FAITH AND FIDEISM by MICHAEL WAYNE BOLLENBAUGH A DISSERTATION Presented to the Department of Philosophy and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillments of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy June 1994 ii "Faith and Fideism," a dissertation prepared by Michael Wayne Bollenb augh in partia l fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Department of Philosophy. This dissertation has been approved and accepted by. Chair of the Examining Committee Committee in charge: Dr. Robert Herbert, Chair Dr. Don Levi Dr. William Davie Dr. Forrest Pyle Vice Provost · nd Dean of the Graduate School iii An Abstract of the Dissertation of Michael Wayne Bollenb augh in the Department of Philosophy Title: FAITH AND FIDEISM Approved: for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to be taken June 1994 Dr. Robert T. Herbert Among philosophers of religion Soren Kierkegaard is often regarded as an archetypal fideist. Jn general terms, fideism is the view that religion is based on faith rather than reasoning or evidence. This study examines and critiques Kierkegaard's view of the nature of religious belief in light of his fideism. I argue that it is not useful to describe Kierkegaard simply as a fideist since this description applies to a whole host of philosophers of religion, some who are endeared by the term and others who are anxious to eschew it. Instead I critique Kierkegaard 's efforts by identifying a species for the genus of his ftdeism, which I call "exclusivist". In identifying a species o f Kierkegaard's fideism I am able to distinguish him from other fideists as well as more clearly define the concerns of his enterprise. The term "exclusivist " describes Kierkegaard's fideistic concerns in two ways. First, it means to make something singularly important as in an exclusive news story. Secondly, exclusive means to bar or prohibit as in an exclusive countty club that only admits members of a certain race and gender iv Kierkegaard's view of the nature of religious belief is an exclusivist fideism because it seeks to make his description of the path to faith singularly true and he bars an positive reasoning from the concerns of faith. I contend that the exclusivist nature of Kierkegaard's fideism has unfortunate consequences for the nature of faith itself. I support this claim by showing that the kind of religious experience Kierkegaard insists on does not parallel the religious experience of most ordinary believers. To support my case I examine several major themes in Kierkegaard's thought, which include his view of passion, his thorough rejection of positive reasoning for faith, the nature of the Christian Incarnation as an absolute paradox, and the subjectivity is truth thesis. I counter Kierkegaard's exclusivist fideism with a genus and species of faith that I can inclusivist fideism. Inclusivist fideism accepts the authority of faith in the life of the believer but rejects the notion that there is a fixed set of experiences that lead to faith and that reason is beyond faith's concerns. I suggest that the genus of Kierkegaard's analysis of faith is correct but that the species is wrong. Because inclusivist fideism does not essentialize a believer's pilgrimage to faith it has important advantages over Kierkegaard's exclusivist fideism. CURRICULUM VITA NAME OF AUTHOR: Michael Wayne Boltenbaugh PLACE OF BIRTH: San Pedro, California DATE OF BIRTH: February 25, 1953 GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon University of Calgary Northwest Nazarene College DEGREES AWARDED: Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy, 1994, University of Oregon Master of Arts in Religious Studies, 1987, University of Calgary Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy, 1980, Northwest Nazarene College AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: Philosophy of Religion History of Philosophy Ethics PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Graduate Teaching FelJow, Services For Student Athletes, University of Oregon, Eugene, 1992-1994 Graduate Teaching Fellow, Department of Philosophy, University of Oregon, Eugene, 1989-92 Graduate Teaching Assistant, Department of Religious Studies, University of Calgary, Calgary, 1986-87 V vi AWARDS AND HONORS: Oregon Humanities Center Graduate Fellowship, 1991-92 vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am especially grateful to Dr. Robert T. Herbert who consented to chair my dissertation committee. His insights both in the classroom and in this study have been pause for reflection and a direct cause of my philosophical growth. I owe a sincere thanks as well to Dr. Don Levi, Dr. William Davie and Dr. Forrest Pyle for agreeing to be a part of my dissertation committee. Believe me, they ask hard questions! I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the Department of Philosophy and Services For Student Athletes at the University of Oregon for their support through fellowships and encouragement. The individuals in these departments probably do not realize how much they have helped me. But most importantly, a loving thank-you to Kelly and Mandy, the two most significant women in my life. They kept telling me I could do it. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION ..... ......... .. ........ .... .... .. ........... ............... ... ..... .......................... .. 1 II. SKEPTICISM, PASSION AND THE EXISTING INDIVIDUAL .............. 20 Skepticism ... .... .. .. ............ .......... .... ...... .... ....... .. .. .... ... ... ... ............ ..... ..... .. ..... 2 2 Passion ......................................... .. ..... .. ................................ ... ......... ............. 31 The Existing Individual .... .................... .. ............................ .. .. ...... ............. 46 Summary ....... ... ........... ... ................. ... ............ .. ....... .. ........ ...... ....... .. ........... . 51 III. EXCLUSIVIST FIDEISM AND RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE ........ .... .. .. .... 53 Religiousness A ... .. ...... ....... ...... .... ........ .. .. .... .. ....... ..... ... .... ... ........... ..... .. ..... 55 The Basis for the Rejection of Religious Proofs .............. .. ............ ....... 75 Faith, the Approximation-Process and Indifference .............. .. ..... 78 Faith and Human Corruption .. .. ....... .. .......... .... .. ................ ...... ... ..... 94 Faith as a Necessary Condition of Faith ...... .. ................................. 102 Summary ..................... ........ .. .. .. .. .. .... .. ............ .. .... .... .. ............ ...... ............ . 11 0 IV. EXCLUSIVIST FIDEISM AND THE ABSOLUTE PARADOX ................ 111 The Language of the Absolute Paradox ..................................... .. ......... 120 The Offended Consciousness ..... ............. ................... .. .. .. .... ..... .. .. ........ . 123 The "HOW" and "WHAT' of the Absolute Paradox .......... .... ......... 145 Summary ......................................... .............. .. ..... .............. .. ..................... . 15 7 V. EXCLUSIVIST FIDEISM AND SUBJECTIVITY .. .. ................................... 159 General Remarks on Subjectivity .. .. .. .. .. .. .................... ......................... 161 Subjectivity as Descriptive of the Inner Life .. .. .... .... .. .. .. ................ .. ... 168 Subjectivity and Theological Non-Realism ....................... .. ........ .. ..... 176 Summary ..... .. .... ... ...... ... .. ....... ............ ....... .......... ............. ...... ....... .. ........... 18 3 ix VI. FAITH AND INCLUSIVIST FIDEISM ........................................................... 184 Part I ............................................................................................................ . 188 Part II ..................................................................... .. ... ........... .......... ............. 192 Part III ...... ...... .. .. ... ......................................... ........ ... .... .. ................. .. ...... ... . 201 Part IV ......................... ...... ...................................................................... ..... 233 B I B L I O G RA P HY ................................................ .. .............................................. ........... 