Kierkegaard's Christian Existentialism

[Music] like marx kierkegaard's philosophy is a reaction to the hegelian synthesis the idea that philosophy pretty much closed up shop once hegel had put together the ultimate or comprehended the ultimate purpose or goal of human life hegel's encyclopedic system was a kind of end to philosophy if you accepted the arguments that he made and kierkegaard hated everything about the hegelian system he hated the smug certainty of it the kind of megalomaniacal comprehensiveness of it the rationalism of it and what he really disliked most perhaps was the the greek promethean element of this rationality in other

words there's a kind of splitting of the difference between athens and jerusalem between reason and faith in hegel's system or if he doesn't split the difference he reconciles them in a way that kierkegaard found altogether to pat inconsistent with his own experience of both reason and religion now kierkegaard is surely one of the most morbid and emotionally disturbed writers in the history of western philosophy i really like him i find him really fascinating he's certainly one of the funniest and he has a thoroughly morbid sense of humor there are so few philosophers with a good

sense of humor kierkegaard is one of them so if you get a chance to read this read it with a sense of humor and i think that you'll appreciate it a great deal more now what kierkegaard thinks is that it's impossible to completely systematize human existence it is possible to give a good rational coherent account of the purpose of human life and in fact he thinks that the problems here are from the mixture of promethean humanistic greek rationality and the strictly understood tradition of biblical faith and religion in other words kierkegaard is going to reformulate

the problem that's been around since the time of augustine at least of connecting faith and reason but only at the cost of undermining reason undermining the greek element in the western intellectual tradition and becoming something like a modern job god's faithful servant the man who will not blaspheme who will not be skeptical of god and his wisdom regardless of what the circumstances are now kierkegaard believes that the orientation that a person takes to the world determines their behavior determines their activities determines the level of human existence that they may rise to and what's worse than

this is that kierkegaard has confronted the problem of religious faith and he is unwilling to look away and accept any of the facile compromises between reason and faith the kind of whistling through the dark that we get with hegel that they're all both really the same and that christianity can be easily reconciled with greek rationalistic philosophy strictly speaking god says no you must make a choice between one and the other so then the question comes which are we to choose are we to choose the life of faith or the life of rationality are we to

choose an orientation towards nature as our main ontological assumption or are we going to go with nature plus nature plus in this case heaven nature plus some metaphysical realm so we have to choose between naturalistic ontologies and metaphysical ontologies we have to choose between athens and jerusalem we have to choose between religious faith and rational certainty and the question is what criteria could we possibly offer for either decision that we were to make and to make the question even more difficult what possible grounds for this judgment could we offer that doesn't presuppose what it's trying

to prove in other words if you presuppose a naturalistic ontology and if you presuppose uh that rationality is the key human fact and that you want to orient your philosophy towards human life rather than some sort of metaphysical construct well then you can go you can start there and then show that it makes sense to have a naturalistic ontology and a humanistic orientation towards life and to emphasize rationality if on the other hand you want to adopt a position like that of say saint augustine or luther who think that if there's a conflict between reason

and faith well and faith wins out every time luther augustine people like that prefer the metaphysical ontological conception they prefer to emphasize faith as opposed to reason they prefer to emphasize the tradition that comes out of jerusalem as to pose as opposed to the tradition that comes out of athens now if you presuppose that the bible is god's authoritative and divine word if you assume that the tradition that comes out of jerusalem is the true revelation of god's intentions if you assume that the life of faith is superior to the life of reason well then

it won't be hard thereafter for you to prove that the life of faith is superior to the life of reason in other words you can you have to make a choice between these two sets of alternatives between the the profane and the sacred between athens and jerusalem between a human-centered conception of the world and a god-centered conception of the world and everybody makes such a choice the difficulty is when you ask them why they make such a choice right they can't give you any explanation that doesn't presuppose what it is that they're trying to prove

because the orientation is built into their justification to the legitimation of that choice so kierkegaard like any good philosopher like any one who's morbidly introspective decides that he's going to try and dig deeper get to the real foundation of this problem figure out how we're going to be able to choose between the life of faith and the life of reason and for kierkegaard it you can simplify it somewhat by by talking about the actual orientation the actual thing that a given person desires and he says that the big choice in life between the humanistic and

