Sárospataki Füzetek 15. (2011)
2011 / 4. szám - TANULMÁNYOK - Kónya Péter: Szlovák reformátusok a 17-18. században
Sawyer. Frank gaard knows no bounds in criticising Hegel, for Hegel (and others) trick us into thinking that we can approach the truth as a “continuous world-historical process” in an objective way and this process says nothing about the individual.14 S. Kierkegaard also said that the Hegelian world-historical dialectic was like a cow chewing its cud and regurgitating it and chewing it again.15 But the repetition does not guarantee the result promised. Compared to Kant and the Enlightenment, Hegel (and the Romantic Movement) had a renewed emphasis on the person of Jesus Christ (and the theme of incarnation fit perfectly for Hegel with the presence of the Divine Geisi). Hegel restored a philosophy of optimism.16 S. Kierkegaard like Hegel, emphasised the Incarnation, but not as a general reconciliation of all of reality in which we are all included, like it or not, but as requiring a leap of faith. Like Hegel, S. Kierkegaard turns to the primacy of will — but unlike Hegel, this is not the bulldozer effect of Absolute Spirit, but die will to choose. “In proportion as will has gone up in the scale, knowledge has gone down.”17 And looking at the movement from Enlightenment to Romanticism to Existentialism, we can say vice-versa: as the grasp of universal reason lost credibility, the turn to the subject and to will (or ‘my choice’) increased. However, S. Kierkegaard reacted to a number of basic Hegelian thoughts, such as: ‘The finite has no genuine being’; or, ‘Man owes his entire existence to the state’; or, ‘The real is the rational and the rational is the real’. S. Kierkegaard did at times imitate Hegel’s dense manner of explaining things, so that the more he explained, the more complicated things became. Over against Hegel’s philosophy of (rational) continuity between everything, S. Kierkegaard places the discontinuity of things and the need for a leap beyond reason. Reason can compose a system but existence disposes this when we face crises and ultimate questions. Then we cannot rely on calculation; we are left with an intuitive leap. A few dominant themes which S. Kierkegaard distilled from his reaction to Kant and Hegel, are: • Crisis of reason (reacted to Kant’s pure reason & Hegel’s dialectical system) • Existential emphasis (and intuitive living) • Significance of doubt: he was a master of suspicion • Life becomes real by means of crisis & choice (leap of faith) • Danger of collectivity (The Present Age) • Three stages in life/radical discipleship (Fear and Trembling) • Freedom with anxiety • Authenticity (commitment) • Life as primarily paradoxical (ambiguous and open to more than one interpretation) • False or true religion (comfortable or self-sacrificial) 14 S. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. H. & E. Hong (Princeton University Press, 1992), 33. 15 S. Kierkegaard’s journals and Papers, translated H. & E. Hong (Indiana University Press, 1975). 16 Diogenes Allen, Philosophy for Understanding Theology (Atlanta: John Knox, 1985), 221ff. 17 Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972), 759. 58 Sárospataki Füzetek 2011/4
