Kierkegaard

Ken Taylor
Welcome to Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

John Perry
…except your intelligence. I’m John Perry.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. We’re coming to you from the studios of KALW San Francisco.

John Perry
Continuing conversations that began at Philosophers Corner on the Stanford campus.

Ken Taylor
Today: the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard.

John Perry
Ken, Kierkegaard is really high on my list of philosophers

Ken Taylor
Which list of philosophers?

John Perry
The list of philosophers that I haven’t read much of, don’t understand at all, and doubt that I ever will.

Ken Taylor
That’s quite an admission, John. It betrays a large gap in your philosophical education. I’m afraid Kierkegaard was a very important Danish philosopher of the early and mid 19th century. I mean,, he criticized Hegel severely—I would have thought that would that would warm your heart. So what’s the problem? Just never got around to giving Kierkegaard to try?

John Perry
No can I’ve tried a number of times. Admittedly, he didn’t like Hegel—that’s good. But apart from that, he just seems to exemplify everything I dislike in a philosopher. I like philosophers who tell you what they think and clear and a straightforward manner. Kierkegaard wrote under a bunch of pseudonyms/ I guess he wrote poetically, but to me, it just comes across as turgid. I think reason is the method of philosophy. Kierkegaard thinks we should accept contradictions and make leaps of faith.

Ken Taylor
Ugh, John, well, you know, Kierkegaard was poetic, and he is sometimes turgid, I have to admit tha. But I think you’ve got—I don’t think you’ve got him quite right. I mean, Kierkegaard thinks we have to accept paradoxes. But I wouldn’t say he thinks we have to accept contradictions.

John Perry
And the difference is…?

Ken Taylor
Well, Christianity is full of what Kierkegaard calls paradoxes, like Jesus is both human and divine. That is a paradox. It’s a paradox, because we with our reason can’t hope to figure out how it could be so. But it’s not a contradiction, because Jesus is both human and divine in the Christian universe. To say Jesus is both divine and not divine, now that would be a contradiction. Kierkegaard doesn’t say we should accept logical contradictions like that. But he does think we very much do need to accept things that we can’t hope to understand with human reason.

John Perry
Okay, so a leap of faith isn’t accepting a contradiction is just accepting something you can’t hope to understand and acting on it. Why should anyone make a leap of faith? Why should we accept something that we don’t understand and act on it? Especially if our actions lead to crazy behavior that affects others, like Abraham getting ready to kill his son Isaac, because God told him to? Kierkegaard thought that was really cool, right?

Ken Taylor
Yeah, he thought Abraham was in that action the great exemplar of faith. Now, he admits that Abraham was kind of paradoxical. And I suppose Abraham himself has a paradox, because Abraham knew it was morally wrong to kill Isaac, but God was commanding him to kill Isaac. So Abraham thought it was his religious duty to kill Isaac, and he would have killed Isaac if the angel hadn’t intervene with a reprieve from God. Abraham was completely completely ready to obey God, to take a leap of faith, even though he didn’t understand how to fit it all together, the demands of the ethical and the demands of God into a coherent picture. And he also was prepared to kill Isaac with the utter confidence that God would find a way to make this alright.

So tell me—I mean, why was Abraham better than Agamemnon, who sacrificed his own daughter to bring success at Troy?

Because Agamemnon was not doing this thing that goes beyond reason. goes beyond the ethical. Agamemnon was doing what the morality of his time dictated, he was killing a loved one. That’s to be sure, that’s a bad thing. But in order to bring success in battle, and save his city, state, I mean, that’s sometimes you have to sacrifice something that you cherish, by doing something highe. Now for Kierkegaard complying with traditional morality is killing Abraham wasn’t complying with traditional morality that goes beyond that. And traditional morality isn’t the best kind of life wants you to obey one’s own inner subjectivity, one’s own in the felt religious duty, especially when you one recognizes it, as from God, that’s what Abraham was doing.

John Perry
Well, Kierkegaard and you seem to feel strongly about this, Ken. But it seems to me Abraham was obviously nuts, a psychotic who almost committed murder. Why would any philosopher approve of such a thing?

Ken Taylor
Well, you know, I have to admit that in my own moment, I have my suspicions about Abraham’s sanity. But I mean, don’t you think Kierkegaard has at least a kind of a point? Isn’t the person who marches to the beat of a different drummer—an internal drummer—someone to be admired often? I mean, the person who has the courage of their convictions—think of John Brown, the anti slavery zealot. He was probably a bit unbalanced, but I admire his passionate desire to end slavery, however ill-considered some of his actions might have been.

John Perry
Well alright, you’ve got a point there. I kind of admire John Brown too. But look inwardly Abraham doesn’t understand what he’s being asked to do. He can’t make sense of it, and yet he’s going to act on it. Now maybe John Brown accepted a lot of Christian paradoxes, I don’t know. But when it came to the attack on Harpers Ferry, he understood why he was doing it. I suspect he had a very clear and consistent internal story about why slavery was wrong, and then how raiding Harpers Ferry might help to alleviate that. But people who take radical actions like murder on the basis of beliefs they don’t really understand and can’t make sense of—I still don’t see what’s admirable about that.