the divine or between athens and jerusalem is whether you are oriented towards the pleasurable life the what he calls the aesthetic life and under the aesthetic life what he means is both physical sensual pleasures uh sex and alcohol and uh i don't know any physical sensual pleasure in addition to that as as a component of the aesthetic life there's also the intellectual pleasures in other words he does not leave out the intellectual hedonists so many philosophers like to so when he talks about the aesthetic life the life in pursuit of pleasure he's talking essentially about

the greek life the like the life of rationality not rationality necessarily in the continent sense more likely rationality in the sense that hume uses it instrumental rationality rationality used as a means to satisfy our desires our desires may be the physical satisfaction of our pleasure neurons or it may be intellectual satisfactions that we get from reading works of philosophy it is entirely possible to be an aesthetic man and not have a scandalous sex life you may take out your aesthetic desires in the realm of art if you frequent art galleries regularly and that is your

main solace in life that's the greatest pleasure you get you are still still an aesthetic man because your orientation is towards pleasure whether it is physical or whether it is mental or intellectual and god believes that that is natural to human beings that we are born into the world of the flesh the world of space and time and that the natural rational orientation of human beings will be the pursuit of pleasure either physical or intellectual and as a matter of practical fact if you look back in history it's not hard to find people that like

pleasure it's not even hard to find them now it is a natural state of human affairs this unfortunate tendency this fact that we are born into the aesthetic life or that it is it is the most natural and in this sense of natural reason the most reasonable choice that human beings particularly untutored human beings can make nietzsche think or god thinks that that's the analog of original sin we are born into this world with a natural predisposition towards following the aesthetic life that shows how depraved we are so kierkegaard believes that because he's a profoundly

religious thinker that we must make a choice between the life of pleasure and the ethical life that's the other alternative and what he means by the ethical life is the person who pursues moral righteousness independent of pleasure what he means by moral righteousness is the person that follows ultimately god's divine law whether they recognize it immediately or not he thinks that all real ethical judgment all ethical judgment that isn't a way of patting ourselves on the back and telling us not only telling ourselves not only how virtuous we are but how clever we are to

be able to cert to be able to discern the ultimate foundations of human virtue all right well kierkegaard says that the only real alternative to the life of pleasure is the life of the ethical man the person who follows moral rules for their own sake in this respect he has many connections to the kantian project both kant and kierkegaard are trying to negotiate this maze of elements from the athenian and the tradition that comes from jerusalem and whereas kierkegaard finds a beautiful and profound synthesis which doesn't abdicate the reasonable and rational responsibilities of the philosopher

kierkegaard does give that up he departs from kant he goes towards the life of pure faith in which reason is either superfluous or a distraction so for kierkegaard there is a definite hierarchy in human existence there are better and worse choices and the fundamental choice that all human beings must make is between the aesthetic and the ethical life so now the question emerges what standard can we come up with that will allow us to kind of cover this whole area the whole set of alternatives which will allow us to decide which is the best thing

to do and here's where kierkegaard makes an important contribution to philosophy he is often considered as one of the founding members one of the most important uh precursors to what in 20th century philosophy is called existentialism he says that individual human beings in the particular place and time that they exist must make a choice between the aesthetic life and the ethical life and he puts this together in a book called either or it's two volumes the first volume is the ether the second volume is the or the ether is the aesthetic life the or is

the ethical life you are faced with a choice and it must be either or you cannot create a pragmatic compromise which splits the difference between the two if you do that you are the aesthetic man par excellence because you wouldn't want to deny yourself the pleasure of having a kind of dilettante's connection to religion so no he's hard shell about it in the way that kant is either or you are either an aesthetic person or you are a moral person an ethical person and there is no happy middle ground there is no potential for compromise

so we are forced to a profound and terrifically consequential decision what makes kierkegaard a precursor to existentialism is that he holds the view that there is no criterion for making this decision in other words he faces us with the grim the horrifying reality of criterionless choice make a decision you have no standards upon which to make your decision good luck and you also have no choice about whether to make the decision or not you must decide best of luck so kicker guard leaves us a drift he cuts us off from our moorings to rationality because

