Søren Kierkegaard and the “Leap of Faith”: Part 2
A brief introduction to philosophers G.E. Lessing and F.H. Jacobi, to Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms Johannes de silentio and Johannes Climacus, and a look at ‘the leap’ in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling
This is a continuation of a series on Kierkegaard’s (unfortunate) reputation as the progenitor and promoter of “the leap of faith.”
The word “leap” is peppered throughout many of Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous writings, and makes two appearances of significance in his signed upbuilding discourses. Given Kierkegaard’s purposes and the type of writer he was, it will come as no surprise that his usage of “leap” is wide, varied, and multi-purposed. What I want to show moving forward, is that Kierkegaard never personally uses the term “leap” to endorse a picture of faith, and that his pseudonyms are ambivalent at best when it comes to their own opinions about the leap as a movement of any kind, including a leap to faith. For the pseudonyms, they are far more interested in the project of getting a person to think differently, and to give up on any kind of ‘system building’ that would keep a person safe from self-reflection. They are not in the business of endorsing or recommending any positive philosophies, leaps or otherwise.[1]
First, I will relay some important background on Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and his famous meeting with Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, as well as give a short summary of Lessing’s famous ‘leap over the ugly broad ditch’ essay. This will then animate a select section each from Fear and Trembling and Concluding Unscientific Postscript that illustrate how the pseudonyms Johannes de silentio and Johannes Climacus choose to use the terminology of leaps and leaping largely because of the familiarity of the imagery within the intellectual circles of Kierkegaard’s day. In talking about leaps and leaping, Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms are both engaging in conversations already begun in the Enlightenment (with Jacobi and Lessing as key figures), while also adding their own philosophical ruminations to them.[2] The few passages we will focus on are all passages that Kierkegaard meant as either direct references to Lessing’s and Jacobi’s use of the leap, or as allusions to that reference. The pseudonyms’ own wider discussion of leaps and leaping will be left out of this conversation for the sake of brevity, as to do an exhaustive study would require a book-length treatment![3] After looking at Fear and Trembling and Concluding Unscientific Postscript, I will turn to Kierkegaard’s signed writings and look at the only two major instances of “leap” within them, and show how neither of them present a positive picture of faith. When “leap” in Kierkegaard’s discourses are read, the pseudonyms and Lessing come to mind, and Kierkegaard’s contradistinction takes on an even clearer picture of what Kierkegaard thinks faith does and does not entail. In the upbuilding discourses, “leap” is talking about movements individuals simply choose to make in their lives—it is an observation, not an endorsement.
There are a two key writings by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) that Kierkegaard engages with in his 1843-1846 pseudonymous writings, along with a separate written account of Lessing by another Enlightenment philosopher, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743-1819). Two of these three references involve the concept of leaps and leaping.
In Recollections of Conversations with Lessing in July and August 1780, Jacobi recounts how he traveled to the town of Wolfenbüttel in order to have a discussion with this foremost intellectual of the century, being himself a developing philosopher with an already widespread correspondence with Germany and Prussia’s intellectual elite. Jacobi relays how, during the course of their conversation, he becomes alarmed that Lessing describes himself as a Spinozist, and that Lessing believes “there is no other philosophy than that of Spinoza.”[4] At that time, to endorse Spinoza was commonly considered an equivalent to endorsing atheism and revolutionary political thinking.[5] Jacobi therefore recommended Lessing subscribe to his own philosophy of the “mortal leap” (salto mortale), which Jacobi believed allowed one to avoid mediation between objective and subjective reality. For Jacobi, truth is appropriated in spite of, rather than by, rational thinking, since “the greatest merit of the researcher is to uncover and to reveal existence” rather than see explanations as “an ultimate goal” in themselves.[6] One therefore must make a salto mortale, a leap, in order to gain the truth of life and existence. But Lessing, who by now had already written his famous 1777 essay, On the Proof of the Spirit and of Power, where he talks about failed attempts to leap across ‘the ugly broad ditch’ of accidental truths to necessary truths, responds playfully to Jacobi. “I can see how a thinking head might perform this kind of headstand just to get out of the bit. Take me with you, if you can!” To which Jacobi seriously replies, “If you will just step on the spring board which lifts me off, the rest will take care of itself.” Lessing then quips, “But even that would mean a leap which I can no longer impose on my old legs and heavy head.”[7] Though these men and their philosophical tête-à-tête is almost entirely forgotten today, in Kierkegaard’s day this exchange was well remembered, and fodder for Kierkegaard to reference while dialoguing with his contemporaries.
