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| El Nido, Palawan, Philippines |
What best defines man? We are used to the Aristotelian
definition of man as a rational being. Does rationality totally capture the
essence of man? It is true that what separates and distinguishes us from the
other terrestrial creatures is our rationality. But why is it that man sometimes
acts irrationally or lives like a beast? Rationality expresses a truth about
the human being, but it does not totally encompass the true nature of man or
exhaust it. Furthermore, Aristotle sustained that all men by nature desire to
know.[1]
Knowledge is a characteristic proper to man. Man is the only animal capable of
knowledge of the first principles and the ultimate causes of beings. But why is
it even the so-called wise men cannot find or accept the truth? So many human
beings are wise but they do not live like true men. This is the paradox of man.
Man is a paradox. It is difficult to understand or know who man is from mere
earthly perspectives. It may be apt to define man as someone who searches for
the truth. Rationality is incomprehensible if it does not have truth as the aim
of its activity. Wisdom or knowledge is nonsense if it does not have truth as
its goal. Man is a searcher of truth. But what is truth? How can man achieve or
arrive at truth?
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| Mactan Island, Cebu, Philippines |
These are the questions that the Danish philosopher, Sören Kierkegaard wanted to answer in his seminal work Philosophical Fragments or a Fragment of
Philosophy. However, he was not interested with the finite truth. He did
not seek for the truth of the philosophers. What he wanted to know and arrive
at is the Eternal Truth that philosophy could not achieve to acquire. So it is
understandable that he used Christian vocabulary in his method in order to
arrive at truth. But for him, the knowledge of truth and its subsequent
acquisition is subjective, not objective. The way or method to the knowledge of
truth does not employ the usual philosophical arguments because it involves
with a leap.
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| Calanggaman Island, Leyte, Philippines |
How far does the Truth admit of being learned? He began his
exposition with this question. The Truth is something necessary that man could
not evade or ignore. Thus, he stated: “In so far as the Truth is conceived as
something to be learned, its non-existence is evidently presupposed, so that in
proposing to learn it one makes it the object of inquiry” (ch.1, 1). The Truth
is the object of man’s learning. How do we learn or acquire knowledge of it?
This is where he was interested with. But the acquisition of knowledge is
itself a paradox: “One cannot seek for what he knows, and it seems equally
impossible for him to seek for what he does not know. For what a man knows he
cannot seek, since he knows it; and what he does not know he cannot seek, since
he does not even know for what to seek” (ch.1, 1). Therefore Truth is not an
object of search. Searching thus is an absurdity. But how can we arrive at the
Truth if there is no need to search? We understand learning as acquisition of
knowledge for we do not have a previous knowledge, like a child who does not
have a previous knowledge of what numbers are before studying arithmetic. But
for Kierkegaard, learning is not acquisition or search for the Truth. For him,
learning is recollection: “One who is ignorant needs only a reminder to help
him come to himself in the consciousness of what he knows” (ch.1, 1).
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| Sta. Cruz Island, Zamboanga City, Philippines |
Aristotle opined that our mind is a tabula rasa prior to the acquisition of any knowledge. It means
that we do not have innate ideas. But in Phaedo, Plato used recollection to
prove the immortality of the soul, thus knowledge for him comes subjectively.
It is in this Platonic thinking that Kierkegaard based his epistemology. Thus
for the Danish philosopher, the knowledge of the Truth does not come from
outside sources, nor to be sought outside of man for according to him, “the
Truth is not introduced into the individual from without, but was within him” (ch.1,
1). All what man has to do is to remember, to recollect. Man has already the truth implanted in him
since his birth or existence. The presence of truth is innate in man. “My
relation to Socrates or Prodicus cannot concern me with respect to my eternal
happiness, for this is given me retrogressively through my possession of the
Truth, which I had from the beginning without knowing it”(ch.1, 3). In short,
man has an innate knowledge. This defines the epistemology of Kierkegaard.
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| Samal Island, Davao del Norte, Philippines |
But why does man err? Why is he lost? Why do men dispute each
other? Kierkegaard pointed out ignorance as the culprit. In his ignorance, man
veers away from the truth. But ignorance could not be accountable to God. “In
so far as the learner exists he is already created, and hence God must have
endowed him with the condition for understanding the Truth. For otherwise his
earlier existence must have been merely brutish”(ch.1, 4). Rather ignorance of
the Truth owes to one’s fault. It is man’s own deliberative action. Man wills
to be in the state of Error (sin). Since he is in the state of Error, man could
not remember anymore the Truth.
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| Unnamed & uninhabited islands, Sulu, Philippines |
In this epistemological explanation of Kierkegaard about
truth and ignorance, we can draw out also his anthropological point of view. John
Paul II defined man as a searcher of the Truth.[2]
Man is incomprehensible without the Truth. Man is totally doomed without the
Truth. Precisely the abuses committed against man are perpetrated out of simple
ignorance or willful rejection of the true dignity of man. In the same way for
Kierkegaard, man is incomprehensible without the Truth, since he was created
with the Truth embedded in his very nature. Without it, man could not be man.
But the act of searching signifies that the Truth is not within himself, but
rather outside. What the encyclical tries to convey is that man could not be
the arbiter of truth. If man is the arbiter of truth, then Truth is relative.
Rather, due to sin, man has lost his connection with the Truth though not
totally. Man is endowed with intelligence and will, faculties that were not
lost, that will help him reconnect with the Truth. Thus even Aristotle affirmed
this when he began his work Metaphysics
with the phrase: All men by nature want to know. In Kierkegaard, however, man
does not need to search for the Truth for it is within him: “For the Truth in
which I rest was within me, and came to light through myself” (ch.1, 3). A
seeker is someone who does not have the possession of what he seeks for or what
he lacks. Thus he seeks it for he needs it. The very act of searching implies
the absence of the object. But for Kierkegaard, the Truth is not absolutely
absent in man. He thus stated: “The seeker must be destitute of the Truth up to
the very moment of his learning it” (ch.1, 3). Man could not be therefore
described or considered as a seeker.
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| Apo Island, Palawan, Philippines |
Who is man for Kierkegaard then? Man thus for him is a holder
or bearer of Truth. He averred: “Since it appears that at the bottom every
human being is in possession of the Truth” (ch.1, 3). Kierkegaard however did
not say that man is the owner of the Truth for it would contradict his whole
stance. Why then man needs to learn or re-learn the Truth if he has it in his
possession ever since? Ignoring the truth or departing from it, that is,
willfully rejecting it is what leads man to the state of Error. Ignoring the
truth is not the same as ignorance of the Truth. In the act of ignoring, one is
conscious of his act. It is a deliberative act. Thus Kierkegaard stated: “For
my own Error is something I can discover only by myself, since it is only when
I have discovered it that it is discovered, even if the whole world knew of it
before” (ch.1, 4). The greatest problem of man, the “learner”, is that he is in
the state of Error and he is not aware of his own ignorance of his error. It means
that man is ignorant of his ignoring the Truth. And man cannot redeem himself
from his own error. He needs someone to remind him that he is in the state of
Error. It seems that Kierkegaard had criticized his contemporary philosophers
for complicating and debasing the Truth with their absurd philosophies.
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| Caramoan, Camarines Sur, Philippines |
Here, Kierkegaard appealed to a figure of the Teacher. No
learner could take himself out from the state of Error unless someone will
remind him of his miserable condition. But no one could be a teacher to himself
since he could not teach what he is ignorant of. The role of the teacher,
according to Kierkegaard, is to remind the learner that he is in the state of
Error, not precisely to take him out from that state: “The teacher is merely an
occasion whoever he may be, even if he is a God” (ch.1, 4). It seems that the
Teacher has a passive role. It is understandable because Kierkegaard wanted to
be coherent with his epistemology in line with Plato: that man knows already
everything and that the task of the teacher is to draw it out. But Kierkegaard
went beyond this Platonic thinking because for him, the problem is that man
must find the Teacher who will remind him of his error and provide him the
means to know again the Truth. Unlike Plato however, Kierkegaard believed that
no mere man could take up the role of the Teacher because the Teacher does not
only give the learner the requisite condition, but the Teacher himself is the
Truth (cf. ch.1, 5): “The Teacher is then God himself, who in acting as an
occasion prompts the learner to recall that he is in Error.” This Teacher is
also the original creator of his human nature who gave him the Truth and with
it the condition (cf. ch.1, 4).
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| Siargao Islands, Surigao del Norte, Philippines |
However since God is the Unknown, He could not be a Teacher
to man since God is totally different from him, therefore God could not make
himself be understood by man. He asked: “What then is the Unknown?” And then he
answered it immediately: “It is the limit to which the Reason repeatedly
comes…, it is the absolutely different. But because it is absolutely different,
there is no mark by which it could be distinguished”(cf. ch.3, 5). He
maintained that Reason can never obtain the knowledge of the Unknown. Reason
could never understand God, “for if God is absolutely unlike man, then man is
absolutely unlike the God; but how could the Reason be expected to understand
this?” (ch.3, 6) This is an indication of the aversion of Kierkegaard to
natural theology or theodicy. This is also a denunciation of the German
Idealists’ pantheism and idealism. Kierkegaard might also have Hegel in mind,
denouncing his rationalization of God and of the Christian mysteries. For him,
we cannot prove the existence of God by mere Reason: “The paradoxical passion
of the Reason thus comes repeatedly into collision with this Unknown, which
does indeed exist, but is unknown, and in so far does not exist. The Reason
cannot advance beyond this point, and yet it cannot refrain in its
paradoxicalness from arriving at this limit and occupying itself therewith” (ch.3,
4). Kierkegaard believed that God’s existence does not need any proof: “His
existence does indeed explain his deeds, but the deeds do not prove his existence”
(ch.3, 3).
