Faith and Philosophy of Nietzsche and Hegel - Essay Example

?For a number of historical and cultural reasons, the intellectual strains of nineteenth century thought could be described in terms of being in a crisis. Perhaps Nietzsche’s proclamation concerning the ‘death of god’ best conveys this crisis. The ‘death of god’ is not meant in literal terms, but in the sense that older forms of ascertaining values and meaning for existence, no longer work without a corollary ‘faith’ in ‘god’, so to speak. Soren Kierkegaard unquestionably belongs in this category of ‘crisis’. The following will examine the topic or subject of what it means to exist, and specifically, within the thought and writing of Kierkegaard, it will be argued that the ‘knight of faith’ is the individual who is capable of affirming existence in the sense in which it is presented in Fear and Trembling. Likewise with Hegel, the notion of 'death' or 'is not' is always associated with its opposite, namely, 'being' or what is. To maintain that 'god is not' as Nietzsche argues, supposes too that she also is. Where some individuals are willing to risk their lives – to be 'what is not'', they must have faith in the reasonableness of this assumption. This parallel between Kierkegaard and Hegel will be kept in mind in the following analysis. What will be outlined first, is his notion of the truth of subjectivity in Kierkegaard. This is an important consideration for what will follow, given that it is an argument which best describes what existence ‘does not mean’, so to speak. It will be argued that his notion of subjectivity is born out of a sense of alienation from ‘traditional’ Christianity, and from Platonism, and that ‘faith’ itself is coextensive with ‘subjectivity’. Following this analysis of the truth of subjectivity, and what he means by subjectivity and the ‘form’ of isolation associated with the ‘knight of faith’. The focus of this latter analysis will turn to an outline in particular of the work titled ‘Fear and Trembling’. What will be examined, is his notion of “infinite resignation” from this work which is important again for the affirmative nature of the notion of ‘isolation’. It will be argued that this infinite resignation, reconciles the ‘infinite’ with the ‘subject’, and it constitutes a theory concerning the meaning of existence – that is, what it means to exist, and moreover, it represents the activity of faith itself. In this respect, faith is not so much a concept as it is an activity or form of praxis. It is 'extra' philosophical or beyond philosophy in contrast with faith, as a form of praxis. The nature or essence of existence, is for Kierkegaard, ‘paradoxical’ [Kierkegaard 32]. It is paradoxical, because it can be described in two contradictory modes, namely, the finite and the infinite. And, implied by the notion of the infinite, are a number of similar or identical concepts. For examples, concepts such as the ‘eternal’, or ‘continuity’, ‘identity’ the ‘absolute’, ‘god’, and so forth. This paper will first give an analysis of a fragment in Kierkegaard’s within the context of his work titled Fear and Trembling, a work which recounts the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac taken from the Torah or the Old Testament (Genesis), and in brief, it concerns a father (Abraham) who is called upon by Yahweh or God to make a sacrifice of his only son Isaac, which is in turn, a parable which on the surface, concerns God’s testing Abraham’s convictions, courage, faith, obedience, and sense of obligation toward himself or herself. What transpires in this story, is that God calls upon Abraham to sacrifice his only son, and so he proceeds to carry out the task, only to have God or Jehweh stop him at the last moment and tell him that he has proven his ‘faith’ to him. In turn, God blesses Abraham for his faith. Before remarking on Kierkegaard, a brief remark will be made about the biblical story, and that is that it is quite short, and in the Revised Standard Edition (and not the Hebrew), there is no indication of any hesitation or questioning on the part of Abraham. Like the biblical story, Kierkegaard’s focuses upon the notion of ‘faith’, but it is, as we shall see not a faith which can or could be viewed as anything properly Christian or Judaic (as far as my understanding goes), but a ‘faith’ which if it resembles any religion, it would be a faith in a Pantheistic deity, or a God who is in everything. First, in the quote in question, it is asserted that (1) in faith, Abraham did not renounce Isaac, and that (2) on the contrary, through faith, Abraham received Isaac. In other words, the demands placed upon Abraham, were demands that he have faith and courage with respect to being able to embrace the “absurd” [Kierkegaard 45] which is the task set upon him, but, the faith is not the trust in God’s benevolence, but faith in the ‘infinite’: “it takes a paradoxical and humble courage to grasp the whole temporal realm in order to gain eternity”. Such fortitude was unquestionably the case with Agamemnon as well. He is told by the hunter goddess Artemis that he has to sacrifice his only daughter. Agamemnon sacrifices Iphigenia only to the wrath of Clytemestra, his wife. Agamemnon chose