Kierkegaard held that faith dwells in anxiety, not certainty

Evidence

For Kierkegaard, the most pressing danger for Christianity was not doubt, but the kind of bluff certainty peddled by pompous philosophers like Hegel. Kierkegaard’s Faith was indistinguishable from terrible anxiety. The paradox of Faith for Kierkegaard was that, if God completely revealed himself, Faith would be unnecessary. Faith is not a form of knowing; on the contrary. Kierkegaard’s models were Abraham on the day he was asked to sacrifice Isaac and Jesus’ disciples: tormented by uncertainty, unmoored from any of society’s ethical anchors, staking their life on fabulous improbabilities. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 300

Categorization

• DEFINE: Spells out Kierkegaard’s counterintuitive definition of Faith as bound to anxiety and uncertainty rather than knowledge.
• XREF: Connects to the fear-and-trembling territory of Abraham and sacrifice, echoing the addendum article on ritual sacrifice (Isaac). — connects to: Kierkegaard deliberately provoked people into feeling existence’s passion rather than abstraction — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 58; Faith is the longing for faith, not perception of God’s presence. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 235; Faith is a cultivated disposition, not a guarantee of God’s existence. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 439 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Kierkegaard deliberately provoked people into feeling existence’s passion rather than abstraction #expands (0.80) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 58
• Faith is the longing for faith, not perception of God’s presence. #corroborates (0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 235
• Faith is a cultivated disposition, not a guarantee of God’s existence. #expands (0.75) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 439
• Faith offers an understanding of life that contrasts with rational knowledge. #expands (0.70) — Leo Tolstoy, A Confession, 118