The other instance of import for understanding Kierkegaard and his pseudonyms on ‘the leap’ is the essay just mentioned, Lessing’s 1777 essay On the Proof of the Spirit and of Power [Beweis des Geistes und der Kraft]. It was originally written in response to orthodox Lutheran Johann Daniel Schumann’s defense of the infallibility of Scripture. In his essay, Lessing makes reference to Aristotle’s notion of a category jump, and during his argument writes one of his most well-remembered lines—“accidental truths of history can never become the proof for necessary truths of reason…[therefore] this is the ugly broad ditch which I cannot get across, however often and however earnestly I have tried to make the leap. If anyone can help me over it, let him do it, I beg him, I adjure him. He will deserve a divine reward from me.”[8]
These, then, are the “leaping” texts that Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms Johannes de silentio and Johannes Climacus have in mind, sometimes explicitly and sometimes implicitly, when they write about leaps. Let me now introduce their characters better. Johannes de silentio is the author of Fear and Trembling (October 16, 1843), and Johannes Climacus is the author of both Philosophical Fragments (June 13, 1844) and Concluding Unscientific Postscript (February 28, 1846). Johannes de silentio translates from Latin as “John of silence,” and is a reference to the pseudonym’s philosophical bent rather than being a proper last name (and therefore it is not meant to be capitalized, as some do). Johannes Climacus is the Latin version of the canonized saint John Climacus’ name, who the Church also refers to as “Saint John of the Ladder” because of his spiritual treatise The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Kierkegaard likely chose the name Johannes Climacus as a joke about theologians who build speculative systems of knowledge and advancement in the name of Christianity.
Johannes de silentio and Johannes Climacus each has his own separate project in mind when he writes, but they both share in common their inability to be Christians themselves. Johannes de silentio is in a quandary of what to do, given that Abraham in Genesis 22 almost sacrifices his son Isaac, and yet Scripture also says that Abraham is the paradigm of faith (such as in Hebrews 11). Does this mean faith requires not questioning God, no matter what? Does faith mean doing whatever the voice of God tells you to do, no matter what your sensibilities say (moral or otherwise)? How is one to understand Abraham, let alone emulate him? de silentio admires faith, but does not find it himself by the end of his only book, Fear and Trembling. His musings peter into silence, no conclusions to his problems found.[9] Johannes Climacus, on the other hand, is a self-proclaimed satirist who has found his calling by making life difficult for people, in much the same way as Socrates did in ancient Athens—by asking pestering questions and not letting people get away with easy answers. He, like de silentio, recognizes the value and desirability of faith, but unlike de silentio has no wish to try and procure faith for himself. Climacus is contented, much like Lessing was, to remain a sceptic and a humorist, while de silentio admires faith and merely wishes to be intellectually honest in his procurement of faith.
With these introductions to the pseudonyms, let us now proceed to look at examples of “leap” in the works they wrote. I will begin with Fear and Trembling, and I will use Christopher Watkin’s recently published Biblical Critical Theory as my dialogue partner, as Watkin misrepresents Kierkegaard in the classic way we have already heard about, ascribing the “leap of faith” to him. It is because Watkin’s book will have reach and influence in Christian evangelical circles, being fresh off of the press, endorsed by Rev. Timothy Keller (of blessed memory), and designed to be a modern City of God for today’s Christians, that it is a good dialogue partner for the purpose of correcting on the leap of faith. It bears mentioning that I will pass over the rest of what Watkin says of Kierkegaard to stay on the task at hand, but that there is very little Watkin gets right about Kierkegaard, and it is a grievous thing that many will be dissuaded from further engaging with Kierkegaard because of Watkins’ criticism.
