Ignacio García Estruch

Kierkegaard’s Faith
 Ignacio García Estruch

Prelude

How mysterious is the fact that we human beings have invented such a tool like words?
Did it happen due to a survival need? Or was it to an inherent human condition that we
developed language? One way or another, we have found and tested the limits of this
rational tool. How many things cannot be expressed with words? It is my opinion that
words are used in our times in order to say nothing; those things that matter cannot be
said and those which are said little do matter.

Nevertheless, we found sometimes shining pearls, beautiful accidents in mankind that are
capable of speaking the unspeakable; capable of implying the location of the most dark
and enlightened natures of our souls. I am not speaking here of talented artists, tragic
heroes or ravishing athletes; these people are recognised for their virtuosity when doing
what they do. I am talking about the “communicator”, the writer, the poet, the one who
is only remembered in past tense. I am talking about those who, usually in their cold
solitude, manage to unlock their souls and with the unfolding of themselves they unfold
everyone who reads them.

We are talking here about the most subtle of communications. Philosophers have tried to
communicate ideas all through the long thread of history. Most of them have tried to
explain their theory, their causality explanation, their definition on nature and men. But
most of them, despite being great thinkers, were also lousy writers. Do not get me wrong:
words are perhaps the worst tool to express deepness and realness and therefore verbal
communication is a courageous endeavour for anyone who wishes to stay true. Most
philosophers have spoken about reality on a dishonest style; they were slaves of what is
true and reasonable. The author of whom we are destined to talk about is anything but
that. As he said about himself, he is not a philosopher; he is poetice et eleganter1, an
amateur writer.
And with such a declaration we have discovered that he is indeed a superb story teller,
someone who neither writes the System or promises of the System 2; since he knows that
most of times words are doomed to say nothing. But what does he write about then?

1
Fear and Trembling (1843) – Preface
2
Fear and Trembling (1843) – Preface
 Ignacio García Estruch

Before talking about Kierkegaard I feel compelled to warn about the nature of this essay.
After reading Kierkegaard work it would be dishonest to write on a systematic and
academic way. Not because Kierkegaard cannot be approached through academics; of
course it can be done. However, it is a personal quest of mine that, after reading most of
his work, I must at least this time try to imitate his formal path. If I ought to talk about
him or his work I must be true to the way I feel like it must be done; with all the
consequences and repercussions that shall have.

My boldness is such that the topic I have chosen is Kierkegaard’s Faith. This topic does
not search what was Kierkegaard’s personal belief or calling but to know what is the
nature of this “calling” and this “faith” he writes about. For that, the focus of this essay
will be Fear and Trembling. In this work written by Johannes de Silentio, we have the
opportunity to read one of the most interesting and enlightening interpretations of the
paradox of faith. We will try to conduct a chronological “iter”: first we will see how
Kierkegaard got to his personal proposal on how to be authentic comparing it to the
previous philosophy. Secondly, we will assess and compare his proposal versus the ones
given by other existentialists. The final part of the essay will be my personal trouble and
affinities with Kierkegaard’s proposal.

Kierkegaard’s persona and legacy opens the door for students and professors to dissert
about numerous aspects: the concept of aesthetics, the concept of angst, of despair,
romantic love, existentialist philosophy, religiousness, depression, tragic heroes, knights
of resignations and many more. On top of this, whichever subject one may chose can also
contribute to various fields of knowledge: science, ethics, sociology, phycology… etc.
Yet this essay will talk about faith. The first part of this paper will surely stablish what
role does this faith play in the field of philosophy and the second one will be (since we
find ourselves under religious vocabulary) a true confession.
 Ignacio García Estruch

From Reason to Passion

Before Kierkegaard’s work we could not find existentialist pieces in the philosophy shelf
of a library. It is true that Schopenhauer was one of the most important authors to swim
against the post-Kantian philosophies going in the moment. However, Hegel was at that
moment the most popular philosopher and with him we find a turning point in European
philosophy. If the 18th century was the century enlightened by Reason, the 19th century
was the birth of the revolution against Reason. Kierkegaard is one of this revolutionaries:

It is supposed to be difficult to understand Hegel, but to

understand Abraham is a trifle. To go beyond Hegel is a miracle, but to get
beyond Abraham is the easiest thing of all. I for my part have devoted a
good deal of time to the understanding of the Hegelian philosophy, I
believe also that I understand it tolerably well, but when in spite of the
trouble I have taken there are certain passages I cannot understand, I am
foolhardy enough to think that he himself has not been quite clear. All this I
do easily and naturally, my head does not suffer from it. But on the other
hand when I have to think of Abraham, I am as though annihilated.3

