Kierkegaards Concepts - Tome I: Absolute to Church

Abstract

Soren Kierkegaard knew that the religious relationship calls the human being into a twofold process involving language. On the one hand, human beings are called to name and describe in language the reality being experienced; yet, on the other hand, they are called to negate the naming and the discursive, linguistic descriptions because such naming and descriptions always fall short of giving proper expression to the reality being named. Kierkegaard's potency as a religious and philosophical thinker resided in his singular capacity for carrying out both sides of this calling. He could engage in naming with the best of them, but he was also unrelenting in his engagement in the activity of negating. A rationality of the deepest sort is at play more obviously in naming but also less obviously in negating, and Kierkegaard's dialectical gifts served him well in the two arenas.