Immanent Possibilities & Beyond: Transcendence in Kierkegaard’s Philosophy of Existence and in T. Rentsch’s Phenomenological Hermeneutics
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Sebastian Hüsch | Aix-Marseille University 01 See Max Horkheimer (1947), 22: “Meaning is supplanted by function or effect in the world of things and events.” See also the interview Horkheimer gave the SPIEGEL in 1973 which is even more pessimistic (or fatalistic?) on this behalf than Eclipse of Reason. 02 See the volume edited by Norbert Bolz & Esther Gisberger (2008) on this issue. 03
See on this topic Peter Nynas
et al. (2013); Péter Losonczi/Aakash Singh (2010); Ziebertz/Riegel (2008). 04 See Peter L. Berger (2013), who first represented the theory of secularization and who has recently edited a volume with the eloquent title Nach dem Niedergang der Säkularisierungstheorie (“After the decline of the theory ofsecularization”). 05 See for instance Bolz/ Girsberger (2008); Graf (2004); Höhn (2007). 06 This is the fundamental claim for instance of Alvin Plantinga who aims “to show how it can be that Christians can be justified, rationally […] not just ‘ignorant fundamentalists’ but sophisticated, aware, educated, turn-of-the millennium people who have read their Freud and Nietzsche, their Hume and Mackie” (A. Plantinga, 2000, 167). With regards to the new interest for issues of transcendence see also Vattimo/ Derrida (2001); Vattimo (2002); Marion (2007); Swinburne (2004); Caputo/Scanlon (2007); Reder (2013). Even Habermas, who earlier in his life had a rather distanced relationship with religion, is today suspected to have undergone a “theolological turn” (see Austin Harrington, 2007, 45–61).
2019 / 2020
One of the fundamental phenomena of Modernity is the erosion of meaning1. In recent years, the discussion around the “come back of religion” 2 and the “post-secular society” 3 seems to affirm the problem of a deficit of meaning in (post-)modern society and to invalidate the conviction — firmly held by many — that secularization is inevitable and irreversible 4 and that it is accompanied by an increase in possibilities the individual can freely choose from to construct an existence that is experienced as meaningful and fulfilled 5. If it would probably be an overinterpretation of the extent of the phenomenon if one was to talk unambiguously about a change of paradigm with regards to secularization, it seems at least possible, at present, to revisit the role transcendence can play for human beings as a constituens of meaning at the beginning of the 21th century and to argue in favor of approaches that allow for perspectives that go beyond mere immanence but without falling short of the state of the art of the knowledge attained in philosophy and the natural sciences over the last 250 years 6. In the present paper, I will take up this problem of a crisis of meaning and argue that there is an intrinsic link between the possibility to relate existence to a perspective of transcendence and the possibility to “recharge” our being in the world with meaning. The starting point of my reflections shall be a philosophy that might at first sight seem little appropriate for the endeavor of defending perspectives of transcendence in complete respect of the body of knowledge at the beginning of the early 21 st century but which will, as I hope, reveal itself— at least in some, and in my opinion essential, aspects — as a very useful and instructive approach. The approach in question is the highly polemical defense of faith formulated by Søren Kierkegaard, who posits unambiguously that an existence without anchorage in transcendence is inevitably to be considered as an existence in despair and boredom. Kierkegaard’s argument will uncover the problematic structure of the modern attempt of self-creation
AUSLEGUNG, VOLUME 33