Fear and Trembling :: Idea's that Cost :: Preface

The focus of K's preface on fear and trembling centres around the possibility of doubt and faith. In particular aspects of faith and doubt that are not immediately apparent from our Greco-Roman perspective.

K begins by casting doubt on the possibility that doubt and faith can be adequately circumvented to achieve any kind of certainty. K makes the twofold criticism that to proceed beyond one would need to (a) first have faith, and (b) know where one was to proceed to. The criticism at this point being that those who profess to have done so have, like poor mathematician's, failed to demonstrate their working out.

Instead what is available are proposed methods or definitions of the problem. K suggests there are aspects of both faith and doubt which cannot be understood in terms of abstract concepts; as such concepts do not account for why I might doubt or believe a thing.

K also employs a metaphor akin to the "market place of ideas" noting that there are significant "bargains" to be had therein. Here K is suggesting that the wealth of ideas available to the individual are cheap. As a reader I find myself asking the question "if it costs me nothing is it actually worth anything?" This is a fascinating idea that some aspects of being can, and perhaps should, cost the individual something. If we pause for a moment here to consider K's point we might well agree that the aspects of being most prised by humans are the most costly [love, justice, mercy, peace, forgiveness, faith and doubt to name a few].

K's criticism of the market place is not the wealth of available ideas but how little they cost the individual both in terms of time and commitment. Time as a cost implication is mentioned on two occasions. Firstly in relation to the Greeks and "doubt", and the second in relation to veterans and "faith". On both occasions K indicates that proficiency was historically considered to be the work of a lifetime. Yet we now find ourself in a time in which most individuals believe they can simply pickup where others left off.

Using Descartes and his method as an example K proceeds to point out the significance of both choice and commitment. Descartes acknowledged that is method held significance for him as an individual, and the route that he employed to arrive at his conclusions. For K it is the commitment to the method and not the method itself that is significant. The market place then has nothing of value to offer then because it cannot offer a commitment within which the individual is invested. The individual has not grappled, wrestled, struggled or striven to achieve they simply follow a method to an outcome that is (apparently) valuable. For K both doubt and faith require commitment over time and an investment from the individual. For K what actually seems to make something valuable is the individuals decision to invest himself in it.

Kierkegaard perceives faith and doubt as costly aspects of being that cannot be adequately explained away by formulae or pithy-zen statements. Why an individual might choose commit himself to one or the other over the course of his life cannot be adequately explained. Instead the individual is confronted with the choice to have faith or doubt indicating that what matters here is not the format that this takes -there are many readily available- but that one either commits himself or does not.

Fear and Trembling :: Why study this book? :: Context

Fear and trembling is one of those books that you read once, and barely understand. Read it twice, three times and you might deceive yourself into believing you grasped the most significant aspects. Yet with each successive visit you realise you had barely scratched the surface.

During my most recent visit I became acquainted with Fear and trembling as the stage on which Kierkegaard displays the distinctions between two mindsets that exist within western society. The Greco-Roman (GR) mindset that perceives Truth as objective, universal, timeless, critical, rational, detached and disembodied. The Judeo-Christian (JC) mindset that perceives Truth as subjective, local, historic, irrational, committed and embodied (Dreyfus, 2004).

The GR mindset finds it origin within the Heraclitian idea that there is an underlying Logos or structure within the world that can be discovered and understood. That the nature of a thing could be discovered by a process of reasoned argument, because the world follows consistent logical rules. This world view became embedded within western culture [see the enlightenment] and is perhaps most clearly exemplified within the work of G. W. F. Hegel.

Hegel perceived history as the triumphant and unrelenting progression of ideas within the world spirit [geist] towards freedom by means of the dialectic. Hegel asserted that within every thesis can be found ideas that dialectically lead to its own demise and the rise of a new dominant thesis; each step forward an increment in human rationality and freedom towards the end of 'absolute knowing' [Absolute Mind]. As such the highest goal for any individual is to set aside one's personal desires and ambitions and be motivated exclusively by the general interest of all. Yet this communitarian ethic was unpalatable for Kierkegaard who placed great significance on both individuality and individual choice.

The JC mindset, on the other hand, is one in which their is a relationship with Truth. I am in some way bound [or committed] to it. It is time and context specific and cannot be universalised. To exemplify this consider how one corpus of humans values individual autonomy in choosing a mate. For one group there is a significant emphasis on individual freedom in such a decision; any outside influence is no only considered undesirable but actively discouraged. The other believe and accept that others [family] should be involved in the  process and can even make arrangements without that individual's active participation. How one deigns to answer the question "Which is the best method?" is telling.

Agreement or disagreement we feel compelled to not a position but, our position. We have some ownership of this aspect of our being. Our compelling arguments may be based on rational ideas; but if we took a moment for self reflection we would discover those arguments are not what binds us to our decision. They are simply an afterthought; rationalisations to make us feel better about our commitment to the Universal norm in our own corpus of humanity. Our rationalisations expose our commitment to values we maintain to be true.

For Kierkegaard the GR world view does not offer a complete account of how humans exist within the world. Our relationship with truth is not dispassionate, cold and disinterested in matters of value. We are instead driven by irrational passions to bind ourselves to local and historic truths which are as absolute to us in our contexts as they will be absolute wrong to others in years to come. Without such a possibility there would be no passion in this world only quiet compliance. For this reason I choose to study Fear and Trembling