Climacus on the Self as Synthesis: Risking Faith and Reason in Kierkegaard

How Kierkegaard’s view on the relationship between faith and reason should be interpreted remains a fertile question. Prominent interpretations have debated the relationship between faith and reason in terms of their greater or lesser conceptual compatibility or opposition. However, in this paper I argue that Kierkegaard should not be interpreted as laying claim to or landing in a rigid conceptual debate about faith and reason. If faith and reason implicate the ethical and existential commitment of the self, and the self is a dynamic synthesis that temporally strives to live out and relate to the good and the true. I argue that to understand faith and reason, the self must be examined. The self as a synthesis is tasked with reflecting on the true and good. Although the true and eternal offends, that is, outstrips her reason, she is tasked with appropriating and evincing a relation that truth existentially.