To textually base his claim that Kierkegaard subscribes to a leap of faith, Watkin says the following: “The difference between the tragic hero and the knight of faith is that, whereas both renounce all they have, only the knight of faith makes the leap of faith, ‘the great leap whereby I pass into infinity.’”[10] Watkin then goes on to say that though “it is unclear in precisely what this leap consists,” he thinks Fear and Trembling makes it clear that passion is essential to faith, and that passion is antithetical to (is “divorced from”) reason and reflection. He supports this interpretation by presenting the only other passage in the book that talks about ‘leaps into the infinite,’ where the reader finds Johannes de silentio ruminating on an unnamed poet’s willingness to ‘leap into eternity.’[11] For de silentio this leap into eternity implies death and a willingness to die, and de silentio observes that this poet’s willingness to die is a passion that is absent from his own present day (from what I’ve found, the identity of this poet has not been ascertained, but it could easily be Goethe, Schiller, or Schlegel [see footnote 2]). Citing these two passages, Watkin concludes that Fear and Trembling is presenting a leap of passion as the means by which one exercises their faith. “…Johannes repeats a number of times that faith requires passion, and that passion is divorced from reflection…[thus] to exercise faith requires a leap that is not based on reflection but on passion.”[12] In this way Watkin sees Kierkegaard formulate and endorse a “leap of faith” out of Genesis 22 (which is then “profoundly at variance with the biblical account [of faith]”).[13]
Already with this presentation we have seen that Watkin’s quotes out of Fear and Trembling say “leap” instead of “leap of faith,” and further that Watkin has preceded his direct quote about ‘the great leap into infinity’ with his claim about its being a leap of faith. But! Perhaps the wider context of that first passage merits this? Setting aside the second passage about the unnamed poet, and the observation that Watkin conflates the knight of faith with that second passage about passion and death, perhaps the wider context of his first quote merits his interpretation of its being a leap of faith.
It, however, does not. The knight of faith is not present on the page or in the discussion de silentio is having, with the wider key passage reading as follows:
“The dialectic of faith is the finest and most remarkable of all; it possesses an elevation, of which indeed I can form a conception, but nothing more. I am able to make from the springboard the great leap whereby I pass into infinity, my back is like that of a tight-rope dancer, having been twisted in childhood, hence I find it easy; with a one-two-three! I can walk about existence on my head; but the next thing I cannot do, for I cannot perform the miraculous, but can only be astonished by it.”[14]
What is notable about this mention of the leap is its evocative imagery of the springboard. A university-educated contemporary of Kierkegaard’s would have immediately recognized the intentional reference to Jacobi and his philosophy, and that Johannes de silentio is making a playful jab at Jacobi’s endorsement of philosophical leaps. But even those of us who have never heard of Jacobi or know what his main philosophical thinking sounded like (which is most of us!), we can still hear the tone of sarcasm and see the exaggerations and layers de silentio is implementing to draw out his point.
