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Kierkegaards's Concept of Faith (Kierkegaard as a Christian Thinker
In this book renowned philosopher Merold Westphal unpacks the writings of nineteenth-century thinker Søren Kierkegaard on biblical, Christian faith and its relation to reason.
Across five books — Fear and Trembling , Philosophical Fragments , Concluding Unscientific Postscript , Sickness Unto Death , and Practice in Christianity — and three pseudonyms, Kierkegaard sought to articulate a biblical concept of faith by approaching it from a variety of perspectives in relation to one another. Westphal offers a careful textual reading of these major discussions to present an overarching analysis of Kierkegaard’s conception of the true meaning of biblical faith.
Though Kierkegaard presents a complex picture of faith through his pseudonyms, Westphal argues that his perspective is a faithful and illuminating one, making claims that are important for philosophy of religion, for theology, and most of all for Christian life as it might be lived by faithful people.
Across five books — Fear and Trembling , Philosophical Fragments , Concluding Unscientific Postscript , Sickness Unto Death , and Practice in Christianity — and three pseudonyms, Kierkegaard sought to articulate a biblical concept of faith by approaching it from a variety of perspectives in relation to one another. Westphal offers a careful textual reading of these major discussions to present an overarching analysis of Kierkegaard’s conception of the true meaning of biblical faith.
Though Kierkegaard presents a complex picture of faith through his pseudonyms, Westphal argues that his perspective is a faithful and illuminating one, making claims that are important for philosophy of religion, for theology, and most of all for Christian life as it might be lived by faithful people.
- GenresPhilosophy
294 pages, Paperback
First published July 15, 2014
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January 21, 2021
Simon D. Podmore, Associate Professor in the Department of Theology, Philosophy, and Religious Studies at Liverpool Hope University, rightly describes this book in the following way: "Merold Westphal's reputation as one of the most profound and lucid interpreters of Kierkegaard's thought is further confirmed in this compelling and erudite book. . . . This work takes us right into the heart of a vision of Kierkegaard which is at once accessible and eloquent, scholarly and reflective, welcoming and challenging. A true companion to Kierkegaard's thought." Indeed, Merold Westphal's "Kierkegaard's Concept of Faith" is a remarkable examination of arguably five of the most important texts of Kierkegaard's corpus - "Fear and Trembling," "Philosophical Fragments," "Concluding Unscientific Postscript," "The Sickness unto Death," and "Practice in Christianity" - and how these works might shed light on Kierkegaard's concept of faith.
Westphal's book displays (1) admirable clarity with regard to how Kierkegaard uses pseudonymity in his various works, with the "Introduction," in particular, functioning as a great primer on how to read Kierkegaard in such a way that is respectful to how Kierkegaard himself would have liked to be read and to his essential concern of drawing out the single individual before God; (2) great care in parsing out, in an intertextual fashion, the similarities and differences between three of the pseudonymous authors discussed (Johannes de Silentio, Johannes Climacus, and Anti-Climacus); and (3) lucidity on the structure of the individual texts, thereby helping to correct misreadings of these works that have proliferated within and outside of the confines of Kierkegaard scholarship.
I, for one, have learnt much from this book, particularly with regard to my own reading of "Fear and Trembling." Westphal raises an excellent point when he argues that there are, in truth, two paradoxes and two contracts in that work; and that it is not so much "the contrast between infinite resignation and faith [that is] the main point of Silentio's text," as many commentators have argued, because such a reading "overlook[s] the explicit claim that this contrast is 'preliminary' [and] that it occurs in a 'preamble'" (69). Rather, the main thrust of "Fear and Trembling" is found in the contrast between the knight of faith and the tragic hero that comes after, that is, "whether there are norms of obligations and justification in which the killing of one's child or the intended killing of a son or daughter is obligator and justified" (74) . Unlike the tragic hero, which is justified in his sacrifice by the demands of the larger community, Abraham cannot be justified by the social morality of his day and can only be saved by "an absolute duty to God that is higher than and not reducible to the duties of one's Sittlichkeit" (74). And this is but an example of the way in which Westphal illuminates particular aspects of Kierkegaard's texts that are given to misinterpretation, which is especially salient given Kierkegaard's focus on pseudonymity and indirect communication as well as the incredibly dense and technical nature of his language.
