Kierkegaard's Knight of Faith: Existentialism & The Absurd

Absurdism, as developed by Albert Camus, defines the absurd as the conflict between humanity's search for meaning and the universe's silence. Camus, though rejecting the label, is classified as an existentialist atheist who stated 'I do not believe in God and I am not an atheist.' In 'The Myth of Sisyphus,' he argues there is only one serious philosophical problem: suicide. Camus distinguishes physical suicide from philosophical suicide—accepting convenient but unconvincing beliefs like religion. This contrasts with Kierkegaard's 'leap of faith,' which Camus views as irrational. Kierkegaard describes freedom as both attractive and terrifying, with despair as 'the dizziness of freedom.' Humans are made of opposites: the finite (actual reality) and infinite (possibility), and we lose ourselves in either direction.

Camus respects the honesty of Kierkegaard's anguish but refuses the leap of faith. To abandon reason at its very limit is philosophical betrayal—a suicide of the mind. Camus does not want to be saved; he wants to stay awake and maintain intellectual honesty. The leap of faith may provide comfort, but it involves abandoning reason precisely when it reaches its limits, which Camus views as a betrayal of the human capacity for understanding.

Camus examines what is perceptible in Leo Chestov, noting that it will be perhaps even more so in Kierkegaard. Despite apparently opposed writings, beyond the pseudonyms, tricks, and smiles, can be felt throughout that work as it were the presentment at the same time as the apprehension of a truth which eventually burst forth in the last works. Kierkegaard likewise takes the leap. His childhood having been so frightened by Christianity, he ultimately returns to its harshest aspect. For him too antinomy and paradox become criteria of the religious. Thus the very thing that led to despair of the meaning and depth of this life now gives its truth and its clarity. Christianity is the scandal, and what Kierkegaard calls for quite plainly is the third sacrifice required by Ignatius Loyola—the one in which God most rejoices, the sacrifice of the intellect. The effect of the leap is odd but must not surprise us anymore. He makes of the absurd the criterion of the other world, whereas it is simply a residue of the experience of this world. In his failure, says Kierkegaard, the believer finds his triumph. It is not for me to wonder to what stirring preaching this attitude is linked; I merely have to wonder if the spectacle of the absurd and its own character justifies it.

Camus argues that if the absurd is the contrary of hope, existential thought presupposes the absurd but proves it only to dispel it and reintroduce hope directly from the absurd. If there is an absurd, it's in man's universe. The moment the notion transforms itself into eternity, it ceases to be linked to human lucidity. The absurd is no longer evidence that man ascertains without consenting to it. The struggle is eluded, and the absurd is integrated back into something that satisfies human demands. This represents sacrificing everything to the absurd and transmuting it back into what satisfies human desires. Camus offers the shocking statement that the absurd is sin without God. Normally, sin is separation from God. For Kierkegaard, sin is profound—both the break between human being and God and the inability within the human being to recognize or remedy that break. Camus evacuates theology: we still have the complex of sin—the inability to come to terms with oneself, to fix oneself, to make sense out of oneself. Camus calls the existentialist approach 'philosophical suicide': they carry out philosophy, show absurdity, then stop doing philosophy as soon as the absurd becomes God, becoming theologians instead.

Albert Camus defines the Absurd as the conflict between humanity's inherent search for meaning and the universe's silent indifference, arguing that the only coherent response to this absurd condition is revolt—affirming life despite its inherent meaninglessness—rather than accepting philosophical suicide (believing in convenient but unconvincing systems) or Kierkegaard's and Dostoevsky's leap of faith into irrational religious belief; Camus illustrates this through Sisyphus, who finds happiness not by escaping his fate but by embracing it with lucid awareness and passionate human revolt.

The teleological suspension of the ethical is the concept that there can be something higher than the ethical sphere. In the aesthetic sphere, the telos is central pleasure in the moment, while in the ethical sphere, it is acting morally in society. The question is whether there can really be something higher than the ethical sphere. Abraham suspended the ethical to a higher telos, giving up the ethical sphere for complete irrationality in faith in God. He became a knight of faith. This concept is considered the trickiest to understand and is both murky and dangerous.

Kierkegaard introduces the concept of 'teleological suspension of the ethical' to describe situations where religious commitment requires overriding ordinary moral obligations. Using Abraham's story, this concept illustrates how faith may demand actions that appear ethically problematic from an outsider's perspective. An individual who believes they have been called by God to serve a higher purpose may need to break laws, risk family safety, or act against conventional morality. From an external viewpoint, such actions seem irrational; however, to the committed individual, these actions represent obedience to a higher truth. This concept challenges simplistic moral judgments and highlights the complexity of genuine religious commitment.