Ken Taylor
Well John, I think we need a little help in making you appreciate Kierkegaard subtlety.

John Perry
Well, you’re right, and I hope some of our listeners can help take the leap of telephonic faith. The number is 1-800-525-9917. That’s 1-800-525-9917.

Ken Taylor
And we’ve asked our colleague, Lanier Anderson to join us. Lanier is a professor of philosophy at Stanford and has particular expertise in 19th-century philosophical thinking.

John Perry
But before we talk to Lanier, our Roving Philosophical Reporter, April Dembosky, has been talking to people about everyday leaps of faith. She files this report.

April Dembosky
There’s a Hollywood version of falling in love.

A Fish Called Wanda
I have loved you ever since the first second I saw you.

Taxi
A man waits all his life for women like that.

The Simpsons
I’ll love you for the rest of my life.

April Dembosky
And then there’s real life.

Alicia
There always seems to be something that’s wrong with the person.

April Dembosky
Alicia is 36 and lives in San Francisco. She’s been dating since she was 15.

Alicia
Every person, it’s sort of like, this drives me nuts or I don’t feel at ease as I shoul I think there’s a lot of shoulds in dating.

April Dembosky
And a lot of criteria. Alicia has a list.

Alicia
Intelligence—like quite intelligent. A little ironic, and a little critical. Someone who likes being outside, someone who really wants to continue their search of developing themselves.

April Dembosky
She finally met a guy who measured up against her checklist. There was just one thing at first.

Alicia
He was very intimate in the beginning. And I was a little worried because he was so into me. And I didn’t feel like he knew me. So I was a little ambivalent. And then I think he gets to know me better and then became ambivalent himself. Then really, when I say ambivalence, I mean fear.

April Dembosky
Now Alicia feels caught in a web of her own doubts and rationalizations.

Alicia
I’m to the point where it feels like I need to take a leap of faith. It’s gonna work out. And I need to put my ambivalence and all the thoughts in my head that are screaming, “Is this right? I don’t know if it’s right—jump ship!” And then part of me is saying, “No, stay, stay stay!”

April Dembosky
This is a tension that Oakland therapist Dan Wile often sees. He’s been counseling couples for 30 years.

Dan Wile
There’s a kind of person who falls in love easily. Then there’s a kind of person who doesn’t do that, who while really liking the partner has worries and hesitancies. Is this the right one? Is there someone better?

April Dembosky
Wile helps couples have constructive conversations about commitments. But sometimes talking it through just isn’t enough.

Dan Wile
For the type of person who does not immediately say “yes, this is it,” the decision to get married is always a leap of faith. That person has to work through, “Well, nothing’s perfect. But I’ve looked around enough. So I’ll go for it.”

April Dembosky
But going on faith doesn’t end at the altar. Couples have to take leaps of faith over and over again. Maybe one partner wants a baby and the other doesn’t, or political views suddenly become an issue. Or maybe there’s an affair.

Dan Wile
The idea is to solve the moment rather than solve the problem.

April Dembosky
Wile tries to get couples to focus on feelings rather than fighting.

Dan Wile
We would try to get them kind of sad together about how one is beig disappointed and the other one is feeling pressured and what a difficult position that is—hoping that by having those kinds of conversations, they’ll be able to work something out.

April Dembosky
A therapist can’t engineer a leap of faith, but they seem to come easier when couples work with each other, not against each other.

Dan Wile
They can find themselves saying these vulnerable things, that if they were thinking about it, they might say, “I’m not gonna say this. You could use it against me later on.” When you’re in a collaborative mode and a loving mode, you can forget a lot of these dangers and do the leap of faith kind of automatically without any effort or thinking at all.

April Dembosky
Falling in love may require a leap of faith. But then again, so might staying in love. For Philosophy Talk. I’m April Dembosky.

John Perry
I’m John Perry and with me is Ken Taylor.

Ken Taylor
And our guest is Lanier Anderson. He’s a professor of philosophy at Stanford University. He’s resident expert on all things 19th century and philosophical. Lanier, welcome back to Philosophy Talk.

Lanier Anderson
Thanks for having me.

John Perry
Lanier, tell us briefly how your love of 19th century philosophy in general and Kierkegaard in particular came to be—some sort of softness for lost causes?

Lanier Anderson
I don’t think that was quite it. With Kierkegaard in particular, I started reading it just because I had to teach it in a class. And then I really got into it because it reminded me, or it helped explain to me something about the weird inner logic of the faith of people that I knew when I was growing up.

John Perry
Well give us a little more background on Kierkegaard what motivated this strange fellow and what were his most important doctrines in a nutshell, no pun intended?

Lanier Anderson
Well, I think he was mainly worried about certain alienating effects of modern life, and especially ones attached to the decay of commitment to our traditional religiously motivated lifeways. And maybe there are two main areas where that came out. Kierkegaard was deeply opposed to the Hague alien project of explaining how the world is fundamentally rational and how it could be justified in terms that everybody can understand. And he was also very upset about the sort of de terrorization of religious consciousness, he was worried that people made things too easy for them.