instead, to avoid the wrath of a goddess, given that she threatened to send his navy ill winds on their voyage over to Troy [Kierkegaard 53-5]. This said, like Abraham, Agamemnon is an extreme example of someone who took a leap of faith. So far, three essential aspects of the passage have been asserted, and this latter aspect needs some explication. As Kierkegaard indicates, Abraham has a ‘grasp’ of the entire ‘finite’ or ‘temporal realm’, and this is precisely the courage of the ‘knight of faith’, so to speak. And, by this, it implies he understands that entropy rules the realm of the senses, that is, that all physical things die and so forth. Further, with respect to gaining anything from the finite world, it is impossible to gain something indefinitely. In short, nothing lasts. Thus, as Kierkegaard argues, he is unable to make a movement toward the “finite” [Kierkegaard 44] Thus, someone who grasps that nothing can be gained by something which is finite, has in turn, “infinite resignation” [Kierkegaard 41]. A resignation which seems to indicate, that everything does not last. However, this is the crucial moment. In other words, it is a moment which brings about “peace and rest”, and if it is, then, it partially explains Abraham’s carrying out the word of God without hesitation or remorse or anger. Having said this, we can now return to the two central propositions: (1) faith is receiving everything, and (2) faith is not renouncing anything. If we focus on these two predicates, everything and anything, we have the philosophical equivalent of universality -- that is everything and anything. And, what is excluded from anything or everything is only ‘nothing’. In other words, everything is something, and it is difficult to conceive of anything which is not at least something, even if that conceiving conjures absurdity or strange thoughts, which are still something and not nothing. By this, strange thoughts or absurd situations are still something and not nothing. I can think of the existence of Santa Claus, and although he does not exist as an actual sensible being, he does exist as a thought or an image, both of which is something and not nothing. In this sense, ‘nothing’ is the absolute opposite of “everything” and “anything”. And, in the context of this quote. Kierkegaard has embraced everything, including the absurdity and perhaps cruelty of God’s command. And, also the fact that Isaac is also a part of this great chain of everything, a part of the infinite some things, and by virtue of not being nothing, but something, namely a person and so forth. However, as Kierkegaard asserts earlier on in the text: In resignation I make renunciation of everything, this movement I make by myself, and if I do not make it, it is because I am cowardly and effeminate and without enthusiasm and do not feel the significance of the lofty dignity which is assigned to every man . . .[Kierkegaard 43] The above passage seems to preclude the possibility of interpreting the previous passage. In other words, although he is “amazed” at Abraham’s actions, he also thinks that it is delusional to maintain that one will acquire “worldly wisdom out of the paradox”. This said, the above passage also qualifies that it is the “outcome” which is where the paradox follows. In other words, the absurdity itself is the ‘whole’ of the story, and the story is a metaphor for existence itself. Thus, an “infinite resignation” is a mode of action, and it is an action that works on the assumption that we cannot know “outcome” of our actions, but that we can have faith in the here and now, and the absurdity. But, it is an objectless ‘faith’. In other words, as Kierkegaard tells this parable, he is not telling this in terms of Abraham having faith in God’s benevolence (which is absurd because the Old Testament God is often a God of wrath) or the outcome of sacrificing Isaac. But, he has faith in the absurd or in paradox, God’s command, and further, he has an infinite resignation toward this as a modality of existing, or “by faith I receive everything”. What Kierkegaard has dismissed, is reason and understanding, and what he has embraced is resignation toward the infinite. By this, it does not mean that he is completely irrational, indeed, it would be difficult to write his books if such were the case, but that with respect to the invariable paradoxes of life he is advocating that we embrace them, or resign ourselves toward them. Finally, it is not God that is the focus, but the paradox of Abraham, and the courage and faith of his actions which Kierkegaard is using to demonstrate his idea of an ‘infinite resignation’ toward the absurd, which has the net outcome of receiving the ‘eternal’. To renounce everything temporal or finite, which is something one cannot acquire (“I cannot get the least little thing that belongs to finitude”), one is in a process of infinitely resigning. As a process of resigning, it is ongoing and seemingly infinite, and as a ‘mode’ of existence, because it is ‘infinite’ it brings forth the eternal through a leap of ‘faith’, and it is in this sense the ‘courage’ of the knight becomes necessary, given the isolation of this decision. That is the complete autonomy which is required by the