In Kierkegaard's 'Fear and Trembling,' a teleological suspension of the ethical occurs when an individual places themselves in an absolute relation to something higher than the universal ethical order, such as faith or divine command; this allows the single individual to become superior to the universal ethical framework, as demonstrated by Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac despite the ethical obligation to protect one's child, where the ethical is preserved while being transgressed for a higher purpose.

The concept of 'teleological suspension of the ethical' describes how higher purposes may require temporarily setting aside ordinary moral obligations. In Abraham's case, he suspends normal ethical considerations because he believes he receives a divine command. This challenges the Kantian view that moral principles must always be universally applicable. The suspension suggests that absolute moral rules may be overridden by supreme spiritual authorities, revealing tensions between absolute ethics and ultimate religious commitments.

Karl Barth, a Swiss theologian, rebelled against liberal theology and developed what he called 'neo-orthodoxy.' He emphasized that God is totally different from human understanding and that Jesus Christ is the only perfect and definitive revelation of God. Barth stressed that the Bible contains God's word and that theology must begin with God speaking, not human speculation. This represents a correct response to liberal theology. However, Barth also suggested that the Bible becomes God's word only when it makes sense to the individual reader, which opens the door to liberal theology's subjectivity of truth. Paul Tillich, a German-American theologian, was considered the 'theologian of theologians' and was highly influential in liberal theology. He developed a method of correlating human questions with theological answers. Despite his apparent piety, his theology has been widely used in liberal seminaries and churches. Tillich defined God philosophically as the 'ground of being' that sustains all things, rather than as a personal being. He rejected the idea of a personal God who hears prayer, teaching that prayer is essentially meditation on oneself.

Paul Tillich (1886-1965) was a German theologian who became Americanized, born into a Lutheran family with his father as a pastor. He initially trained in liberal theology and served as a WWI army chaplain, an experience that profoundly shaped his thinking. Serving with wounded and dying soldiers, he realized liberal theology's optimism could not console traumatized soldiers. He broke with liberal theology's rational faith and ethical reductionism. By WWII, he was a German professor opposing the Nazi regime, expelled from Frankfurt in 1933, and emigrated to the US. His major influences were Luther and Heidegger. Tillich introduces revelation as transcendent, taking distance from natural and liberal theology. The church is related to God's revelation, meaning related to eternal truth. Tillich is not an existentialist in Sartre's sense; for Christian existentialism, existence is distant from essence, producing a crisis that cannot be answered from existence itself. Tillich incorporates Freud's ideas, recognizing dissociation as fundamentalism's key element.

Tillich's philosophical development was shaped by early engagement with Greek pre-Socratic thinkers like Heraclitus and Democritus, followed by classical philosophy (Plato, Aristotle), German classical idealism (Fichte, Hegel), and modern figures including Nietzsche and Heidegger. He identified with existentialist thinking, tracing its roots to Kierkegaard and particularly to the later periods of Schelling, who anticipated many concepts later developed by Heidegger, Sartre, and others. Tillich believed existentialism provides tremendous value for interpreting Christianity today, as its description of the human predicament—finitude, anxiety, guilt, despair, and meaninglessness—aligns with Christian theological descriptions of human condition without God. Christianity is not bound to any special philosophical tradition but can use all traditions and must transform them.

Paul Tillich (1886-1965) was a German-American theologian born in Großburg, whose father was a Protestant pastor. He studied theology at Berlin and Tübingen universities, influenced by Kierkegaard and Schelling. After serving as pastor in Berlin and military chaplain during WWI, he was expelled from Frankfurt in 1933 for opposing Hitler, then taught at Union Theological Seminary (1933), Harvard Divinity School (1955), and University of Chicago (1962). Classified as an existentialist theologian, Tillich held that existence precedes essence, contrary to Descartes. His philosophy blended existentialism with Hegelian idealism, adding history of religion and culture to theological method. He viewed humans as broken and separated from fullness (sin/fallen nature), interpreting angels and demons psychologically as powers rather than beings. His major works include Systematic Theology (1951, 1953, 1963), The New Being (1955), Courage of Being, and Dynamics of Faith.

Altizer's intellectual development involved encounters with major 20th-century thinkers. Paul Tillich helped him recognize his theological foundations had broken down, experiencing deep theological perishing. Karl Barth's influence involved 'killing' Barth—to end all theology and make possible recreation of theology. Eric Voegelin represented radical conservativism with theoretical sophistication. Hannah Arendt's circle exposed him to profound thinkers, though brief encounters with Walter Benjamin's friend Jacob Taubes awakened him to apocalyptic radicalism.