Reconciling Objective and Subjective

If Heidegger’s existentialism sought to reconcile a perspective of Christian theology with the modern age’s fragmented self, Kierkegaard took a different path, one that rejected even the idea of universal truths in favour of the individual, as the sole arbiter of meaning and beauty. Is this not a structure built on the ruins of reason to reach deity, where language crumbles under the weight of personal revelation and faith becomes a solipsistic echo chamber? Is this not a Babel Tower in every way?

Kierkegaard famously declared that “truth is subjectivity,” a claim that sets him apart from both Hegel (with his grand, impersonal dialectics) and the logical positivism (which sought to constrain all valid knowledge to verifiable observation alone). For Kierkegaard, truth is not found in the material world or even in any collective consciousness of humanity or anything beyond; it resides within the individual, who must “leap” beyond reason into faith. This leap, he claimed, is not a step backward into ignorance but a transcendent act that elevates the human soul to communion with the divine. This is confused. It is a complicated way of saying that faith is based in ignorance, but then deifying the ignorance; what Kierkegaard proffers is the literal enshrinement of the individual will in ignorance. Ignorance is outside God, and can only lead us into temptation and toward worship of material powers. Ignorance is the multilayered basic state humanity. To truly accept it is to counter it; to consider ignorance itself as part of the grand mystery is like trying to ride on a rail without a train. Ignorance is an active force and connotes faith in one’s own will above any other. Ignorance isn’t simply one issue, it is a collection of problems within the nature of imperfect mortality. If Kierkegaard’s faith is considered an active letting go of that which overcomes ignorance, with the enshrinement of ignorance as the path, all is lost.

Contrarily, acceptance of our imperfections is the first comprehension of greatness beyond ourselves, but there can be no indulgence here in our personality; which is the shadow of the magnified ego which is never let go in any of this. To “leap” into ignorance is to pretend that our understandings have hit some upper limit, which is pure ego in our imperfections. The leap in faith Kierkegaard argues for is no different than any other ‘faith,’ since it is a reversal on the immanent comprehension (overcoming ignorance) and a forfeiting into our own imperfections (ignorance; despite what he claims), rather than devotion to what is truly greater than ourselves. This is proven by his conclusions in existentialism, an enshrinement of the self, which is little different from a weak Epicureanism or a spruced up satanism with pretty pictures and ‘best’ intentions.

On a practical level, this is the death of true faith, since faith is regarded as less; only attainable through the placement of ignorance itself over reason. This is a denial of greatness, and can never strive for the highest Good. If there is not the greatest greatness, if that does not exist, then everything is a race to the existentialist bottom, and all power falls to materialists. Christians must be reasonable, and must find logic, as well they must use logical positivism as a very powerful tool from God, rather than counter-signalling it.

Yet here lies the paradox: if truth is subjective, then how can we ever claim it as truth at all? Kierkegaard’s philosophy, like Heidegger’s existentialism, risks reducing Christianity to an intensely personal experience rather than a shared, objective reality. Plainly, we cannot pretend that all definitions of faith are the same, and clearly, it must be, that different deities or ideas about deity should have quite distinct expectations for faith. To speak of faith as merely a “leap” implies that the self must abandon reason altogether whenever asked to, a move that echoes the Tower of Babel, where humanity unreasonably sought to reach heaven through its own strength and was scattered by divine intervention.

The lesson here is against putting human judgement above that of God, not the abandonment of judgement entirely. What kind of deity asks of you to go against all reason in slaughtering an innocent, for instance, simply to prove themselves? How does this prove anything besides gullibility on the part of the man and evil on the part of the entity pretending to deity? Faith to a good loving God could not be proved through blind evil. Nothing short of goodness could confirm ourselves to a good loving God, and so this faith must be faith in the goodness of God; therefore clearly, requested evil would be proof against an entity being your good God of unlimited love. Besides, our Christian God only requires faith and needs no proof because He owns our hearts and minds, in complete access immanently. This suggests that what is in Genesis 22 is proof of Abraham failing the trial of temptation. He reasoned that God would bring back Isaac, which is not what happened. According to the story, God stopped him, so that his faith here was in his false idea of deity but God’s intercession was completely different from his expectations; not physical.

In this light, the emphasis on individuality becomes not only a philosophical stance but an anti-cultural force; a way of thinking that privileges the self over greatness in reality and the material over the spiritual; determined over destined. In fact, it is a denial of greatness, and intrinsic submission to nothingness. If there is greatness, then there is ultimate greatness, and if there is ultimate greatness, then noumenality is present at the very highest level, no matter how artificial one might argue our imperfect representations of it; fuzziness does not mean nothingness, it means shortsightedness of our material. This is a truth, not anything illogical or unreasonable and is proved by the limitations of our language to capture reality and there is no leap necessary. Existentialism, on the other hand, is a worldview that has unfortunately been allowed to reshape modern Western conceptions of duty, culture, responsibility, and purpose as designed by the individual who is sole creator and consumer of meaning. But does this not lead us to a dangerous place? There is no security or liberty in a world where truth is no longer shared, but fragmented into incomprehension, each as invalid as the next in claimed primacy, with nothing effectively true?

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