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Christian Freedom Reconsidered: The Case of Kierkegaard

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Julian N. Hartt
Julian N. Hartt
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

In this discussion I have taken up only one of Kierkegaard's writings, Philosophical Fragments (1844). I have not gone very far into the problems of Kierkegaard's intentions in the pseudonymous literature. I have assumed that he meant pretty much what he said in the Fragments; but even if he did not, the issues there pursued are what they are, i.e., are worth someone's efforts.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 60 , Issue 2 , April 1967 , pp. 133 - 144
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1967

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References

1 Translated by David F. Swenson, Princeton Univ. Press, 1944.

2 If we translate “sin” as “error,” I suspect that Kierkegaard's arguments can be restated thus: alienated from the Truth any illusion (or lie) is free to assume domination of the mind; and even though the mind thus imprisoned feels free, since it is bound to nothing but itself, it is a slave of its own phantasms and is thus stripped of its essential “being,” i.e., to be in the route of access to reality. His account of the contradiction into which the “autonomous Reason” falls is very like this.

3 I take this to mean: to believe in Jesus Christ is made possible only by the “occurrence” of Jesus Christ. Otherwise one would have to say that being able to believe anything is a function of psychological pressures of one sort or another only accidentally related to the object to which in fact they are related.