The central idea of Westphal's book is that the different aspects of faith (e.g., faith as the task of a lifetime, faith as willing to be oneself before God, faith as contemporaneity with Christ) that are drawn out over these five works "supplement and complement one another" in such a way that it "present[s] a fuller, richer, multidimensional picture" of what it means to live before God (275). They all come together in a coherent portrait of a life lived in a passionate relationship with a God who is not just a Creator or a First Cause, but one who is "the personal, covenantal God who enters into transcausal relations with humans" via the means of promises and divine commands and also such "an Other [that] always exceeds our grasp" (275). It leaves us not purely with a deeper sense of Kierkegaard's religious thought (as well as, by contrast, the religious thought of thinkers such as Hegel, Kant, and the like) but invites us to think about how we function, epistemologically and existentially speaking, in concrete realities and become who we are in them.
Westphal's book displays (1) admirable clarity with regard to how Kierkegaard uses pseudonymity in his various works, with the "Introduction," in particular, functioning as a great primer on how to read Kierkegaard in such a way that is respectful to how Kierkegaard himself would have liked to be read and to his essential concern of drawing out the single individual before God; (2) great care in parsing out, in an intertextual fashion, the similarities and differences between three of the pseudonymous authors discussed (Johannes de Silentio, Johannes Climacus, and Anti-Climacus); and (3) lucidity on the structure of the individual texts, thereby helping to correct misreadings of these works that have proliferated within and outside of the confines of Kierkegaard scholarship.
I, for one, have learnt much from this book, particularly with regard to my own reading of "Fear and Trembling." Westphal raises an excellent point when he argues that there are, in truth, two paradoxes and two contracts in that work; and that it is not so much "the contrast between infinite resignation and faith [that is] the main point of Silentio's text," as many commentators have argued, because such a reading "overlook[s] the explicit claim that this contrast is 'preliminary' [and] that it occurs in a 'preamble'" (69). Rather, the main thrust of "Fear and Trembling" is found in the contrast between the knight of faith and the tragic hero that comes after, that is, "whether there are norms of obligations and justification in which the killing of one's child or the intended killing of a son or daughter is obligator and justified" (74) . Unlike the tragic hero, which is justified in his sacrifice by the demands of the larger community, Abraham cannot be justified by the social morality of his day and can only be saved by "an absolute duty to God that is higher than and not reducible to the duties of one's Sittlichkeit" (74). And this is but an example of the way in which Westphal illuminates particular aspects of Kierkegaard's texts that are given to misinterpretation, which is especially salient given Kierkegaard's focus on pseudonymity and indirect communication as well as the incredibly dense and technical nature of his language.
The central idea of Westphal's book is that the different aspects of faith (e.g., faith as the task of a lifetime, faith as willing to be oneself before God, faith as contemporaneity with Christ) that are drawn out over these five works "supplement and complement one another" in such a way that it "present[s] a fuller, richer, multidimensional picture" of what it means to live before God (275). They all come together in a coherent portrait of a life lived in a passionate relationship with a God who is not just a Creator or a First Cause, but one who is "the personal, covenantal God who enters into transcausal relations with humans" via the means of promises and divine commands and also such "an Other [that] always exceeds our grasp" (275). It leaves us not purely with a deeper sense of Kierkegaard's religious thought (as well as, by contrast, the religious thought of thinkers such as Hegel, Kant, and the like) but invites us to think about how we function, epistemologically and existentially speaking, in concrete realities and become who we are in them.
Displaying 1 of 1 review