Faith as the Omnipresent Necessity for Reason: A Defense of Kierkegaard’s Subjective Faith against Locke’s Empirical Reason
Introduction
In the rich philosophies on religion, the topic of faith vs. reason has been one of the most discussed aspects that concerned our relationship to religion on the lack of determinate proof of God's existence. Among many, John Locke, a Christian philosopher of the empiricist tradition, holds reason as the standard of determining truth given the empirical reality, where faith is only the second-best criterion regarding instances of revelation on the matters such as God that reason has no answers for. For Locke, religious faith without reason is the surrender to pure enthusiasm that undermines both reason and faith. On a diverging perspective, Søren Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher, upholds faith as the ultimate pathway to a higher truth than what mere reason can provide, such that by believing in a kind of absurdity with no rational justifications, the individual living in the finitude of reasonable reality is revealed to the infinite universality of God. For Kierkegaard, religion is the enterprise that only involves radically subjective faith without reason intervening with any rational understanding of God or our relations to it.
In this essay, I examine Locke's and Kierkegaard's positions. I argue that Kierkegaard's view is more compelling by objecting to Locke on the ground of the limitations of reason even in conventionally rational terrains such as science. Thus, I align with Kierkegaard, where reason must give in to faith regarding religious matters that are deeply personal and subjective.
Locke: Reason in the Empirical above Faith in Revelations
In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke (1825) drew boundaries between faith and reason in response to the religious conflicts in 17th-century Europe. Under the Enlightenment era's focus on the scientific method, Locke stood by reason as the foreground of faith and a moderating force to pacify the violence surrounding religious zealotry.
With his idea of human beings as blank slates filled only by empirical experiences, reason for Locke is the tool to discover the truth and falsity of propositions deduced either from direct experience received through our sense faculties or reflective thoughts. Religious faith, on the other hand, is acquiescence toward propositions whose truths are solely subjective to the proposer who received revelations of God (Locke 1825, 526). Notably, the original revelations of God one directly experienced through sensations provide new knowledge only for that person. And when they are communicated in the form of traditional revelations, they lose all capacities of informing new ideas as these revelations are unable to be captured in the languages that are only associated with the commonly experienceable (1825, 527). Moreover, regarding the content of revelations, when they intersect with the matters that can also be discovered by reason, reason should always be attributed as the immediate justification instead of being overridden by faith (1825, 528). Only when the revelations concern matters beyond the realm of reason, such that zero or only partial direct experience or reflective thoughts can be relied on and that they do not contradict reason, can faith be referred to as the justification (1825, 530).
However, revelations that contradict reason could still be asserted and accepted by some. For example, one could firmly believe an instance when God told her that 2+3=6 and held it as a direct revelation immediately. In such a case, this revelation contradicts with reason that states 2+3=5 but was not questioned for its irrationality. For Locke, this is when enthusiasm arises, such that revelations are assented to without the check of reason. However, the "natural revelation" in accordance with knowledge gained through our natural faculties should always take precedence when assessing the truth of any proposition, especially when they regard revelations (1825, 533). Without reason, the validity of revelations is baseless, which vitiates both reason and faith. Thus, Locke emphasizes that clear evident revelations should always be subjected to rational tests, such that it is not mere fanatic beliefs that are indemonstrable to others. When Moses saw a burning bush not being consumed, which violated the laws of physics, and heard the voice of God, he put this original revelation up for a test when he confirmed a rationally unexplainable miracle later when God turned his rod into a serpent (1825, 538). Moses checked his revelation with the dictates of reason. Without having done so, he would have fell victim to enthusiasm that threatens the divinity of God such that it is associated with contradictory ideas to reason. God's revelations must be clear if there are any messages to be delivered beyond the empirical world governed by reason, so they are distinct from and unmistakable to our rational faculty of reason.
Overall, Locke argues reason as the criterion of all truth superseding faith. And failing to consult with it, one becomes the victim of enthusiasm that forgoes the rational judgments necessary to ensure God is revealed clearly, distinctly, and evidently without contradictions.
Kierkegaard: The Radical Subjective Faith that Transcends Reason
In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard (1941) deciphered the nature of faith through an investigation of Abraham's story in the Christian bible. Kierkegaard saw Abraham as the epitome of a believer who wholeheartedly resigned from his ethical and universal duties as a father as he prepared to sacrifice his son but simultaneously retained everything that God asked of him. This is faith for Kierkegaard, which is radically subjective and above any ethical or rational reason. It is what the father of monotheistic religion professed, as Abraham is subjectively certain of a God that would not take Isaac from him yet was irrationally certain of his faith by doing what God has told him to.
