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

How Soren Kierkegaard’s view on faith and reason should be interpreted remains a fertile philosophical question. Three prominent interpretations include irrationalism, antirationalism, and suprarationalism. Irrationalism, the view that faith demands the utter disavowal of reason, has been challenged (Evans 1989; Evans 1983). While, on the one hand, antirationalism posits an antagonism: reason has a role, but is impotent in accessing the truths of faith (Carr 1996; Buben 2013; Kemp, Della 2022). On the other hand, suprarationalism argues that reason can have a role for faith: faith is above—but not at odds with—reason (Fremstedal 2022; Evans 2010). There is healthy debate and interpretation amid these general camps. But Kierkegaard’s deeply important emphasis on the dynamic of the self and subjectivity, especially the existential and ethical dimensions of faith which demand risk and offense have not been sufficiently emphasized. However, in my paper I argue that Kierkegaard (particularly the pseudonymous texts of Johannes Climacus and Anti-Climacus), should not be read as landing in any one camp in a rigid conceptual debate on faith and reason. Rather, as I interpret, given that Kierkegaard stresses the dynamism and tension of the self as striving and appropriating the ethical to actuality, the “finite to the infinite,” faith and reason’s tension implicates a tension of the self (Kierkegaard 1980, 13). Implied in this tension and synthesis is that faith and reason are bound up with the existential and personal risk of the subject (Kierkegaard 1941, 133). Though the good and the true outstrip her reason, their appropriation into actuality, is crucial to the task of selfhood for the subject. 

Further, human thought is not purely logical, it is also reflective. That is, reflective reason is the passionate capacity in the self to reflect on and care for, the eternal, the true, and the good (Kierkegaard 1980, 46). The passion of faith is the capacity in the self to risk itself, and take responsibility for appropriating the ethical truths which offend—that is surpass—human thought and conceptual communicability. While the scholarly debate and literature raises conceptual problems—I argue that the topic of faith and reason should not be understood as a purely logical dialectic, but a dialectic of the self. To support my argument, I first examine how the nature of the self, as spirit, or the synthesis between the “infinite and finite,” is tasked with appropriating reflective thought and faith to become a self. (Kierkegaard 1980, 13-14). I emphasize that the task of relating to, and caring for the eternal and ethical, poses an offense to the self—but is also part of the nature of the self as synthesis. I stress that for Anti-Climacus, the tension and relationship of faith and reason implicates the self’s striving to appropriate the ethical, the eternal and the good into temporal existence. Hence, faith and reflection are implicated in the self as spirit, which is to relate the finite and infinite. While such a relation seems conceptually paradoxical, it should not be understood on these terms. Rather, the paradoxicality speaks to the tension and dynamic of the self, the kind of self that can relate its thought to its being; a self that can relate to the true and the good, and appropriate it existentially. Subjectivity implies the dynamic capacity of reflecting on truth and faith appropriating it. The self as spirit holds itself accountable before the good, the eternal, which is to “rest transparently” before God (Kierkegaard 1980, 14). That is, faith and reason are not a conceptual tension, nor can they be. The self as relation between the finite and infinite that reflects a personal and existential task to appropriate the ethical; and to do so is to take up the dynamic task of relating reflective thought and appropriative faith within existence.

Building on the relation between faith and relation and the self, I argue that the risk posed by faith, by appropriating the eternal and ethical, is not an intellectual or conceptual risk—it is a risk to the self understood as a synthesis (Kierkegaard 1941, 133). While conceptually, it seems impossible, and offensive to risk oneself to the good, and the true, to relate myself before God, it is only offensive and paradoxical conceptually. It is not impossible, but it is an existential risk. Faith means appropriating thought into being, it means commitment to dynamically becoming spirit. Our reflective thinking and faith must relate to each other. Faith appropriates truth that outstrips the capacities of reflective thought; the infinite is appropriated into the finite, and this tense dynamic relation is an existential task, a task that constitutes the self’s becoming spirit (Kierkegaard 1941, 182-183). Passionate care for the eternal, the ethical, and relating oneself before God seems offensive but it rather reflects the incommunicable task of becoming spirit, and the capacity humans have, as dynamic selves for appropriating the infinite within time if we are willing to risk passionately taking up the task of selfhood. 

All told, I suggest that it is important for Kierkegaard that the tension between faith and reason is understood as implicating and reflecting the tension between the self as a synthesis between temporality and eternality. That is, the self is a being that must risk offense in the face of relating itself before the “power that established it,” and to relate to this power is to appropriate, as a self, reflective thought and faith that forms the dynamic of the parts of the self as a dialectical synthesis (Kierkegaard 1980, 14).