Kierkegaard's Living-Room: Between Faith and History in ‘Philosophical Fragments’ by David E. Mercer (review)

humanities 455 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 David E. Mercer. Kierkegaard=s Living-Room: Between Faith and History in >Philosophical Fragments= McGill-Queen=s University Press. x, 208. $60.00 Most students enter Kierkegaard=s thought through Fear and Trembling. A readable text, it has at its core the rejection of the view, dear to modern Christianity, or so Kierkegaard believes, that to be religious is to be good, or that morality is the sole content of religion. Fear and Trembling, with its suspension of the ethical, the leap of faith and the Knight of Faith, is authentic Kierkegaard. But Philosophical Fragments is perhaps a better point of entry for those eager to study Kierkegaard. At least that is the way I think Kierkegaard would see it. At the core of this work is the attempt to demonstrate the impossibility of any philosophical interpretation of Christianity in general and of the Hegelian interpretation of Christianity in particular. Fragments reveals Kierkegaard in the pose of a Christian David, determined to bring down the Hegelian Goliath. Kierkegaard relishes the role. His weapon is modest: a scepticism about the nature and limits of human reason that reminds one of Hume, but he directs it at his enemy with great skill. Reason is limited, Kierkegaard argues, but lives in denial of these limits, while religion is rooted in the awareness of these limits and, as a consequence, is aware of the precarious and uncertain situation of the individual human being. Any attempt to understand human existence, Kierkegaard insists, would be well advised to begin with Socratic ignorance rather than with the Hegelian claims to absolute knowledge. This is a lesson he thinks Christianity knows all too well and carries forward with its notion of God and faith. Christianity is more Socratic than Socrates, a fact Kierkegaard believes the modern defenders of religion have forgotten. David Mercer=s book is a very good companion to the Philosophical Fragments. It is comprehensive and thorough and, above all, I think, faithful to Kierkegaard=s argument. True to the book=s subtitle, Mercer provides a fine account of Kierkegaard on scripture and history, Christ and history, secular and sacred history, and the relation of faith and history. Mercer describes himself as a theological conservative. He wants to argue, as indeed Kierkegaard argued, that Christianity cannot be understood as a system of interdependent concepts that might then be defended as would a philosophical system. Christianity is rooted in a historical event B the life of Jesus. It is the Incarnate God which is at the heart of Christianity (not a postulate of pure practical reason, as Kant argues in the Second Critique, or the Idea or generative seed of human consciousness, as Hegel argues in the Phenomenology). And this historical fact can be accepted only as an act of xxxxxxxx 456 letters in canada 2001 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 faith. Christianity is not a cultural accomplishment that we might defend for its cultural benefits but a profound existential challenge that begins with the unqualified choice to believe. Mercer is always on top of the text and is a most reliable guide to Kierkegaard=s argument. His book is not, however, very adventuresome. It stays close to the main lines of Kierkegaard=s analysis, and the route it takes through the work is familiar. If one is eager to discover if not a new Kierkegaard then a new approach to various aspects of his thought, one will not find it here. I would also add that while it is important to get Kierkegaard right, and Mercer does, it is also important to ask whether Kierkegaard is right. Would Hegel have come to see the error of his ways had he had the benefit of the Philosophical Fragments? Hardly. He would have seen in Kierkegaard the rejection of reason and modernity and a defence of what I think he would take to be the bad old days of pre-Enlightenment religion, namely individualism, a lack of social and political responsibility, an inability to distinguish faith from superstition, an invitation to put religion into the hands of those caught...