This leap of faith is a process that one takes in the finite reality yet binds one to the infinite. Kierkegaard breaks down this process into two stages, the stepping stone of the infinite resignation and the faith that arise afterward. In an analogy with a knight who is in love, he must begin with inner examinations to see if this love fills the content of his life (Kierkegaard 1941, 33). In religion, that belief in God must be the sole content of one’s life devoted with absolute subjective certainty. In such a stage, one resigns the finitude of reason and ethicalities in this world and spiritually concentrates on the subjective dedication that prepares one to enter the infinitude by renouncing all physical possibilities of one’s desires. This first stage of infinite resignation involves Locke's enthusiasm unchecked by reason, but it is given the utmost primacy by Kierkegaard so that it involves nothing else but one's deepest passion. If reason interferes with this passion, then that central content of one's life, whether it be devotion to love or God, becomes a part of the destined rationale that needs no radical subjective faith to vindicate.
However, infinite resignation within the finitude comes with the greatest pain where this subjectively desired content is only to be thought of as within me and not to be hoped as ever possible to manifest in the outside of me. Nevertheless, the second movement is where faith arises to console us such that the materially impossible content of my desire could be made possible through God's intervention, and we can rest comfortably in that belief through faith. The knight of faith thereby surrenders himself to the faith that God can render his materially impossible love possible by reconciling his finitude with God's infinitude (1941, 37). God makes the one in faith return to reality without sacrificing one's truth of that belief, so one safely knows that the belief will be made true and blindly lives as though it is already true. Therefore, real faith arises as a kind of absurdity of the impossible desires lived as if they are actualized realities through the eternity of God.
In general, Kierkegaard praises the enthusiasm that is held with contempt by Locke. Further, he considers this enthusiasm the only possible justification for faith, as any rationally reasonable propositions do not require any faith for their certainty. Kierkegaard also furthers the consequences of that enthusiasm by positing a kind of faith that requires no objective justification, forgoes all physical possibilities, and raises us above our particularities and the universal rationalities through our relation to the infinitude of God. So, for Kierkegaard, faith is not merely believing what is possible or does not contradict reason, but above reason, yet it also allows reason to survive as if the impossible is always already possible in the finitude.
Faith as the Omnipresent Necessity for Reason
The major distinction between Locke's and Kierkegaard's argument lies in how they define faith, whether it is a secondary option one seeks when reason fails to justify a proposition or it is wholly subjectively determined without the need to consult reason. Here, I argue that Locke's argument that emphasizes the clear-cut boundary between reason and faith is unsound as the criterion of rationalities are constantly revised throughout the history of science, and many of these adjustments are pushed precisely by Locke's enthusiasm or Kierkegaard's subjective certainty that is also present in religious faith.
In Locke's example of Moses' original revelation, where a bush is burned but not consumed, it is a violation of reason. Nevertheless, this sign of the need for faith is under one key assumption: the uniformity of nature (Hume 1739), where the objects we empirically experience are inductively inferred always to behave similarly. Because bushes that had been burned so far were all consumed, they must always be consumed when burned in the future. Locke, as an empiricist, had to rely on the empirically real for rational judgments. However, an inductive leap must be made here, as the assumption of uniformity of nature cannot be proven, and we can very easily imagine a universe where bushes are not consumed when burned. Therefore, by checking with reason, Moses still cannot be sure that he witnessed a miraculous event because physics, on the basis of available empirical evidence, is constantly subjected to the scrutiny of an inductive leap. And even when probabilities of past occurrences are brought to back up a rational induction of the consumption of bushes under fire, the assertion of a highly probable event is still dependent upon a subjective opinion as one cannot empirically experience all possible outcomes of burning bushes to have objective certainty of that assertion.
