ABSTRACT Faith for Kierkegaard is ‘beyond’ reason in some senses but not others. Faith is more specific and more subjective than concepts. On the other hand, Kant claims it is the faculty of reason that motivates us to make sense of anything and enables us to take something teleologically as a task, including faith. I begin from Kant’s account of the artistic genius to show how the faculties of imagination and understanding are related for Kant and how Kierkegaard’s description of (...) faith as a synthesis relies on the teleological structures established by Kant. While imagination can overwhelm understanding in works of artistic genius, a complex harmony nevertheless emerges that depends on the viewer (i.e. is ‘subjective’) but originates in the work. The free play between imagination and understanding in Kantian aesthetic judgments offers a way in which faith and understanding can be in tension for Kierkegaard without there being an absolute boundary that leaves reason behind. (shrink)

Perhaps Kierkegaard’s most notorious—though pseudonymous—claim is that truth is subjectivity. This claim is commonly elaborated to mean that faith is a “how” and not a “what” . I show through a discussion of examples taken from throughout Kierkegaard’s writings that Kierkegaard accepts a basic insight of Kant’s philosophy: each experience implicitly includes an underlying unity—the object—that does not itself appear. Both Kant and Kierkegaard emphasize the importance of a “continuity of impressions,” which gives experience its unified structure beyond changing superficial (...) appearances. I show that Kierkegaardian faith requires an object in just this Kantian sense: the object of faith does not directly appear but is implicitly present in all experience. For Kant, this type of object is not “beyond” experience but is posited by reason as the unity of experience as a whole. In this respect at least, Kierkegaard’s account of faith shows similarities not just with Kant’s practical philosophy but with his metaphysics as well. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook Jahrgang: 23 Heft: 1 Seiten: 3-32.