Anselm, Aquinas and Paley all offered what they believed was reasonable proof for the existence of God. Anselm held that existence flowed from the very definition of God. If God is that than which nothing greater can be thought, then God must exist since it is greater to exist than not to exist. Thus, for Anselm, the existence of God – the very fact God exists – can be derived a priori (without the need for any experience) from the concept of God itself. Aquinas and Paley, on the other hand, claimed to derive the existence of God from our experience of the sensible world. Since we observe that things change, it is clear that there must be something that sets that chain of causes and effects going. Since we observe that things in the world can equally exist or not exist (things whose existence is contingent), there must be something that exists necessarily, something to secure the existence of contingent beings; otherwise, everything at some point in the past would have ceased existing and existence could never get started again (remember the principle of plenitude). Finally, since we observe that things in nature seem to have order and purpose, there must be something that bestows that order and purpose to the world. Thus, for Aquinas and Paley, God’s existence can be derived a posteriori (through our reasoning about experience).
Kierkegaard will argue that there is a significant problem with all of these proofs. Remember, since they are proofs for God’s existence, their aim is to establish as true the claim that God exists. In other words, they aim at knowledge of God’s existence. So, while we might have faith or belief in God’s existence, the fact that we are seeking proof indicates that God is as yet unknown to us.[1]
In fact, Kierkegaard’s ultimate aim in this passage is to determine whether or not it is possible to give a negative characterization of God – namely, as the ‘unknown’. If we can, then there is at least a very weak sense we can say we know God. Here, Kierkegaard follows many thinkers who have claimed just this point: it is impossible to grasp any positive attributes of God (e.g., that God is omnipotent or omniscient) because God is infinitely beyond our comprehension; nevertheless, we can still know what God is not, and in that sense understand God. To use a bad example, I may not know what a pineapple is (what it looks like or tastes like) but I can know that it is neither a pinecone nor an apple. This, at least, is the intuition behind the negative approach.
His conclusion ends up being that we cannot even understand God in the negative sense, and this is where ‘the leap’ comes in. Reason has nothing to say about the unknown, positive or negative. But Kierkegaard thinks we must (why is a question you should investigate). However, before he can consider the question of a negative understanding of God, he feels he must rule out once and for all the idea that we could have a positive understanding of God. In other words, he must show that we don’t already know God in the stronger, positive sense. This is all we will tackle in our class.
The First Arguments – a priori objections to proving God’s existence
Kierkegaard first raises two general objections to the idea that we can prove God’s existence. The first is a dilemma. The second is more interesting, though less intuitive, and attempts to show that existence can never be proven by an argument. He then raises an objection against the teleological argument.
A dilemma is a problem with two possible solutions, neither of which is particularly appealing – think of the idioms, ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ or ‘stuck between a rock and a hard place’. The two possible solutions are called the problem’s two ‘horns’, the idea being that you would rather not be impaled by either one. Kierkegaard’s dilemma is this:
Either (a) God exists or (b) God does not exist.
(b) If God does not exist, then it is impossible to prove that God does exist.
(a) If God does exist, then it is foolish to want to demonstrate it, since I have already presupposed God’s existence.
So, the dilemma starts with a problem in the form of a disjunction (either… or… ). The next step is to take up each horn of the dilemma separately, and see what happens. So we assume (b) God does not exist. But if we assume this is true, then how can we prove that God does not exist? Then we assume (a) God does exist. But if God’s existence is my starting point, then why bother trying to prove it? Of course I could prove it:
Premise 1: God exists.
Conclusion: God exists.
But such a proof, at least according to Kierkegaard, seems pointless.
Now, what follows from option (b) is, I think, quite convincing. However, I don’t think much of his response to (a). It doesn’t show that demonstration of God’s existence is impossible, and it doesn’t prove that it is pointless. The proof might have benefit for others, or for me, by showing that such an assumption is reasonable. What might other objections to Kierkegaard’s conclusion be?
The second general argument against proofs for existence can be summarized in Kierkegaard’s claim that “I always reason from existence, not toward existence” (p. 92). Kierkegaard is saying, following the 18th Century German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, that thought or reason always starts from the assumption that objects exists, and then goes on to give an account of it, to think about what it is like. As Kierkegaard puts it, “I do not, for example, prove that a stone exists, but that some existing thing is a stone. The procedure in a court of justice does not prove that a criminal exists, but that the accused, whose existence is given, is a criminal” (p.92). This needs to be spelled out a bit:
Imagine you wanted to buy a new car. You come up with all the things you want the ideal car to have. You then use that list of properties or qualities to compare actual cars in order to figure out which one is best suited to your ideal car. You might list things like ‘good fuel efficiency’ or ‘good warranty’, etc. What you probably won’t put on the list is ‘exists’. This is because you aren’t all that concerned with non-existent cars, since they would be quite difficult to drive.