he says there is no possible rational decision procedure which could give you grounds for choosing the moral or the aesthetic life if you want to say that you've developed some rational theory which shows you that only the rational life is the good one you are presupposing what you are trying to prove if you didn't presuppose that rationality would be our guide then what would you say nothing the vast silence of human existence becomes very very clear when kierkegaard begins to meditate and think deeply about the choices that human beings must by virtue of the human

condition make what is agonizing what is awful about this decision is that you have no grounds for making it and you have to make it and your soul is depending upon it your felicity is depending upon it it's the most important choice in human life and you have no star to steer by and never will what a horrible universe he's created for us what a terrifically difficult set of problems he faces us with and he will accept no compromise either or you can see how he disdains hegelian synthesis of either of any kind because hegel

would say we'll get a little bit of this we'll get a little bit of that we'll get a thesis and antithesis we'll synthesize hegel says no synthesis no compromise this or that decide which if you refuse to decide well you started out as an aesthetic as an aesthetic man to begin with you're born in the state of nature people naturally pursue pleasure if you don't want to decide we know where you stand you've decided already so we're stuck with the ultimate theological problem and we have no way of solving it now kierkegaard's book either or

is remarkable for its literary virtues it is a wonderful a beautiful book it is also a kind of harrowing frightening book and it is obviously the book a book produced by a tortured individual a man who thinks about things like this all the time and who manages to come up with this sort of problem is not a happy person even when he finds god the irony and the cynicism he wrote his doctoral dissertation on irony on socratic irony the whole book is an ironic treatment of irony his supervising professors found it enormously unpleasant they said

you're an awfully impressive guy but i never want to read anything like this again [Music] it's understandable have a look at it you'll see what he's saying irony is one of the things that cure god relishes so much because having put himself through this harrowing theological experience he feels that it is very difficult for him to explain to people what the significance of the ultimate moral theological choice is he feels that people that haven't suffered for what they believe almost have no right to it that you earn your desserts that you earn your stripes as

an intellectual by not only thinking problems through but feeling them through kierkegaard is writing in the first part and the middle part of the 19th century he is one of the great examples of theological romanticism and of course that's connected with the entire romantic reaction to the enlightenment and to the rationality that's central to the enlightenment romantic thinkers like or romantic thinkers it's almost a contradiction in terms romantic intellectuals like feeling over reason they like grand and beautiful emotions they emphasize sentiment if you think of charles dickens's novels if you think of berlioz's music too

much of everything they have no sense of proportion but they have lovely sentiments well kierkegaard has no sense of proportion and has very frightening sentiments there's horrific sentiments but they have their unique appeal so in the volume one in the ether he presents some very arresting images he writes from the perspective in the first volume of the ether he writes from the perspective of the aesthetic man and explains to us what it's like to be us as if we didn't know and in fact kierkegaard thinks that we don't know he doesn't he thinks that we

don't entirely comprehend the wretched state of the purely natural aesthetic man i think it's t.s eliot that once uh wrote a line describing uh the hollow man i believe he said that they're distracted from distraction by distraction well kikergaard thinks that that's what the life of the aesthetic man is it's one distraction after another to prevent you from seeing the vacuum of your existence to prevent you from looking right at the void and being turned into stone he says that's why you pursue pleasure and novelty all the time because the real evil or the real

misery in the life of the aesthetic man is boredom kierkegaard says and i think it's one of the greatest lines in the history of philosophy it's beautiful and it's horrifyingly true he says that boredom is the root of all evil think about that it's much more dangerous than money think about the amount of evil that is introduced into the world by people's simple desire for sensation and kierkegaard of course in his own inimitable and most unkind ironic way talks about the history of boredom in a piece called the rotation method sometimes translated as the rotation

of crops and he describes the origins of boredom it's beautiful he said god created man because he was bored adam was alone he was bored he asked for eve adam and eve were born together they had some children then they were bored on familia and then people multiplied and reproduced and they were then they were bored on moss and everywhere boredom took over the world eventually people created the tower of babel which is an idea that is as boring as the tower is high and the reason they did that is sheer boredom that's the only