Ken Taylor
So he’s worried about the deep alienation and of alienating aspects of modern life. But I take it this Hague alien reason thing is supposed to make us at home in the portal because it’s rational through and through and, and religion gets to be it has a rational basis. And it’s, it would be good if Christianity were easy, rather than hard, because that would be accessible rather than inaccessible. So that all sounds kind of paradoxical.

John Perry
So maybe we should just say we’re talking about Georg Hegel, who was rough contemporary of Kierkegaard, who was, you know, THE German philosopher for the 19th century.

Ken Taylor
Doesn’t Kierkegaard make us more alienated?

Lanier Anderson
Well, he thinks that that the Hegelians are making things way too easy for themselves by thinking that everything in the world is going to turn out to be rational and Okay. And, you know, let’s go back to that case of Abraham, right? Kierkegaard wants us to realize that if God is not going to be in God’s commands are not going to be just irrelevant to our ethical life, then it must be possible for God to command us to do something that’s against what reason would suggest and that’s what happens in the Abraham case. And, you know, Hegel is just trying to push that under the rug.

Ken Taylor
Right, so religion has to be hard. Faith and Faith has to be beyond reason. It has to be hard for us to come and then we’re more at home in the world. That’s the part I don’t get use. Because you said you weren’t. He said he was deeply worried about alienation. But it sounds like I don’t understand why he doesn’t make us more alienated, but you don’t, I’m gonna ask you to hold that thought. And tell us why we’re not more alienated in thae Kierkegaardian picture than we started out with. You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today we’re discussing Kierkegaard with Lanier Anderson.

John Perry
We’ve been getting a brief overview of this enigmatic but important philosopher. In the next segment, we’re really going to focus on his concept of a leap of faith. So take a leap yourself, give us a call. 1-800-525-9917 that’s 1-800-525-9917 and you can also send us email at comments@philosophytalk.org.

Ken Taylor
Faith leaping—plus your calls and emails, when Philosophy Talk continues.

Bob Dylan
Weel, Abe said where you want this killing done, God said out on highway 61.

John Perry
Bob Dylan’s retelling of the story of Abraham, that classic biblical leap of faith. It was Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, theologian and psychologist who talked about the leap of faith, and how is necessary for belief in or true love of God or as a matter of fact any kind of true love, perhaps. I’m John Perry.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor, and this is Philosophy Talk. Have you ever taken a leap of faith? How, in what context? What does it take to make that leap? Courage, folly, or something else? The number is 1-800-525-9917. That’s 1-800-525-9917. Or you can email us at comments@philosophytalk.org.

John Perry
Our guest today is Lanier Anderson from Stanford’s philosophy department.

Ken Taylor
So I’m gonna go back and eventually I want to get back to the question I was asking you before the break about alienation and how this is supposed to make us more at home in the world. But let’s let’s dig into this concept of a leap of faith because I think that’ll help us lay some groundwork. I tell John, a leap of faith is when you inwardly accept an act and a paradox, something you don’t understand, but you you believe and act anyway. Is that basically right? Or how would you characterize?

Lanier Anderson
I think that is basically right. It’s a special attitude that you take toward this paradoxical demand or paradoxical object of belief, paradoxical content. And it’s important in important ways. It’s defined by contrast to a rational belief in that thing. When you believe on the basis of faith for Carragher, it’s in a way that goes against what reason would demand of you and I think that the, the rubbing philosophical segment was on to something in focusing on that case about love. So imagine that you’re trying to say that you’re in love with the person, and you come to your partner and you say, Well, I’m in love with you for three or four reasons. And here they are, I enumerate them. As soon as you do that. You’re testifying against yourself that you’re not really in love. If you’re really love than your attitude of love, your feeling of love way outstrips any reasons that you could give. And it’s that sort of thing that Kierkegaard is thinking faith should be like.

John Perry
Okay, so let me let me make a contrast. So there was another famous Antifa, Galeon, Schopenhauer, Schopenhauer, his idea was a word world is Will an idea. And Will was this primordial thing that pushes us to do things that are really stupid? Like, if you were living today, he would say, you know, why do you have Why do you want to get married? They almost all end in divorces or unhappiness? Why do you want to have children they’ll soak up all your money, right? That’s the will, right? manipulating your ideas, which are an illusion, and leading you to do things you shouldn’t do. Now, I mean, is there a kind of a deep analogy there with Kierkegaard he thinks we also have this deep primordial need, but but he kind of he kind of approves of it. I mean, they both looked at the irrational and and, and Schopenhauer says that Your Will playing a trick on you and, and Kierkegaard says, No, that’s the essence of Christianity, take your Leap, have your children get married, which, by the way, he chickened out of his marriage, if I remember correctly.

Lanier Anderson
That’s true, he did. And you might think of his whole philosophy as a retrospective way of explaining to himself, why he did and what went wrong and how he failed to become a failed to have enough faith to carry through with that.

John Perry
So I mean, just so our listeners will have the facts. He had a fiancee, Regina Weaver. Yes, very Regina Olson, they seem very much in love he back up, kind of at the last moment, then she ended up marrying someone else and drove him crazy for the rest of his life. That’s my take on it.