leap in question. . So far, this paper has focused on what it means to exist according to Kierkegaard, and it was argued in this sense that the infinite resignation is essential for understanding what is implied by ‘faith’, and in the context of the analogies drawn with both Judaic story of Abraham from Judeo/Christian mythology. Further, it has been argued that it is the knight of faith who is precisely capable of the isolation involved with the ‘infinite resignation’. As mentioned in the introduction, Kierkegaard was very concerned with the older ways in which humans generally defined meaning. The ‘centre no longer held’ in Kierkegaard’s own age, and he was one of a number of existential thinkers, who attempted to understand the meaning of life, in a post-Christian world. This paper examined his idea that alienation really was an extension of the split between the subject and the object – the finite, the infinite, change, and continuity, and so forth, and this is characteristic of the isolation associated with the knight of faith. There is a very similar duality between the 'finite' and the 'infinite' in Hegel. It will be argued that for Hegel, the type or form of 'infinite resignation' that was discussed in Kierkegaard, is similar to his notion of the 'Unhappy Consciousness'. This is a stage in the Phenomenology of Spirit, and it is associated with Scepticism and Stoicism. The Phenomenology of Spirit is the gradual progression of 'spirit' as it unfolds for 'consciousness'. Each step along the way in this work, is representative of a stage of consciousness, and thus, before arriving at the 'Unhappy Consciousness' and how this relates to Kierkegaard, some of the background stages will be examined first. This will set-up this analysis for the further consideration of the dialectic between 'being' and 'non-being' as articulated in the Encyclopedia Logic, and in turn, how it is we can explain 'absolute knowing'. For Hegel, it will be argued that the 'infinite' that Kierkegaard resigned himself from having knowledge, is reconciled with the 'finite'. It is a unity of opposites, and the logic for unifying opposites is concisely articulated with the opposites of 'being' and 'non being'. Faith and reason are reconciled in Hegel, and are likewise, opposites that have a logic that constructs their unity. As mentioned, the Phenomenology of Spirit is a progression of consciousness. The beginning of this progression, is the notion of 'sense certainty'. It emerges in the opening section of 'Consciousness', and it is important for the background of understanding 'The Unhappy Consciousness' in the section titled 'Self Consciousness'. As a progression, to understand 'self consciousness' is to have a prior understanding of 'Consciousness', and 'Sense-cettainty' is where it all starts. As the title of the section states, certainty is both a starting place but also an end. While a progress, it is a progress that more resembles a circle. Any point on a circle, is both a beginning and an ending. Certainty is already something that is conceptual, more than sensible because something which tastes bitter today might taste sweet tomorrow. As Robert Stern writes in his commentary on Hegel's Phenomenology: “The aim of this section is then to bring out how sense-certainty’s a-conceptual view of knowledge appears natural to it because it conceives of individuality in this way, as something an object has apart from universality and particularity; by showing how this conception is problematic, consciousness comes to see how this view of knowledge is mistaken, and that its epistemic paradigm is illfounded.” [Stern 45]. The notion of particularity and universality articulated by Stern, are in reference to a few arguments presented by Hegel, but the argument regarding the individual “I” [Hegel 79] stands as a good obvious starting point for a discussion about particularity. Hegel argues that any particular individual as “mediated” [Hegel 80] by an “other” [Hegel 80] at the point that they begin talking about their own particularity. Whatever I can say about my self as a nominal or particular entity, I cannot fully say something novel because of the very act of saying it, I am using the language of my community at the very least. Optimally, I would have absorbed some knowledge in the form of education along the way so that it can be said that my individuality would be expressed both with the language of my community but also some forms of knowledge or “mediated” awareness. Likewise, with the notion of the “this” and the “now” [Hegel 81]. Both this and now have the language factor or variable that is mediating the instance denoted by both terms. I can say now describes the moment I am a moment from now and so forth. The combination of universality with particularity is the very essence of sense-certainty as Stern argues, as it raises it to the level of the “conceptual”. I know with some certainty that I am a particular nominal individual, but at the same time I cannot help the fact that whatever it is I am going to say about that experience is “mediated” by something “other” than me. The section titled Self-consciousness, The Truth of Self-certainty; A. Independence and Dependence of Self-consciousness: Lordship and Bondage is a completion of a unity between the 'beyond' which is infinite or enduring and the particular which is changing. The success of the worker at the end of this section is that they have found their 'other' in the object that is manually produced by themselves. Along the pathway to that gratitude of servitude for the creation of objects is where the concept finds itself entangled or coupled with the thing that will survive. The uncertainty of particularity and the conceptual nature of it takes the self toward another, and this very act or action relating to an other can be said to be a need for some for of “mutual recognition” rather than a recognition that is “one sided and unequal” [Hegel 96]. At the level of social interaction, one side is finite while the other continues on and this is the outcome of the “master slave” dialectic. As Stern writes: “the requirement on each subject to risk its life is the reason for the life and death struggle, rather than the lack of mutual recognition, as each tries to show the other that it is not a ‘mere’ living creature.” [Stern 77-78]. There is a good contemporary analogy with the life and death struggle that illustrates the importance of “risk” in the struggle for mutual recognition. Or, the struggle to have someone identify you in the way that you identify yourself, which is an attempt to establish the veracity of your own particularity – something you hold with sense certainty. A suicide bomber is an individual or particular that is willing to risk their own particularity, as is a conscripted or enlisted soldier. When a soldier enlists in the National Guard during a long stretch of peace, the furthest thing from their mind might be the potential of serving and experiencing “risk” involved with military service. Or, they might not understand 'risk' to the full extent until they are actually facing as something which threatens their particularity. Whatever horrific that feeling must be associated with risk, there is a qualitative distinction to be made between the enlisted or conscripted soldier and the individual who freely chooses to carry out a suicide bombing mission. They know that the particular must be sacrificed to the greater number, and that eighteen motivated men with 'box cutters' as weapons can practically bring an entire planet into a conflict. They also know that their is a much higher probability that their particularity will also be eliminated, so the willingness that involves “risk” has to be seen as one of the mediating stages. That is, a stage that has impact to compel or make a change into the next level of Consciousness. Where the master slave dialectic begins with the struggle to the death for the sake of mutual recognition, it is resolved by the conceding, becoming self-enslaved. A slave becomes a slave by virtue of not willing to risk their lives, and thus the concession of their lives as having become more universal at least as far as longevity goes, is that they build something or create that which endures beyond themselves. The active creating for an other, is how the particularity becomes reconciled with the universal: “... a kind of equilibrium, where the one that has given up the struggle is the slave and the other the master...The master can now show himself to be a subject in the eyes of the slave, not by risking his life, but by exercising power over the slave's body” [Stern 83]. A master can only find mutual recognition through the enslavement of an 'other', or the “power” exercised over them. But this is a relationship of dependency because of the necessary relationship between the 'master' as a 'master' who necessarily needs a 'slave'. One does not make sense without the other and this is a relationship of conceptual but also, actual dependency. But, dependency is the opposite of freedom, so while the master has some recognition, it is not 'mutual recognition'. One has to be recognized by a peer rather than someone who has sold or given up their particularity. Thus “freedom” is born out of the deficits created at the completion of the “Lordship” and “bondage” section, but can be said to play out on the philosophical or historical stages of 'Stoicism, Scepticism, and the Unhappy' Consciousness.. This three stages of Consciousness that are all associated with philosophical schools, are consequently not too difficult to define. The Stoics negated the body as a physical praxis, where the Sceptic negates the body as a representational or intellectual principal. Stoicism is based on the belief that the mind knows that the universal is superior to the particular, and thus a negation of the body becomes a virtue and form of praxis as well as a principal [Hegel 101]. What is it of consciousness that survives or gets subsumed into a new concept with this bodily negation, is the awareness that the negation of bodies is also mental. When we are sceptical with the mind, we are both aware that the mind is always capable of doubting the sensory “perception” like “Kant” [Hegel 154] that it is being fed, and this too is a divorce of mind from body but not one which is said to go beyond that. There is no imminent risk involved with being a sceptic unless someone of course, doubts