reason people put together culture at all it's boring the world is full of nothing and that we fill this nothing up with trivialities like human culture oh you you feel the breath of infinite spaces in this guy he lives in a kind of interstellar space of the soul it has nothing in it and he says the problem is is that you think that about me because i'm such a perverse writer but in fact it's all true about you and that's what your life amounts to and that's what it means to make the aesthetic choice this

leads to two possible things it leads to a continuation of it where you die on your own with the more impressive self-consciousness on the part of the aesthetic man they choose something a little bit more stylish a little bit more tasteful they commit suicide kierkegaard believes that if anyone were to actually become conscious of what it means to be an aesthetic man to be constantly pursuing new flavors new tastes new sensations new experiences you would just get it over with now it's so horribly boring that the board would drive you just to exterminate yourself that's

the active rather than the passive form of the aesthetic man now in addition to this either and it's a grim either before i get beyond the either he has a very risky arresting image that's worthy of nietzsche as a matter of fact there are few people that i would be willing to place in the same intellectual league with nietzsche but for simple perversity for a for simply morbid approach to the world i would say the cure for god and nietzsche are very close i mean one believes in god the other doesn't but both are really

morbid and introspective well in a portion of the ether called the diapsal mata he gives an image that you would expect from nietzsche he said at a theater one evening a fire broke out backstage and one of the clowns came out onto the stage and announced to the audience that the theater was on fire they thought it was a joke and they laughed and he told him no really the theater is on fire you are in terrible peril and the more he told them that the funnier they thought it was and the more they laughed

this is kierkegaard self-conception he is a joker who is deadly serious and you people are laughing at him thinking that he's a religious kook when in fact you are in mortal terror terror you are in mortal peril you are going through the dark knight of the soul you are so detached from your souls you don't know it what a horrifying situation one horror after another all of god's writing go from bad to worse they're all entertaining but they're all the product of a depraved mind this image of the clown is perhaps one of the worst

now let's try the or the better alternative let's try what it means to be the moral man well if you're going to be the moral man you're going to follow the dictates of conscience follow the rules of morality in a kantian sense but not for kantian reasons you're going to do it out of your lust your passion for moral virtue not because you worked out some kind of logical system that tells you that the ci the categorical imperative is really obligatory upon all rational agents if you do it for that reason you're really an aesthetic

man right because you're doing it because it pleases your vanity of thinking that you're such a clever guy that's why he thinks that kant for that reason is immoral in the sense that he lacks faith and shores it up with rationality he says if you have the real thing you have the real thing and if you have the real thing then what difference does it make whether it makes any sense there's a a great church father named tertullian you may have known him or you may have heard of him you couldn't have known him he

once said i believe because it is absurd there's a terrific perversity to that too but that's the kind of a guy that's not willing to cut any sort of compromise between athens and jerusalem biblical belief comes first and it is exclusive of all other beliefs the lord thy god is a jealous god thou shalt not have strange gods before me the idol of reason is a strange god so for that reason the moral man will pursue morality with a passion again this harks back to the romanticism that we find there not on the basis of

some cogitation but because he has made the criterionless choice he has chosen the or rather than the ether why did he do it there's nothing to say this is what he's chosen this is the best that human life has to offer the simple primary commitment to righteousness independent of pleasure independent of rationality independent of any possible alternative there is a fierceness of fanaticism to this which again is kind of appalling if you stop and think about what kind of a guy we're talking about and i'll try and get across to you the degree of fanaticism

that attaches to this because in some respects if he formulates a very interesting system and in fact there seems to be a certain method to this madness there is a certain degree of logic and reason to it it's just that the point here as in the case of so many romantic writers and romantic artists is that they want to go beyond reason to some transcendent realm that you get access to or that you connect to on the basis of some primary intuition rather than any activity of rational analysis one of the great romantic thinkers in

that respect now in order to get across to you the difference between the either and the or and in order to get across to you the difference between say the enlightenment and romanticism in order to get across to you the difference between kant and kierkegaard i think we should choose to examine the theology of these two gentlemen kant and kierkegaard because they are perfect paradigms of the kind of thinking that they represent and fortunately for us kant and kierkegaard were considered enough to both make comments about the same biblical story at least one of them

