Date Thesis Awarded
5-2024
Access Type
Honors Thesis -- Open Access
Degree Name
Bachelors of Arts (BA)
Department
Philosophy
Advisor
Timothy Costelloe
Committee Members
Aaron Griffith
Alexander Angelov
Abstract
Søren Kierkegaard describes a human life as a dialectic of three stages: the esthetic, the ethical, and the religious. He argues that there is a qualitative break between the ethical and religious spheres, which requires a “leap” for the individual to cross. In this thesis, I argue that the key to understanding the concept of the leap is to focus on its inevitable failure. Failure is essential to an individual’s transformation to becoming a Christian, as no human beings in this life can ever achieve authentic faith, become a knight of faith, or arrive at Religiousness B. For an individual, the progression towards the religious stage is a development of his consciousness of the self. In the process of a continuous self-deepening, the subject eventually reaches the moment where he is fully conscious of his ideal self, the truly authentic lifestyle, and his negative self, consisting of past faults and wrongdoings. In this moment, the individual is pushed to the apex of his existential pathos, thereby arriving at the brink of the ethical, and taking the leap. Here, the failure of the leap is critical because the individual is far from landing secure in the religious sphere after the leap. Instead, as the failure is inevitable and predestined, the subject is ushered into aporia, a liminal stage between the ethical and religious. This individual in aporia is marked by despair and emptiness due to the complete annihilation of the self. That is, the subject realizes the impossibility of becoming a complete self and the inability to eradicate its negative self. In aporia, the individual is offered the final chance to bring himself before God in a total submission, as he truthfully accepts his guilt as sin in humility. In doing so, the individual ultimately remains content in an eternal striving to be a better ethical being without daring to claim himself as the faithful.
Recommended Citation
Shao, Yi, "The Self in the Mirror of Despair: Søren Kierkegaard on the Authentic Christian Life" (2024). Undergraduate Honors Theses. William & Mary. Paper 2116.
https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses/2116