that it is safer to leave a six floor apartment through the front door and the elevator than it is to leave it through the window. Risk is a binary when the consequence of it means death. As far as opposites go, the binaries of “being” and “non-being” come to mind as absolute opposites: “It was with the Eleatics, above all Parmenides, who first annunciated the simple thought of pure being as absolute and sole truth: only being is and nothing absolutely is not” [Hegel 188]. Both Hegel and Parmenides begin their respective systems with a discussion of 'being' and 'non being', and Hegel openly admits that this stage of consciousness is an ancient problem. Parmenides started the type or form of “axiomatic” and “deductive” reasoning that is manifest in the Elements of Euclid. He presented his logical arguments in the form of a poem, and the two main works of his which have survived are titled 'The Way of Truth' and the 'Way of Seeming' or appearance [Kirk and Raven, Ed., , 1984: 266]. Like Pythagoras, he argues that everything is reducible to the one – or, that the one is the very commensurable nature of all things [Kirk and Raven, Ed., 1984: 268]. This argument is premised on an important axiom from which the the notion of the unity of all things as one is deduced, namely, that only nothing or non-being/non-existence can come from non-being. That is, we cannot “know” and nor can we “say” that which is nothing or non-being [Kirk and Raven, Ed., , 1984: 269]. For instance, not many adults believe in Santa Claus, however, we cannot really maintain according to Parmenides important axiom that Santa Claus does not exist. Santa Claus according to this axiom is something that it is knowable and something that can be said. That is, Santa Claus is a 'thought' and a 'narrative' that we tell to children, and while he might not be as concrete as a table or a chair, 'words' and 'thoughts' are still something rather than nothing: “We can think of fictional heroes and chimerical beasts” [Kenny, 2004: 202]. One can see the parallel with Kierkegaard which why the note to Santa Claus was re-invoked or re-asserted. Abraham who is characterized by his courage and faith, has the commitment to his actions because of his willingness to sacrifice. His son is the ultimate risk, and this for Kierkegaard this ‘infinite resignation’ toward the absurd has the net outcome of receiving the ‘eternal’. What is important is the “absolute” in both being and not being. What makes these opposites, are the absolute nature of them. One either exists or they don't so this is a relation of absolutes according to the opening section to Hegel's Encyclopedia of the Sciences. Risk is a likewise important mediated past phase of Consciousness progressing that demonstrates their relationship on another plateau, because it demonstrates the 'absolute' nature of the struggle for recognition. Absolute knowledge is a process, and not a fixed state, such that at least two-semi fixed states are at play at any moment for Consciousness. As Stern writes: “absolute knowledge, which represents the highest form of satisfaction; until that point is reached, Hegel calls our knowledge ‘finite’ or ‘conditioned’, in so far as this rational insight has not yet been attained” [Stern 12]. Thankfully we don't have to choose between absolute opposites very often. Life is mostly grey and not black and white like the world of print. There is an important supposition in Hegel that maintains that there are distinctions of genus and species, but distinctions that they all share in as particulars. There is an important distinction implicit between contradictories and contraries which has been argued in this interpretation to be a distinction of universal from particular. A universal attribute of any human individual is a necessary one for it to 'be'. For a human to be, there needs to be a functioning cardioid-vascular and respiratory system. What is particular with that, is that they either 'on' or they are 'off'. Such were the opposites in Kierkegaard. The opposite between the finite and infinite are resolved in the Abraham narrative, but made 'rational' in the logic of Hegel. The relationship for Hegel between “faith” and “reason” is necessarily resolved in favour of reason, but if they are 'absolute' opposites it would follow that 'reason' is to 'master', as a 'faith' is to its slave. Bound together in a determined position. They don't make sense without one-another. Bibliography: Hegel, Georg. (1998). The Hegel Reader. Edited by Stephen Houlgate. Oxford: Blackwell. Kenny, Anthony. (2006). Ancient Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kierkegaard, Soren. “Fear and Trembling”. Reprinted in Existentialism. Basic Writings. Edited by Charles Guignon and Derek Pereboom (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1995). Kirk, J.S. And Raven, J.E., (Ed.). The Presocratic Philosophers. A Critical History with a Selection of Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). Stern, Robert. (2002). Hegel and the Phenomenology of Spirit. London: Routledge. FAITH IN OPPOSITION TO REASON IN KIERKEGAARD AND HEGEL: A comparative analysis focusing on the importance of 'absolute' opposites in both philosopher's. Read More