard As Religious Thinker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 53. Commenting especially on the specifically Christian content of his thought, Gouwens notes that, in addition to requiring appropriation and subjective reflection, Kierkegaard "believes that religion and Christianity are deeply conceptual. For example, while Christianity is not a doctrine but an 'existence communication', it still possesses doctrinal and conceptual content, such as revelation, Incarnation, consciousness of sin, and the possibility of offense".
23. David J. Gouwens, Kierkegaard As Religious Thinker 1996), Ibid., p. 201.
24. See David J. Gouwens, Kierkegaard As Religious Thinker 1996), ibid., pp. 202-203.
25. Soren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), p. 43.
26. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 200.
27. C. Stephen Evans, Passionate Reason: Making Sense of Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments, (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992), pp. 68-69. Commenting on Climacus' views about arguments concerning the existence of God, Evans observes that, "His real target is the notion that such a rational proof could be a substitute for faith. Once it is conceded that the recognition of such an argument requires faith and cannot be a substitute for it, he seems to have no objection to such arguments".
28. My use of concepts such as "evidence", "reality", "certainly", and "truth" need more discussion that is possible in this paper. Suffice it to say here that these uses are essentially phenomenological and more specifically Husserlian. A remarkably incisive and clear discussion of these notions is available in Robert Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 156-176.
29. believe that Bernard Lonergan's discussions of judgments that are virtually unconditioned are also of great value in discussing the concept of certainly. See Bernard Lonergan, Insight (London: Longmans, Green and Co., Ltd., 1958), pp. 280-281.
30. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 446.
31. M. Jamie Ferreira, Transforming Vision: Imagination and Will in Kierkegaardian Faith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 62. At this point in her discussion Ferreira is commenting on Judge William's discussion of the transition to ethical existence in Either-Or. What she says here applies as well to the transition to religious existence.
32. M. Jamie Ferreira, Transforming Vision: Imagination and Will in Kierkegaardian Faith 1991), Ibid., p. 63.
33. M. Jamie Ferreira, Transforming Vision: Imagination and Will in Kierkegaardian Faith 1991), p. 63. Ibid.
34. M. Jamie Ferreira, Transforming Vision: Imagination and Will in Kierkegaardian Faith 1991), p. 63. Ibid., p. 39.
35. M. Jamie Ferreira, Transforming Vision: Imagination and Will in Kierkegaardian Faith 1991), p. 63. Ibid., p. 39.
36. M. Jamie Ferreira, Transforming Vision: Imagination and Will in Kierkegaardian Faith 1991), p. 63. Ibid., p. 33.
37. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, pp. 426-427.
38. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Ibid., p. 427. Climacus often uses "eternal happiness" as a name for the absolute telos. One should note that in classical philosophy and scholastic philosophy and theology this expression can name a condition or the reality that is the source of this condition. Thus the scholastics can say that human happiness consists in God, insofar as the condition of happiness comes about through the perfection of the relation to God. Kierkegaard employs this usage.
39. As I note earlier, Kierkegaard holds in the Postscript and elsewhere to much of the conceptual content that belongs to the orthodox Christian tradition as he understand it. This content has to do with God and the relation of creation to God.
40. It is important to note that undertaking the task of religious existence has, for Kierkegaard, the character of a venture and not of a trade.
41. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, pp. 246-247.
42. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Ibid., p. 245. Climacus says, for example, that it is not consistent to expect that God would appear in "the form, for example, of a rare, enormously large green bird, with a red beak, that perched in a tree on the embankment and perhaps even whistled in an unprecedented manner. . . ."
43. This continues to be the case in the light of the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation. Kierkegaard discusses this in detail in Philosophical Fragments.
44. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Norman Kemp Smith, (new York and Toronto: St. Martin's and Macmillan, 1965), B 151/p. 165.
45. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 226.
46. See Ferreira, Transforming Vision, p. 33.
47. Kenneth Schmitz, "Philosophy of Religion and the Redefinition of Philosophy", in The Challenge of Religion, edited by Frederick Ferre, Joseph J. Kockelmans, and John E. Smith (New York: Seabury, 1982), pp. 7-8.
48. S. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, translated by Howard and Edna Hong (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), p. 199. "All human language about the spiritual, yes, even the divine language of Holy Scriptures, is essentially transferred or metaphorical language."
49. Robert Sokolowski, The God of Faith and Reason (Notre Dame and London: University of Notre dame Press, 1982), p. 115.