Lanier Anderson
Well, he started writing, even before she got together with the other guy trying to explain to her and himself, I think, why he couldn’t go through with it. But really, to contrast Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard thinks that there are two different kinds of non rational attachments that we might have to project sorts of things in the world, the ones that are based on mere desire, he might even agree with Schopenhauer that they’re really bad, and that they should be overcome by our reason. And our reason gives us ethical rules that help us to live in a way that detaches us from these mere desires. But the thought is that these even these rational ethical rules are themselves not everything, and that there is a further attitude of faith that goes beyond them. And that puts us directly into relationship with God and that’s what we’re really called to do.

Ken Taylor
Right, okay, so look, I’m gonna get let’s, let’s get back to Abraham just Kierkegaard wrote a book of fear and trembling, which is a constant meditation on Abraham and the paradox of Abraham and the paradox of faith, which is, I think, a really fine book. i It’s dense and thick, but it’s a beautiful book. So let’s get back to Abraham. Abraham was called to kill Isaac, or sacrifice Isaac, and an inner voice says, I guess, kill Isaac. And the leap of faith is, I guess, going ahead and killing Isaac being ready to kill Isaac despite the fact that everything that reasons is don’t do that. Isaac being his own sound son. He got out of faith, I guess, because God promised him Isaac and God’s gonna take him back. You know, if God said, Kill Isaac, who am I promised you? I’d say are you really god? What Why? Why should I believe you? I mean, isn’t. Isn’t this leap of faith just a form of like schizophrenia or something like that? Well, you know, thought it search in this strange voice talking to you.

Lanier Anderson
It does seem it does seem very strange. So Kyra has a nice way of of talking about this. He points out that the ethical description for what Abraham has asked to do is to murder his own son. The religious description of what he’s asked to do, is that he’s asked to Sacher. Advice the very best to God. So in one sense, what’s really going on with the leap of faith is whether you can contain your anxiety enough to adopt the religious interpretation of what you’re being asked to do if you know the leap of faith just is thinking of the thing religiously and not as a murderer.

Ken Taylor
Right. You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. We’re talking about Kierkegaard with Lanier Anderson, we’re talking right now about the leap of faith. And we want to know, have you made a leap of faith? Would you make a leap of faith? Small leaps of faith, big leaps of faith, give us a call one 805 25917. That’s 1-800-525-9917. Or, as always, you can email us at comments at Philosophy Talk. Okay, let’s dig into this a little bit more. Okay. Can I adopt the religious name for what I’m called by this inner voice to do a sacrifice rather than murder? But it still why should I adopt? So I’ve got my reason, right. I’m a thoroughly rational, secular guy, I’ve got my reason I’ve got the ethical commandments that are delivered to me through reason. Just don’t, don’t kill, don’t kill anybody, unless for some higher thing like Agamemnon, and then do it. Sadly, it with anguish, not gladly and willingly as Abraham was willing to sacrifice Isaac, I mean, what’s supposed to get this leap of faith even going? Right let’s isn’t wants to believe that.

Lanier Anderson
It’s all about your individual relationship to God. So I taught a course on Kierkegaard with a colleague of mine at Stanford, Ken Taylor, oh, there. And he made the excellent point in lecturing on character guard, that this leap of faith symbolizes for us, the thought that we are something more than all of the particular things that we might be attached to in the world, including even the most important demands of ethics and rationality on us. We are something more than that. And why are we something more than that, because we are creatures of God and called by God, to be in an individual.

Ken Taylor
This is this has to do with something, the thing you were talking about, now we’re getting to the thing, you’re talking about the alienation, right? Because it triggered God has another fine book, The sickness unto death, the name of that sickness unto death is despair. And he thinks despair is everywhere. It’s like the condition of human beings who have not made this leap of faith, every single human being was not made this leap of faith has some version of despair. Explain that to us.

Lanier Anderson
Well, Despair is the condition of not being in faith, of being hopeless about your position in the world, and about your the value of your life. And he thinks that that despair is in fact sin. Because what God demands of us is to have faith that he will order things in a good way for us. And if we don’t have that faith, then we’re defying God and God’s commands for us to take.

John Perry
That is complicated and weird. I’d say if you understand Understand despair, spend winter in Denmark, I mean, look, I would like to understand this, at least in the sense of relating it to larger currents now, no, Kierkegaard got in trouble with the Lutheran Church in Denmark, I believe, but it wasn’t because he wasn’t Protestant enough. He’s kind of the super Protestant. That’s right. I have two friends. Who are both philosophers of religion, a married couple. And I remember years ago, when I knew them, well, he used to come up with rationales for the Trinity, how you could understand a trinity. So it made sense. And her response always was, that’s got to be wrong, because it doesn’t make sense. You have to accept it on faith. So those are kind of two poles. And I think she was the more Protestant of the two. Is that right? Is this whole Kierkegaardian thing? That it’s an individual understanding, and you’ll never get it straight? Because it’s intrinsically mysterious. Is that is that all wrapped up in being a Protestant?

