Teodorescu: Kierkegaard and the Knowledge of God
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Kierkegaard and the Knowledge of God Valentin–Petru Teodorescu ABSTRACT: Contrary to the common opinion that Kierkegaard is a fideist, there are in fact good proofs that he offers arguments (of an ethical and existential nature) in favor of the belief in God’s existence. However, this type of philosophical justification is not classical. Evaluated through the categories of modern epistemology it may be called rather externalist than internalist. The advantage of this approach to the problem of the arguments for God’s existence is its egalitarian, eliberating and formative consequences. In addition to that, a result of this view on the belief in God (and the knowledge of his attributes) is the fact that they do not seem to depend in any way by the contingent developments of science or society; therefore, they cannot be affected and eventually deteriorated by these factors. KEY WORDS: fideism, arguments, knowledge, externalism, egalitarianism, future
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he theme of this essay is the knowledge of God—more precisely the knowledge that God exists and that he is a certain kind of being—from a Kierkegaardian perspective. There is generally, regarding Kierkegaard, the public perception that he is a fideist, a person for whom belief in God has no rational grounds; from this perspective a theist, in order to adhere to his own metaphysical worldview, needs to make an irrational jump toward faith. The present article suggests that this perception is false. In what follows we shall see that in the support of theistic belief Kierkegaard brings ethical and existential arguments, relating in this way our knowledge 105