Concluding Unscientific Postscript Entry 2, Courage of Dialectic

 So, as I've been reading this book along with Courage of Truth by Foucault, I can't help seeing parallels, real or imagined, there they are. Kierkegaard's point here at the beginning is that disputations about the truth of the Bible do not provide assurance of eternal happiness; they can't, even if the historical proofs are good, because you can only get approximation in this world. And even if you could get a proof, where would the passion of your faith be? Faith, he implies in some passages, requires imperfection:

"For someone who believes that there is a God and a providence, things are made easier(in preserving the faith) in an imperfect world, where passion is kept alive, easier too in definitely gaining faith(as against an illusion) than in an absolutely perfect world. Indeed in such a world faith is unthinkable. Hence the teaching that faith is abolished in eternity."(Concluding Unscientific Postscript pp.26-27)

For Kierkegaard faith IS passion, not something objective; it is subjective. In eternity, in heaven, in front of God, obviously there can be no faith. And faith is not some bargain, some wager. It is a passion for one's eternal happiness. I've read some Christian books about how it's "not about you", but for Kierkegaard it IS about you, as he would say, about the little self.

Now for the connection... Kierkegaard goes to some length to discuss the knife's edge one is on if one tries to build one's eternal happiness of some dialectic without a conclusion. He goes over and over how such a thing will not accomplish it's desire. Searching for historical or philosophical truth in this way cannot create the assurance of eternal happiness, because at any moment, the current of an argument, a bit of philology, anything, can turn awry. To give into an argument on this is to imply one is lacking in passion.

I have, on many occasions, and on many things, found my sense of well-being dependent on the outcome of some argument. It doesn't have to be about religion, it can be about anything: ethics, the nature of the Self, the meaning of life, all sorts of things. Yet there must be courage in these matters to investigate them. If I've committed myself to some view, built my life, my sense of self on it, only to have it undermined by an argument, that's quite a moment. It takes courage.

Foucault is talking about Plato's dialogue Laches. In this case he is talking about the definition of courage, and courage is displayed by all who engage in the account one has to give of themselves over the course of the dialogue. The dramatic difference, what is are the stakes? Eternal happiness? Perhaps, actually. If the dialectic were to show the soul doesn't exist, so much for the soul.

Is the soul a bit of metaphysics, though? Or can it be viewed as one's subjectivity? We can secularize all of this and become existentialists. The dialectic in one's life is then the facing of one's subjectivity, the principles one lives by, what I AM. That is a very dangerous thing to have to face, and it requires courage. Foucault repeatedly refers to the 'care of the self' as the purpose of his work. 

Is the care of the self the risking of the dialectic? The risk of discovering the truth of one's life, of life itself? Ultimately, I don't believe in God, but I find value in Kierkegaard for his revelation of the risk of life, the leap into the absurd that faith requires, or in fact of anything one sets one's life by.

In one's subjectivity, the leap from one stage of life to another, one set of principles to another, one form of life to another, is in some way always ungrounded, as later existentialists would say, no matter how grounded you think you are. So, in the Socratic Dialogues we end in Aporia, but the dialectic itself is the protagonist, in Kierkegaard, the dialectic requires courage but can imply a lack of passion, unless the passion is that of the dialectic itself. I guess that's the point.

Next time, I'll consider further Kierkegaard and also the possibility that undermining this is Foucault's normal view that everything is a 'practice' or a 'discourse', rather than being truth itself, that is 'truth' is relative to some collection of power-relations, in the case of the dialogues, Socrates has the power, he is running the game. What are the games being run on me?