As we can see, Kierkegaard knows that talking about what Hegel has been talking about
is pointless; the maze of a rational system usually suffers from not having any clear exit
and, to make things worse, it seems for Kierkegaard that Hegel, Kant and all the idealists
are aiming at the wrong targets. For him, it is much more interesting to pay attention to
the development of one’s interior than to try to unravel a general solution. In his words:

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced. 4

In this sense and now pointing our fingers to Hegel, philosophers have confessed that life
must be understood backwards. However, they usually forget that life has to be lived
forwards and , for that disease, philosophers like Hegel seem to forget to give any
prescription or formulas.

3
Fear and Trembling (1843) – Preliminary expectoration
4
Unlocated Quote from Kierkegaard
 Ignacio García Estruch

As Sartre puts in his book “Existentialism is an humanism”:

Clearly, the anguish with which we are concerned here is not one that could lead to quietism or
inaction. It is anguish pure and simple, of the kind well known to all those who have borne
responsibilities. [This anguish…] does not prevent their acting, on the contrary it is the very condition
of their action, for the action presupposes that there is a plurality of possibilities, and in choosing one
of these, they realize that it has value only because it is chosen. Now it is anguish of that kind which
existentialism describes […]5

We can say that this vision on late existentialism matches with the early and yet un-
labelled existentialism of Søren Kierkegaard. Existentialism is a philosophical trend that
demands action; perhaps more action than any other philosophical trend. So, what action
does Kierkegaard prescribe us? After reading Fear and Trembling I am afraid that the
only sure and grasping reality he portrays is the trembling, fear, and angst that anyone
can feel if he chooses to be authentic. But, besides the anguish feeling, this essay has in
mind discovering Kierkegaard’s proposal. In Fear and Trembling we can deduce this
proposal but, in the end, we shall think that this is not Kierkegaard talking but Johannes
de Silentio. This meta-narrative tactic leaves Kierkegaard untouchable since we cannot
attribute the proposal in Fear and Trembling in a direct way to Kierkegaard. Nevertheless,
we now know that whoever it is who talks, the message of it will be in some sense
prescriptive.

De Silentio writes; […] The poet cannot do what that other does, he can only admire,
love and rejoice in the hero. I feel the same way; like an academic: I can only admire
Kierkegaard work, I cannot prescribe my own vision yet. He is a tragic hero, although he
has not defeated any divine wrath or magic monster: he has opened the pathway on being
real, on being authentic. As a young boy this is perhaps the most courageous adventure
someone can present to me: a trip towards reality. Can I write about this at least with a
little bit of grace? If he only could know how much impact his words have had! But that
is perhaps what makes him so mysterious and damned; he never knew if what he was
doing was right or not; he was just guessing, following an intuition. Because, as opposed
to Hegel, Kierkegaard never got any official recognition of his work.

5
Existentialism is an humanism (1946)
 Ignacio García Estruch

Faith as an authentic proposal

With the story of Abraham in Fear and Trembling Kierkegaard sets a precedent in the
history of philosophy. He states that all Ethical stage can be suspended in front of a
personal calling of the Individual. Kierkegaard argues all around the third chapter of this
book about what are the characteristics and requirements of this calling in order to
consider it true: it cannot be shared into the universal; the calling of someone can plenty
of times clash with the universal6, it must be done once you have asserted the ethical stage;
that is, abandoning double-minded actions, it must be done also after doing the movement
of resignation, that is, renouncing the finite aspect of something or someone ( or
everything or everyone). But, on top of all this, Kierkegaard says that is only with faith
into the absurd that you acquire the highest level of authenticity. Yet, why doing so?

“For the movements of faith must constantly be made by virtue of the absurd, yet in such a way, be it
observed, that one does not lose the finite but gains it every inch.”7

That is for me the most paradoxical part of Kierkegaard’s philosophy. It is attractive for
the reader to know that through faith you indeed not lose the finite but gain every inch
but how does that work?
We are told that through faith in God Abraham recovers Isaac. That is for Kierkegaard
the most authentic someone can get: to be capable of jumping into the absurd, because
through faith in the infinity of the absolute you recover every inch of the finitude of your
world.
My interpretation of this words are the following. The importance here is to put our
perspective point in the Individual. The particular, at first, feels chained to its pleasures
and immediacies. After jumping into the next stage the particular can then move in the
universal, this is, in the environment mankind has created to relate one and other.8

