Copenhagen resident Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), is commonly referred to as a philosopher. Though he was trained not in philosophy but in theology and this is apparent in his line of thought. His system is certainly not reasonable and therefore not philosophical. He is most notably known for his pithy exclamation “leap of faith”. As he imagined it this leap from the ethical stage of development to religious faith is how one becomes an authentic person. Proposing three stages of development he attempts to show how a radically personal relationship to the Judeo-Christian God is crucial to being a complete individual. The first of his three stages is the Aesthetic stage in which sensuous enjoyment is the goal of all pursuits. He likens this to the moral development of a child in which a person who doesn’t progress beyond this stage is left without any sense of right and wrong and an undeveloped character. This brings him to the ethical stage. In which people come to grips with laws and social norms, which leads to the conclusion that the path to goodness is to follow the rules and directives of society.
Kierkegaard realized that merely following rules and directives does not lead to moral authenticity. He found that this ultimately leads to despair because one is continually confronted with moral failure while trying to follow impossible rules. He reasoned that in judging oneself with the standards put forth by others, personal existence is removed from the individual’s hands and placed in the judgment of others. He found this prospect distasteful, looking for a way to be compete and whole as an individual he arrived at what would be the third and final stage of development in his system; religious faith. This is where the “leap” would be required. Where he imagined true existence began. He compared this existence with “riding a wild stallion”, while contrasting it to the “conformists who are like those who fall asleep in the hay wagon”. He held that the third stage of development begins when individuals are filled with despair over their “sinfulness” and thus are compelled to leap out in faith to God. He held that it is in this radical commitment to a relationship with God that one is made complete.
Kierkegaard became convinced that the key to a fulfilled life is to shrug off societal conventions and the “comfort” of reason. As may seem obvious, it can be rather daunting to argue against someone who has forsaken reasonableness in favor of faith in the unseen. Though, I think I can highlight the absurdity contained in this man’s refusal to grow up.
He begins with faith in God. What does he mean to have faith something? He seems to mean something other than the commonly used word belief. The common usage of belief is simply to say “I believe X because it is an accurate representation of how the world really is”. We cannot however, say that I believe in X because it makes me feel good, as Kierkegaard implores us. Or that I believe in Y because it is prudent to do so, as Pascal would have us do? Let’s see how this functions in real life. Imagine that I hold that the president of the United States has gifted me with 200 million dollars’ worth of gold bars, which the CIA has buried in my backyard. This would no doubt leave me feeling very happy and secure. But do I have any reason to accept the idea that bars of gold have been planted in the ground behind my house? Of course I do not. This is where these epistemological Ponzi schemes run aground on the shore of reason. As soon as we confront the belief in hand with contrary evidence and are unwilling to alter the belief in question it is clear that our belief is not an attempt to align with reality. It is a childlike attempt to run from reality to consoling fantasy. This is the faith of Kierkegaard’s fancy.
While Kierkegaard maintained that the life of faith was the equivalent of riding a wild stallion, he was drastically wrong. Faith is nothing short of the comforting blanket which a child clings to for security. Ill equipped to accept and face life as it really is, warts and all. Faith becomes the antidote. This leaves one unable to distinguish truth from falsity in the most important matters imaginable. Contrast this with a life spent opening all of one’s beliefs to new evidence, evidence which might smash a strongly held belief to the ground. What Kierkegaard and his ilk are afraid of is reality. It is trivially easy to see who is riding in the “hay wagon”.
I certainly agree that faith can give us something which ethics cannot. However, I disagree strongly that what it gives us is beneficial. It seems to me that the leap made by Kierkegaard was a leap backward and it requires both the immaturity of a child who never grew up and a demand for comfort. Comfort even at the hand of self-delusion. I can’t help but think that Kierkegaard experienced dramatic failures of self-restraint which led him to run into the arms of a merciful deity for forgiveness. It would not take much to reason that his personal failures were victimless crimes, in which the only one offended by them was the God who resides in his imagination. The moral failure came not in an inability to follow the rules; it came from an acceptance of the arbitrary as legitimate in the first place. This sounds like Stockholm syndrome to me. It is the submission of the bullied to the bully. It is likely no coincidence that one of his heroes was Abraham. Who as the story goes, submitted to the cosmic bully Yahweh even to the point of willingly setting his son on a death stage. This is faith at its necessary conclusion. It is also humanity at its worst. When human credulity escapes from the constraints of reasonableness, internal consistency, civility, and candor it becomes faith. The benefit provided to the individual is illusory at best and certainly destructive to societies filled with people who maintain numerous unfounded and unjustified beliefs about the instructions of invisible deities.
A very effective example of the destructive nature of faith comes to us from an event in our own times. The atrocities of September 11, 2001 resonate with anyone alive at the time. The men, who piloted those planes into the trade towers, were not insane or wicked, as they were portrayed again and again in the western media. They were men of faith, perfect faith.
Certainly, it is not hard to call to memory, similar or worse atrocities committed without faith in a deity or religious text. Though, looking deeper reveals that genocidal and terrorist atrocities are always backed by an unbending faith in some comforting vision, be it a future utopia or the eradication of a hated ethnic group. Simply and frankly ordinary conscience unbound by irrationality is all that is needed for ethical behavior. Indeed passion guiding reason and reason guiding passion fills one’s toolkit with all they need to lead a complete and fulfilled life.
Sadly Kierkegaard never grew up. In fact he refused to. This certainly motivated him to go about developing a philosophy which justified his refusal to reason and live as an adult. Living as an adult means taking responsibility for oneself and applying all of our faculties in the business of living. Some would say he was unable, I say he was unwilling.
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