maybe more than one but there's at least one biblical story that both of them talk about and it connects the problems of faith and reason in a way that highlights both the advantages and disadvantages of either position this is the story of abraham you may have heard of this it's at the beginning of the bible right early on in the book so if you haven't finished it well you perhaps have seen this particular story here's the deal abraham is a shepherd and he god makes a covenant with him chooses abraham and says abraham all right

you and your descendants gonna be a chosen people i have a special connection with you and to do your big favor since you're 100 and your wife sarah's 90 i'm going to send you a child now i don't know how sarah felt about that at 90 years of age she may not have thought of it as much of a great gift but abraham is very pleased with the gift and then later on in the story god appears to abraham and god says abraham in his own inscrutable way god says i want you to sacrifice your

son no explanation no explication no justification just god told him to do this now the question is what are we supposed to think about things like that shall we take it in an allegorical way shall we take it literally what are we supposed to think about a god who gives you things like a family and then who for no obvious reason who in a rather capricious way decides to tell you now kill him he's your only son destroy him as a way of showing how much you like me it's a horrifying choice now kant has

a very interesting read on that and it's in a footnote maybe the greatest footnote in the history of philosophy it's in a book called religion within the limits of reason alone which is a typically kantian idea right i can almost just tell you the title of it and you could probably pick out that kant is the kind of guy who would write a book like that and what he says in this footnote very important footnote rather pregnant is that if it were the case that god should appear to us by some miracle literally speaking we

couldn't just fall down on our knees and do what god told us we'd have to stop and ask ourselves is this really god i mean that's a that's the kind of thing a rationalist does when god appears to me asks who are you right the kind of free enlightened rationality characters to give enlightenment well i want to know who i'm talking to first now one assumes i mean god has never talked to me so i'm not sure about this but my sense is and this is kierkegaard sense that when you when you see him you

know what you're looking at right i mean there's got to be something special about his properties in a visible sense that would let you know that you're dealing with something unusual but that's not enough for for kant because he wants rational certainty so kant says in order to find out if what if this big thing of light or the burning bush or whatever it is talking to you is really god you've got to find out if he really has the properties of god and what properties does god have well he's perfectly rational and he's perfectly

free you can't imagine him being unfree you can't imagine him being irrational it's like saying god is a lisp right he's perfectly free perfectly rational perfectly knowledgeable perfectly good perfectly virtuous that means he always follows the categorical imperative why because there's only one rule for moral behavior it's true for individual human beings it's true for nations but it's also true for god and the angels this goes all the way up the hierarchy right to the boss and you know he's god because he's perfectly free and perfectly rational which means that he's perfectly autonomous he's never

heteronomous he's never moved by anger or jealousy or anything like that he's the perfect kantian in other words you'll know you're talking to god when everything he tells you to do is consistent with a categorical imperative if some big bright ball of light should ever start talking to you and tells you to do anything that's inconsistent with the categorical imperative you know you're talking to the devil or one of the devil's pals because god never violates the categorical imperative god can't do that it's not that he can't do that it's the wrong way to think

about it but that blasphemous utterance comes close to being the rationalistic conception of god god by virtue of his very nature by his freedom by his knowledge by his goodness always obeys the categorical imperative elsewhere you'd be saying that he was vicious and unfree so now let's start and stop and think about this ball of light that's telling me to sacrifice my son can i universalize the maxim uh what could i wish that everybody should sacrifice their son whenever all light talks to them no so that means that this is inconsistent with the ci and

if it's inconsistent with the categorical imperative it's not god because god always obeys the categorical imperative so whenever burning bushes or balls of light whatever it is it starts talking to you make sure that you test it with a categorical imperative that's the ultimate rule of morals and that never can let you down there is an element of promethean greek rationality in the kantian view which is rather impious who are you to question god who are you to tell god what the rules are he's god there is an element here of rationality of a very

of a limitation of faith which is not consistent with a simple arbitrary subjection to the will of god which is characteristic of the most vehement perhaps the most fanatical of religious believers tertullian i believe because it is absurd kantwood wins to hear that kind of a belief is that any god worth believing in is where is going to be rational i mean that's part of what makes him virtuous think about the content conception of morality and then you think about the content conception of god and you're going to find out that kant's god is oppression

