Reason’s Backsliders: Pascal, Kierkegaard, and dialectical paradox of human existence

Abstract

The article attempts to find common features in research project of B. Pascal and S. Kierkegaard. A starting point uniting both thinkers is the paradox of human nature, in the light of which the truth of contemporary knowledge is called into question. In Pascal’s case it is the episteme of mathematics, in Kierkegaard’s case — the truth of speculative philosophy. The “basic anthropological structure” of their thoughts problematizes any kind of rationalism by detecting the gap between the human existence and methods of its interpretation. Revising the universal concept of human being as one-sided abstraction both Pascal and Kierkegaard backslide from reason and dialectically invert the paradox of human existence. Pascal’s man is the “midpoint between nothing and everything”. He is crucified between two abysses: outer stretch of the universe and the infinity of internal division. His destiny is connected with inconsistency and instability, while his dignity and the most important task are thinking. However, with the help of reason “thinking reed” is only able to grasp its limits and realizes its own littleness. Reason must delegate authority to the heart which is able to bring a person to the faith. Kierkegaard’s man is not the subject to uninterested scientific observation. He is neither the excuse for aesthetic contemplation or moral reasoning, nor the result of speculative becoming a metaphysical definition. Having a paradoxical heterogeneous structure, the man is the spirit, the consciousness, the self, who combines the infinite and the finite, the temporal and the eternal in itself, Kierkegaard’s person is subordinated to the task “to become subjective”. The implementation of this task in limiting conditions of existence opens to him the choice of faith on the border of the absurd. The greatness and littleness of man, his limitations and finiteness in the face of infinity and eternity can be grasped only in a dialectical manner. Trying to stop the imitation of transitions and the lie of mediations, both Pascal and Kierkegaard use the “qualitative dialectics”. It includes two elements: 1) opposites and irreducible possibilities of human existence connecting and holding together; 2) rupture of immanence as the condition to think existentially. This is the dialectics of paradox and leap changing the shape of philosophical message. Pascal uses aphorisms in the spirit of classicist aesthetics. Kierkegaard invents the rule of double reflective message. But ultimately to be a man for both thinkers means to be a Christian. Refs 17.