| Hi friends!
I hope you are all doing very well.
I know that there are some late-night bloggers that more or less read anything out there to keep themselves entertained. So I thought just for fun that I post up something that I wrote for a class of mine. And, joking aside, if any of you want to give feedback, that'd be cool, as well
(Note, by the way: I'm don't necessarily believe everything said below)
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Is Kierkegaard's Notion of Faith Really That Bizarre?
Any reader of Kierkegaard has the impulse to do three things. First, he has the impulse to decipher what what the author is saying. Second, he has the impulse to determine the role of what the he has read in the authors larger, systematic project. And finally, as part inquirer and part judge, the reader has the impulse to ask: 'Is what as been said correct?' and render after, reasoned deliberation, his verdict.
A reader's second impulse is stemmed as he reads Kierkegaard's account of faith in Fear and Trembling. To be sure, we don't like to treat a philosopher's work or concept in isolation from his “larger” thought. But, in the case of faith, its not clear what Kierkegaard's larger project - if any- was when he wrote about faith.
But no matter. In this paper, I plan to follow our first impulse, disregard completely our second one, and follow our third impulse only partially. I'll explain Kierkegaard's notion of faith in §I. We'll see here that faith involves absurdity, and, moreover, maximally absurd (defined later on). In §II, I'll won't consider if his account of faith is right per se, but only look at one claim that buttresses the claim that Kierkegaard's notion faith is truly bizarre. That claim I'll look at is the claim that law of non-contradiction (LNC) is Truth (we'll see why this is relevant later).
I.
To understand Kierkegaard's notion of faith, I'm going to lay some groundwork. I'll do this by looking at “absurdity” (for this paper, I limit its usage to statements or claims). Absurdity admits of degrees; some claims are more absurd than others. The degree to which a statement is absurd is a function of how close to true, logical (i.e: formal) contradiction we judge a statement to be: The closer we judge a claim to logical contradiction, the more absurd it is. That I say “true, logical” contradiction is important: It hints that some “contradictions” are merely apparent, as is the case sometimes with statements that involve linguistic ambiguity, equivocation, and the like. For example: We say that the claim “the chair both exists and doesn't exist at the same time” is more absurd than the claim that “by giving away, we gain more” because we judge the former to be closer to true logical contradiction than the latter claim (which, after all is a product of linguistic usage). Thus, we have an emergence of a low-high range of absurdity: On the low ends we have linguistic fowl-ups, and on the high ends we have true, (formal) logical contradiction. The highest end of absurdity I'll call maximal absurdity.
(i)
Faith is maximally absurd, Kierkegaard says. It is maximally absurd because it involves in believing in the logically impossible is. Believing, for purposes of this paper, is granting mental assent, or accepting as true a particular statement. Put differently, faith involves that an agent believe that the conjunction of claims p and ~p is true. What the beliefs (p and ~p) are is found in the Biblical narrative of Abraham's sacrifice of Issac. We'll look at what these are in a moment. But now consider the following. This narrative tells us is that God commanded Abraham to sacrifice (note: kill) his son Issac to prove his love to God. Abraham, clearly, is in a bind: One on hand if agrees to kill his son, he violates the (Hegelian) ethicalprecept that the only action that is ethical is an action that benefits people as a whole (also known as: “the Universal”); and on the other, Abraham could deny God's request, do the ethical thing,but sin. He's in a mess, either way. Abraham, in the end, agrees to kill his son and, effectively,wills to do the un-ethical. But yet, Abraham's willing to kill his son was credited to him as “righteousness.”
The answer to what the beliefs are is found in this narrative. Scripture says that the moment Abraham willed to kill his son, he believed that Issac would never return to him. In order words, Abraham fully believed that his son's death would be final, say without any possibility of resurrection (call this belief 'pI'). But yet, Abraham also believed that his son would come back to him (call this belief '~pI'). So effectively, Abraham believed two logically inconsistent beliefs at the same time. Why? Because of his belief that with God all things arepossible (p.50), even despite glaring impossibility.
Now, to say that someone could believe a logically impossible claim is utterly baffling and incomprehensible that we're apt to misunderstand what Kierkegaard is saying here in our attempts to make any sense of it. So let's dispel with some immediate misunderstandings of what Kierkegaard means by the claim that Abraham believed pI and ~ pI is true. One read can go like this: Abraham believed that his son would never come back, but then, at some later point, believed that he would come back (one maybe wants to say: he changed his mind?). No. The belief that Abraham would never see his son again and that he would occurred at the same time, concomitantly. They were, as it were, part of the same thought. Another misread is this: Abraham never fully believed that he would never get his son back, making it the case that he wasn't confronted with the full absurdity of believing pI and ~ pI . This could be the case, for example, in wishful thinking, where one belief is suppressed, or the case Abraham where was convinced that his son would come back (p. 50-51). No, again, Kierkegaard says. None of these alternatives is “faith.” Rather, if Abraham ever had faith, it occurs precisely because he knew and confronted this absurdity. In fact, he was aware of the impossibility that p&~p can ever be the case “ . . .with all his passion of his soul and with all his heart. . . .” (ibid)- and then believe that God could “resolve” this impossibility. Anything sort of this requirement falls sort of “faith.”
Now, we're still left with the problem of the “ethical.” Recall, that above I said that Abraham's willingness to kill his son was accredited to him as righteousness, though in strictly
Hegelian terms the action is un-ethical. But at this point we've said nothing of the un-ethical nature of faith. Kierkegaard does the job here. Indeed, the very talk about “un-ethical” nature of faith is wrong for him. For, he says, faith isn't at all concerned with the ethical -- much less, can it said to be “ethical” or “un-ethical.” What Abraham did (and what faith, in general, requires) is a stepping out of the domain of the ethical. You see, for Kierkegaard, human existence occurs on several “domains” of existence, each with their own modes1, or ways of existence (p. 5). In the case of faith, the agent, as it were, steps out of the domain of the ethical into something “higher”,namely the domain of faith, thereby having a new mode of existence and losing the constraints of the old, former way of existence. The result is this: The faithful isn't constrained by the ethical, and as such, can't be deemed ethical or un-ethical in his actions (p. 57 ff) inasmuch, say movements on the moon can't be said to be “un-earthly (but not earthly at all). And such is the case of faith: The agent isn't constrained by the Ethical or Universal, but exists under different conditions, making his actions not un-ethical, but not ethical at all.
Now, there is one more question that arises from Kierkegaard's response that we should
look at before moving on. Now, if Abraham's willingness to kill his son was not something
that could be classified as being “ethical” or “un-ethical”, he entirely skirted the question of
the Universal altogether. This would mean that the Abraham's actions aimed at proving to
God his own faith and nothing else, for his own sake. Abraham, it seems, put his own
interests above the Universal. But, this is precisely what we say is un-ethical (i.e: not aiming
for the universal). Yet, he is not un-ethical. We have no rational explanation for this. Again,
Abraham is forced to believe in an absurdity – one that is an un-resolvable absurdity for Kierkegaard.
II.
This ends my brief discussion of Kierkegaard's notion of faith. His account of faith is hard to buy. One reason that is it so is that we're disposed to think that logically impossible claims are always impossible to believe. Thus, we conclude that Abraham couldn't have believed logically impossible claims. So, if he ever was in 'faith,' he was in faith for reasons other than believing the logically absurd.
This sort of thinking is buttressed by a belief that we have that the law of non-contradiction (LNC) is not only a “true claim,” but indeed, a claim of a much-stronger sort. We'll call this much stronger sort of claim a Truth. There are Truths and there are true claims. Before discussing what these two are, I can make a universal claim that every Truth is a true claim; however, not every true-claim is a Truth.
So then, what is a true claim? It is a claim that corresponds to the way the world is. For instance, the claim that “There is an apple on my desk is true” if there is, in fact, is an apple on my desk.
There are a couple of ways, however, in which a claim can correspond to the world, only two of which we'll look here. The first way that a claim can correspond to the world is if there is a congruency between a claim and historical or present fact of human beings. This could anything ranging from facts about human beings to things that people have “done.” One such claim could be the claim that “President Bush is a Republican.” This however, is not the sense in which we're interested in.