236 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION This study is an exercise in philosophical cliticism. The critique developed here is directed toward Soren Kierkegaard's view of faith, most prominently those elements in his thought that typically lead us to think of him as a fideist. When considering the list of thinkers classified as fideists Kierkegaard is perhaps the most often thought of example. He concurs with all other fideists that faith either stands against reason or is competent to stand on its own without the benefits reason purports to offer, and even that faith trumps reason. While I want to approach Kierkegaard's views on faith and fideism in a philosophical manner I will not do so with the attitude of a dispassionate clinician. I come to Kierkegaard, first, as an admirer of his work, but, secondly, as someone who is genuinely bothered by his conception of faith. On the first count, I reject the widely held view that Kierkegaard, as Henry Aiken was told by an Oxford scholar, is not a thinker upon whom you can sharpen your philosophical wits.1 This view is held by those who have not read Kierkegaard carefully, seriously nor, I dare say, fairly. Part of my reticence to be overly critical of Kierkegaard comes from his desire to create a meaningful faith, a faith that is held with conviction and brings existential 1Henry D. Aiken, The Age of Ideology: ·n,e Nineteenth Century Philosophers (New York: The New American Library, 1956), 226. impact to the life of the believer. While I think that Kierkegaard proposes steps which do not necessarily achieve these ends, I am sympathetic to the ends themselves. 2 An able Kierkegaard defender may cogently argue that my philosophical critique leaves Kierkegaard unscathed because his goals of religious devotion supersede whatever petty philosophical differences I have with him. While I have some sympathy for this argument I still believe a philosophical critique of Kierkegaard's ideas is in order. So, on the second count, my worries about Kierkegaard center on his fideistic conception of faith. These worries will constitute the focus of my dissertation. Kierkegaard is not merely a convenient thinker to write a Ph.D. dissertation about. For me, Kierkegaard's efforts generate real existential problems connected, specifically, to the lived experience of religious belief. If Richard Popkin's generic definition of fideism is right, then there is no difficulty in seeing why Kierkegaard is regarded as a fideist. Popkin writes: Fideism is the view that truth in religion is ultimately based on faith rather than reasoning or evidence. This claim has been presented in many forms by theologians from St. Paul to contemporary neo-orthodox, antirationalist writers, usually as a way of asserting that the fundamental tenets of religion cannot be established by proofs or by empirical evidence but must be accepted on faith.2 It can be readily seen that Popkin's generic definition of fideism tells us little about the specifics of Kierkegaard's fideism. Hence, to classify Kierkegaard as a fideist without qualification is not philosophically useful since many thinkers from many periods of history readily wear this label. Tertullian, 2Toe Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1972 ed., s.v. "Fideism," by Richard Popkin. 3 Pascal and even Wittgenstein are some of the first to come to mind. But this does not mean they are just like Kierkegaard in their respective assessments of religious belief. To do Kierkegaard justice requires that I give attention to the unique features of his thought that are the basis for viewing him as a fideist. So as to properly critique his claims I will avoid the temptation to merely lump him together with other fideists. In another work, Popkin recognizes the wide ranging meaning fideism has as it is applied to different thinkers. He says it covers a spectrum of views which extend from: (1) that of blind faith, which denies to reason any capacity whatsoever to reach the truth, or to make it plausible, and which bases all certitude on a complete and unquestioning adherence to some revealed or accepted truths, to (2) that of making faith prior to reason. This latter view denies to reason any complete and absolute certitude of the truth prior to the acceptance of some proposition or propositions by faith, ..... , even though reason may play some relative or probable role in the search for, or explanation of the truth.3 While I think there are many incongruities between Kierkegaard's fideism and the first description Popkin gives, I do think he is closer to it than the second description. I say this in light of his many attacks on probabilistic arguments in favor of faith. Using the poles Popkin gives us to cover the range of thinkers classified as fideists, I would place Kierkegaard well to the side of number one (1) versus number two (2). In general, Kierekgaard insists "there can be no relation between what is accepted on faith and any evidence or reasons that can be given for the articles of faith". 4 At this point I would like to introduce a term that I will use with some 3Richard Popkin, The History of Scepticism From Erasmus to Spinoza (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), xix-xx. 4Ibid., xx. 4 frequency in this study. This tenn is "pistology". It simply means how any particular thinker conceives of faith or religious belief. Just as epistemology is constructed of the Greek tenns episteme and logos to mean "theory of knowledge", pistology comes from pistis and logos to mean "theory of faith". As we might expect, Aquinas' pistology differs from that of St. John of the Cross while Anselm's pistology differs from the pistology of St. Paul. Just as different thinkers have differing conceptions of knowledge, philosophers have a variety of conceptions of faith. This study will be directed toward clarifying and analyzing Kierkegaard's pistology and its connection to his purported fideism. While Kierkegaard surely upholds the most recognizable feature of all fideists, viz. the alleged disparity between faith and reason, I will endeavour to get a clear sense of the distinctive nature of Kierkegaard's fideism by describing it as exclusivist in nature. An analogy with the zoological terms genus and species will help explain what I mean b y exclusivist fideism. In this case fideism is the genus of Kierkegaard's pistology while exclusivist is its species. Not only will the genus-species analogy help us see the distinctiveness of Kierkegaard's fideism, it will also assist in developing the focus of a critique of Kierkegaard's pistology. Now, zoologists use the tenns genus and species to distinguish the diversity of the earth's plant and animal life. For example, Ursus horribilus is the genus and species of the grizzly bear. This large, ferocious omnivore lives mostly in secluded regions of the North American wilderness. As with any species, what defines the grizzly bear as Ursus horribilus includes its size, 5 shape, body features, diet and habitat. The grizzly bear is easily distinguished from its cousin, the black bear (Ursus americanus), by the farmer's much larger size, humped shoulder, dish-shaped proboscis and the large ranges of undisturbed habitat required to maintain its existence. If we were to suddenly remove all grizzly bears from their natural habitat to the desert of the southwestern United States we would insure the extinction of this species since what Ursus horribilus requires for its survival cannot be found there. Or, to make the point in a different way, if we were to conceptualize a species of animal along with its accompanying features and habita t demands, we would not give it gills while also making it a land dweller if we wanted it to be viable, i.e. to actually exist. Nor would we require that our conceptual animal needs salmon in its diet while limiting its range to the Rocky Mountains. To conceive of any species of animal in these ways subverts the viability of the species. The point of the genus-species analogy is to show that what I call Kierkegaard's exclusivist fideism parallels taking a species out of its natural habitat or giving it attributes which prevents its survival. I contend that Kierkegaard creates a species of fideism whose members either have no viability or are doomed to extinction. This means that there can be no actual believers of the genus and species, exclusivist fideist. My claim is that people of faith simply do not believe in the way Kierkegaard says they must in order to be true believers. Further, I contend that Kierkegaard draws the questionable conclusion that his view of faith provides the only adequate basis for the level of commitment and devotion faith requires, to the 6 exclusion of all other pistologies. In short, faith does not and cannot exist under the conditions of Kierkegaard's exclusivist fideism. While it might be true that Kierkegaard presents his readers with a seamless definition of faith, I argue that if faith is to be a lived faith, as Kierkegaard insists it must be, then faith is more than his definition strictly entails. While faith may be entailed by Kierkegaard's definition, his exclusivist fideism does not account for all that faith seems to be. In essence, this is a problem of theory and practice. Arguably, Kierkegaard develops a coherent pistology; but I claim that it has no practical viability. Hence, in Kierkegaard's scheme of things, when considering the members of the set of genuine Christians, the set is empty or a null class. Another way to make my point is ask to