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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
Kierkegaard's leap of faith is one of the most thoroughly explored topics in modern philosophy. What can yet another inquiry into this notion hope to achieve? A number of significant things, I think, of both historical and systematic value.
The main contention of this paper is that the leap of faith, often associated with the emergence of existentialism, is Kierkegaard's response to a problem which is essentially Kantian in origin and structure. Kierkegaard wants to accomodate both the Kantian interpretation of morality as rational command and Kant's insistence on morality as the sole point of access to religion, while rejecting the Kantian moralization of religion and rationalization of faith. The leap of faith is not, as existentialism would have it, an absolute beginning in philosophy or in individual reflection but a transition from morality to religion within an essentially Kantian context.
page 159 note 1 Kierkegaard, Soren, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. Swenson, D. F. and Lowrie, W..(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941), pp. 54, 85, 268, 350.Google Scholar
page 159 note 2 ibid. pp. 18, 54.
page 160 note 1 Kierkegaard, , Either/Or, trans. Swenson, David F.. and Swenson, Lillian Marvin (Garden City: Anchor Books, Doubleday, 1959), 1: 20, 74.Google Scholar See also Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 226.Google Scholar
page 160 note 2 Ibid.
page 160 note 3 ibid. pp. 92, 304.
page 160 note 4 Kierkegaard, , Either/Or, trans. Lowrie, Walter (Garden City: Anchor Books, Doubleday, 1959), pp. 44, 61; 2:41, 61.Google Scholar
page 160 note 5 ibid. p. 21.
page 160 note 6 ibid. p. 22.
page 161 note 1 ibid. p. 260.
page 161 note 2 ibid. p. 268.
page 161 note 3 ibid. p. 270.
page 161 note 4 This is, I believe, the significance of Kierkegaard's analysis in ‘Ultimatum’, Either/Or, 2: 341–56.Google Scholar
page 161 note 5 Kierkegaard, , Fear and TremblingGoogle Scholar in Fear and Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death, trans. Lowrie, Walter (Garden City: Anchor Books, Doubleday, 1954), pp.68–9.Google Scholar
page 162 note 1 The establishment of this point is the main purpose of Kierkegaard's, Philosophical Fragments, trans. Swenson, David F.. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962).Google Scholar See also Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 182.Google Scholar
page 162 note 2 Kierkegaard, , Concluding Unscientific Postscript, pp. 118, 182.Google Scholar
page 162 note 3 ibid. p. 188.
page 162 note 4 ibid. p. 116.
page 162 note 5 Kierkegaard, , Fear and Trembling, pp. 64–77.Google Scholar
page 162 note 6 ibid. p. 70.
page 162 note 7 ibid. p. 69.
page 162 note 8 ibid. p. 77.
page 163 note 1 ibid. p. 66.
page 163 note 2 Kierkegaard, , Concluding Unscientific Postscript, pp. 96, 231.Google Scholar
page 163 note 3 Kant, Immanuel, The Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Beck, Lewis White (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1956), pp.114–36.Google Scholar
page 166 note 1 Sartre, Jean-Paul, ‘The Singular Universal’, in Kierkegaard: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Thompson, Josiah (Garden City: Doubleday, 1972), p. 262.Google Scholar
page 167 note 1 Buber, Martin, ‘What is Man?’ in Between Man and Man, trans. Smith, Ronald Gregor (London: Collins, 1947), p. 244.Google Scholar
page 167 note 2 See Buber's, ‘Replies to My Critics’, in The Philosophy of Martin Buber, edited by Schilpp, Paul Arthur and Friedman, Maurice (La Salle: Open Court, 1967), p. 720.Google Scholar
page 167 note 3 Kierkegaard, , Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 182.Google Scholar
page 168 note 1 ibid. p. 181.
page 168 note 2 ibid. p. 109.
page 170 note 1 ibid. p. 119.
