Thomas Covenant as existentialism – interesting.
Thanks for sharing the abstract. It’s pretty good. Although, I wouldn’t like to attempt one myself. My notebook and book margins demonstrate that I haven’t come close to pulling anything so cogent or insightful together. Always easier to criticize than produce. (That concept shows up in Fear and Trembling in the section on the assistant professors.)
Meaningless: I’ve read a small portion of his work. But in nearly everything I’ve read, Kierkegaard or his fictitious narrators, rework the logic or meaning of a number of concepts including “despair” and “faith”, often while reacting against or reconfiguring Hegel’s dialectical and systematic (speculative) work to the purpose of an ancient, even an orthdox* Christianity. The structures of his books, even when they appear to be highly structured and analytical as Sickness does, meander. This makes it very hard, as you have said earlier, to find a diffinitive quote. You might find a repeated quote that is meaningful in the context of the book, but enigmatic at best pulled out of context.
In Sickness the discussion of despair revolves around one’s relation to God. The “dynamic dialectic” that is at the beginning of the book includes “the eternal” (God) in all of these relating relations. The narrator repeats throughout the book: “Despair is sin.” “The opposite of sin is not virtue, but faith.” The narrator describes the person who is not in despair in this way: “In relating to itself, and in willing to be itself, the self is grounded transparently in the power that established it.” This is a self who recognizes itself as established by God, relates to God in this way and would have it no other way – wills to be itself. This person has faith, the opposite of sin.
Similar to many people in this forum, Kierkegaard has worked through ideas in his own way, seeing connections others missed and from them drawing unique conclusions. But his work is really always in relation to traditional Christianity with its traditional concepts of God, sin, atonement, etc.
I don’t know if it’s been any help to you to read this. Writing it may have been of most benefit to me.
*For all his theological uniqueness, SK was surprisingly orthodox. But different.
I used Dracula for my class discussion and term paper for my “intro” survey to critical theory. My classmates were probably rolling their interior eyes at my lack of sophisticaton. We begin where we are, though. The class almost killed me. But I learned a lot.
I don’t know Donaldson’s work, but did read the Wikipedia page about Woulded Land. Why do you see using his book for your class as daring?
Kierkegaard’s narrator calls despair sin, because he sees the self as existing in relation to, and in actively relating to God. Without willingly being oneself in this way, the narrator claims one is in despair. One who does not see oneself in this way or will to be so lacks faith. And the opposite of faith is sin.
It’s an entirely different concept of despair than most people have in mind.
As with much of Kierkegaard’s work, this one is slippery, always making the reader ask what we are really talking about. Despair? Faith? The self?
While the book provides an excrutiatingly detailed analysis of despair in the unique terms of the narrator, it is really (I think) an exploration of the ways the self relates or doesn’t relate to God and how that affects our individual development of the self.
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for the term paper.
It was popular fiction and not recognized as an existentialist work or writer. I think it is “safer” to choose something written by a writer recognized as existentialist. This is probably what most students in the class did. Of course, I don’t know. I didn’t see them.
At least that one is classic literature. Still you are obviously aware even this was daring. How much more so a modern work of popular fantasy fiction?
Our thinking is linked but certainly not the same. Since I see a faith in God as the same as a faith that life is worth living, it is not strange to me to think of despair as the opposite of faith. What is strange to me is this idea that the opposite of faith is sin. This certainly doesn’t agree with my understanding of sin as self-destructive habits, and it isn’t quite the classical understanding of sin either. Faith is the way to salvation from sin.
I guess it is not so strange when you think of A&E’s original sin as a lack of faith. It is not my way of thinking, but not so strange. Hmmm… perhaps what gets in the way is the idea of faith as belief in dogma which I don’t agree with anyway. Certainly I don’t agree it is sin not to be Christian. But the way I often describe faith as doing good for its own sake, seeing sin as the opposite isn’t quite so strange. Still, it is not what I understand as sin.
(emphasis mine)
Yay! I’m not the only one who thinks so!
I remember Oswald Hoffman quoting that in a Lutheran Hour broadcast. The message title was something like “Stop Worrying About Sin”. He tied it to Paul’s statement that God has prepared good works for us to do.