because god likes moral rules just for the sake of having them he likes rules and he obeys them perfectly which is what a prussian god would do in other words kant's god looks remarkably like kant with all his vices taken away in other words he's the super kant he always obeys the ci now let's look at the other alternative from the perspective of kierkegaard the romantic approach all right and this is in a section of a book called fear and trembling which is the kind of charming title that kierkegaard often gives to his books there's

another one called the concept of dread i think you'll like that that's a real page turner all right anxiety despair that kind of thing you can see how sart's going to get the cue for nausea out of this i mean think of something really horrible and write a book about it or tell us that that's the human condition well that's essentially what kierkegaard does he says in fear and trembling is a long passage about abraham and what a great guy abraham is why you know sit there and ask god questions god tells me to do

something goes do it that's it that's what religious faith means no compromises no nonsense none of this greek rational stuff none of this presumptuous categorical imperative business god told me to do something i'm going to go do it that's what's great about abraham now kierkegaard says not only is that great but he goes on for about 40 pages telling us what a tremendous thing this is to do and then he points out that this is unethical i mean literally speaking that killing your son is the kind of thing that most sane people think is an

evil and actually god himself does and here's where he makes a what might be thought of as an addendum to his theory it appears that it's not just a two-part separation between the aesthetic and the moral life it appears that once you get into the moral life once you make that transition from the ether to the or what you get is the possibility for further ultimate and complete transcendence complete submission to the will of god and that comes in when we move from the moral life to the religious life to the life of simple but

profound faith which brooks no obstacles and will not even slow down for considerations of rational calculation so in other words what kierkegaard says is that abraham was one of the great men of faith one of the great religious figures in the world precisely because what he is doing makes no sense if it made sense it wouldn't be nearly so good can you see first of all the romantic elements here the rejection of rationality the rejection of reasonable order the rejection of the greek humanism that's built right into the enlightenment project what he is saying is

on this rock i will build my religious faith i am going to be the faithful man of god the comparison between kierkegaard and job is not facetious he is a modern job the enlightenment thinkers like kant have some of the situ or in some respects like job's wife and job's friends who tell him you ought to blaspheme if god isn't doing what you expect and do what you want to do kierkegaard like job says no there's only one god and he's what he is and i am what i am i'm relatively speaking an insect a

worm i'm not going to tell god how to run the universe so if god appears to me one day i wouldn't hold your breath on that but if he does ever appear to me one day what i'm going to do is i'm going to do exactly what he tells me i'm not going to ask him is this consistent with a categorical imperative i'm not going to interrogate him i'm not going to ask him are you sure you're running the world right because he's god and once you make that fundamental decision then you have the true

life of faith you've got you've transcended simple ethical orientations towards the world and gotten to the true religious orientation so abraham is the perfectly religious man the man of faith and abraham is the man who has made the either or choice and he says hey look it's not pretty if you wanted something pretty if you wanted something fun if you wanted to enjoy yourself back to the aesthetic life with you this is agonizing in other words not only does he say that abraham has to agonize and go through all kinds of anguish and thinking about

killing his own son who's the pride of his life he's the source of his happiness the greatest benefit god has given him and now for apparently no reason at all on some sort of a whim and in the in this case god never explains to him why he wants him to kill his son he says now god inexplicably wants me to kill him i'm going to kill my own son one of the greatest crimes one of the greatest moral transgressions that you can imagine this is testimony to the enormous power and the awful majesty of

god morals come from him they don't run him we judge whether things are virtuous or good by virtue of whether they are derived from god or not anything which is not derived directly from the will of the almighty directly from his authoritative revelation is simply either wrong or superfluous faith by itself is sufficient what is it that luther says faith alone will save us well he takes luther's idea of faith alone he takes luther's idea that we must what is it luther writes up we must the the believing christian must pluck out the eyes of

his reason and god says yeah that's a great idea by doing that you show how humble you are you refrain from that promethean pride which says i'm going to be just as rational as god instead you do what you're told because that's your position in the world that's what the real human condition is what's agonizing about this is that the same god that gave us the capacity to reason put us in a circumstance where reasoning won't help us because we have to make the criterionless choice between the either and the or and there is no

