Ways of Knowing: Kierkegaard's Pluralist Epistemology

6. Subjective Knowledge

115 CHAPTER SIX Subjective Knowledge Subjective knowledge was Kierkegaard’s primary epistemological interest. It is tempting to jump to the conclusion that subjective knowledge is something that is idiosyncratic to Kierkegaard. It should be clear, however, that while a fully developed theory of subjective knowledge such as is possible to extract from Kierkegaard’s works may indeed be specific to Kierkegaard, it is not at all idiosyncratic. That is, there are some things that, because of their very nature, nearly everyone would agree, we cannot have purely objective knowledge of. Of course, Kierkegaard had very well-defined ontological (and hence also anthropological) ideas, so not everyone will agree with Kierkegaard’s claims concerning what sorts of things can be known subjectively. Confirmed atheists, for example, would not accept that any sort of religious knowledge, even of the subjective sort, is possible. But then, atheists also have very different ontological views. Kierkegaard’s views make a number of ontological assumptions, as all views about knowledge must. That many of these assumptions were religious was not at all controversial for Kierkegaard’s audience, though many of their implications, as Kierkegaard develops them, were. Not all subjective knowledge, as we will see, however, is religious or depends in any sense on religious assumptions. All subjective knowledge, as Kierkegaard understands it, however, does depend on an acceptance of the reality of ethical obligations, or what one might even call social obligations, 116 WAYS OF KNOWING if the term “social” is understood in the anthropological sense. This will be controversial only to people who are unfamiliar with recent work in anthropology , zoology, and even neurology concerning how fundamental is our sense of obligation to our fellow creatures.1 The reader might be inclined to think that, given the apparent symmetry of the categories of objective and subjective knowledge, pseudo-knowledge is analogous to objective knowledge in the loose sense and thus to expect that a section of the present chapter will be devoted to pseudo-knowledge. Pseudo-knowledge is not analogous to objective knowledge in the loose sense, however. Objective knowledge in the loose sense is a legitimate form of knowledge for Kierkegaard, whereas pseudo-knowledge is not. There will thus be no section devoted to pseudo-knowledge. Pseudo-knowledge is simply subjective knowledge that is not reflected in the existence of the “knower.” Immanent Metaphysical Knowledge We saw in chapters 2 and 3 that objective knowledge in the strict sense is restricted to mathematics and what Kierkegaard calls ontology. They are part of the realm of immanent metaphysical knowledge. According to Kierkegaard , immanent metaphysical knowledge is not restricted, however, to mathematics and ontology but includes such things as knowledge that there is a God and that one has an immortal soul. The difficulty with these latter sorts of knowledge, according to Kierkegaard, is that people are unwilling to let it “get control of their minds” (JP, 3:3606). It is precisely the potential of this knowledge to get control of the knower that distinguishes it from objective immanent metaphysical knowledge, which is indifferent to the existence of the individual knower as such. Kierkegaard is widely believed to belong to a skeptical tradition that would appear to preclude any claim to religious knowledge.2 As early as 1835, however, there is a reference in his journals to the possibility of such knowledge,3 and in 1840 there is another reference, this one to his plans 1 See, e.g., Leonard Katz, ed., Evolutionary Origins of Morality (Charlottesville, Va.: Imprint Academic, 2000); and Joshua D. Greene, R. Brian Sommerville, Leigh E. Nystrom, John M. Darley, and Jonathan D. Cohen, “An fMRI Investigation of Emotional Engagement in Moral Judgment,” Science 293, no. 5537 (2001): 2105–8. 2 See, e.g., Popkin’s “Kierkegaard and Skepticism” and Penelhum’s “Skepticism and Fideism.” 3 “I can indeed conceive of a philosophy after Christianity,” writes Kierkegaard, “or after one has become a Christian, but then it would be a Christian philosophy. Then the relationship would not be one of philosophy to Christianity but of Christianity to Christian knowledge [christelige Erkjendelse] or, if one insists, Christian philosophy” (JP, 3:3245). SUBJECTIVE KNOWLEDGE 117 for developing a “speculative Christian epistemology [Erkjendelseslære]” (JP, 2:2277).4 The reader might be tempted to conclude that these remarks were written before Kierkegaard’s thoughts were developed to the point where such knowledge would be precluded. We will see, however, concern with and...