I’ve been wrestling with the idea that somewhere along the line the Creed(s) went from being a declaration of Whom we believe in to being treated as statements of what we believe. That’s a shift that’s easy to make in English due to the different uses of the preposition “in”; I suspect the same is true in Latin but have forgotten too much to be sure of it. In Greek, though, the preposition is actually “into” – “I believe into” does not indicate a statement of propositions to which agreement is given but a declaration of putting trust in the object, so when the Creed starts out “I believe in one God, the Father…” it isn’t intended as a statement of dogma but as a confession of trust.
I was once invited to preach and the text for the specific Sunday was one on faith, and I took the liberty of having the Creed printed in the service bulletin, but with the above change, so it said, "I put my trust in one God, the Father . . . I put my trust in one Lord Jesus Christ . . . I put my trust in the Holy Spirit . . . ". More than one person afterwards said they finally understood why the Creed is recited in church!
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In a master’s level English class, Dracula and Wounded Land would be equally esteemed. As “popular” and “unsophisticated.”
Reading Kierkegaard sometimes gives my brain cramps. Here is his justification.
No, the opposite of sin is faith , as is therefore stated in Romans 14:23: “Whatsoever is not of faith is sin.” And this is one of the definitions that is decisive for the whole of Christianity: that the opposite of sin is not virtue, but faith.
S. Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death Bruce Kirmmse trans., pg. 107.
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How could one not notice?
I had a couple of classmates who absolutely loved Kierkegaard and would never have admitted such a thing – and one professor who said we had to learn to appreciate his way of thinking.
“Mind” is different from consciousness. I’m one of the “some” who would say it’s a product of brain activity. It’s an oversimplification, but we lose consciousness every day when we fall asleep or when we undergo anesthesia for surgery. Until some new evidence comes along to change my mind, I’m ruling it out.
Nice of you to chalk it up to a willing refusal on my part. This is why I stopped responding to you a long time ago. Bye Mitchell. This is our last engagement. No need to read the rest.
I have more than one family member who suffers from bipolar. I hear you.
Okay. Lots of concepts are worth deep thought, but not all are worth accepting as valid.
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I understand the temptation but I don’t think science works best to decide what can be ruled out. Particular finding contribute most. But what we know by way of science is always a work in progress and subject to revision. Science isn’t comprehensive enough to rule on what can be ignored except for the moment when a particular path in research must be taken. You can’t go everywhere at once. But rather than opine dismissively about something as entirely nonsense or not worth it, it would be better to just recognize there are more promising projects to explore for now by in your opinion.
I was thinking this more and realized better how much we are ‘trapped’ in the worldview and input we get from others during our life. The detail that made me understand it was my attitude towards the welfare state. For someone else, the same could be true in their attitudes towards science or deviating religious doctrines.
What follows is an explanation what made me to better realize the above point. If you are not interested, you can stop reading here - no need to waste time…
I have grown in a country that could be labelled a welfare state (Finland): there has been good public healthcare, good public schools, etc. The other side of the coin is that the services are not cheap, so supporting the public welfare services necessarily means somewhat higher taxes. The cost of healthcare is lower than for example in USA because of the cost-effective and relatively fair system but there is a price tag. My family, relatives and friends have benefitted from the public services so much that I am a happy tax payer; the point is not how much you pay taxes, what matters is what you get with the tax money. We have got so much that the cost-benefit ratio is heavily positive for us.
Another detail that has made me value public services is attending to the street and welfare work among the poorest through churches.
Because of these experiences and growing in a bubble where the public welfare services are seen as a very positive thing, it has been natural to be a supporter of a welfare state.
Lately, I have read some books where the authors have been US-style libertarians. Minimal state intervention and minimal state services and control are seen as fundamentally good, the alternative is presented as a communist-type totalitarian system with oppression of citizens and forced takeover of private enterprises - a black-or-white choice between the good libertarian and the evil communist-type state.
As an addition to this libertarian worldview in the books, there has been a need to think about the matter because politicians with libertarian ideals have now increasing influence in our country. The Minister of Finance said that she is a libertarian. Lower taxes, lessened regulations but also less tax money for public welfare services, healthcare and education.