Layer one is the joke about leaping, being meant to be read as a joke because of hints like “twisted spine,” “one two three!,” and even “I can form a conception” (indicating that one can imagine all kinds of movements and decisions, but that this does not then grant that one has actually made such a movement or a decision. One’s conceptions do not equate to one’s actions). de silentio is saying, ‘Look at me, I can just count one two three and jump off of this elevated springboard, it’s easy even with my twisted spine because I’ve been practicing since childhood! Here I go!” This picture is silly, it is meant to be seen as silly, and the follow-up imagery of ‘walking about existence on one’s head’ is the assurance to the reader that de silentio is indeed exaggerating and teasing (‘walking on one’s head’ is distantly reminiscent of Lessing’s reply to Jacobi about making a headstand, too. But right now we’re disregarding references to Lessing or Jacobi). The second layer then relies upon the first—while de silentio can supposedly make Jacobi’s leap, de silentio still cannot perform “the miraculous;” he cannot understand Abraham and he therefore cannot understand faith. In other words, de silentio might be able to perform the ludicrous by imagining he has taken the leap into infinity (and by imagining it, he actually has, right?), but the miraculous is above the ludicrous—de silentio will just as soon be able to make leaps into the infinite with his twisted spine, than he will be able to obtain faith the Abrahamic way.
It bears mentioning briefly, since the knight of faith figures in Watkin’s discussion of Fear and Trembling, that the knight of faith does not himself make the leap of faith. There are a great many movements that the knight of faith does make, but leaping isn’t one of them. There is even a case to be made that the knight cannot leap because leaping indicates a leaving behind, and the knight refuses to leave any part of himself behind on the journey to acquire faith (see pp. 88-96, Lowrie trans).
Now, it is true that Kierkegaard is often challenging to read (and he’s impossible to skim read). Is it then possible for the motivated, non-professional reader of Kierkegaard to make sense of his books? I truly believe so, as Kierkegaard offers a key to his reader in the prefaces he writes. Unlike most prefaces today, which function as ancillary material bearing only curious relevance to the book, Kierkegaard’s prefaces are artfully, carefully crafted, and are designed to be read as an important function of the book. In them Kierkegaard provides hints to the tone and reason for being of the pages that follow.[15] In the case of Fear and Trembling, de silentio explains that he is trying to elevate the worthiness and desirability of faith, while at the same time dissuading and even destroying the attempts one might commonly make to obtain it (which, in de silentio’s case, ends with him not finding faith by the end of the book). This main aim of the book is not antithetical or threatening to the Bible’s presentation of faith (as Watkin fears). On the contrary! “Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale,” de silentio begins in his preface.
“Everything can be had so dirt cheap that one begins to wonder whether in the end anyone will want to make a bid. Every speculative score-keeper who conscientiously marks up the momentous march of modern philosophy, every lecturer, crammer, student, everyone on the outskirts of philosophy or at its center is unwilling to stop with doubting everything. They all go further. It would perhaps be malapropos to inquire where they think they are going, though surely we may in all politeness and respect take it for granted that they have indeed doubted everything, otherwise it would be odd to talk of going further…
…In those old days it was different. For then faith was a task for a whole lifetime, not a skill thought to be acquired in either days or weeks. When the old campaigner [the apostle Paul] approached the end, had fought the good fight [2 Timothy 4:7], and kept his faith, his heart was still young enough not to have forgotten the fear and trembling [Philippians 2:12] that disciplined his youth and which, although the grown man mastered it, no man altogether outgrows—unless he somehow manages at the earliest possible opportunity to go further…”[16]
“…The present author is no philosopher, he has not understood the System, nor does he know if there really is one, or if it has been completed. As far as his own weak head is concerned, the thought of what huge heads everyone must have in order to have such huge thoughts is already enough. Even if one were able to render the whole of the content of faith into conceptual form, it would not follow that one has grasped faith, grasped how one came to it, or how it came to one. The present author is no philosopher, he is poetice et eleganter [poetically and elegantly] a freelancer, who neither writes the System, nor makes any promises about it, who pledges neither anything about the System, nor himself to it. He writes because for him doing so is a luxury, the more agreeable and conspicuous the fewer who buy and read what he writes. In an age where passion has been done away with for the sake of science, he easily foresees his fate – in an age when an author who wants readers must be careful to write in a way that he can be comfortably leafed through during the after-dinner nap…he [the present author] foresees his fate will be to be completely ignored; has a dreadful foreboding that the scourge of zealous criticism will more than once make it still felt; and shutters at what terrifies him even more, that some enterprising recorder…will slice him into sections, as ruthlessly as the man who, at the service of the science of punctuation, divided up his speech by counting the words and putting a period after every fifty and a semi-colon after every thirty-five. No, I prostrate myself before any systematic bag-searcher; this [present work] is not the System...”[17]
de silentio is probably speaking at his plainest when he says, before his reader has even embarked on the experience of engaging with Fear and Trembling, that “even if one were able to render the whole of the content of faith into conceptual form, it would not follow that one has grasped faith, grasped how one came to it, or how it came to one.” The purpose of Fear and Trembling is to demonstrate this statement through a series of philosophical puzzles and ruminations, aiming to elevate the desirability yet difficulty of faith. de silentio knows faith is something that is lived and experienced rather than being a thing that can then be described, dissected, explained, or waxed lyrical upon. It’s just that, in taking the Bible seriously, de silentio quickly encounters a quandary in Abraham.