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| Sohuton Lagoons, Surigao del Norte, Philippines |
To the question how can God be the Teacher to man, thus Kierkegaard
answered, “in order to be man’s Teacher, (the) God proposed to make himself
like the individual man, so that he (man) might fully understand him (God/
Truth)” (ch.3, 6). And for Kierkegaard, this is the Absolute Paradox. Christian
doctrine is full of paradoxical tenets: Jesus Christ as true God and true man;
life after death; manifestation of love through death. The Absolute Paradox
will forever remain a headache to Reason. Reason could never reconcile with it.
Thus Kierkegaard mentioned another form of knowledge that could transcend the
boundaries that limit Reason: Faith. For him, only the knowledge of Faith could
understand the Absolute Paradox. Only through faith that man could re-learn the
truth.
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| Hamilo Coast, Bataan, Philippines |
Here Kierkegaard transports us from a philosophical
epistemology to theological epistemology. He believed that since God/ Truth/
the Unknown is beyond our comprehension, this Truth appears to us in the form
of a paradox. Reason could never understand contradictions though a paradox itself
is not a contradiction. But for reason, it is a contradiction. Only Faith could
reconcile “contradictions”. In the thought of Kierkegaard, the object of Faith
is the Paradox. Thus he insisted: “No knowledge can have for its object the
absurdity that the Eternal is the historical” (ch.4, 5). This Paradox incites
offense in the non-believer because he cannot understand what he tries to
understand. Since reason cannot transcend itself or go beyond its limit, thus
it considers everything beyond its scope as absurdity. With the image of the
French Revolution fresh in his mind, Kierkegaard seemed to criticize those who
exalt the primacy of reason and retorted with an argument that it is the
Paradox that makes Reason absurd: “Since the Paradox has made the Reason
absurd, the regard of the Reason is no reliable criterion” (ch.3, 9).
With this declaration of the defeat of the Reason by the
Paradox, Kierkegaard emphasized that the only way to approach the Paradox is
through Faith. Any way or type of knowledge is ridiculous. Thus only the
knowledge through Faith that one can know or grasp the Paradox since by its
nature it is unreachable by rational knowledge. Here we can detect the
influence of Fideism or the Lutheran tenet sola
fide in Kierkegaard.
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| Camiguin, Philippines |
With the status of Faith well in placed, Kierkegaard, this
time, equated Faith or belief with new existence, alluding to the Christian
doctrine of faith as new birth or a rebirth. Thus he stated: “Belief is a sense
for coming into existence” (Interlude, 8). And here we detect the
transcendental existentialism in Kierkegaard: “For belief and coming into existence
correspond to one another, and are concerned with the two negative
determinations of being, namely the past and the future, and with the present
in so far as it is conceived from the point of view of a negative determination
of being, namely as having come into existence” (Interlude, 9). Faith has
always the ever present as its time. Kierkegaard concluded: “For Faith does not
have to do with essence, but with being [historical
existence], and the assumption that the God determines him eternally and not
historically (Interlude, 10).
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| Boracay Island, Aklan, Philippines |
There
is also an influence of Hegel in Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard distanced himself
from the Platonic belief that the individual has an existence prior to his
coming into being, thus his nature is determined in continuity with itself. Instead,
he aligned himself with Hegel with this statement: “But in our project, on the
contrary, everything is forward-looking and historical, so that the notion of
being born with faith is as plausible as the notion of being born twenty-four
years old” (ch.5, 5). Kierkegaard followed Hegel’s historicism but with his
unique characteristic, paradoxical. We may call it transcendental historicism. Kierkegaard
considered faith as a birth within a birth (ch.5, 6). It is through faith that
man transcends history as he is born again, but he remains at the same time historical,
a product of his time. Thus he stated: “The absolute fact is an historical
fact, and as such it is the object of Faith (ch.5, 7). A person with faith is
always a contemporary whether he was born 1500 years ago or 15 years ago.
CONCLUSION
Kierkegaard
was a product of his time. He was influenced by his Idealist precursors and contemporaries,
but at the same, he tried to break free from being associated with them. He
distinguished himself from the predominantly pantheistic and atheistic
atmosphere of his time. Kierkegaard wanted to know the truth of human
existence, but for him it could not be totally answered by purely human
reasoning. His work can also be considered as a reaction against Hegel’s
intention to demystify the Christian revelation and eventually, rationalize the
Christian faith. Kierkegaard subtly criticized the philosophers and historians
who tried to prove Christianity through empty reasoning. Thus for Kierkegaard,
there are only two choices: either believe or be offended.
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| Sören Kierkegaard |