I tried to understand these differing opinions and realized that these opinions are not based on fully rational deduction. Much depends on what kind of social bubble we grow in. Those growing and living in a libertarian bubble with horror stories about what happens when the government gets too much power naturally tend to be pro-libertarian and anti-government. Those living in a welfare state grow to expect that the government provides good public services and people need to pay taxes to fund these services. In such a country, the government has necessarily more power, even if the system would otherwise be relatively free and promoting private business.
When analysed as objectively as possible, both alternatives have their strengths and weaknesses, so it is partly a matter of taste - what do you value more than the alternatives. Rather than seeing the other side (‘them’) as evil or mislead, the diverging opinions could act as a mirror that might help us to see the strengths and weaknesses of the alternatives better.
In reality, the emotions rising from the input we get in our social bubble may hamper or prevent the learning process. Because of the emotions, the nice idea of mutual benefits through learning by comparing the strengths and weaknesses of the differing worldviews will probably remain a dream that will not become reality, except for a small group of thinkers.
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Maddening but true.
Do you think, keeping your example in mind, that there are ways to weigh or evaluate things like, to stick with your example, the costs and benefits of a “welfare” (I know it’s the term that’s used. It has perjoritive implications here in the U.S. though.) state?
A society’s vaules should count for something, shouldn’t they? Attempting to gain the fullest possible perspective on the issue (for example state health care vs. the mess we have in the U.S. vs. maybe some other options), for example, I would think that a culture different from the U.S’s might look unfavorably on the senseless inequity that results from the lack of overall structure or inclusion that our system has.
In other words, are all strenghts and weaknesses of the same weight (or ethical value)?
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Cultural aspects play an important role.
For example, in Finland even the conservative (more right wing) parties support a decent public healthcare and public school system for everybody - they would loose too much votes if they did not support it. Because of this, in USA, these parties might be labelled as left wing parties, although they are not that.
It just shows how the different history and culture in these countries affects what is considered to be acceptable.
Politics is not my love - I leave it to others and do not want to go deeper into that area. What I think is relevant and perhaps possible to discuss here is how well these matters fit to the teachings of the biblical scriptures and Christian churches. In that, I think we have blind spots.
Organized care of the poor, having decent healthcare for all citizens, having public school system - in Finland, all these were founded on the ethical teachings of the Finnish Lutheran church.
Public schools developed from the teaching that the church arranged to everybody. You could not get married in the church before you had a minimum knowledge of the teachings of the church and for that, you needed to be able to read the catechism. The Lutheran church was practically a monopoly (all Christian citizens needed to belong to it, except the Orthodox minority) and living together without marriage was socially condemned, so there were no alternatives for the citizens.
The church also arranged help for the poor. Public healthcare insititutions started through the actions of active believers (benefactors) but got wide support and the practice spread around the country because they were considered to be ethically correct, based on the teachings of the Lutheran church.
What could be debated is whether the helping of the poor needs to happen through the organized society or whether it should be based on the voluntary donations of individuals.
Personally, I would be happy if we could organize the helping of the poor without governmental control. What the reality has revealed is that a large part of the wealthy people love and serve themselves and wealth more than God. If the organized society does not demand payments for this purpose (taxes), the poor do not get sufficient help.
Is that acceptable or not is an ethical question that we can and should think. Our cultural background is likely to affect our answers.
Science does not give answers to this kind of ethical questions. We can observe and document how many starve or die to curable health problems without organized public aid and healthcare. Documenting such events does not tell whether it is good or bad. It only turns to ‘good’ or ‘bad’ after the facts have been filtered through our mind that is not an objective judge.
Edit:
Sorry for the unaware selection of words that may sound politically loaded in USA. That was not my intention. I tried to find correct words by translating the Finnish terms to English. The basic dictionaries do not reveal the emotional and political baggage the words might have in the current debates.
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I actually didn’t notice much that is.
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I heard that referred to as a “foundationally funded” state, the idea being that using a ‘reverse income tax’ at the bottom end guaranteed customers for businesses.
