Kierkegaard Faith

The essence of science is Reason. Science can be defined as the relationship between cause and effect. “It is also the supreme passion of the Reason to seek a collision, though this collision must in one way or another prove its undoing” (Kierkegaard 291). Reason seeks to understand everything objectively, through thought and logic. Science uses a method to prove something. It comes up with a hypothesis, which needs to be verified empirically and experimented, before a conclusion can be reached. According to Soren Kierkegaard, Reason has a limit, and that limit is God. He says that the existence of God cannot be proved with the help of any sort of method or system, as is used in science. One has to have faith in God without knowing that He exists. What then is God? “It is the Unknown. It is not a human being, in so far as we know what man is; nor is it any other known thing” (Kierkegaard 291).
God, according to Kierkegaard is the ultimate unknown. He cannot be objectified. God is the ultimate limit of objectivity. He disagrees with the Hegelian theory of finding God through logic and reasoning. Unlike Hegel, he emphasizes on subjectivity, rather than objectivity. “Objectively, reflection is directed to the problem of whether this object is the true God” (Kierkegaard 302). An objective approach to God would be to look outside and try to find God, with the aid of reason and empirical evidence. An objective approach is the ‘what’ approach to God. Kierkegaard claims such an approach is blasphemous. He feels that one needs to have faith in the existence of God and the existence of God can only be proved if it is presumed that God exists. “Subjectively, reflection is directed to the question whether the individual is related to a something in such a manner that his relationship is in truth a God-relationship” (Kierkegaard 302). Knowledge of God is not essentially a knowledge. One finds God by looking within oneself and at one’s relations and self-commitments. The subjective approach is the ‘how’ approach to God. Attempting to prove the existence of God gives rise to a paradox. “The supreme paradox of all thought is the attempt to discover something that thought cannot think” (Kierkegaard 291). God is something that is not within the boundaries of thought, but it is within the boundaries of passion. But paradox is our food for thought. Our reason seeks paradox. Kierkegaard finds it impossible to prove the existence of God through reason and so he decides to prove that something that exists is infact God. He proposes “to prove that the Unknown, which exists, is the God” (Kierkegaard 292), explaining it by comparing it to a stone. He would not prove that a stone exists, but infact, would prove that something that exists is a stone. He says that God is a concept. There is an absolute relationship between God and the works of God. Only God can perform the tasks of God. Kierkegaard believes in God, but he doesn’t know if He exists.
He has faith in God. He challenges thought and objectivity in proving the existence of God. Unlike Hegel, he feels that faith is not within the sphere of reason instead, it is like God, it cannot be objectified. It is subjective. He treats religion and morality as inward convictions rather than logical conclusions on the existence of God. “Faith is precisely the contradiction between the infinite passion of the individual’s inwardness and the objective uncertainty” (Kierkegaard 306). Faith makes one cling on to objective uncertainty. The roots of faith lie in the contradiction and risk of believing in something without knowing. The objective uncertainty is the absurd. It is something that is unknown and can only be believed. It transitions from rational thought to something that is intellectually inaccessible. If someone tries to prove the object of his faith, he realizes, after his investigations, that he no longer has faith in the object. Faith is based on the absolute paradox. It is detached from
reason. God is a mere name we assign to the something that Reason collides with when attempting to explain the Unknown. Since God is the name given to the unknown, it is impossible to prove its existence. Reason cannot advance beyond God, but it cannot control its paradoxicalness from mulling over the Unknown as it seeks paradox. Reason seeks to determine the likeness or unlikeness of God to any other known thing, but it cannot because it does not know what God is, and thus cannot determine whether he’s like or unlike something else. One does not need to go to the house of God to find God, but one can find God by praying to an idol with a true heart. Thus there is no system of proving the existence of God. God is just a belief, a faith, something that can never be known or proved by Science or Reason.