6
As Kierkegaard puts it: “As soon as the individual would assert himself in his particularity over against
the universal he sins, and only by recognizing this can he again reconcile himself with the universal…”
7
Fear and Trembling (1843) – Problem I
8
“The ethical as such is the universal, and as the universal it applies to everyone, which may be
expressed from another point of view by saying that it applies every instant” Fear and Trembling.
 Ignacio García Estruch

Finally, the particular becomes the Individual when doing several movements. The first
one is the movement of resignation which consists in the renouncement of all the physical
and finite aspects of the things and people you encounter in life. In Fear and Trembling,
de Silentio uses the example of the love between a Knight and a Princess. In this example,
the Knight renounces the Princess and with that resignation the Knight converts his finite
love in an eternal love; he converts it to the true meaning of it. However, when this
happens, the princess is then lost for him because, for someone who has resigned the
finite, tasting the finite again is extremely dangerous. When the movement of resignation
has been done, the finite experience is a nuisance, a reminder of how everything will
perish; even your princess. In such a way, the movement of resignation is the elevation
of someone or something into the eternal. For those who stay there, they can never enjoy
the finite. But, surprisingly enough, there is another movement to do: the Leap of Faith.
For those who manage to jump into the absurd they recover all the finite! And here is
where the story of Abraham makes sense!
As I said, in order to understand this aspect of Kierkegaard we ought to focus on the
Individual’s perspective. What I have understood is that, as an Individual, you first resign
the finite. Yet, after doing so, one must find his personal calling and precisely that is, in
my opinion, Kierkegaard’s God.

“What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I am to know, except in so far
as a certain knowledge must precede every action. The thing is to understand myself, to see what
God really wishes me to do: the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for
which I can live and die. ... I certainly do not deny that I still recognize an imperative of knowledge
and that through it one can work upon men, but it must be taken up into my life, and that is what I
now recognize as the most important thing”9

So Abraham has a clear idea for which he can live and die: following God. Kierkegaard’s
theory is that, since Abraham has already done the leap of faith, he never lost Isaac. If we
take the Individual’s perspective (Abraham’s) and we imagine that this individual really
believes in the absurd we can then understand how he regains the finite.

9
Statement from Kierkegaard’s Journal
 Ignacio García Estruch

He loves Isaac eternally, yet he follows God’s command that brings him the absurd: the
finite is going to be lost because you need to follow your calling. The Individual though
has genuine faith in the fact that, due to his belief, he will never lose the finite but the
contrary, he will gain every inch. The poetic allegory the Bible has for expressing this
concept is that God stops Abraham in the last moment; with that intervention he finally
recovers Isaac and all the finitude he feels with him.

If we try to implement this allegory into our day to day life we find it utterly difficult.
However, I can imagine that, from the Individual perspective, what we ought to pay
attention to is not the kind of calling you have but the fact that you have faith in it. If I
have the calling of loving my daughter, the love for her will be, by my movement of
resignation eternal. But, if I have faith I will enjoy her finitude since I won’t be afraid of
losing her physically. That means that, even if my daughter dies, I will recover the feeling
of enjoying and therefore I will learn to enjoy the finite again. That does not mean that I
will not feel grief or that I will forget my daughter. I will remember her but my faith will
make me able to keep loving the finite of my world; not earning my dead daughter back,
but the relation I had with her again with another thanks to this existentialist position I
take. This will mean that, from the Individual’s perspective, I will still be able to enjoy
the finite even if I physically loose it.

The problem for me is the relationship between these two features of Kierkegaard
thinking: 1. the faith/ jumping into the absurd capacity and 2. The personal calling. It
seems that it can be two sides of the same coin. On one side, we find the calling;
something or someone for whom you are willing to die and live for and, secondly, we
find the capacity of jumping into the absurd, that is, the passion and faith with which you
can, when required, transgress the universal, transgress every moral stage. One aspects
needs the other one and cannot be unlinked; if someone dares to say they have found that
for what they are ready to die but when tested they come back to the universal, we cannot
accept it as a real calling. On the other hand, someone that transgresses the moral stage
invoking his individuality but does it whenever he wants and for whatever reason or
person cannot be considered to do it for faith but only for pure selfishness ( double-
minded).
 Ignacio García Estruch

Conclusion:

Kierkegaard wanted to shred light into Abraham’s condition: no one talked about the
angst and vertigo the patriarch felt when God put him into that crossroad. However, it is
my opinion to say also that Abraham had at least a clear calling; a very difficult one but
a very clear and visible one too. In this sense, I understand Kierkegaard’s sentence when
he says he needs to know what God is asking for him. It is the same feeling I have when
I read Fear and Trembling.

