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89 6 The Pseudonymous dialectic of faith, i in many forms and under several pseudonyms, a whole pseudonymous literature is chiefly concerned with illuminating the question of faith, with discerning the sphere belonging to faith, with determining its distinction from other spheres of the intellect and spirit, etc. and how is all this done? By dialectic, by reflection. i venture to claim that it would be hard to find an author who has been so devoted to reflecting on faith. (JP, 6:296–97 [#6595]) let us take stock of the arguments put forth thus far. in part 1 i claimed that it is a mistake to suppose that given Kierkegaard’s indirect, often playful methods of communication , there is nothing serious going on at the same time. roger Poole exemplifies the kind of interpretation that generates a false dilemma out of jest and earnestness . not only is the dilemma false, jest can serve the end of earnestness quite powerfully . The classic example is Jonathan Swift’s “a modest Proposal,” which combines jest and earnestness, seriousness and play, to convey its message far more effectively than a didactic treatise or sermon would.1 in part 2 i suggested there is a real dilemma, an exclusive either/or when it comes to reading Kierkegaard suspiciously or trustfully. There are lots of reasons to think that a suspicious reading of Kierkegaard falters, but most important to my thesis is the closure to the possibility of moral and religious edification for Kierkegaard’s reader that such an interpretation entails. Whether or not—as fenger and garff assert—Kierkegaard is sometimes misled or sometimes misleads, whether or not he carried deep psychological wounds into his writing, i argued that one can and one ought to trust his stated intentions of wishing to make his reader aware of what it means genuinely to exist and what it means to exist Christianly, primarily because of the momentous quality of these intentions. tying together parts 1 and 2, the well-known aesthetic anecdote in Either/Or I bears repeating and reinterpreting in light of Kierkegaard’s urgent attempts to make his contemporaries aware of the Christian ideal and their relation to it: “in a theater, it happened that a fire started offstage. The clown came out to tell the audience. They 90 | Faith and Virtue thought it was a joke and applauded. he told them again, and they became still more hilarious. This is the way, i suppose, that the world will be destroyed—amid the universal hilarity of wits and wags who think it is all a joke” (eo, 1:30). Can one read Kierkegaard the clown as merely jesting? Sure. ought one to be suspicious about his warning? Perhaps. Could he instead be serious, and if so, might there be good reason to trust his cry? i believe so. in this chapter and the next we turn to Kierkegaard’s works themselves and, in particular, to his exploration of faith, a predominant concept throughout both the pseudonymous and signed writings. it is one thing to quote Kierkegaard’s retrospective literature as evidence of his interest in edification, but a stronger case can be made by offering a reading of the texts themselves, particularly the pseudonymous works that are the focus of thinkers like Poole. The present chapter, therefore, will illustrate Kierkegaard’s edifying philosophy at work but also offer an alternative reading of the pseudonymous literature to the one Poole proffers. The focus on faith also anticipates the concluding chapter, which aims to show how Kierkegaard is a kind of Christian virtue thinker and strengthens my position that Kierkegaardian edification has as its end becoming a Christian. i will limit my focus to Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous conceptions of faith. i am interested in faith’s quantitative or conceptual dialectic—the rich and multifaceted analysis Kierkegaard undertakes by approaching the concept from many angles, through similarity and difference. it is a strength of Kierkegaard’s account of faith that he chooses to elucidate faith not just from the perspective of the ideal Christian but also from the perspective of several characters—pseudonyms—who admire faith or understand it to a degree yet do not possess it. an approach from different angles is also notable insofar as it sheds light on Kierkegaard’s various polemical interests, the various philosophical and theological understandings with which he takes issue. Why faith, and why not love or hope? first, of the countless concepts Kierkegaard attends to, central among them is...

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