FIDEIZAM Doktrina prema kojoj je vera nezavisna od razuma, fides lat.- faith + izam fideista se oslanja na veru vi!

e ne"o na razum, razum je uvek ateista, #jerke"orov ira$ionalizam vere %&rtvovati razum radi afirma$ije sopstveno" ja, razum je prepreka vere, tek prevazila&enjem razuma, &rtvovanjem, stradanjem, odustajanjem od samokontrole i suo'avanjem sa apsurdno!(u &ivota smo u pozi$iji apsolutno" odno!enja prema apsolutu).

*.*.* #ierke"aard

Any discussion of Sren Kierkegaard's thought is complicated by the fact that he wrote pseudonymously, attributing most of his writings to a variety of fictional authors whose views may or may not have corresponded to his own !n The Point of View for My Work as an Author "one of the few works to which Kierkegaard #$%$&'$%(() was willing to append his own signature"he e*plains his use of the pseudonyms by noting that philosophical and religious confusion can be addressed only indirectly+ one must approach from behind the person who is under an illusion #$%,%, -,'-() .e adds that the illusion against which his pseudonymous writings are directed is an illusion about what /hristianity re0uires, and that these writings, though employing philosophical tools, thus subserve a religious intent According to this retrospective self1 assessment, the whole of Kierkegaard's work is related to /hristianity, to the problem 2of becoming a /hristian,3 with a direct or indirect polemic against the monstrous illusion we call /hristendom, or against the illusion that in such a land as ours all are /hristians of a sort #$%,%, ('4) Although it is a sub5ect of debate whether to take at face value Kierkegaard's claim that his entire work serves a religious end"after all, it seems to be contradicted by other remarks of his"it is nevertheless clear that combating confusion, including illusions about faith, was central to his work 6(7 Kierkegaard suggests that speculative philosophy contributes to this confusion by transforming /hristianity into a sort of philosophical theory or system #.egel is fre0uently"if not always entirely fairly"parodied in this connection ) !n so doing, it imports into religion modes of in0uiry that distort the essential nature of faith

!t is perhaps tempting to imagine that the relation between evidence and belief is purely epistemological, a 0uestion of 5ustification 8n this account, beliefs mean what they do irrespective of their relation to the evidence9 what a consideration of the latter reveals is whether or not they are 5ustified :ut one of the implications of Kierkegaard's thought is that entitlement is a social status, and that the various social practices within which it is conferred or withheld contribute to the meaning of the beliefs in 0uestion ;here are different kinds of beliefs, logically speaking, and different ways in which entitlement to such beliefs is vindicated ;he basic error to which philosophical systemati<ers are prone, he argues, is assuming that the criteria for evaluating a belief in one conte*t are e0ually appropriate in other conte*ts .e writes, in our own age everything is mi*ed together+ the aesthetic is treated ethically, faith is dealt with intellectually, and so forth =hilosophy has answered every 0uestion9 but no ade0uate consideration has been given the 0uestion concerning what sphere it is within which each 0uestion finds its answer # Anthology, -->) ?ithin the sphere of the intellectual"e g , within scientific or historical scholarship"in0uiry is conceived in terms of a process of appro*imation to reality ?hen it comes to religion, however, what matters, according to Kierkegaard, is not the ob5ect to which the knower relates himself but the relationship itself+ the accent falls not on what is said but on how it is said #$%,4, $>> and -@-) Aor Kierkegaard, as for the so1called evangelical fideists, faith is characteri<ed by passionate commitment and thus re0uires a decision or 0ualitative leap #$%,4, &%,) .is claim is not simply that having evidence is unnecessary in this conte*t, but that it would, so to speak, destroy the whole endeavor, since it would alter the meaning of the beliefs in 0uestion and the spirit in which they could be believed !f ! am able to apprehend Bod ob5ectively, ! do not have faith9 but because ! cannot do this, ! must have faith !f ! want to keep myself in faith, ! must continually see to it that ! hold fast the ob5ective uncertainty, see to it that in the ob5ective uncertainty ! am 2out on C@,@@@ fathoms of water3 and still have faith #$%,4, -@,) Any belief that depended on the outcome of historical or scientific appro*imation"and which could be undermined by its results"would not be genuine faith, and anything whose e*istence could be established purely on the basis of philosophical argument"and so could be believed in indifferently, without this belief making a significant difference in one's life"would by definition not be Bod Anyone who wants to demonstrate the e*istence of BodDproves something else instead, at times something that perhaps did not even need demonstrating, and in any case never anything better #$%,,, ,&)

Kierkegaard's point is not that it is somehow permissible to neglect one's epistemic duties where belief in Bod is concerned, but that one cannot separate the 0uestion of what is believed from the 0uestion of how it is believed #Aor a contemporary defense of this point, see Strandberg #-@$$), especially /hapters $ and , ) .ere the how refers to the relationship sustained by the e*isting individual, in his own e*istence, to the content of his utterance #Anthology, -$,) Eeligion, for Kierkegaard, is a matter of what one does with one's life, a matter of inwardness !n this conte*t, to observe that religious believers lack evidence for their beliefs is not to render a negative verdict on their entitlement but to comment conceptually on the kind of beliefs they are ?as Kierkegaard a fideistF /ritics have argued that in recoiling from natural theology, Kierkegaard transformed belief into a matter of will and emotion, and that a decision as monumental as a leap of faith"made seemingly arbitrarily, in the absence of any rational assurance"might 5ust as easily have disastrous results G H Iackie, for instance, claims that what Kierkegaard himself is advocating is a sort of intellectual Eussian roulette #-$4) So far, it might be argued, Kierkegaard has done little to show that a leap in the direction of /hristianity is a better bet than any of its alternatives, and that a wiser tack"as .ume counseled in connection with alleged miracles"would be to proportion belief #and passion) to the available evidence Kierkegaard's defenders might reply that it is only from the outside"from the point of view, e g , of the dispassionate pseudonyms"that /hristianity appears ungrounded and absurd, and that Kierkegaard's point is really that those already in possession of faith need not be embarrassed by the fact that it is not the ineluctable outcome of reasoning from an imagined set of neutral and uncontested premises Although he relentlessly critici<ed what he perceived as the overweening ambitions of academic philosophy and an unwarranted reliance on foundationalist tendencies in theology, Kierkegaard held that faith and reason are not mutually incompatible, and that philosophy"when practiced with respect for the conditions of e*istence within which human beings necessarily do their thinking"can ultimately help to clarify the nature of /hristian commitment Aor Kierkegaard, faith is incomprehensible, in the sense that it demands a willingness to venture beyond the purview of philosophical reason, but it is not unreasonable or irrational ;hus, although he describes faith as believing against the understanding, he is careful to distinguish the content of religious belief from mere nonsense ;he believer cannot believe

nonsense against the understanding, which one might fear, because the understanding will penetratingly perceive that it is nonsense and hinder him in believing it9 however, the believer uses the understanding so much that through it he becomes aware of the incomprehensible"i e , of the logical limits of speculative thought"and now, believing, he relates himself to it against the understanding #$>>-, (4%) :y discriminating between those cases in which it is competent to 5udge and those in which it is not, philosophy thus plays a self1critical role+ mindful of its own limits, it allows religion to be itself