The preface to Fear and Trembling also complains of simple readers wishing for simple books. “[A]n author who wants readers must be careful to write in a way that he can be comfortably leafed through during the after-dinner nap…” de silentio “shutters at what terrifies him even more, that some enterprising recorder…will slice him into sections…” After 180 years this has turned out to be all too true of Fear and Trembling, (having also what Alistair Hannay calls an “ever-thickening prism of textual commentary and explanation” to accompany it).[18] Watkin, then, is in good company in terms of his dipping into Fear and Trembling and pulling away from it common misconceptions about Kierkegaard as a writer, philosopher, and biblical theologian via ‘slicing him into sections.’ But what is so disappointing about his treatment of Kierkegaard is his failure to recognize that Kierkegaard’s project and content and style have all come from, and been informed by, the very book that Watkin wishes to elevate as an authoritative, dynamic, living text. Kierkegaard and his complicated thoughts on faith are not an enemy to knowing God and benefiting from Scripture, but are instead an ally. We see this in Fear and Trembling’s preface as well, when de silentio upholds the Apostle Paul as the better image of what faith is like. de silentio upholds Paul and juxtaposes him against those who would believe that faith is intellectually subscribing to dogmas within a matter of “either days or weeks.” For Kierkegaard, the Bible as the word of God is God’s challenge to a person, full of dilemmas that are meant to drive a person into prayerful dialogue with the living God.[19] Under no circumstances does Kierkegaard deserve Watkin’s criticisms that he presents pictures of faith “profoundly at variance with the biblical account.”[20]
[1] This is not to suggest the pseudonyms aren’t worth reading, or that they don’t have a great deal to teach—they are and they do! It is also not to suggest that one cannot come to the pseudonyms and walk away inspired to take the imagery or philosophy the pseudonyms write about, such as the leap, and appropriate it for one’s own purposes—of course one is free to do this. The issue only lies in making appeals of authority to persons, fictitious or otherwise, who do not indeed hold the views and opinions being held to them.
[2] Other prominent German philosopher-poets, such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805), and Fredrich Schlegel (1772-1829) used leap terminology and imagery in their writings, all of which were influential on German philosophical and theological development (and thus, by some extension, European philosophical and theological development). Kierkegaard was well read in all three of these figures.
[3] For example, ‘leaps into the infinite’ are present in Either/Or, a book in part compiled by the pseudonym A and in part written by the pseudonym Judge William, all of which is edited by the pseudonym Victor Eremita (yes, it’s quite a layered affair!). Sylvia Walsh points out how, according to the character John the Seducer, there is a difference between a feminine and masculine leap into the infinite. “Whereas man’s leaping is dialectical in nature, requiring many advance preparations and calculations, several practice tries, and a running start, for woman the leap is no more than a hop in which she glides effortlessly to the other side, arriving there ‘more beautiful, more soulful than ever’ (EO, I: 391f).” p. 11, Kierkegaard on Woman, Gender, and Love (2022). It’s by these theories that the Seducer works out his horrible goal of seducing an innocent girl, Cordelia, and of which Victor Eremita is troubled by, only willing to present an account of the Seducer because Judge William’s thoughts are also presented as counter-arguments.