rational procedure which can allow you to choose between one and the other so for kierkegaard we live in a grim and rather macabre world there is a terrific amount of misery and pain and irony connected with the best of human lives the price for escaping the aesthetic life from for escaping boredom is a life of absolute fidelity to god and that means that you may well be called upon to do things that are exceedingly unpleasant even unto the murder of your own child kierkegaard says let us be direct if we judge abraham by ethical standards

the man who is willing to kill his own child is a criminal if we judge him by religious standards by the single test of faith in god there is no better man either or make the choice and he's not pulling any punches he's not trying to make it look as if the set of either-or choices that we make is going to be easy and he explicitly tells you that it will be unpleasant perhaps it will even be gruesome and that's the best you can hope for this is what the human condition is there's a strain

of philosophical melancholy in kierkegaard a forlorn-ness a kind of anguish which is very much modern which seems almost a part of the 20th century the strange religious formulations are not in keeping with this century i'll grant that but the idea that truth is subjectivity one of kierkegaard's favorite terms instead of the drive for objectivity and certainty and rational proof characteristic of the thinkers of the enlightenment kierkegaard says no like any good romantic truth is subjectivity i myself will become a person by understanding the choices that i'm confronted with and making them simply on the basis

of my own what he calls leap of faith how will we jump across this criterionless barrier you must make the leap of faith and there's no way of telling whether you will make the crossing safe no proof no certainty no final explanations god perhaps has his reasons the man of faith believes that but in fact there's no way to tell we live in a frightening horrific world where we are faced with miserable soul-wrenching choices that ultimately amount to a flip of the philosophical coin the emphasis on subjectivity the loss of certainty the loss of orientation

the the argument that essentially there is no ultimate rule no ultimate rational algorithm which will allow us to discern good from evil which will allow us to decide what the best and most virtuous life is these are exceedingly modern ideas many of the important thoughts taken by the existentialists like heidegger and sartre and camus and marcel are all homage to kierkegaard kierkegaard for all his religious craziness has forced us to stop and think about the implications of being free autonomous rational subjects when we move into the age of romanticism and also into the age of

the 20th century the age of anxiety if you want to call it that we are faced with simple subjective choices which have no decision procedure we are forced to make either-or decisions perhaps not of the fundamental uh significance of the choice of the aesthetic or the ethical life but we are faced with choices many choices which we are informed have no rational grounding and that means we are set adrift in a realm of whim in an area of opinion of feeling of taste of sentiment which is what kant described as a wretched anthropology there is

no up there is no down you take your best shot and you live the life you choose this is what kierkegaard offers to us a rather grim perspective on the world justified perhaps by the fact that it makes us think that it increases our own consciousness i would be very worried for you if you made all the same decisions as kierkegaard i'm i'm not trying to persuade you to do that but i am trying to persuade you that this is the kind of problem that you do have to confront it may well be and i

have a hunch that it's the case that not all the important decisions in life offer us a rational decision procedure many of the important elements in human wisdom are not derived from any algorithm they are derived from experience from acting on your hunches maybe from doing the best you can muddling through a world that is obscure unclear and not perfectly delineated delineated by the light of reason kierkegaard in that respect is a contemporary of ours he understands what it's like not to know up from down he understands moral confusion probably better than any of us

he offers us an alternative that if it's not the only alternative we might want to choose it's certainly intriguing and if you even don't like the set of moral alternatives that he lives with us that he offers us with that he offers us then i recommend that you just have a look at the either or and try the either because you're probably an aesthetic person um have a look at either or simply because of its remarkable literary qualities there are very few authors who can project their mind into the consciousness of a hypothetical other person

better than kierkegaard when he writes about what it's like to be an aesthetic individual a fascinating piece of work i particularly recommend a piece called the diary of the seducer which is very much in keeping with the aesthetic man kierkegaard then one of the great romantic theologians one of the great reactions to hegel one of the few early 19th century writers whose work still has a considerable direct acknowledged influence on the philosophical writing that is characteristic of living philosophers today you