Lanier Anderson
Maybe Maybe it is wrapped up and being a Protestant, but anyway, I think you could. I think the Protestant Catholic divide doesn’t really separate your two friends, more than Hegel. Hegel Kierkegaard died. It’s whether you think that a reason can be given that makes ultimate sense of the religious symbol. And what your second friend, let’s call her Maryland’s what your second prime was was saying, is, like what I was saying about, about the person in love, she was saying, Look, you’re supposed to be committed to the religious symbol in a way that goes beyond this rationalization that you’re coming up with. And if you just stick to that rationalization, you’re admitting that your commitment stops there and isn’t a thing that goes beyond any circumstance, you know, any mere little reason that you would come up with.

John Perry
But why couldn’t the same framework be applied in what I would think would be a bad way towards things like patriotism, you know, my country right or wrong? I don’t really understand why America is better than other countries. But it’s part of being an American project set that on faith, is that kind of thinking really any different than Kierkegaard is recommending with respect to the religion he happened to grow up in?

Lanier Anderson
I think it’s structurally quite similar. And he does too, I think. So when he talks about the Abraham case, he thinks that what’s most characteristic of it is that you’re taking a huge risk, to bet that this is the demand of God, and not some schizophrenic voice or you know, some thought insertion or some immoral desire of your own. And that’s a huge risk that you’re taking. And the question is, whether you’re actually in the god relationship or not.

Ken Taylor
And that’s partly why that book is called fear and trembling, because you take this risk with fear and trembling. 1-800-525-9917. That’s 1-800-525-9917. We’ve got John from San Carlos on the line. Welcome to Philosophy Talk, John.

John
Hey, how are you?

Ken Taylor
What’s your comment your question?

John
The point you guys had about Abraham, Abraham’s faith, it wasn’t, wasn’t something that kind of began right there in the situation where he was told to kill Isaac, it actually began prior to that, with Isaac birth. So the fact that Isaac exist to him is almost reason enough to have faith.

Ken Taylor
Well, it is it is. Thanks, John. It is it is you guys, it was a gift of God. Right who promised that Abraham that he would you know, seed the next generation through Isaac, but then God takes him back. Give me back him. Isn’t that—

John Perry
Isaac was the one that Sarah who had been barren for years had as—Abraham was, what, 600 years old or something by then. Yeah, so I mean, of course, Abraham a lot, a lot more time to think about this. And then I have had.

Ken Taylor
I’m gonna put another kind of question to you, I want to get back to the despair because I don’t quite agree that it’s structurally that it’s just craziness. Because I think, faith for Abraham, Kierkegaard is supposed to be a solution to a deep human problem, this problem of the self and who am I? And what am I, right? I look at the world, I could just the world offers me up stuff, it offers me glory, and riches and all that sort of stuff. But then I have all these desires that go beyond what the world offers up. And what do I do? I give up my desires. Now, I hold on to them, but the world doesn’t offer, I hold on to desires that the world won’t satisfied. And then what am i I’m sad, I’m dissatisfied, I’m alienated from the world. And I have if I only believe, in my own ability, my own self constitution without turning toward God, I’m just wondering, what does he call it fantastical or something like that? So I can’t remember the exact phrase, and only when I turn to God, can I recognize fully the self that I am? Can I fully ground that self? So faith is a kind of solution to a problem that all human beings face? I mean, is that right, roughly?

John Perry
You’re really into this.

Ken Taylor
I think he’s profound. What do you think, Lanier?

Lanier Anderson
I think that’s right, in the sense that Kierkegaard thinks that there’s something in us of the infinite. But we’re also of course, finite, limited creatures. And because there’s something in us of the infinite. Our desires are always going to outstrip what we ourselves can accomplish in the world. And if we don’t fall back on God and rely on his help, then we’ll always be doomed to be in this position of frustration that you describe.

Ken Taylor
This is what people think of Kierkegaard as an existentialist, and I guess rightly, but he will think I’m gonna be an extension that almost existentialist atheists. But there’s some kind of commonality between people like Sartre,and Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. Do you think that’s right?

Lanier Anderson
So my favorite story about existentialism is that there are three kinds of existentialists the ones who are dead before there was any such word and Kierkegaard is one of those, the ones who denied that there were existentialist and had that confirmed by start and then the third class include Sark. But in spite of that, funny classification, there is a kind of family resemblance between Kierkegaard and these other existentialist, maybe you should think of it this way that he puts all this weight on the anxiety that we have about finding an individual a justified individual place in the world for ourselves. And he thinks that somehow these characteristic emotional attitudes like anxiety or dread or despair, or faith, are going to help us see our way to the right resolution of that problem.

Ken Taylor
It’s by by working through this is this right? I’m not quite sure. But it’s only by working through these kinds of layers of despair, as he thinks despair comes in many different forms. But it’s only by working through these layers of despair that you’ll get to this point where you can make this leap of faith.

Lanier Anderson
Well, he thinks that people who have haven’t ever figured out what it is to be in despair are basically shallow people and haven’t really confronted the problem. And in that sense, you need despair to take the next step, but it is required for you not to be in despair, and you should not confuse your despair with any kind of virtue. It’s sin, Ken.