questions about the relationship between the "knight of faith" Kierkegaard describes in Fear and Trembling and ordinary believers. Can ordinary men and women, people who are timberworkers, teachers, homemakers, bankers and business executives become knights of faith? Is there not a basic incongruency between these individuals and the knight of faith? If there is, then the exemplars of faith will be few to none. One expression of Kierkegaard's pistology is found in the following excerpt from the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. He writes: The inquiring subject must be in one or the other of two situations. Either he is in faith convinced of the truth of Christianity, and in faith assured of his own relationship to it; in which case he cannot be infinitely interested in all the rest, since faith itself is the infinite interest in Christianity, and since every other interest may readily constitute a temptation. Or the inquirer, is on the other hand, not in an attitude of faith, but objectively in an attitude of contemplation, and hence not 7 infinitely interested in the determination of the question.5 In this passage faith is "the infinite interest in Christianity" which can be disrupted by outside interests. Here Kierkegaard uses the word "interest" in a special sense. He does not mean that if we have interests like the opera or hockey or in finding a good job that we cannot be people of faith. What he has in mind are interests outside the realm of faith that some are tempted to import to determine the truth of Christianity, viz. historical and philosophical truth. If we have an infinite interest in determining the truth of Christianity we cannot apply historical and philosophical truth to its determination since this shows that we are in an "attitude of contemplation" and not of faith. To be in an attitude of contemplation means that we are unconvinced of Christianity's truth and, therefore, we are not believers. While historical and philosophical truth may have an importance of their own, they cannot be employed in the interests of faith. To think they can is to relativize the interest in determining the truth of Christianity. Kierkegaard locates the fully convinced believer on the "either" side of the dialectic he develops in this passage. On the "or" side of the dialectic is "a11 the rest" which is a kind of catch-all category for any other way of conceiving of faith. This latter categol)' is a showcase of unbelief, according to the passage. Since the interest in determining the truth of Christianity is of infinite proportions all other interests, e.g. historical and philosophical truth, are excluded from consideration. I think Kierkegaard's claim that someone is either convinced of the truth of Christianity or he is not is uncontroversial. As Kierkegaard says, either 5 Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), 23. 8 people are believers or they are not. Either people have appropriated religion into their lives or they have not. I think believers and unbelievers alike would concur with Kierkegaard on this matter. However, what is controversial is Kierkegaard's further claim that anyone who employs reasoning in the interests of faith is actually an unbeliever. Against Kierkegaard, I take the position that it does not follow that a believer who values reasoning in religion shows himself to be unconvinced of Christian truth claims. So, for Kierkegaard to exclude what he calls positive ways of reasoning from religious reflection and to give an exclusive franchise to that range of reasoning that he frequently refers to as the negative way is central to the contention between Kierkegaard and myself. Kierkegaard worries that if objective reasoning is seen as active in the lives of believers that reason will occupy the space that ought to be occupied by faith. For Kierkegaard, faith will then only reside in a peripheral area of one's existence. This causes him to develop a well -intentioned segregation of faith and reason. Kierkegaard thinks a proper separation of faith and reason as a defense of faith lives in the contention that faith cannot be derived from reason. But human beings may find it too difficult to come to the issue of faith without their reason since most human concepts and activities involve reason. I think the value of faith's involvement with reason can be seen while being fully cognizant of reason's limitations. On this point there is a large area of agreement between Kierkegaard and myself. Like him, I recognize that faith and reason are incommensurable. The difference between us lies in 9 the fact that Kierkegaard thinks this should bring an reason based inquiries into faith to a halt while I do not. Unlike Kierkegaard, I do not reject an philosophical treatment of faith or God. Contra Kierkegaard, I think believers can afford to consider the promises and intellectual difficulties philosophy poses for faith. Kierkegaard's exclusivist fideism is an archetypal example of faith and reason being held apart. Hence, my rejection of Kierkegaard's exclusivist fideism is underpinned by the classic faith/reason dichotomy many fideists seek in order to protect the purity of faith. Usually, this dichotomy is created to protect the side of the dichotomy that is most highly esteemed, which, in this case is faith. Kierkegaard shows himself to be in the company of those who desire to keep faith and reason apart when he says in the Fragments. "If the Paradox and the Reason come together in a mutual understanding of their unlikeness their encounter will be happy. .. . "6 The problem with the faith/reason dichotomy parallels the difficulties found in the fact/value distinction Iris Murdoch describes in Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. She says while the purpose of this well -intentioned distinction is to segregate fact from value in order to keep value pure and untainted, it ignores an obvious and important aspect of human existence, which is that any survey of facts itself involves moral discrimination. In our attempt to resist the view that value can be derived from or is mixed with empirical facts we force an unwarranted dichotomy on them.7 Because 6soren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments. trans. David Swenson, fifth edition, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 61. 7Iris Murdoch Metaphsics as a Guide to Morals (New York: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1992), 25. human beings (as moral agents) set up facts the concept of fact itself is complex and brings with it evaluation and moral judgment.8 In the long 10 run value becomes marginalized by the dichotomy that is designed to protect it. Following Murdoch's model, faith faces the same fate as value if it is isolated from reason. Human beings, just as they bring moral judgments to their evaluations of facts, bring judgments of reason to their reflections on faith. Like value, faith too is complex. It is not easily broken down into the constituitive elements of faith and reason. A dichotomy which segregates faith and reason in order to maintain the purity of faith destroys the very thing it seeks to protect. The exclusivist nature of Kierkegaard's fideism not only bars reasoning from the habitat of faith but it gives rise to several questionable themes which he considers to be essential to his pistology. I will investigate some of these themes in this study. Not only does Kierkegaard take away something (reasoning) that is important to faith, but he adds features (the themes in question) which threaten its survival. The former is analogous to taking habitat away from the grizzly bear and the latter is analogous to giving lungs to catfish. In both cases the extinction of the species is insured. The questions and objections I wish to raise are not directed toward the genus of Kierkegaard's pistology as much as they are the species of his thought. If fideism in general recognizes a basic incommensurability between faith and reason then there may well be workable versions of fideism that are 8 Ibid., 25-6. not entailed by my critique of Kierkegaard. But Kierkegaard claims much more than this in his exclusivist version of fideism. For Kierkegaard, reasoning in religion is not merely incommensurable with faith but it is faith's mortal enemy. Part and parcel to my critique of Kierkegaard are his views that lead him beyond the genus of fideism to its exclusivist species. 11 In part, exclusivist fideism fails because Christian theists do not hold their faith in the manner Kierkegaard says they must if they are to be counted as genuine Christians, i.e. the kind of believer Kierkegaard describes does not, in all likelihood, exist. But Kierkegaard wants to counter my claim by saying that the kind of believer he describes is found in the New Testament. In fact, he thinks his efforts reclaim what he calls "the Christianity of the New Testament". Kierkegaard himself sets this standard as representative of true faith, i.e. for Christianity to be genuine it must reflect what we find in the New Testament. In Attack Upon Christendom. Kierkegaard writes: The Christianity of the New _Testament simply does not exist. Here there is nothing to reform; what has to be done is to throw light upon a criminal offense against Christianity, prolonged through centuries, perpetrated by millions (more or less guilty), whereby they have cunningly, under the guise of perfecting Christianity, sought little by little to cheat God out of Christianity, and have succeeded in making Christianity exactly the opposite of what it is in the New Testament.9 For Kierkegaard, the history of Christianity since the period of the New Testament is a showcase of how far removed we are from genuine faith. Kierkegaard goes on to discuss how remote "official Christianity" is from the Christianity of the New Testament. In other places in his works, Kierkegaard develops the theme of the disparity between Christendom and New 9soren Kierkegaard, Attack Upon "Christendom". trans. Walter Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton - University Press, 1972), 32-3. 12 Testament Christianity. For example, in the Journals Kierkegaard says, "That Christianity simply does not exist" because there are no Christians in the "most rigorous sense".10 In Practice [Trainin&) in Christianity, Kierkegaard says we have been duped either by others or by ourselves into thinking we are Christians.11 Kierkegaard also writes in The Point of View of My Work as An Author: The content of this little book affirms, then, what I truly am as an author, that I am and was a religious author, that the whole of my work as an author is related to Christianity, to the problem of becoming a Christian, with a direct or indirect polemic against the monstrous illusion we call Christendom that in such a land as ours all are Christians of a sort.1 2 I presume Kierkegaard thinks that his description of a genuine Christian or a "Christian in the most rigorous sense" reflects the kind of believer we find in the New Testament. In essence, the above citations show the pervasiveness of Kierkegaard's claim that we must return to the Christianity of the New Testament. If we do what Kierkegaard recommends, viz. look in the New Testament to find genuine Christianity, there is little support for his pistology. In the New Testament faith is described variously as something the righteous live by (Romans 1:17), a way to cleanse the heart (Acts 15:9), as the means of our justification (Romans 5:1 ), as coming by hearing (Romans 10:17), as the "assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1) and when faith is tested it produces endurance (James 1:3). I do not see 10 Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. eds. and trans., Soren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers. vol. 3 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975), 322. From this point forward I will quote from this version of the {oumals by reference to the entry number used by the Hangs. 11 Ibid. 12soren Kierkegaard, The Point of View of My Work as an Author (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939), 5-6. 13 that these and other descriptions of faith in the New Testament have anything in common with Kierkegaard's description of faith as "an objective uncertainty held fast in an appropriation-process of the most passionate inwardness ... " or as the infinite interest in Christianity. The suggestion that Kierkegaard's exclusivist fideism does not match the Christianity of the New Testament is not to claim that he does not know Christianity's doctrines nor scripture. He plainly does. In fact I find his breadth of knowledge of Christianity quite striking, so striking that I am left wondering why he does not take his own advice and simply look in the New Testament to find Christianity. Instead, he falls victim to the vety critique he brings against his opponents (usually the Hegelians). In the long run, he does not return us to New Testament Christianity but casts the Christian message in a distinctly philosophical form, something he usually seeks to avoid. While Kierkegaard often portrays himself as an anti-philosopher who tries to show that a link between philosophy and Christianity leads to the latter's demise, he readily employs philosophical categories in his conception of religious belief. The point of Kierkegaard's exclusivist fideism involves an attempt to revive a species that has long since dwindled or been brought to the brink of extinction. Kierkegaard thinks this species once thrived in the period of the New Testament. In depicting Kierkegaard as an exclusivist fideist I am saying the species of exclusivist is used in both its negative and positive senses. In the negative sense it means to exclude, i.e. to negate, eliminate, bar or forbid. Certain notions (such as reason), Kierkegaard thinks, must be excluded from 14 faith to have a pistology that is proper to Christianity. Exclusivist's positive side means to make prominent or singularly important as in an exclusive intetview or exclusive news report. What is wrong with this, it might be asked? Would not a singularly truthful, concise explicit, crystal clear definition of faith be a very useful thing to have? Is it not desirable to have a pistology that cuts the fat and develops lean muscle? Yes, such a definition of faith would be useful. However, my contention is that Kierkegaard cuts away more than fat and acutally cuts into the lean muscle of faith in his drive to find the Christianity of the New Testament. I have created the following rejoinder from what I have gleaned from several of Kierkegaard's writings. I assume he might offer it to rebut my complaint that his exclusivist fideism causes him to stray from the descriptions of faith in the New Testament to the pistology he proffers: "The present state of Christianity is deplorable because its followers are under the illusion that they are genuine Christians. If this condition is to be corrected, it requires the strongest possible antidote. Afterall, a patient with a life threatening disease often requires intense therapy to insure his restoration to full health. Further, by claiming that I make faith's requirements too narrow, you seek to expand them which leaves you open for a relapse into Christendom. You do not make Christianity sufficiently difficult to be worth believing and you turn the religious pretenders of Christendom into true Christians. My definition of Christianity turns believers into hearty souls who understand the value and importance of faith while you make Christianity sloppy and loose. Your believers are religiously slothful and 15 without commitment. In the long run, you make faith relative rather than absolute. My depiction of Christianity makes faith emminent1y practical while what you offer makes faith merely contemplative. Granted, what I offer may be hyperbole but it must be expressed in hyperbolic terms if I am to gain the attention of those living under the illusion of being Christians." It is not this rejoinder per se that is problematic. Even unbelievers often complain that they would like to see a higher level of devotion from believers. Assuming Kierkegaard would offer such a rejoinder, I can think of very few believers (or even unbelievers) who would have any quarrel with it. What is problematic is Kierkegaard's view that commitment and devotion can only come from his definition of faith. This is, in part, why I describe Kierkegaard's fideism as exclusivist in nature. My quarrel with Kierkegaard is over the underlying set of assumptions that Kierkegaard thinks leads naturally to his assessment of Christianity's present state. Success in this study depends largely on revealing the flaws in what lies behind the above imagined rejoinder, not in attacking the rejoinder itself. My description of Kierkegaard's fideism as exclusivist in character emerges naturally from several of the central themes in his writings. It is these themes which go to the core of Kierkegaard's pitology and comprise the chapter divisions of my study. Chapter Two, entitled "Existence, Passion and Skepticism", is largely expositional as opposed to critical. It serves to set the stage for assessing and evaluating Kierkegaard's fideism. In this chapter I examine Kierkegaard's emphasis on skepticism, passion and the existing individual as a set of precursory elements necessary to faith. I discuss why only the existing individual can have the passion faith requires and how Kierkegaard employs Greek skepticism to support these interests. 16 In chapter three I investigate Kierkegaard's rejection of the notion that historical and speculative proofs can be the epistemic cornerstones of faith. In this chapter I draw attention to Kierkegaard's double claim about reasoning in religion. First, he notes the philosophical failure of any sort of proof making in religion. Since proofs only provide approximations to the truth of the Christian revelation, compared to the appropriation of Christian truth that faith requires, they are to be rejected as facilitating faith in any way. Because proofs are merely probabilistic they cannot secure certainty for faith. Secondly, he insists that the employment of proofs in the interests of faith arises from sinful and prideful human beings. As we saw above, Kierkegaard claims that reasoning in religion is actually a sign of unbelief. True faith, as Kierkegaard puts it, brings reasoning to a standstill and believes against the understanding. Thirdly, I question the coherency of Kierkegaard's claim that the greater the risk the greater the faith. If faith is vouchsafed in the haven of subjectivity how is it possible for faith to be risky, as Kierkegaard insists it must be? Chapters Four and Five delineate themes which draw us closer to the inner circle of Kierkegaard's exclusivist fideism. The topic of Chapter Four is the Absolute Paradox which is Kierkegaard's interpretation of the Christian Incarnation. For Kierkegaard, the God-man constitutes the greatest possible contradiction because both God (the eternal) and man (the temporal) reside in a single person. The basis of his characterization of the Incarnation is that 17 God and man are so utterly different that to claim they are fused together in one person is absolutely paradoxical. Ironically, it is the Incarnation's contradictory nature that makes it worthy of belief. While K1erkegaard is certainly correct that the person of Christ is the proper object of faith for Christians it is not clear that his depiction of the Incarnation as an absolute paradox is philosophically as well as theologically sound . Kierkegaard categorizes all other paradoxes as relative when compared to the absolute paradoxicality of the Incarnation. What he seems to mean is that a relative paradox is one which only appears to be paradoxical. A relative paradox can be resolved (or "mediated", to use Kierkegaard's term) via philosophical analysis. But the absolute paradox defies the understanding and is impenetrable to the work of philosophy. This notion is important to Kierkegaard because if philosophy was able to mediate the absolute paradox, faith would again become the hand-maiden of philosophy. K1erkegaard is not particularly clear why faith must be directed toward this particular paradox when many other imaginable paradoxes are at least equally contradictory. If this is true then it seems K1erkegaard is stuck with an obvious arbitrariness in picking the particular paradox he does as the object of faith. Further, he is not clear why an absolute paradox yields a specifically Christian faith. His claims are made more problematic by the possibility that believing an absolute paradox to be true may constitue an act of self- deception. This leads directly to the subject matter of Chapter Five which deals with Kierkegaard's claim that genuine faith is defined as a passion for the infinite, 18 maximal subjectivity or inwardness. Another way he puts this notion is that "subjectivity is truth". I note that subjectivity may be a useful way to address the important topic of the inner life of faith. Here the believer finds a way to express himself with regard to the the certainty of his faith and his walk with God. If seen as expressive of the inner life of subjectivity may prove to be a quite defensible notion. But as useful as Kierkegaard's notion of subjectivity is to the inner life of faith, it also raises some serious questions for the coherency of faith itself. For example, does infinite passion unwittingly allow that the object (or Being) of faith can be removed from the equation and yet the believer still have faith? Does maximal subjectivity do violence to Christianity by creating a kind of accidental atheism or what I call a theological non-realism? If what counts is the subjectivity of the believer could God not disappear entirely from the picture while genuine faith is retained? To summarize, Chapter Two is largely expositional because it serves to clarify the pre-conditions Kierkegaard establishes for a genuine faith. Chapters Three through Five serve as showcases of Kierkegaard's exclusivist fideism. In these chapters I to try and show why I think Kierkegaard's fascinating claims do not, in all likelihood, apply to believers. I am concerned, that for all its appeal, Kierkegaard's efforts do not serve the real interests of faith and that believers must look elsewhere to find a more adequate pistology. Above I made the claim that reasoning is part of the natural habitat of faith. In a concluding chapter I will develop this claim around an inclusivist 19 version of fideism. I will argue that the basic impulse of fideism, as Popkin gives it, is correct in spite of its epithetical treatment by many thinkers. Inclusivist fideism, like all versions of fideism, recognizes a basic incommensurablility between faith and reason. Its genus is fideism which means that it ascribes to the view that the major tenets of religion are based on faith not reason. But its species is inclusivist because it allows that proofs and arguments are within the concern of faith. The point of the distinction inclusivist fideism is to devise a more survivable version of fideism than the exclusivist sort I think is descriptive of Kierkegaard. lnclusivist fideism, for example, a11ows that reasoning can be important for religion without unduly tethering religion to reasoning. In this chapter, my argument turns on the view that Kierkegaard is wrong to think a believer cannot value reasoning in religion without betraying genuine faith. His tendency to classify all believers who show an interest in proofs and reasoning as member of Christendom actually turns many of the faithful into unbelievers. It seems incredible that thinkers with the spiritual credentials of Anselm or Aquinas are, on Kierkegaard's account, outside the community of faith along with myriads of ordinary believers. Put in another way, this chapter works against the view that the commitment of faith and the holding of reasons for faith are mutually exclusive. In essence, I argue that for fideism to be a workable genus for faith, its species must be more inclusive than Kierkegaard allows. It is in this inclusiveness that we find actual "flesh and blood" believers or the real exemplars of faith. In my view, Kierkegaard's exclusivist practices are both unfortunate and unnecessary. CHAPTER II EXISTENCE, PASSION AND SKEPTICISM It is presumably the witchery of this ever-continuing process which has inspired the misunderstanding that one must be a devil of a fellow in philosophy in order to emancipate himself from Hegel. But this is by no means the case. All that is needed is sound common sense, a fund of humour, and a little Greek ataraxy. (Postscript, p. 34) 20 In the introduction to this study I described Kierkegaard as an exclusivist fideist. My purpose in doing so was to specify the nature of Kierkegaard's fideism and to begin my critique of him on that basis. This description setves three ends. First, it keeps me from falling into the trap of critiquing Kierkegaard simply as a fideist since this term is wide ranging in its meaning and is applicable to many thinkers. Secondly, I am able to carry my critique to the heart of Kierkegaard's thought. From my vantage point I hope to develop an argument which shows that if K.ierekgaard is a fideist of the exclusivist sort, his pistology is not applicable to ordinary flesh and blood believers. Close scrutiny of Kierkegaard as an exclusivist fideist and his accompanying depiction of faith should reveal that the faithful do not generally hold their beliefs in the manner he insists on. Thirdly, by criticizing the exclusivist features of Kierkegaard's fideism I leave the door open for an inclusivist version of fideism which, hopefully, will prove to be a more suitable 21 explanation of religious belief. In this chapter I will lay down some important background to support my claim that IQerkegaard is an exclusivist fideist. Here I intend to discuss three central themes in Kierkegaard's thought, viz. passion, skepticism and the existing individual. Why is it so important to discuss Kierkegaard's use of these themes? First, skepticism, passion and the existing individual comprise a set of concepts which are precursory to the condition of faith. That is, they must actually exist in a person before he can go on to faith in a Christian sense (religiousness B). Secondly, they foreshadow more definitive Kierkegaardian themes such as infinite passion, the absolute paradox, believing against the understanding and subjectivity, among others. To understand Kierkegaard's initial use of skepticism, passion and the existing individual yields some insight to Kierkegaard's larger program of thought. If Kierkegaard's ultimate goal is to help us chart a path to "an absolute relationship with the absolute", then skepticism, passion and the existing