Still Clinging to Dialectic

As confounded as I was when I first read Hegel, I still have yet to encounter a better alternative from the post-Hegelian writers that we have encountered in this class. Sure he is almost incomprehensible at times, but I believe he deserves the most merit in attempting a scientific philosophy. Even if conscious is frustrated at times, these feelings seem much more applicable than unmediated relations to the Absolute from Kierkegaard. I have to side with Hegel’s suggestion that the ineffable, in this case faith, is simply untrue. If it cannot be relayed in terms we can understand, then it isn’t true. Ironically, I take this to be the main point from Fear and Trembling; by trying to explain or make faith more expensive, Johannes has only revealed that it just refused to be translated into intelligible terms. I can handle the extreme sense of uniqueness that faith encompasses, but why must it come at the cost of traditional philosophy? If faith is to be made more expensive through the prevailing message that Johannes, why does he have to throw previous philosophical works under the bus? While I applaud his categorization of the ethical, aesthetic, and religious realms, it still leaves much to be desired, especially if the ethical realm can be suspended for these unmediated interactions. And if these unexplainable interactions are supposed to be the richest of experiences, it leaves much more to be desired, seeing as how they are largely intelligible and unable to be related to other consciousnesses. Things of the ethical realm still need to be explored and placed at a premium, because it seems that everyone must participate under these conditions, as not everyone will engage in religious realms because it seems very central to Christianity, which not everyone practices. So, why does Johannes spend so much attention to the ineffable? I guess I am not one for miracles, as I feel more attention needs to be paid to what can be understood by others. As stylized as Kierkegaard’s works are, he seems stuck in the sense-certainty when faith is considered, and maybe faith shouldn’t be that important because there are more pressing matters at hand. Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling emits this sense of escapism, because of his religious affiliation, and it frustrates me that someone with this much insight would dedicate so much effort towards something that cannot, and as he argues, shouldn’t be expressed (which s the problem with the constant preaching of the Abraham narrative in the first place).