John Perry
So here’s email. It’s a little bit of a digression, but it’s a serious email. So I think we ought to hear it. John and Berkeley says, sometimes Kierkegaard seems as in the argument of philosophical fragments, to be a serious exponent of Hague alien dialectic. Other times, he seems to be satirizing alien ism as in the attack on Christendom. So So what’s the real story? This question has been bothering me since we just got started.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, briefly, tell us what the real story is.

Lanier Anderson
So I think the real story is this. Kierkegaard thinks that this dialectical reasoning that Hegel goes through where we somehow make opposites come together. He thinks that that often works, and that we can resolve a lot of contradictions by doing that, but it can’t work in every case. And so he wants to do that dialectic in a very precise way, so that he can identify exactly those cases where no amount of rational dialectical work can get you from one stage to another stage. And you have to actually take the leap of faith against your reason.

Ken Taylor
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk, we’re discussing Kierkegaard with Lanier Anderson from Stanford University.

John Perry
We’ve talked about who Kierkegaard was, and his idea of a leap of faith, faith and reason or faith versus reason is a time honored philosophical issue. In our next segment, we’ll dig deeper into this perennial question and what Kierkegaard has to say about it.

Ken Taylor
Faith, reason, and your calls and emails—when Philosophy Talk continues

Bruce Springsteen
It takes a leap of faith to get things going, in your heart you must trust.

John Perry
A Leap of Faith—a major idea, a concept Bruce Springsteen got from Soren Kierkegaard, the great philosopher. Sometimes we focus on individual thinkers. Today, Kierkegaard is our man. I’m John Perry, this is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Ken Taylor
…except you intelligence. I’m Ken Taylor, our guest is Lanier Anderson from Stanford University.

John Perry
Lanier, it seems to me that most philosophers of religion from Augustine, to Aquinas, to our own contemporary Robert Adams, typically attempt to reconcile faith and reason. Where does Kierkegaard fit into this? Or does he just not fit in?

Ken Taylor
He seems like he’s trying to drive them as far apart as possible.

Lanier Anderson
He’s trying to drive them as far apart as possible. He thinks that that whole tradition is on the wrong track. Because what is demanded of us is not to reduce God to our level and make God’s religion turn out to be just what reason would demand he thinks that what God’s demanding of us is to humiliate our reason and rest are faith in Him.

John Perry
So the problematic that we think of as the philosophy of religion starting, at least with Augustine, going through Aquinas, and, and, and so many others, he just thinks is wrongheaded.

Lanier Anderson
He thinks that those people didn’t understand what was important about the genuine Orthodox tradition in the faith. He thinks that they’re, that they’re corrupting the faith, one 805 This is why he got in such trouble with the Danish church.

Ken Taylor
1-800-525-9917, or email us at comments@philosophytalk.org, and Judy from Berkeley is on the line. Welcome to Philosophy Talk, Judy.

Judy
Ok thanks. What bothers me is that Abraham, in his leap of faith, was stepping outside his own situation and killing another human being. Why does his leap of faith have to take his son’s life? I mean, that should be personal.

Ken Taylor
That’s, that’s, that’s a term in that for Kierkegaard just so you know, the teleological suspension of the ego he was stepping outside of the ethical but Lanier explain that to Judy.

Lanier Anderson
So the teleological suspension of the ethical is the thought that the ethical, could be suspended, that is rejected, in favor of some higher purpose, namely, God’s fate. And I think the reason that, that the story is supposed to be so powerful, or anyway, that’s Kierkegaard is interpretation is precisely this disturbing aspect of it that Judy has, has picked out. It’s because what Abraham is asked to do is so awful, that his willingness to do it is supposed to be so great and so high.

John Perry
So, a modern Bay Area person might think of the leap of faith as drinking the Kool Aid. Christine Ellis points out because there’s this analogy with the people that Jonestown that that followed their leaders insistence all drank the Kool Aid and died. Does Kierkegaard have any tests any criteria and Abraham could have used or He could use or I could use to tell when we’re being taught to by God. And whenever we talked about a charlatan?

Lanier Anderson
Well, there’s no test. And that’s why faith is risky and great when you have it. It’s all about whether in fact, you are in the proper individual relationship to God or not. And if you ask for some criterion, some tests that your reason could assess, then you’re asking for the wrong kind of attitude.

John Perry
Another interesting email from Paul, in Plato’s famous Apology of Socrates, Socrates explains that he’s acting in response to his demon would not not count as a leap of faith. And also Socrates is one of the one of the people that Kierkegaard refers to a lot.

Lanier Anderson
Kierkegaardloves that fact about Socrates. Although, of course, Socrates can’t count as the genuine nine of faith because he’s not a Christian. But Kierkegaard thinks that he was dimly aware of the need for such a thing. And that came out in his relation to that.

Ken Taylor
I want to start to pick up on the look, Kierkegaard wants a demanding, is offering. I don’t know if he wants, but he’s offering and he believes in a very demanding Christianity. That’s right. I mean, it’s a very demanding thing, because your reason, which is an instrument, I guess, that God has given you, right? It, I guess it’s to faith. It’s sort of like perception or, you know, presumption tells you all these things. And sometimes your reason says, no, that’s just, that’s just wrong. And you have to go with your reason. Well, Faith sometimes tells you, reason tells you these things, and fate says no, that’s not what God wants. And your reasons, that’s, but that’s what I think. And you have to you have to submerge it. I mean, you just have to submerge it. And reasons always going to object. It’s always been your debt, but that’s just like a child objecting to the parent. And but until you get to see that faith is this highest achievement, you’re always going to be puzzled by this. I mean, so it is a very, very demanding Christianity.