individual are themes we meet at the trailhead. In the literature it is not uncommon to find Kierkegaard's interpreters dealing with the aforementioned themes independently of one another. They may even discuss all three themes in a single work. But rarely, if ever, do they give attention to the interconnection between them. In my view, a clear understanding of Kierkegaard's pistology is not forthcoming apart from grasping the interdependent relationship that passion, skepticism and the existing individual share. In one of his better known defintions, Kierkegaard says faith is "an objective uncertainty held fast in an appropriation-process of 22 the most passionate inwardness .... "13 What I propose to do is investigate the relationship between these themes with the purpose of getting a clear picture of the kind of person Kierkegaard thinks one has to be to hold this view of faith. If it is true that Kierkeggard's fideism leads to a pistology that does not describe any actual believers then an elucidation of the connection of these themes should make clear to us the kind of person who supposedly holds Kierkegaard's defintion of faith. It should also become clear to us if the person who aheres to this definition of faith can have concrete existence or is merely idealized, as I contend. I intend for this portion of the study to be largely expositional as opposed to critical. However, I will attempt to develop an argument based in this exposition which should heighten the suspicion that there is, at base, something wrong with Kierkegaard's exclusivist fideism. I will discuss, in order, Kierkegaard's adaptation of skepticism in the supposed interests of faith, his view of p assion and finally, the existing individual. Skepticism There is certainly plenty of room to criticize Kierkegaard's basic intetpretation of the Greek skeptics. But if we are to make sense of Kierkegaard's use of the Greek skeptics in the supposed interests of faith, it is important that we allow him his own construction of their views. This is not to say I agree with his interpretation of them. For the record, I think there are many places he gets them wrong. But for the sake of argument I will proceed in a way that grants Kierkegaard most of his intetpretation of the Greek 13Kierkegaard, Postscript. 182. 23 skeptical tradition in the interests of faith . It might seem that if there is a connection between faith and skepticism it must be of an antithetical sort. After all, has skepticism not been in the business of undermining whatever metaphysical or doctrinaire claims it encounters, especially religious belief? Is faith not the obvious countetpart of skepticism? If this is so, should we not expect to find Kierkegaard immediately involved in a quarrel with skeptics everywhere? Not necessarily. For Kierkegaard, the essential insight of the Greek skeptics that is that they were suspicious of metaphysics and the sorts of ultimate truth claims made by the dogmatic philosophers. Terence Penelhum, for example, says that the fideist tradition Kierkegaard belongs to " ... tries to enlist the doubts and questions of the philosophical skeptic in the supposed interests of Christian faith."14 According to the skeptics, any attempt to resolve metaphysical questions does nothing to bring us closer to the truth but only produces a life of vexation. The skeptics thought that the best way to find a life of ataraxia (tranquility or unperturbedness) was through epoche (suspense of judgment). Kierkegaard adapts skepticism's basic principles as a way to undermine a pretentious and haughty reason. Herein lies the genius in Kierkegaard's use of skepticism in the interests of faith. For Kierkegaard, skepticism is a handy way to attack the kind of reason he vilifies throughout his works. He thinks that when the potential believer looks into the philosophical toolbox of the 14Myles Bumyeat, ed., The Skeptical Tradition. vol. 2 of Major 11,inkers Series. gen. ed. Amelie Oskenberg Rorty (Berkeley: University of califomia Press, 1983) , 288. 24 skeptic he will see that a reason based faith is impossible. Kierkegaard intetprets the Greek skeptics as agents unaware of the assistance they give the project of dismantling the notion that reason and philosophy can provide epistemic surety for faith. Kierkegaard hopes to show that the kind of skepticism found in early Greek philosophy does some important work for faith . He wlites: The study of Greek scepticism is much to be recommended. There one may learn thoroughly that it will always require time and exercise and discipline to understand ....... . , that the certainty of sense perception, to say nothing of historical certainty, is uncertainty, is only an approximation; and that the positive and immediate relationship to it is the negative.15 In part, Kierkegaard recommends the study of Greek Skepticism not because of what it establishes but because of what it dis-establishes. Skepticism shows that our common dependence on sense perception or history is unfounded because it delivers a tenuous and approximate knowledge. Hence, skepticism teaches us positive lessons but in a negative way. One of the first lessons skepticism teaches is that none of the "tried and true" methods of knowing work, at least when it comes to creating epistemological certainty. Skepticism shows just how inadequate our knowledge claims truly are. But Kierkegaard hopes that out of skepticism's negative teaching something positive will emerge. As an unwitting a11y of faith, skepticism undermines the haughtiness of reason. If we come to see that skepticism rules out our reliance on the metaphysics of reason to discover our place in the universe then ultimately perhaps, we will tum to God with the empty hands of faith. For these reasons Kierkegaard wants to co-opt the skeptical tradition in the 15Kierkegaard, Postscript, 38. 25 interests of faith. For Kierkegaard, the skeptic is a cobelligerent in a war against the traditional enterprise of attempting to prove God's existence and attempting to show, by philosophical means alone, that some of the major tenets of Christianity are likely to be true.16 Kierkegaard proposes to take away the metaphysical 'hand-holds' a believer may be tempted to use to secure a faith based on reason. Left with no metaphysical 'hand holds', the believer must find the kind of answers he seeks elsewhere. After skepticism has done its work one option left open to the potential believer is faith in God. Kierkegaard thinks skepticism supremely plays the role of faith's benefactor because it is instrumental in establishing his claim that for anyone to have faith he must first relinquish the idea that his common sense beliefs provide epistemic certainty when those common sense beliefs are used to support faith. Since the central feature of Greek skepticism works against the surety of our most cherished common sense beliefs, Kierkegaard thinks he has found a philosophical paradigm which takes away our epistemological pride. Kierkegaard suggests that the achievement of faith requires that faith's obstacles first be removed. Analogously, skepticism is like a gardener whose prize roses are obscurred by an overgrowth of weeds. The gardener's job is to cut away that which hides the beauty of the roses to make them stand out. Kierkegaard thinks Greek skepticism can do this kind of work for faith since it is surrounded by the "weeds" of metaphysics and reason which clutters the landscape of faith. 16rerence Penelhum, God and Skepticism (Boston: D. Reidel Pub. Co., 1983), 88 26 Kierkegaard has a distinctly religious purpose in mind in his analysis of skepticism. The unpretentious believer opens himself to some immediate religious practicalities, in Kierkegaard's view. He is humble, meek and devoid of vanity, everything we have come to expect from a person who lives the religious life. Though the alliance between faith and skepticism may seem to be unholy at best it is the first step in Kierkegaard's quest for a 'pure' faith, devoid of metaphysical trappings. While Kierkegaard views skepticism as an ally of faith, it can only be an ally in the short term. This is because a central theme of Greek skepticism includes a call for a suspense of judgment (epoche ' ) with regard to any ultimate truth claims. In refusing to commit himself to any ultimate metaphysical claims, the skeptic thinks he achieves ataraxia ("unperturbedness", "tranquility"). Thus the skeptic avoids getting entangled in questions which have no apparrent resolution and are by nature disruptive to a peaceful and tranquil life. Greek skepticism is a conscious disengagement from irresolvable philosophical questions. Now the Greek skeptics d id concede that they could not achieve total absence of disturbance. Instead, they settled for a "moderate affection", roughly the ups and downs of life, minus any cosmic significance. So, the sort of calm the Greek skeptics think epoche can get for them is not the utter Stoic