In Kierkegaard's argument on the subjective nature of truth, he gives the example of a Christian "pray[ing] in untruth" while in the "House of the true God." He asserts that this Christian possesses a less genuine degree of truth than the individual from a non-Christian culture who "prays with all of the passion of infinity" to an untrue god. As mentioned in class, this is one of the trickiest passages in our reading for Thursday.
The key detail from the first half of Kierkegaard's example is that the Christian in question prays in untruth, but it's difficult to decipher exactly how one could pray in an untrue manner. My initial assumption was that prayers would be untrue if worship was conducted in a distant and half-hearted way, but during the second reading I was skeptical as to whether or not this would actually constitute an "untruth." The prayer would seem more untrue if the Christian was not much of a believer at all, but simply identified himself or herself as such out of habit. Then all that remains within the Christian is a shell of a belief, completely lacking passion. Prayer from such an empty shell would presumably ring untrue. So if how you believe is more significant than what you believe, does that make passivity of belief the untruth to which Kierkegaard is referring?
I also found it interesting that Kierkegaard chose to use “untruth” rather than “falsehood.” It seems in the spectrum of truth, that which is untrue is closer to true than that which is false. Or, for a less wordy representation: True - - - - Untrue - - - - False, with true and false being opposite extremities. Perhaps in Kierkegaard's mind, to pray in untruth to the true God is more true than to pray in untruth to an idol. Praying with passion to an idol would fall somewhere between the true and the untrue in this spectrum. Of course, the spectrum itself is geared toward Kierkegaard's subjective truth, involving God as the true absolute and any other religions' absolutes as incorrect.
According to the spectrum (which may be overcomplicating or oversimplifying things, I'm not really sure which), many radical modern religious movements would be considered closer to the truth than passive, moderate Christians. In class we brought up the suicide pilots involved in the attacks on the country during September 11. The pilots truly believed they were serving their god and their country, and they believed it so vehemently that they were willing to die for their beliefs. I'm not sure if Kierkegaard took such extreme cases into account when he was forming his philosophy. Having not read Kierkegaard prior to this class, it's possible that he goes on to discuss how overlapping or contradicting subjective truths of various individuals should be addressed. He seems like a fairly rational fellow, so it's likely that he would not condone one individual's subjective truth justifying the extermination of other individuals. If anyone has more experience with Kierkegaard or knows of something that I've overlooked that addresses the issue of violence, please chime in. Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
I think something that would help our understanding of Kierkegaard's idea of subjective truth would be to firmly grasp the distinction between objective truth and subjective truth. Objective truth is certainly our most familiar idea of truth: It is determined by whether it is or is not the case that one's proposition matches how things are in the world. Subjective truth is entirely different in that it is more of a MEASURE (although exactly what is measures seems a little vague) between one who knows/believes and the thing known/believed. Objective truth, then, concerns a relation between a statement and a fact -- regardless of whose statement it is -- while subjective truth concerns a relation between a PERSON and the thing believed.
ReplyDeleteConfusion seems to arrive by muddling the two ideas of truth. They actually are quite distinct and share no discernible relation between each other, which is why I have a problem with using the word "truth" for both cases since it makes it so easy to slip into equivocation. Objective truth has the dichotomous truth-values of true and false: A statement either is so or is not so. Subjective truth, however, can admit degrees of truth, such that one truth can be "more true" than another and perhaps even "less true" than a third. With such different criteria for determination, it seems difficult, perhaps even impossible, to arrive at a meaningful relation between these two types of truth.
Let's examine the 9/11 scenario in light of this distinction. In order to not confuse the types of truth, let's use the word "passion" instead of "subjective truth" for what follows. The pilots were indeed convinced that their actions were serving God's best interests and their own, and the actions themselves demonstrate this conviction. It seems safe to say then that they had more passion than the average believer (whatever the believer believes), so it seems that the pilots did actually have more subjective truth than the average believer. Now, it's important to realize that Kierkegaard does not speak about passion's, or subjective truth's, relation to morality (which may, in fact, actually be a matter of OBJECTIVE truth anyway), and I doubt that he would go so far out to say, roughly, that the more passion there is, the more moral the act associated with that passion is, because that would imply that the pilot's actions are to be praised. It also has nothing to do with objective truth: Just because the pilots had a lot of subjective truth does not mean that it actually is the case that they were serving God's best interests. All that we can say is that when it comes to passion by itself, the pilots demonstrated a great deal of it in their actions. It does however raise some interesting dilemmas about the relation between subjective truth and morality.
(If anything is taken from this post, please DO NOT take this as a justification of the terrorists' actions. It is simply to clarify what subjective truth is and that it has no relation to objective truth.)
I agree with both this post and the comment in response to it (I apologize if that seems broad and sweeping).
ReplyDeleteI struggled to recognize clearer distinctions between Kierkegaard's subjective "truth" and "untruth" beyond the scope of of conviction and passive acceptance. However, I realized that they are two realms which overlap in subject but not approach. Though is does not seem to be a point of any confusion, I still wish to state -- or rather reiterate -- that however true a person's subjective truth may be, it is not necessarily more appropriate or correct in a conventional sense. Kierkegaard purposely imposed universal limits on it through the presence of objective truth. Therefore, the subjective and objective mingle awkwardly -- hold separate foundational values (the "what" versus the "how).
I bring this up only as a response to the worry that the discussion of 9/11 may be seen as praise for the actions. This is of course not the case, and while Kierkegaard found that it was more fulfilling to be in subjective truth than it was to just be in objective truth, it is not inherently more noble for the very reason that the objective exists. These universal laws that govern the objective are included within the passage for the reason of keeping the potentially irrational nature of the subjective in check.
I would say it is fair -- even correct -- to say that more extreme religious movements regardless of how radical they are can be seen as being held in more subjective truth because of the strength of their followers' convictions. However, ignoring fear of redundancy, it does not necessarily put them above the universal in anyway other than one's personal opinion of which truth holds more value.
This all seems repeated clarification, and it is perhaps frivolous after the previous comment, but I felt it was important to the grasping of the distinction between Kierkegaard's two truths that we recognize that neither is held in a higher regard in an analytical sense -- though the subjective is inherently more important to the single individual. There is no clear "meaningful relation" but rather the two are more or less used as qualifications of truths.