Furthermore, in the realm of things that reason of empirical rationality cannot answer, these inductive leaps sometimes must be chosen subjectively to alter the demarcations of reason itself. In the history of science, our understanding of what's rational can be drastically different from century to century. For example, the Copernican revolution that changed our rational understanding of the universe from having the earth as its stationary center to having the sun was inductively inferred by Copernicus, where the heliocentric model was found better suited to depict the physical reality of the universe, which the geocentric model can no longer afford. But it caused a lot of unease, especially in the Catholic church, which prohibited Copernicus's theory. This is a major shift in scientific paradigms in Thomas Kuhn's (1966) language, where the fundamental theoretical assumptions that members of the scientific community agree on are being altered. Intriguingly, Kuhn argues that in times of these scientific revolutions, new paradigms are not just adopted on accounts of empirical rationality but also with an act of faith. From what I argued before, what we know to be empirical reason can be based on subjective inferences and abide by high probabilities. And Kuhn's postulations on the paradigmatic shifts of scientific doctrines suggest the same, where what was not acknowledged to be rational in the past might become rational with a subjective faith in the new paradigm.
Now it seems Locke's conception of a clear boundary between faith and reason might not be so clear after all, even in the scientific realm. Faith is arguably now a presupposition in all matters that are considered rational. During the historical shifts from Aristotelian sciences to Newtonian Physics and then to Einstein's theory of relativity, enthusiastic faith is what had to be relied on outside of reason to modify those boundaries of rationality. What follows from this undeniably ambiguous boundary between faith and reason is that any rational tests that are required for Locke before one turns to faith become inexecutable. All reason can provide is the best inferences which still await a component of subjective faith to complete it as true. Therefore, faith is conceivably inextricable from reason, rendering Locke's demarcation of the boundary between them an unresolvable project. Therefore, in matters of divinity, which rests on an equally unresolved debate on its rational existence, faith now becomes the best tool available to assert its truth of it. Since even what was thought to be most reasonable in science does not necessarily pass the rigid rational tests, then, in matters that are unknowable determinately, such as God, consulting reason cannot be held as the necessary step to confirm one's faith.
Instead, the fanatic enthusiasm that Locke saw as the enemy that harms both faith and reason is the inescapable element even in the determining of reason itself, which opens possibilities for Kierkegaard's affirmation of the subjective necessity of confessing religious faith. The universal reason referred to by Locke is already shadowed by ambiguity and obscurity, and one is left to one's own subjectivity to determine their allegiance to divine matters. This makes subjective faith ultimately a higher faculty than universal reason, as it must be employed in all matters, whether they are scientific or religious. Scientific faith already requires a certain suspension of reason as reason itself has inductive limitations; religious faith then must rest on a complete suspension of reason, which is what Kierkegaard advocates.
However, one may object to this complete surrender to subjective and enthusiastic faith by pointing out how a reasonable inference is still needed as the basis of faith. Because even in science, inferences are made based on the best explanations. And without that counterpart of rationality, one could dangerously end up in the land of subjective chaos without objective reasoning, where religious conflicts might grow, which is also what Locke is writing to avoid. In response, I argue that faith is ultimately a private matter, especially the kind that is advocated by Kierkegaard. Contrary to many public terrains that are governed by rationality, such as science, Kierkegaard is grounding faith as a subjective truth outside of the dogmas of institutional religions where authorities dictate the rational basis for all believers that clashes with other dogmas and generates conflicts. Due to its private nature, this subjective truth varies from person to person. And finding a rational basis for exclusively private matters is another entry to the fanaticism that Locke opposes by adhering to the construction of dogmas. Then, without the collective allegiance to one kind of religious truth, religious zealotry won't be materialized on the scale that results in massive conflicts. On the contrary, by treating faith as an extremely subjective enterprise, relativism can come to the aid of maintaining peaceful practices of religion. By understanding that each is entitled to declare their own content of truth and be faithful, all can be neutral to others that are in radically different faiths without the need to explicate or demonstrate their subjective faith to others on the grounds of universal reason at all.
Conclusion
In summary, Locke and Kierkegaard offered two contrary understandings of faith and its relation to reason. The former puts reason on a pedestal that must be employed before one announces faith, and the latter argues faith to be the only principle to abide by in religion that transcends any material function of universal reason. However, Locke’s boundary between faith and reason is obfuscated by inductive limits, and faith is virtually omnipresent in the determining of reason itself. Therefore, in private matters, Kierkegaard's subjective faith is the fundamental underpinning of religious beliefs which reason cannot compete with or replace.
Bibliography
Hume, David. 1739. A Treatise of Human Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kierkegaard, Søren. 1941. Fear and Trembling. Translated by Walter Lowrie. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kuhn, Thomas S. 1966. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Locke John. 1825. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 25Th ed. London: Tegg.
