Kierkegaard’s Philosophy of Religion

Dear Colleagues,

Any meaningful engagement with Søren Aabye Kierkegaard’s philosophy of religion immediately immerses one in the dynamic struggles that marked the life of the Danish Christian philosopher, poet, and critic. Using this hermeneutical framework to examine religion from his perspective allows us to gain deeper insight into the ambivalent relationship that this Christian existentialist had with both philosophy and religion. Kierkegaard’s life was marked by a trajectory of personal historical guilt, woundedness and brokenness prior to his rediscovery of the therapeutic power of faith. Consequently, Christian faith took on a profoundly personalistic dimension for Kierkegaard, such that he was only able to view the truths of Christianity from a subjective perspective.

Given this subjectivity, the philosophical ethos of Hegelian collectivism that had shaped nineteenth-century Danish Lutheran Christianity became a greater target for Kierkegaard. If Christianity in its New Testament form could only be fruitful with the individual stepping outside the boundaries of the collective, then a philosophical system like Hegelianism in which the individual is consumed by the collective is antithetical to the very possibility of faith, since the grounds for the subjective are erased by a certain rationality that, by identifying thought with existence, has forgotten the latter. For faith to be lived, space must be created for the individual to shed the conformism of the collective so that they can stand out in an absolute relationship with the Absolute. Thus, going against the collective, in reference to the larger picture of German Idealism as embodied by Danish Hegelians, meant creating space for faith.

In this sense, not only does Kierkegaard proceed with a profound hermeneutic of suspicion toward philosophy, but an identical misgiving and wariness appear to eclipse his perception of religion as well, especially the state Lutheran Christianity of nineteenth-century Denmark. Consequently, at the intersection of philosophy and religion for Kierkegaard stands the question: What is the ultimate frame of reference for human life? If it is Christianity, what does it mean to be a Christian today? Kierkegaard declares in the preface to Fear and Trembling: “The present author is by no means a philosopher. He has not understood the system, whether there is one, whether it is completed; it is already enough for his weak head to ponder what a prodigious head everyone must have these days when everyone has such a prodigious idea.” (III 59).

The statement, “the present author is by no means a philosopher” is itself, a profoundly philosophical statement. It is indicative of a rejection of a philosophical system that has emptied religion of its vitality by making faith into a tool of cultural conformism, necessitating what Kierkegaard characterizes as the need for an “autopsy of faith” (Philosophical Fragments, IV 233). It is equally indicative of a dialectical tension of the relationship between philosophy and religion vis-à-vis the affiliation of subjectivity to eternal happiness within time. More so, it raises the need to clarify the interwovenness, if any, between the historical and the philosophical in terms of the truth claimed by both schools of thought. Additionally, given Kierkegaard’s battle for subjectivity in order to reintroduce Christianity into Christendom, which in today’s world would be secularized Christianity, a supposed rejection of philosophy invites an engagement with the costly nature of faith that pushes religion to proceed along the path of a teleological suspension of the ethical, of the philosophical system, so that faith can once again emerge in all its challenging and yet, therapeutic vitality.

In his day, Kierkegaard saw himself as a spy, a gadfly, a missionary to what he construed as a lethargic Christianity that was no longer capable of transforming lives. Several aspects of his thoughts on philosophy and religion such as faith, rationality, the historical, subjectivity, collectivity, the leap, happiness, and more, continue to be relevant in a world that also has to deal with the fundamental question that marked the Christian existentialism as defined by Kierkegaard: How can I be happy, now and eternally?

The essays in this Special Issue of Religions seek to respond to this question, and to do more.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Maurice Ashley Agbaw-Ebai
Guest Editor

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• subjectivity
• the leap of faith
• the absolute paradox
• the absurd
• inwardness
• passion
• the single individual
• existential commitment (decision)
• agape
• stages on life’s way
• teleological suspension of the ethical
• angst (anxiety/dread)
• despair
• sin
• repentance (sorrowing)
• infinite resignation
• knight of faith
• infinite qualitative distinction
• christendom
• repetition