The Father of Existentialism

I am reposting this first presentation because it was originally poated as a comment, and it took me this long to figure out what I was doing wrong.

Soren Kierkegaard was born in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1813 and he died in 1855. He never married, although he was presumably in love once with a woman with whom he broke off their engagement. He was not only a philosopher and considered by many to be the father of existentialism, but he was also a theologian. In fact, some of his best works, in my opinion, are those that deal with prominent biblical figures.

Although Kierkegaard seems somewhat out of place being categorized with atheists like Nietzsche and Sartre, and certainly with a Catholic like Miguel de Unamuno, he nonetheless earned his place as their precursor in being one of the earliest thinkers to contemplate the nature of the individual and her place in the world. Before there was psychology, or the study of the individual psyche there was existentialism. The existentialists were the first philosophers to take the method of deep objective analysis from the abstract and apply it to the human condition in focusing on the individual existent. Although I cannot personally claim to have any knowledge of Kierkegaard overtly protesting the academic establishment like Nietzsche, and although he did not disavow religion, he did distinguish himself as an individualist in not following the proverbial herd when he spoke on subjects of religion like condoning, if not outright, advocating doubt as an essential part of faith. He also spoke against the notion of “Original Sin” in pointing out that the Biblical Adam could not have known that he was doing wrong in eating the forbidden fruit, since eating the forbidden fruit was supposed to be the source of knowledge of good and evil. So, as Kierkegaard pointed out before eating of the tree of knowledge Adam could not have had the knowledge, that eating from the tree was supposed to give. To assert that he did wrong or evil by eating of the tree presupposes that he already knew something that he could not know yet. I can only surmise that this and other rational analysis of church dogma could not have endeared him to the religious establishment.

His philosophical works always focused on the concrete existence of the individual, making him the first existentialist. In the Seducer’s Diary he focused primarily on the inner thinking of a fictional character that plans and carries out an elaborate plan to steal a woman’s heart, detailing a more complete seduction than one of pure lust, in Fear and Trembling he deals with the existentialist implication of Abraham and his almost sacrifice of his own son.

A reoccurring theme throughout much of his work is that of dread. Kierkegaard mentions dread as that feature in the spirit, that is, the union of the body and the soul, becoming aware of itself as a free entity. Themes of dread and anxiety in the individual’s recognition and use of her freedom is central to Kierkegaard’s narrations. The concept of dread as utilized by Kierkegaard is not something I am fully competent to speak of, however, an example that clarifies it to some extent for me, is that of Adam in the garden of eden. Kierkegaard uses this story to illustrate what Adam felt as he proceeded in ignorance of his misdeed, towards knowledge in the face of his freedom.

Although I have no direct knowledge of Kierkegaard ever speaking on issues of authenticity and absurdity, at least not as Sartre and Camus did, he certainly did not shy away from the question of an absurdity of sorts with respect to religion. For Kierkegaard, a figure like Abraham who heard a voice telling him to go kill his son, and for Abraham to obey and attempt to carry out that order, in this world Kierkegaard agrees would make the person a lunatic, however in the case of the biblical Abraham he is considered the father of monotheism, being equally revered in Christianity and Islam as well as Judaism. Kierkegaard did concede, at least implicitly, if not explicitly in some material I am unfamiliar with, that religious faith was irrational. However, like Pascal’s wager, and Unamuno’s assertion that philosophy offers no comfort from the certain knowledge that we are going to die, he famously stated that we ought to take a leap of faith. I compare his “leap of faith” with the admonishments to faith by both Pascal and Unamuno, because in each case, the case for faith does not have the same level of depth and rigor, that each of the thinkers is known for. It’s like a justification for carrying a rabbit’s foot, it seems to come down to the less harmful wrong. The point here is that Kierkegaard like most, if not all, of the existentialists readily acknowledged and even embraced the notion that reason and logic had their limitations, especially with regards to the human condition.

As I have understood them, existentialists have always been iconoclasts of sorts, breaking from traditional mores be they religious in practice, philosophical in focus, so it is difficult to set them apart in any distinct way because what brings them together is their opposition. Most if not all of the existentialists seem to make their mark by their shared hostility to academic or institutional philosophy, particularly the sort focused on the abstract, and their shared interest in the human condition vis-à-vis the individual. Seeing as the thread that holds this group together is so tenuous, I find it difficult to set them apart from each other in any systematically coherent way. Religiously they could not be more diverse, some are catholic, Kierkegaard is often referred to as a “Protestant’s protestant”, and some are atheist or antitheist. So any differences with respect to their existentialism would be minimal considering the fact that the essential details that link them together are the only thing that they share in common to begin with.