Kierkegaardian deconstruction and the paradoxes of faith

Duane Armitage

pp. 155-168

in: Bruce Ellis Benson (ed), Evil, fallenness, and finitude, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Abstract

This chapter argues that a proper "Christian deconstruction" of reason, for Kierkegaard, depends on the necessity of finitude and guilt and their rootedness in an existential anthropology. That is, the paradoxes of reason that lead to reason's own self-deconstruction are exposed in an existential anthropology that conceives of the human being as spirit and thus as task, and as such, inevitably finite and (ironically) powerless vis-à-vis this task. Christian deconstruction then hinges, I argue, on Kierkegaard's existential anthropology, which in turn depends upon finitude or the essential impotency of the human being vis-à-vis an ironic task of selfhood. Finitude qua impotency and guilt prove then to be a necessity for grace and faith.

Cited authors

Kierkegaard Søren