apatheia. However, for the skeptics the logical terminus of philosophy is ataraxia and there is nothing better nor higher to be pursued beyond it. But faith, on Kierkegaard's view entails an unreserved commitment and this is why its alliance with skepticism must ultimately be dissolved. While 27 Kierkegaard thinks the skeptic provides a service for faith because the skeptic makes us despair of ever finding a suitable demonstration of God's existence, the skeptic would never assent to the kind of commitment Kierkegaard's definition of faith requires. This would violate his principle of the suspense of judgment and keep him from living a peaceful, trouble free life, unencumbered by the sort of commitments he characterizes as vexations of the spirit. If Kierkegaard's definition of faith calls for commitment while the Greek skeptic seeks to avoid it, is there not something inherently contradictory in Kierkegaard's desire to enlist skepticism in the cause of faith? Not if we understand the sense in which I think Kierkegaard sees faith and skepticism as co-belligerents. As co-belligerents faith and skepticism are combatting a common enemy. Yet faith and skepticism seek different results. Just as two disparite groups like the French underground and the French communists fought the Nazis during World War II, it is not really suprising to find the skeptic and the believer, as Kierkegaard construes him, battling a common enemy. The common enemy, of course, is the dogmatic philosopher. Central to Kierkegaard's case is the importance of not seeing the b eliever and the skeptic as opposites. In the present day it is easy to associate skepticism with disbelief in the central doctrines of the Judea-Christian tradition.17 The skeptical philosophy of Hume has perhaps held the greatest influence in shaping this view. Thus, any tendency to view the believer and the skeptic as archenemies is understandable. But, Kierkegaard sees the real enemy of faith to be a dogmatist like Hegel just as the skeptics saw the enemy 17Popkin, The History of Scevticism from Erasmus to Sl)inoza. p. xviii. 28 of a tranquil life lying in the dogmatics of the Stoics. It is on the basis of this co-belligerency that faith can accomodate skepticism in a limited way. But this limitation becomes obvious when one crosses the line between the suspense of judgment and the commitment of faith. A Pyrrhonian skeptic says that to preserve a tranquil and peaceful life we should never commit ourselves to any philosophical, moral, religious or political position we must defend. The skeptic teaches us that such commitments lead to a life of frustration and conflict. He recommends that we follow the demands and expectations of local custom to promote ataraxia. However, the skeptic's combination of easy outward piety and inner suspension of belief is a far cry from the dynamic faith IGerkegaard has in mind.18 This is why it is initially puzzling to find him viewing skepticism as an ally of faith. But the alliance Kierkegaard seeks between faith and skepticism does not in itself constitute a contradiction. For example, suppose you and I walk across campus together to the Student Union building. However, our respective purposes in going there are very different. You want to get a sandwich and I want to mail a letter. After walking to the Student Union together we part company and see to our differring tasks. Analogously, Kierkegaard and the skeptic can travel on the same path a short while for entirely different reasons. Like the walk you and I take to get to the Student Union, Kierkegaard and the skeptic travel the same path to undermine the pretensions of human reason. While their arrival point is the same their reasons for being there are very different. So, the skeptic and l 6Rorty, 293. 29 the believer are co-belligerents in the sense that both employ the same method to establish the conditions for more ultimate, though differing, ends. The skeptic hopes the undermining of reason and its accompanying suspense of judgment yields a tranquil life. Kierkegaard, however, hopes the undermining of reason will serve as a propadeutic to faith. It is in this limited sense, I think, that Kierkegaard sees the skeptic as an ally of faith. He is aware that any extended relationship between faith and skepticism is problematic. Kierkegaard writes, "If doubt is capable of overcoming itself, if one may find the truth in doubt simply by doubting everything, without breach of continuity, and without an absolutely new point of departure, not a single Christian category can be sustained, and Christianity is ipso facto abolished."19 Kierkegaard's point is that skepticism has some important work to do for faith but its work is not ongoing. It serves to prepare the ground for the believer but soon must be set aside in favor of an infinite decision leading to an eternal happiness. I am still troubled by the alliance Kierkegaard wants to make between faith and skepticism. This is because the description of faith most religious people testify to has more obvious parallels to the skeptic's notion of ataraxia than Kierkegaard's picture of it as an ongoing conflict. But how is this possible since the believer clearly does not see his faith as a suspense of judgment? On the contrary, people of faith claim an assurance of God's existence, of salvation and providential activity in their lives, i.e. the kinds of transcendant realities a skeptic could never assent to. Though a person of faith does not begin with epoche' (suspense of judgment), the same ataraxic 19Kierkegaard, Po stscript. 299n. 30 like results the skeptic seeks are produced in his life by faith. While the skeptic achieves the desired tranquility of life by refusing to become entangled in irresolvable philosophical conflicts, a person of faith may claim the same results through the religious life. A religious person might say that his faith relieves him from the cares of the world . It is his judgment that even in the face of all kinds of difficulties, whether they be finding satisfactory answers to the objections skeptics raise or the personal experience of evil and suffering, that faith always trumps these problems. There is a sense of quietude, unperturbedness based on the assurance that providence wi11 ultimately resolve life's difficulties. But none of this seems possible with Kierkegaard's understanding of faith, which seems to require that it be borne and remain in agony. In short, many believers think their faith provides rest and a reduction of anxiety in contrast to Kierkegaard's view. Kierkegaard knows he must ultimately let go of skepticism because we are unable to hold fast a suspension of the dialectical moment of faith .20 While the principle of the suspense of judgment is lethal to Kierkegaard's view of faith, the interest of faith overwhelms the suspension of judgment that skepticism seeks. A perpetual state of disinteredness is simply not possible when the passion of faith is involved, in Kierkegaard's view. Kierkegaard recognizes that eventually one has to stop doubting and start believing. lOibid ., 280. 31 Passion I have said that Kierkegaard views skepticism as an ally of faith because skepticism devotes itself to undermining the pretentiousness of reason. Through a process of systematic doubt skepticism works against the view that historical and philosophical truth can lead us to faith. Another common feature shared by faith and skepticism, according to Kierkegaard, are their respective emphases on passion. Skepticism performs a kind of double-duty for Kierkegaard-it both undermines reason and it is passionate. Kierkegaard remarks that it is impossible to exist without passion and therefore every Greek thinker was a passionate thinker.21 But in what sense does Kierkegaard view the skeptics as passionate? Afterall, one of the stated goals of the skeptics is to escape the kind of mental suffering generated by deep metaphysical commitments. The skeptic claims that the achievement of this goal requires a suspension of judgment which produces a tranquil life of moderate affection. This hardly seems to be in line with any familiar sense of the word passion. However, I believe there are three senses in which Kierkegaard understands the role of passion in his view of faith. There is the sense in which passion is a boundless enthusiasm, ardent affection or strong devotion to something. To say I am passionate about the opera means I find personal joy and fulfillment when I attend its productions. Because of my passion for the opera, perhaps I support a local company with regular donations or chair an organization which raises funds to insure its continued existence. My 21[bid., 267. 32 passion for the opera is demonstrated by committed action which promotes operatic productions in my community and elsewhere. If I am passionate about the opera, I would consider my life to be empty if I had to live in a place where there was no opera. Kierkegaard uses this sense of faith as passionate when he rails against the members of Christendom, whose religion, according to him, is without depth and personal commitment. Passion also plays a role in Kierkegaard's description of faith when he distinguishes between faith in an eminent sense and faith in an ordinary sense. 