Into the air or into the unknown.
To leap when the faith is lost –
bravery or foolishness? Still, faith requires doubt.
Those who doubt may more likely leap.
I stand at the edge and ponder.
The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard came from a wealthy Copenhagen family and he was left enough of an inheritance to be financially independent for life. He is considered the father of existential philosophy, but his writing also touched on theology, psychology, literary criticism, and fiction.
Two ideas of his stayed with me all these years after university study. One is the idea of “subjectivity.” He meant that we all perceive the “truth” of the world differently. In my undergraduate mind this, perhaps incorrectly, seemed to me to be related to Einstein’s concept of relativity.
The other thing is his expression of the “leap of faith” and that faith is not possible without doubt. In that confusing philosophical way, he would say that one must doubt the existence of God to have faith in the existence of God. Belief without doubt is just credulity.
I rediscovered Kierkegaard through his influence on novelists like John Updike, Franz Kafka, and Albert Camus.
Writing the Day 