There is another sense of correspondence that is more interesting. This sort arises between a claim and, what existentialist call, “facticity.” Facticity is different from the brute historical or present 'facts' of human existence (see above case for these) in that these facts, in some real sense, limit the way an individual 'exists' in the world. For instance: Imagine, that there is a guy who suffers from a deformity in his eyes such that objects in his visual perception appear blue-ish. We'll call him Mr. Blue. Imagine, further, that someone who doesn't suffer this deformity (i.e.:has “regular eyes”) introduces into his sight a vase, which from regular eyes, is really red. Mr. Blue, however, sees it as purple (purple, recall, is a mixture of red and blue).
To say that the correspondence of a claim arises from human facticity, then, is to say that the claim is true, but that it's true only insofar as its correspondence with the world arises from a feature, say deformed eyes, of us that makes it so. It is, in short, true -- but in a limited sense. In the case of Mr. Blue, it was his facticity to see the world as blue that makes a correspondence between the claim that “there is a purple vase” and the fact of the world (to him) that there is a purple vase.
This leads me to an important point. Neither correspondences that arise from historical/present facts of humans nor correspondences that arise from facticity of humans can ever be said to be a Truth. What is a Truth, then? It is a claim whose correspondence arises, as it were, purely with with World. That, in short, that a claim is true without us.
(ii)
I want to ask is LNC a Truth? To be clear, there are two possible ways LNC can be said not be a Truth. The first is to way is to deny that LNC is a true claim. The second way is to say that LNC is a true claim, but that it is true because it owes its correspondence to human facticity (see Mr. Blue's case, for instance). I don't dispute that LNC is a true claim. Thus, I reject the first way as a way to deny that LNC is a Truth. I focus in on the second way. So the determining question for me is whether or not LNC's correspondence with the world is due to human facticity. The answer is, it must be so; therefore, it can't ever be a Truth.
To answer the question of whether or not LNC is a Truth, I ask a preliminary question. The preliminary question that I ask is : What does it mean to say that something is “necessarily true?” (a recall that the LNC says that its “necessarily true that p&~p cannot ever be the case.”). While its beyond the scope of this paper to give full account of this, suffice it to say that if we're able to give a minimalist account of it, we're in good shape (this, too, will be come apparent why ). A “minimalist account” is set of conditions which must be satisfied in order for us to say something ( say, knowledge) is something. For instance, in order to say that something is knowledge, that something must be: justified, true, belief (without one or more of these components, there is no knowledge). But, as the term suggest, when we give a minimal account, we list only base requirements; we only list what must be the case.
A minimalist account of “necessarily true” is as follows. For “x” to be necessarily true is to say that: “x” is always true + “x” satisfies some other un-articulable conditions.” Let me explain. We think that if something is “necessarily true” that it's always true. Hence, the phrase “always true.” But that's only part of the story: For “x” to be necessarily true requires something else; something stronger. What is it? It remains un-articulable. Hence, the phrase “something other . . .”
We can derive two implications from his minimalist account of “necessarily true.” First, if we read this minimalist account of “necessarily true” in the LNC, what we get is: It is always true that p and ~p cannot be the case in the world, and that other conditions (whatever they are) hold. Secondly, if we read this account into LNC, as well as suppose that the LNC is a Truth, then we get a claim as follows: 'It is always true that p&~p cannot be the case, and other conditions hold is true [i]; and that the claim that 'It is always true that p&~p cannot be the case, and other conditions hold' is true without human facticity [ii]. This, regretfully, is messy. However, the important point is that for LNC to be a Truth, it must be true that conditions i and ii, obtain in the world. That is, it must be the case that there is a correspondence between the fact of the world that conditions i- ii are conjoined and the claim that the i and ii are conjoined. But, not only this. Furthermore, this correspondence (meaning, here, the whole sentence) occurs without human facticity (will be clear, as well). This, however, as I'll show in the next paragraphs, can never be the case .