Lanier Anderson
I think that’s right. And what I really like is this thought that until you get to see that faith is higher than reason, you’ll never be willing to suspend your reason in this way. And, of course, he can’t give you a reason that will will underwrite this claim that faith is higher than your reason, that would be exactly to make the mistake. So what I think Kierkegaard is doing is showing the internal logic of a non rationalist V Deus faith based position. But he, but all he can do, he can’t argue by reason into that position. He’s trying to provoke you into that position by showing you something about how glorious faith would be.

Ken Taylor
Alexi from Oakland is on the line. Welcome to Philosophy Talk, Alexi.

Alexi
Thank you. I think people make leaps of faith all the time. But they use the example of Abraham is another extreme. I think people make leaps of faith in order to find out how it’s going to work out. And I think this is the common thing. And in some senses, it’s quite rational, that you don’t know all the all the factors, you jump in, and you see how things work. This is such an extreme example and say to him, suddenly, it comes with gifted personality, but it’s very unrealistic thing and I think that’s not necessary to posit such a such a thing. Also, not to unnecessarily think that there’s such a great gap between reason.

Ken Taylor
Okay, thanks for the call. What do you think?

Lanier Anderson
I guess I agree with everything Alexei said right up into the last thing about the gap between reason and faith. I think it’s right, that Abraham that Abraham has a very extreme case and that Kierkegaard, I think Kierkegaard self consciously presented as a very extreme case. And I think Abraham, sorry, Kierkegaard does want us to recognize the important role of similar kinds of attitudes in our life. So think, again, of falling in love. When you fall in love with somebody, you can’t talk yourself into love by enumerating all the reasons that the person that you think you’re in love with is a good person, when you fall in love with somebody, you’re making a kind of bet, just like Alexei suggested, that if I keep engaging with this person, my life will be better in the future. And that debt outstrips whatever reasons.

Ken Taylor
But until actually, again, I think you have to realize how consequential for Abraham for Kierkegaard, this leap of faith is it is the only thing. It is the only thing that will ground a self. I mean, without the leap of faith, you’re selfless. You’re running from yourself, you might try if you’re a certain kind of you have a certain kind of despair. You might think you were like King of yourself. You can come stick yourself figure out what you want, what you value what you are. But it’s always he says subject to change and rebellion. And the only stable thing is this direct relation to God through Christ. And Christ is the only real model of self of that that we have available. And he’s very serious about that.

Lanier Anderson
That’s true. He’s very serious about it. But look, you know, Alexei is right, that it’s not always as extreme a case we’re not always as extreme the sixth situation as Abraham was. And because it’s so crucial to us, Kierkegaard wants us to know that even in more ordinary circumstances, we still are required to have this kind of attitude.

John Perry
So we’ve got an email that poses kind of a meta question here. The title of the email is how Philosophy Talk is like Sunday school, which might give you a sense of for 10 Q who the email is from. He says, while a discussion of old moldering, ignorant philosophers of yesteryear is fascinating. It ultimately yields nothing about the nature of the human condition any more than endless discussion of Aristotle and told me leads to any insight by dynamics and cosmology, all these people getting rid of modern science, I mean, what’s the point? So you guys teach courses on Kierkegaard apparently, you invite undergraduates to take their units and spill them down to Kierkegaard shoot instead of taking geology or science? But what’s your excuse for this? What can we really learn from Kierkegaard?

Ken Taylor
You’re the expert in 19th century thinking.

Lanier Anderson
So look, I think, we can learn something really important about what the nature of a non rational attitude of faith would be. And I think that’s not that kind of attitude or commitment to that kind of attitude is a very common thing in our culture. And it’s really important. Well, so part of the reason I find Kierkegaard so fascinating and interesting to study is that I feel like it gives me insight into what’s going on in the psychology of friends and family members of mine, who do have this kind of Stark religious commitment.

John Perry
Well, right, right at present, as I understand relativity, theory, and grand cosmological theory, and quantum theory can’t really be put together. So maybe there’s a paradox involved in modern science.

Ken Taylor
And then I want to stick up a little more deeply than either of you have, though, because I think that Kierkegaard describes something profound about the human situation, what is the basis of our being in the world? Who are we? What are we up to tell the world that our culture, our history, or nation offers up narratives of what we are to be, oh, maybe they can be wrong, and we can be alienated from our nation? Well, then what then offers up a narrative of who you are and what you are? Well, your own reason, but then you say, why this self rather than that self? And that’s a profound question, why am I this rather than that? And Kierkegaard offers up another kind of answer a powerful answer. And he argues, I think persuasively for that grounding in the Divine, that gives you the only stable model of selfhood that is available, all the other ones are going to lead you even if you’re not conscious of it to despair. Now, I like to get that email or into our classroom and, and see how easily you can talk Kierkegaard out of that I think somebody’s just being too quick and shallow.