When we use concepts like ‘my ideal car’, we are using them to classify objects which we come across in the world. If we come across an object that has all the properties included in one of our concepts (good gas mileage, good warranty, etc), then we can apply that concept to that object. In these sorts of cases the question of whether an object exists does not come up, as the object is already given to us. On the other hand, if we have a concept and there is no object that conforms to that concept, then we will say that none of those objects exist. If there are no cars that have all the properties of ‘my ideal car’, then my ideal car does not exist. What I don’t say is that my ideal car does not exist because it does not have the property ‘exists’. Instead, I say my ideal car doesn’t exist because I couldn’t find anything in the world that fits the bill.
Kierkegaard’s example of the stone and the criminal is meant to make just this point. I have a concept, ‘a stone’, that includes properties like hard, inanimate, etc. When I find something in the world that fits that concept, I say “that thing is a stone”, and then I can say more simply, a stone exists. If I never found anything that fit the concept of ‘stone’, then I could never say a stone exists (in fact, we routinely things like unicorns or sea-monsters don’t exist just because we can’t find anything in the world that fits our concept of one). But, even if I don’t presuppose a stone exists, I still have an idea of what a stone is. In other words, I know what criteria some existing thing must meet before I can call it a stone. The criminal example is even more intuitive. I wouldn’t say the court is trying to prove that a criminal exists. Instead, it is trying to establish whether something that already exists – namely, the accused – is a criminal. If the accused doesn’t fit with the evidence, they are proven not guilty.
In the case of God, Kierkegaard is arguing, very quickly, that people who try to prove the existence of God put ‘the unknown’, which we assume exists, under the concept God.
P1) The unknown is an existing thing
P2) God is the unknown
Conclusion: God is an existing thing
In the argument we have done two things: (1) we have assumed that the unknown is something that exists; (2) we have identified the unknown with God. In ordinary cases, an argument like this would work:
P1) This thing is hard, inanimate, etc.
P2) A stone is this thing.
Conclusion: Stone is hard, inanimate, etc.
There is nothing wrong with this argument. It just seems to put the cart before the horse. We call things stones because they are hard, inanimate, etc. We do not first know that things are stones, and then talk about what attributes they have. We start with the general idea that things exist, and then talk about them.
In the case of God, we have admitted that God is unknown. How, then, are we going to go out into the world and find God using the idea we have? The fact is, we already have an idea of what God is, so we contradict ourselves. We think God is knowable in some sense, in the sense that God is the Unknown. Then we go looking for God using that concept. So we already assume God exists. However, since the concept is empty, we pretty soon have to start filling it with stuff in order to pick something out. When we do that, we develop our concept, but we are still assuming God exists in the first place without justification.
The Napoleon analogy fills this argument out. Kierkegaard points out that it is impossible to infer someone existing from their works without assuming someone exists whose works they are. If there were a string of burglaries in my neighbourhood, I would not prove that a burglar existed, but that someone who exists is a burglar. Then again, I could not infer or judge with any certainty from a string of burglaries that only one person did all those things. And I certainly could not say who exactly it was who committed the crimes.
But perhaps the order in the world is enough to infer that there must have been a divine creator. Kierkegaard asks us what certainty we have there is such an order. The whole world could fall apart tomorrow. If we really wanted to know for sure, we would have to wait around in suspense until the universe ended, and only then once all the evidence was in could we pronounce a judgement either way. But this is quite impossible.
[1] In an earlier part of his work, Kierkegaard claims that there is a “paradoxical passion” behind all thinking: thought ultimately seeks to understand something that cannot be thought. We don’t have to get into any of these details here; but, he seems to be making a psychological claim about reason and human beings in general. We inevitably collide with a limit to what we can understand, and this is implicit in Kierkegaard’s characterization of ‘reason’ as a passion. For example, when one is thirsty, fulfilling the thirst by taking a drink eliminates or destroys the original passion. When one loves something (in the erotic sense of striving and desiring), once the object of love is attained the love vanishes. In the same way, the ‘unknown’ that reason seeks would be its downfall if it could be attained. Yet, at the same time, its attainment is impossible since we have no idea what we are looking for in the first place (we will come to this when we talk about knowledge in a few weeks). The question of God’s existence is an illustration of this claim about reason and what we can understand.