To see why, turn your attention to the word 'and.' What does 'and' do or mean? To get a feel for this, first look at a feature of 'and': 'And' always express a relationship between relators (examples: apples, oranges). For example, we say that “an apple and orange is on my table.” So far so good. But, what is the relationship that 'and' expresses between relators? This: That the claim of one relator is simultaneously true with the claim of the other relator. I'll explain why this is so in a moment, but first let's get a better feel for this. Look at the claim that there is “apple and orange on my desk.” There are essentially two claims here in this sentence: (1) an apple is on my desk; and (2) an orange is on my desk. Now, what the term “and” does is tell us that claims (1) and (2) are simultaneously true with each other. That is, the claim that there is an on apple is on my desk, is simultaneously true with the claim that is an orange on my desk.
This analysis of “and”, at first, may seen foreign so let me explain my reasoning. The reader may first ask why I go into the trouble of saying “that the claim one relator is simultaneously true with the claim of another relator”, and not “one relator is simultaneously true with another.” The answer is that the former locution allows for us tense shifts, whereas the latter one doesn't. Look at the sentence, for instance, “I had put an apple and then an orange on my desk today.” Had I said that “and” expresses a relationship between simultaneousness relators (and not between their claims), there would be no sense in which we could have said that an apple and orange were on my desk. Rather, we could only say that they are (as in: present tense) on the desk. On the other hand, this problem is avoided if we say the relator's claims are simultaneously true with another. For while these fruits may have been on my desk at different times, the claims that the fruit were on my desk are simultaneous with each other. In short, it gives us a more natural reading.
So we've just understood the relationship that “and” expresses between relators. We have also seen that simultaneity is subsumed in the concept of “and.” With this, we're ready to see why LNC can't be a Truth. This is for two reasons. The first reason deals with what I said above, that “it must be the case that there is a correspondence between the fact of the world that conditions i- ii are conjoined and the claim that the i and ii are conjoined”; and that this correspondence (of the whole sentence) must arise without human facticity in order for LNC to be a Truth. The first reason is this, then: That it can never ever be the case that two conditions (i and ii) are conjoined in the world apart from human facticity. That is because a conjunction is, like “and”, hints at simultaneity. This is because “conjunction” and “and” are the same words, except written with different symbols.
This leads to the second reason: Simultaneity is always temporal, or dealing with time.
And yet, while simultaneity is tied to- and can only be understood with regards- to time, time, however, is no means real or exists. The following argument establishes this. If time were real -and not just something in our mind-, then time would have to move (by definition). But what part of time moves? Only present time. Let's look at the term “move” now. What does it mean something 'moves?” It means that something, say a train, moves with respect to 'time.”
In the present case, then we're pressed to say that “time moves with respect to time.”We can posit something like a meta-time, which is different from present time, but which present time can be said to moves with respect to. Fine, for the moment. But, if time moves, then it must also be the case that meta-time would move, otherwise, meta-time would not be 'time' at all. So, we can again ask the question: What does this meta-time move with respect to? Say, a meta-meta-time. The reader gets the point: Time really would have to be a series of infinite series of different times. This, however, can't be the case: For if it were, we could never have “present” time because we can't ever traverse an infinite series of time. And if there is no “present time”in time, time can not exist. Time, then, is our creation. It arises out of us. Hence, two claims can only be simultaneous insofar as we posit that time exists.
Thus, LNC is not a Truth. This is because the requirements of Truth are not satisfied in the case of LNC. Particularly, as we've seen, LNC is attendant on the concept of “simultaneity.” This, in turn, is attendant on our understanding of Time. Nothing – including true claims- can be simultaneous with each other apart from time. But, as I've said: Time is our creation; and that is, it's part of our facticity.
The implication of all all of this for Kierkegaard's notion of faith is easy to see. For, if LNC is not a Truth, then it, at most, is true claim. But recall that true claims owe their correspondence to the world in part to us, either by our facticity or historical-present facts about us. In any event, what this means is that LNC is true only in some sense, namely the sense in which we make them true. Thus, if we think its impossible for LNC to be true, its impossible only to the agree that our facticity or present/historical facts make it true.
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