22 In the Fragments. when Kierkegaard makes reference to faith in the sense of genuine Christian belief he calls it "faith in an eminent sense". He regards this kind of faith as passionate because it has an essential passivity about it. Kierkegaard attributes passivity to faith in light of his saying both that faith is and that it is not an act of will . Faith in an eminent sense requires a miracle from God and to this degree is not an act of will. Eminent faith is something too hard for sinful human beings to perform. Hence, faith is passionate in a passive sense because the believer is acted upon by God who gives him the condition of faith . Faith is not something the believer achieves exclusively by himself. This is why Kierkegaard makes reference to "the martyrdom of faith". 23 I will say more about the distinction Kierkegaard is trying to make between faith in an ordinary sense and faith in an eminent sense in Chapter Four. At this time I am simply pointing out one of the senses in which Kierkegaard thinks faith is passionate. The third sense in which Kierkegaard sees faith as passionate (and the 22Kterkegaard, Fragments, 109. 23.Kier'kegaard, Postscript , 32. 33 one most important to this part of my study) lies in his interpretation of the Greek skeptics. He thinks of passion in terms of the intense emotions produced by suffering, as in the sufferings of Christ. Hence, passion is produced when one is acted upon by distressing or painful circumstances. It is analogous to faith in an eminent sense in that the passion is generated by something external. But in the case of the Greek skeptics the forces acting upon them are the circumstances of existence as opposed to God acting in a miraculous way to give the believer the condition of faith. But these circumstances are created through the employment of the principle of epoche (suspense of judgment) which Kierkegaard describes as an act of will.24 So, in this case, passion results from something active, viz. the will, as opposed to something passive. Kierkegaard thinks there is tremendous difficulty in becoming skeptical. It takes great effort to resist the temptation to draw unwarranted conclusions from our sense experience. It is not something anyone easily decides to do like having breakfast or putting on my favorite shirt. The effort required to suspend judgment must continually work against the passivity of forming hasty conclusions. The ongoing resistance to not give in to anything beyond the immediate experience of sense perception is the source of passion. This produces a conflicted existence where one is tugged and pulled in different directions. By stressing the ambiguity of our circumstances, and the intellectual uncertainty of common sense beliefs the skeptic sets up the conditions of passion. It this uncertainty which strains our existence and leads to a state of passion in the sense that one suffers because of this conflicted existence. 24Kierkegaard, Fragments. 102. 34 Kierkegaard sees the Greek skeptics as passionate because they recognized the difficulties resident in being a skeptic in the first place. If one is going to be skeptica] at the ]eve! of thinkers like Pyrrho and Sextus it is a serious project that he proposes to undertake. It is no easy matter to hold belief at bay. Kierkegaard says the skeptical freedom from affections sought after by the Greek skeptics was thought to be very difficult to attain.25 The individual who succeeds in holding belief at bay accomplishes something great but he suffers in doing so and, therefore, is passionate. Becoming skeptical in the sense that the Greeks and Kierkegaard mean it is a serious spiritual undertaking To become skeptical is not to be the belligerent person who doubts anything and everything just to frustate those he is in conversation with. Rather, the skeptic seeks the spiritual goa] of ataraxia through epoche. In Fear and Trembling. Kierkegaard writes about the difficult achievement in doubting as the Greek skeptics doubted. He says: What those ancient Greeks regarded as a task for a whole lifetime, seeing that dexterity in doubting is not acquired in a few days or weeks, what the veteran combatant attained when he had preserved the equilibrium of doubt through all the pitfalls he encountered, who intrepidly denied the certainty of sense-perception and the certainty of the processes of thought, inconuptibly defied the apprehensions of se1f-love and the insinuations of sympathy-that is where everybody begins in our time.26 Kierkegaard also attributes the same "dexterity in doubting" to Descartes, whom he calls "a venerable, honest, humble thinker, ..... " who saw "that his method had importance for him a]one and was justified in part by the 25Kierkegaarcl, Postscript, 358. 26Ki erkegaard, Fear and Trembling, trans. Walter Lowrie (Garden City, ew York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1954), 23. 35 bungled knowledge of his earlier years."27 So, the task of "getting skeptical," realizing there is a problem of life that ordinary be1ief does not even see, requires passion-a passion intensified as one sees that his hfe is at stake and that there is no obvious answer around to resolve the problem. In a humorous example of how suffering might produce passion, Kierkegaard writes: I have often reflected how one might bring a man into a state of passion. I have often thought in this connection that if I could get him seated on a horse and the horse made to take fright and gallop wildly, or better still, for the sake of bringing the passion out, if I could get a man who wanted to arrive at a certain place as quickly as possible, and hence already had some passion, and could set him astride a horse that can scarcely walk....... Or if a driver were otherwise not especially inclined toward passion, if someone hitched a team of horses to a wagon for him, one of them a Pegasus and the other a worn out jade, and told him to drive-I think one might succeect.28 The anxiety one faces in trying to control a frightened horse, the urgency to get somewhere in a hurry on a broken down horse or trying to team up two totally ill -suited horses are examples of the strain of existence which produces passion. One of the ways we can get clearer a bout Kierkegaard's notion of passion and why it is applicable to the Greek skeptics is to give attention to the distinction he makes between Greek skepticism and Hegelian skepticism. Kierkegaard says the former is like faith because it is passionate while the latter should be rejected because it is passionless. Kierkegaard recognizes in Pyrrho, Sextus et. al., a kind of skepticism which potentially assists faith. He also sees Hegel as developing a skeptical philosophy but one which is 27Ihid., 22-23. 28Kterkegaard, Postscript, 276. harmful to faith's cause. It is important to understand the subtle way in which Kierkegaard distinguishes between the two kinds of skepticism. 36 Though it is not common to view Hegelianism as a kind of skepticism, Kierkegaard describes it this way because there is something analogous to the skeptic's notion of suspense of judgment. He seems to mean something like the following: Our cognizance of the ongoing historical flux limits us to decisions of a contingent and finite sort. In essence we can make no decisions that are not subject to the unfolding and changing historical process. If faith involves an infinite decision (and I take this to mean one made for aU time and without regard to the transitory nature of the world) then, according to Kierkegaard, Hegelianism by the nature of its metaphysics eliminates the possibility of the decision of faith. Greek skepticism, on the other hand, brings us to the brink of a decision of faith. In several passages in the Fragments and the Postscript Kierkegaard cites the errors he thinks Hegelian skepticism makes. For example in the Postscript he writes: As soon as subjectivity is eliminated, and passion eliminated from subjectivity, and the infinite interest eliminated from passion, there is in general no decision at all, either in this problem or any other.... A contemplative spirit, and this is what the objective subject is, feels nowhere any infinite need of a decision, and sees no decision anywhere. This is the falsum that is inherent in all objectivity; and this is the significance of mediation as the mode of transition in the continuous process, where nothing is fixed and where nothing is infinitely decided; because the movement turns back upon itself and again turns back, so that the movement becomes chimerical, and the philosopher is wise only after the event.29 In a footnote to this passage Kierkegaard says, "The scepticism that is 29Kierl