[4] pp. 88-89, “Lessing: Appropriating the Testimony of a Theological Naturalist” in Kierkegaard and the Renaissance and Modern Traditions. Tome I Philosophy, ed. by Jon Stewart. Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) was one of the 17th century’s most original and influential philosophers, and whose metaphysics expresses a system of panentheism considered one of the finest today (panentheism is the belief that nothing exists except God, and that therefore everything in existence is essentially just God. This is different to pantheism, which does not recognize a single God, and holds merely that everything in existence is God).
[5] pp. 33-34, “Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi: Two Theories of the Leap” in Kierkegaard and the Renaissance and Modern Traditions. Tome I Philosophy, ed. by Jon Stewart.
[6] p. 34, “Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi: Two Theories of the Leap” in Kierkegaard and the Renaissance and Modern Traditions. Tome I Philosophy, ed. by Jon Stewart.
[7] pp. 88-89, “Lessing: Appropriating the Testimony of a Theological Naturalist” in Kierkegaard and the Renaissance and Modern Traditions. Tome I Philosophy, ed. by Jon Stewart. For an excellent summary and introduction to Jacobi’s philosophy, see the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s online entry -- https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/friedrich-jacobi/. There is no SEP page for Lessing, but Britannica’s entry is good for a start, in terms of free internet resources (it does not, however, mention Lessing’s deep involvement with Free Masonry, or his reading of Spinoza) -- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gotthold-Ephraim-Lessing
[8] p. 87, Lessing: Philosophical and Theological Writings, ed. by Nisbet.
[9] This was first pointed out to me in a seminar with Murray Rae (author of Kierkegaard’s Vision of the Incarnation and Kierkegaard and Theology)—a very good insight!
[10] p. 257, Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture, Christopher Watkin (2022).
[11] All other instances of “leap” in Fear and Trembling are references to other kinds of movement, such as the leap a dancer makes into a certain posture.
[12] Ibid.
[13] p. 258, Biblical Critical Theory, Christopher Watkin.
[14] p.77, Fear and Trembling, Lowrie translation.
[15] Indeed, Kierkegaard was so enamored by the power of the preface as a literary device that he even produced a small volume solely of prefaces. See Prefaces by Nicolaus Notabene, originally published June 17th 1844.
[16] For an excellent treatment of Kierkegaard and his reading of Paul, see Hugh Pyper’s “How Edifying is the Upbuilding? Paul and Kierkegaard in Dialogue” in The Joy of Kierkegaard: Essays on Kierkegaard as a Biblical Reader.
[17] All quotations of Fear and Trembling’s preface come from Alistair Hannay’s translation for Penguin Classics.
[18] p. ix-x, A Short Life of Kierkegaard. Fear and Trembling is possibly Kierkegaard’s most popular book today, and is certainly the most-translated title of Kierkegaard’s into English; I am currently aware of 6 different translations. Robert Payne (1939, [a rare find today!]), Walter Lowrie (1941), Howard and Edna Hong (1983), Alastair Hannay (1986), C. Stephen Evans & Sylvia Walsh (2006), and Bruce Kirmmse (2021).
[19] For Kierkegaard’s most explicit discussion of what Scripture is I direct a reader to For Self-Examination, where Kierkegaard at one point likens engaging with Scripture to reading a letter from one’s beloved.
[20] p. 258, Biblical Critical Theory, Watkin. In the same breath Watkin insinuates that Kierkegaard is not ‘a careful biblical exegete,’ so I’ll take the opportunity to mention that Kierkegaard was fluent in both written and spoken Latin, proficient in Greek and Hebrew (not to mention other non-biblical languages, such as German), and left pages and pages of Scriptural translations out of the original languages in his journals.