Transcendent Human and the Relationship between Reason and Faith from Kierkegaard's Perspective

Abstract

The issue of faith and its compatibility or incompatibility with reason as well as the justification of religious beliefs based on rationality has long been considered as one of the most challenging issues in the philosophy of religion. Many philosophers and thinkers have examined this ambiguous issue and criticized each other's views. Soren Kierkegaard, a prominent Danish religious thinker known as the father of existentialism, is one of the most important theorists of the relationship between faith and reason. He considers the rationalization of faith to be contradictory. He believes that the realm of faith is separate from the realm of reason, and that faith has primacy over reason. According to him, faith is a subjective truth and a kind of passion, and the reason that seeks for objective truths can never comprehend subjective truths. This article consists of five sections. In Section (1) we examine the intellectual and philosophical foundations of Kierkegaard’s position. In Section (2) we describe Kierkegaard’s theory of the nature of faith, and in Section (3) we explore his theory about the relationship between reason and faith. In Section (4) we will introduce the notion of blissful human and the transcendental manifestation of existence from Kierkegaard's point of view. Finally, in Section (5), we will conclude and summarize the obtained points and results.

Keywords

• kierkegaard
• existentialism
• reason and faith
• subjective truth
• objective reasoning
• kierkegaard on passion