Frustration: Justification and Amazement via the Absurd

                In understanding Kierkegaard’s position, I think we must take it as true that god exists, that the events of Abraham did occur, and that justification is possible through the absurd. To simply take these as baseline facts of Kierkegaard’s analysis should be something that raises red flags in anyone’s mind.

 The most troubling and the most readily disputable, to me, is the justification of Abraham’s position via a paradox, via the absurd. Kierkegaard is very careful to use the word justification, a word that does not necessarily imply any sort of rationalizing endeavor like the “explanation” or other suitable words would suggest. Though we have come to associate justification with rational explanation, to justify is simply to uphold or defend something as well-grounded (i.e. as justified). It does not by necessity require typical reasoning nor is it necessarily a true/false claim. But I think we can say that there are degrees of justification and that some things are more effectively justified than others.  Again, it is the tendency to associate the degree of the justification with the most rational argument. This is because we can make connections and see most clearly through reason. Asking a human being, who only understands itself as a human and as being via reason, to suspend the ethical—to suspend the universal—on the basis of and with the justificiation of paradox is to ask the human being to suspend the basis of meaning in our lives. There is no meaning without understanding or comprehension.

                There is no wonder and amazement without understanding. In this respect, I think that things which are truly paradoxical—what I mean to bring up here are things that by definition do make sense, cannot be understood, are literally absurd or equivalently miraculous—are self-undermining with respect to the human grasping them. Nothing can be truly contradictory and at the same time be appreciated as a wonder. No one wonder’s at the square-circle because it cannot exist. Try to conceive of it. The wonder and appreciation that Johannes de Silentio suggests we should possess for the faith he speaks of seems to me to be impossible. For by holding wonder for something, we necessarily associate it with meaning and we only possess meaning in understanding. To suggest that we can hold meaning through paradox is simply not the case for paradox possesses no meaning. It is simply impossible to understand, and therefore—if it is truly absurd—should lie out of the realm of human vision.

All of this does take for granted that reason is what is necessary for human understanding.