John Perry
So you think if I believe that what we are in the world is a bizarre evolutionary accident that will probably destroy the world that might really lead me to despair.

Ken Taylor
I’ll give you one last comment really briefly.

Lanier Anderson
So So look, I agree with you can, that he’s onto a very deep problem about how we constitute ourselves. But really, maybe we’re just stuck with the situation where we have to give ourselves our own self customization. And there is no outside force outside being that commands us to be that way.

Ken Taylor
I certainly agree about that. And on that note of agreement, I want to thank you for joining us. It’s been a great conversation.

Lanier Anderson
Thanks for having me.

Ken Taylor
I guess it’s been Lanier Anderson, Professor of Philosophy from Stanford University. So John, you got any final thoughts about Kierkegaard?

John Perry
Yeah, Hegel and Kierkegaard are driving across Denmark and Hegel says, Hey, sorry, and we’ve got a flat tire. What does Kierkegaard reply?

Ken Taylor
I don’t know.

John Perry
No problem. I’ve got despair.

Ken Taylor
Now that’s pretty lame. But you know, this conversation continues—I hope not So lamely—on our blog, the blog dot philosophy talk dot O RG. And also on our Facebook page, we’ve got almost 3000 members on our Facebook page, and we’d love for you to to get us over that tipping thing.

John Perry
And you know, you can download podcasts of our program from our website as well. Now now for the final word, we’re going to take a leap of faith. That is that our fast paced mind of Ian Shoales is going to have something more deep to say than anything you’ve heard so far in this program. Here here is, the Sixty-Second Philosopher.

Ian Shoales
Ian Shoales… Soren Kierkegaard died at 42 in 1855. It wasn’t until the 20th Century that his writing began to resonate. You can still see traces of Kierkegaard everywhere, or at least the ghost of his traces. In the tragic absurdities of Franz Kafka, the deadpan humor of Donald Barthelme, in the half-blind strivers towards faith of Flannery O’Connor, in existentialism, Ingmar Bergman movies, even in the “make your own truth” ethos of the hippies, there is the ghost of Kierkegaard.  Though he himself was not even remotely hippie-like. His beliefs are often put this way, “I cannot believe, and yet I MUST believe.”  Much of what Kierkegaard wrote was written under pseudonyms, around twenty in all, which reads like a list of W. C. Fields screenwriters, who of course were all W.C. Fields. Kierkegaard presented himself on various pages as Johannes de silentio, Constantin Constantius, and Hilarius Bookbinder, among others. Why did he do this? Kierkegaard was cursed with both a fertile imagination and a dour Scandinavian Lutheran outlook. It has been surmised that he could only exercise his imagination by pretending to be somebody else. Hence the pseudonyms.  He was a weird guy, both playful and tortured. One of the few actual events in his cloistered life was when he proposed marriage. The woman accepted, and he was immediately anguished. When he saw her on the street, he avoided her gaze. He came to her house to read to her, or listen to her play piano, and sat weeping in a chair instead. Finally, he broke it off. In his journal, he wrote, “Suppose I got married to her. What then? In the course of half a year, in less time than that, she would have torn herself apart. There is… something ghostly about me… Fundamentally I live in a spirit world.”  He also wrote things like, “My sorrow is my castle.” “To love God is to hate what is human.” Not exactly Hallmark card material.  He was well-known in Copenhagen for his writing, but also for his personal appearance – spindly legs, one shorter than the other, stooped posture, a crablike gait. He was considered a figure of fun, a character, a crank. Children would make fun of him on the street. Even as a child he was described as an old man, nicknamed the Choirboy, and the Strange One.  He described himself once as a “genius in a market town,” which is at once true, self-pitying, and funny. Declining an invitation to a party, he once said, “Let no one invite me, for I do not dance.” He’s a fascinating figure. Not fun to be with exactly, but you’re still glad you know him, this strange duck who was perhaps the most self-conscious human being who ever lived, like a character in a Woody Allen movie, magnified a thousand times.

Miles Monroe
I’m what you would call a teleological existential atheist. I believe that there’s an intelligence to the universe with the exception of certain parts of New Jersey.

Ian Shoales
I gotta go.

Ken Taylor
Ian Shoales, the only man who can solve a philosophical problem in 60 seconds.

John Perry
Philosophy Talk is a presentation of Ben Manilla productions and the trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University copyright 2010.

Ken Taylor
Our executive producer is Davids Demarest

John Perry
Our Production Coordinator is Devon Strolovitch. Our directors of research are Daniel Elstein and Ben Hirsch. Lael Weis is our webmaster.

Ken Taylor
Also thanks to Chris Hoff, Merle Kessler, Corrie Goldman, and Mark Stone.

John Perry
Support for Philosophy Talk comes from various groups at Stanford University, the Friends of Philosophy Talk, and the members of KALW. San Francisco, where our program originates.

Ken Taylor
The views expressed (or mis-expressed) on this program do not necessarily represent the opinions of Stanford University or of our other funders.

John Perry
The conversation continues on our website, philosophytalk.org. I’m John Perry.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. Thank you for listening.

John Perry
And thank you for thinking.