Some cultures different from the U.S. look at our system and see an inefficient corporatism rather than free-market capitalism, because it’s been shown clearly that universal health care, a high minimum wage, and generous support for the poor contributes to a robust economy. So even just an argument from economic efficiency suffices to say the U.S. is doing it wrong.
It seems that such give a sense of hope and trust to those who are economically below the average. Poor that feel they have nothing to loose or no hope are potential supporters of rebellion, revolution or violent demonstrations. They may also be more vulnerable to the temptations of crime, especially if they feel that it is the only way to get enough of money. If they feel they are treated wrongly by authorities, that makes the situation worse.
Unstability is poison to the economy, and safety of your dear ones has value, so an investment to the poor through taxes may be beneficial for the wealthy - it may act as some kind of insurance payment that helps to stabilize the surrounding society. Even those who do not value people should understand the meaning and value of insurance payments.
I don’t know what these practical observations tell about humans. Sometimes it feels enough that something works and everything is ok, even if we would not understand the philosophical ideas behind the phenomena.
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I think it tells that humans benefit from both competition and cooperation. This makes sense; competition drives us to improve, while cooperation makes sure no one falls behind so far that they have no room to improve.
It points to why experiments such as one done in (IIRC) San Diego have worked: They did away with all the bureaucratic hoops people were required to jump through and just provided housing and cash. Building on the sense of security that provided, some of the participants went back to school to aim for new careers, some even started businesses. Yes, there were some who didn’t change, but only a small fraction, and many took advantage of counseling to work through the seemingly unshakeable senses of hopelessness.
I keep thinking there’s something existential in there, but as I’ve said I never grasped existentialism well (if at all) and thus can’t really say.
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Existentialism turns up in the Porcine History of Philosophy and Religion.
The essay by Marx that I read in my political science course was a reasonable argument, but with flawed premises. Marx reflects an Enlightenment-style pseudoscientific formula, in which the assumed formula overrules the facts. Like creation science, Marxism assumes that having sciency-sounding formulas makes something scientific, when in reality it is the process of testing and correction of ideas that exemplifies science.
Fortunately my memory from reading Camus’s The Stranger in French class was good enough to not have to re-read it for English. Sartre and Camus both emphasize the constraints imposed by circumstances, society, etc., but aren’t strong on logical consistency - it seems more like blaming or excusing than serious work to address the problems.
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Considering how easy it is to come up with whatever premises you need to get the conclusion you want, I don’t think logically correct is sufficient to make a conclusion reasonable. If the conclusion can possibly be confirmed by testing then at most this provides an hypothesis to be tested, and it is only a reasonable conclusion if tests confirm the hypothesis.
And if premises or conclusion disagree with the facts, then even the hypothesis cannot be considered reasonable.
I see no blaming or excusing in “The Stranger.” The simple fact is that sometimes people cannot explain why they did something. Neither explaining nor excusing is the intent or the focus of the story. The point is that someone with a completely malevolent intent can make himself look good by playing the game and putting on a show of remorse which isn’t real. Meursault is an existentialist hero because he doesn’t play the game but remains true to himself. He gives no excuses because he doesn’t have any, and he doesn’t pretend to feel things he doesn’t feel. And there is no attempt by Meursault or Camus to say his conviction is unjust. That is not the point of the story.
But self-righteous Christians cannot relate to the story because they don’t believe that they ever do anything they cannot explain. And that sort of shallow Christianity frankly misses the whole point. When they read Romans 7 “wretched man that I am,” they find this incomprehensible. It is the same sort of shallow understanding of human existence which makes the liberals think education is the solution to all human problems.
I told someone in church the reason I became Christian was in the book of Romans and coincidentally it was Romans 7 we started looking at. They couldn’t get it. I had to explain it to them. It is the question “why can’t I even do what I think is right?” That connection with Paul right there is the reason I became a Christian. For most of them raised Christians, it is about not living up to God’s standards and they don’t realize the standard hardly even matters. We cannot do it even when the standards are so much lower than those. Even when we are convinced that the standard is right.
One of my pastor-theologian mentors held that anyone who has not had a deep “wretched man that I am” experience was not qualified to be a pastor or a theologian.
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