from Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel Reconsidered, Jon Stewart, Jun 9 2004
Take, for instance, the crucial question of the relation between philosophy and religion. Philosophy according to Hegel seeks to comprehend the content of Christianity conceptually, whereas Christian faith according to Kierkegaard is an infinite pathos that is evoked and sustained by the paradox of incarnation. Here, it would seem, we face a genuine disagreement between Kierkegaard and Hegel himself, yet Stewart argues that Kierkegaard only challenges Heiberg, who claimed that philosophy includes and accounts for private religious emotions. Hegel is not the target of critique, for on the one hand, Hegel openly acknowledges that private feelings fall below the level of the concept, and on the other hand, Kierkegaard admits that the speculative philosopher or theologian can also be a knight of faith. Instead of an ’either / or’, we have a kind of ’both / and’, where Hegel’s philosophy is valid in the sphere of objective thought, and Kierkegaard’s in the sphere of personal existence. Neither Hegel nor Kierkegaard would be satisfied with this conclusion, however, for the issue dividing them is which sphere is ’higher’ or closer to the truth. Hegel believes that religion is the penultimate form of consciousness which must be surpassed precisely because it is mired in the immediacy of feelings, whereas Kierkegaard holds that faith is higher, for it involves passion and risk in the difficult task of holding fast to that which escapes cognition. Although it may very well be true that Kierkegaard never challenged Hegel himself on this point, Stewart must ultimately acknowledge that there is a ’metalevel’ dispute, a conflict of paradigms, as it were, between universal reason and personal authenticity, in their accounts of religion (and a similar conflict in their accounts of ethics).