Albert Camus said in The myth of Sisyphus that Kierkegaard needed a cure for his angst
and therefore, created his philosophy of the calling and faith in God. However, this is for
me a wrong interpretation of Kierkegaard’s reading.

The knight of faith knows, on the other hand, that it is

glorious to belong to the universal. He knows that it is beautiful and
salutary to be the individual who translates himself into the universal, who
edits as it were a pure and elegant edition of himself, as free from errors as
possible and which everyone can read. He knows that it is refreshing to
become intelligible to oneself in the universal so that he understands it and
so that every individual who understands him understands through him in
turn the universal, and both rejoice in the security of the universal. He
knows that it is beautiful to be born as the individual who has the universal
as his home, his friendly abiding-place, which at once welcomes him with
open arms when he would tarry in it. But he knows also that higher than
this there winds a solitary path, narrow and steep; he knows that it is
terrible to be born outside the universal, to walk without meeting a single
traveller […]10

In this passage we can see that all Kierkegaard’s philosophy points to a very difficult
prescription and in no way this seems like a cure to me but more like a dark, unavoidable
destiny. On the other hand I do feel what Sartre says about Kierkegaard when talking
about Abraham:

10
Fear and Trembling (1843) – Problem II
 Ignacio García Estruch

“But anyone in such a case would wonder, first, whether it was indeed an angel and secondly, whether
I am really Abraham. Where are the proofs? […] If an angel appears to me, what is the proof that it is
an angel; or, if I hear voices, who can prove that they proceed from heaven and not from hell, or from
my own subconsciousness or some pathological condition? Who can prove that they are really
addressed to me? […]If a voice speaks to me, it is still I myself who must decide
whether the voice is or is not that of an angel. […]”11

That is the angst that Kierkegaard tries to express. That is, indeed, the fear and trembling
that Abraham must have experienced if he existed and his story is true. If God exists we
are its interlocutors. Therefore, in the end, we cannot place Kierkegaard as anything other
than an existentialist because for him too “existence precedes essence” even if he places
God in all this mess.

However it is still for me mysterious the concept of hearing your calling. I am afraid of
abandoning this essay without knowing anything on how to reach that calling, how to
learn to hear it. I too want to know what does God want from me, my personal idea for
which I am willing to live and die for. Because, after reading Kierkegaard, I do feel that
living without a calling is way more plain and boring. To live in passion is to live on edge:
at any moment your passion can be challenged by the universal and in that moment you
own spirit will be challenged. What is the passion I am willing to die for? I know that the
concept of Love is tangled in all of this at least for me. What is that I love unconditionally?
Just as de Silentio, I also think that …faith is a miracle, and yet no man is excluded from
it; for that in which all human life is unified is passion, and faith is a passion.12

11
Existentialism is an humanism (1946)
12
Fear and Trembling (1843) – Problem I
 Ignacio García Estruch

One aspect that keeps me at unease is thinking in the figure of Isaac. If we abandon our
point of the Individual, in our case Abraham, we find that we can proceed with the killing
due to the teleological suspension of the ethical. However, what if we put the emphasis
on Isaac’s side? Does Isaac has a saying in all of this? Not from an ethical point of view
but from his individual, existential point of view.

Let’s imagine that Isaac has a calling too. Kierkegaard does not present this issue. What
is the proceeding if Isaac wants to fulfil his own personal faith?

In that situation I imagine a more much smart Isaac. A dark aura embodies the end of this
paper when I think of it. Father and Son riding to its final destiny. Abraham is willing to
fulfil his passion; Isaac has discovered his father’s calling and he is prepared to fight for
his life. The air is dry and the sun blazes mount Moriah. Just when they get to the top of
it, Isaac, afraid to hear any answer, asks his father:
“Father?”
“Yes, son?”
“The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”
“God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.”

What could Abraham do apart from being ironic? How to speak the unspeakable? Yet,
Isaac knows now that his father is a liar. While his father builds the altar for the sacrifice
he gives a last look around them: no lamb, just dry sand and bushes.
Isaac is tired for these three days of walking. His eyes burn, and he is very dehydrated.
Yet, neither of this things will stop him from the act he is about to commit. He has too a
passion to fulfil. He might not have discovered it yet but he has faith in the fact that he
will. And with unquestionable fear and trembling he manages to save his life by providing
the body that the altar required.