For various reasons, most related to teaching philosophy at St. John’s University, I have been thinking about what we refer to as classics in literature. One day in class last semester, a student announced that he had bought three books by Dostoyevsky: “The Brothers Karamazov,” “Crime and Punishment,” and “The Idiot.”
On other occasions, the student, through his comments and questions, had revealed that he was taking his studies very seriously and was trying to grow by reading the classics. After announcing the books by Dostoyevsky that he had bought, he revealed that he had tried to read “Brothers Karamazov” but that he stopped because he was not getting anything from it. I was delighted by his confession and by the reaction of his fellow students. Everyone encouraged him not to be discouraged, that perhaps he was not yet ready for “The Brothers Karamazov,” that he should wait for a little time before trying it again.
The confession by the student who was interested in Dostoyevsky and the support offered by his classmates encouraged me that some students were growing as students. It also reminded me of how I am blessed to be able to read and re-read classics because of my vocation as a teacher. My wonderful experience as a college professor is that through my reading, new insights appear, and previous insights often return. What many people don’t have the time to experience, my vocation almost obliges me to experience. I want to share those experiences with as many people as possible.
At one point during the spring semester, I was teaching the philosophical visions of Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1856) and Jean Paul Sartre (1905-1981). Historians correctly describe both thinkers as existentialists. Existentialism emphasizes human freedom more than any other philosophy. If I had to describe my own philosophy, I would describe myself as an existentialist personalist or a personalist existentialist.
I borrow frequently from existentialist thinkers but also from personalist philosophers such as Martin Buber and Gabriel Marcel.
I am certain that Pope Francis’ thinking was greatly influenced by personalist philosophers. While thinking about and lecturing about Kierkegaard and Sartre, I was struck by how both made freedom central to their philosophy, but gave freedom a radically different importance in their thinking. To state it succinctly, Kierkegaard thought that only through freedom could we encounter God; for Sartre, freedom meant that there could be no God.
Kierkegaard thought that there were three stages on life’s way, and though we might have parts of all three in our lives, everyone was predominantly on one of those stages.
Soren called them the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. What characterizes the aesthetic that involves a commitment to sense pleasure, the best food, drink, wine, theatre, music, sexual pleasure, and that there is no experience of any transcendent.
The aesthetic was completely this worldly.
To characterize the aesthetic stage, Kierkegaard used the figure Don Juan, who might have sex with a different woman every night, and if that woman was married to someone else, that made the experience more exciting.
The logical outcome of living on the aesthetic stage was suicide because the person was looking for fulfillment in finite realities, which cannot fulfill a person. But suicide is not inevitable.
The person can leap to the next stage, which the Danish thinker called the ethical. This stage is better than the aesthetic because it emphasizes morality, law, and duty. But fulfillment cannot be found on this stage.
What is required is a leap of faith to the third stage, which Kierkegaard calls the religious stage. This leap of faith is a leap toward Christ. Kierkegaard names four characteristics of this stage. They are the following: a leap, inward, subjective, and absurd.
The leap suggests risk. Reason cannot prove that the third way is the way we should live. So the leap of faith is subjective, meaning deeply personal.
By absurd, Soren does not wish to indicate that it is meaningless but rather that it has so much meaning that our limited minds cannot exhaust its meaning and mystery. Through the leap, we find the risen Christ, and then we should spend our lives bearing witness to our relationship with Christ.
I would guess that anyone reading this column who identifies himself or herself as a follower of Christ has made that Kierkegaardian leap at some time in his or her life, perhaps at baptism or first Communion or marriage. Perhaps we don’t think of our commitment in the dramatic way that Kierkegaard depicts it, but that does not make it any less real.
If at this moment in our lives we are trying to live as followers of Christ, I think that signifies that we have made the Kierkegaardian leap of faith.
Father Lauder is a philosophy professor at St. John’s University, Jamaica. His new book, “The Cosmic Love Story: God and Us,” is available on Amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble.