Justified Faith without Reasons?: A Comparison between Søren Kierkegaard’s and Alvin Plantinga’s Epistemologies 9783111334769, 9783111333045

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Valentin Teodorescu Justified Faith without Reasons?

Kierkegaard Studies

Edited on behalf of the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre by Heiko Schulz, Jon Stewart and Karl Verstrynge in cooperation with Peter Šajda

Monograph Series 45 Edited by Heiko Schulz

Valentin Teodorescu

Justified Faith without Reasons? A Comparison between Søren Kierkegaard’s and Alvin Plantinga’s Epistemologies

ISBN 978-3-11-133304-5 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-133476-9 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-133482-0 ISSN 1434-2952 Library of Congress Control Number: 2023944920 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

Foreword The present study was accepted as an inaugural dissertation in July 2022 by the Department of Protestant Theology at Goethe-University Frankfurt. The text of the manuscript was checked for printing and supplemented in a few places before publication. I should like to thank all those who gave me advice and support during the time of my doctoral studies. Special thanks are due to my doctoral supervisors, Prof. Dr. Heiko Schulz (Goethe-University Frankfurt) and Prof. Dr. Oliver Wiertz (Hochschule für Theologische Studien Frankfurt) for their plentiful encouragement and support. Their sound guidance and many helpful impulses and suggestions helped me immensely in working on the topic! I am also deeply grateful to Prof. Dr. Alvin Plantinga, who, with his vast knowledge, perspicacity, repeatedly offered me good advice, feedback and encouragement and helped me to clear up and eliminate certain ambiguities regarding some aspects of his thought. In 2017, while I was working on the dissertation, he was awarded the prestigious Templeton Prize for his “rigorous scholarship,” which for “over a half century has made theism a serious option within the academy” – an honor well deserved! I would also thank Prof. Dr. C. Stephen Evans (Baylor University, Waco, TX) for many conversations in which I greatly benefitted from his formidable knowledge of Kierkegaard and his generous support for the present enterprise. As a close friend of Plantinga and an expert on his thought, he has made extremely valuable contributions to certain areas of this dissertation. It is particularly important to me to thank the GRADE Center for Religious Studies and Theology (RuTh) for the generous financial support in publishing this work. I should also like to give special thanks to the editors of the Kierkegaard Studies Monograph Series (Heiko Schulz, Jon Stewart and Karl Verstrynge) for accepting the manuscript for the series and to the publisher, in particular to Dr. Albrecht Döhnert. Katrin Mittmann, Eiske Schäfer and Teodor Borsar deserve extra thanks for their competent editorial support and overall smooth and steady cooperation. I would extend my thanks to Paula Iulia Cionca (from the “Ratio et Revelatio” publishing house in Oradea/ Romania), whose efforts and patience in creating the layout of the present work I greatly appreciate. Furthermore, I should like to thank two proofreaders of the manuscript before publication: Alan Duncan (Vienna) and Marius Manci (Troy, MI), also to Simon Kashner (Frankfurt) for checking a number of footnotes. I greatly appreciate their valuable suggestions and support in shaping the final form of this study.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111334769-202

VI 

 Foreword

Without the assistance, encouragement and trust of my family and friends this work would not have been possible. Above all, I sincerely thank my wonderful wife, Cristina, for her support and great patience with me in completing this work! To her this book is dedicated with love and deep gratitude. Frankfurt, August 2023

Valentin Teodorescu

Contents Table of Abbreviations  Introduction   XV

I

 XI

Theoretical Epistemology

 1

1 Kierkegaard’s Theoretical Epistemology   3 1.1 Introduction   3 1.2 Kierkegaard’s “Theoretical Epistemology”   6 1.2.1 Knowledge in a Strict and Necessary (Formal) Sense  1.2.2 Knowledge in a Loose Sense   11 1.3 Conclusion   29

 8

2 The Epistemology of Alvin Plantinga 31  31 2.1 Introduction  2.2 The Relation between Plantinga’s View and Other Contemporaries’ Views on Warrant   32 2.2.1 Foundationalism and Coherentism; the Main Argument of Foundationalism   32 2.2.2 Plantinga’s Critique of Coherentism   33 2.2.3 Classical Foundationalism and Its Rejection by Plantinga   35 2.2.4 Reidian Foundationalism   38 2.2.5 Evidentialism   40 2.3 Plantinga’s Notion of Warrant   44 2.3.1 Proper Function   44 2.3.2 Appropriate Cognitive Environment   45 2.3.3 Degrees of Warrant   45 2.3.4 The Design Plan   46 2.3.5 Reliability   47 2.3.6 Plantinga’s Notion of Warrant   48 2.4 Plantinga’s Externalism   48 2.4.1 The Gettier Problems   48 2.4.2 A Critique of Plantinga’s Solution to Gettier Problems   51 2.4.3 Plantinga’s Reply   51 2.5 Conclusion   54 3

Comparison between Plantinga’s and Kierkegaard’s Theoretical Epistemologies   57

VIII 

II

 Contents

Knowledge about the Existence of God 

 65

Kierkegaard and Knowledge about the Existence of God   67 Kierkegaard and the Subjective Knowledge   67 The Knowledge that God Exists; the Subjective Immanent Metaphysical Knowledge   67 The Knowledge that God Exists and Its Relationship to Ethics   70 Inwardness and Gaining the Belief in God   72 How Inwardness Works: Triggering Factors for Gaining the Belief in God   73 4.4.1 Schulz: Existential Despair as a Triggering Factor   74 4.4.2 Roberts and Evans: the Normativity of Ethics as a Triggering Factor   75 4.4.3 Triggering Factors: Externalist and Internalist Epistemological Justification   79 4.5 Conclusion: Desirable Consequences of the Idea of an “Inwardly Conditioned” Religious Knowledge   82

4 4.1 4.1.1 4.2 4.3 4.4

Plantinga and the Knowledge about the Existence of God   85 Proper Basicality with Respect to Justification   85 The Classical Foundationalist View of Knowledge   85 The Critique of the Classical Foundationalist and of Modified Foundationalist Views on Belief in the Existence of God   87 5.1.3 Plantinga’s Inductive Criterion for Proper Basicality   89 5.1.4 Answering the Great Pumpkin Objection; Properly Basic Beliefs as Grounded Beliefs   94 5.1.5 Philip Quinn’s Critique of Plantinga’s Inductive Criterion for Proper Basicality   98 Proper Basicality with Respect to Warrant  5.2  102 5.3 Conclusion   104 5 5.1 5.1.1 5.1.2

6

Comparison of Plantinga’s and Kierkegaard’s Views Regarding the Knowledge about the Existence of God   105

III

Arguments for God’s Existence 

 109

7 Climacus and the Arguments for God’s Existence   111 7.1 Introduction   111 7.2 The First General Objection   114 7.3 The Second General Objection   117 7.4 The Critique of the Ontological Argument   120

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 IX

 124 7.5 The Critique of the Teleological Argument  7.6 The Ethico-Religious Critique of the Arguments   129 7.7 Conclusion   130  133 8 Plantinga’s Arguments for the Existence of God  8.1 Introduction   133 8.2 The Perspective on Natural Theology from the Early Works   137 8.2.1 The Cosmological Argument   139 8.2.2 The Ontological Argument   142 8.2.3 The Teleological Argument   143 8.3 The Ontological Argument during Plantinga’s Middle Works   145 8.4 The Perspective on Natural Theology Extracted from the Later Works   148 8.4.1 The Ontological (or Metaphysical) Arguments: the Arguments from Intentionality, from Collections, from Natural Numbers and from Concepts   150 8.4.2 The Argument from Physical Constants   154 8.4.3 The Naive Teleological Argument   157 8.4.4 The Argument from the Confluence of Proper Function and Reliability   158 8.4.5 The Moral Argument   160 8.4.6 The Argument from Evil   161 8.4.7 C.S. Lewis’ Argument from “Nostalgia”   162 8.4.8 Arguments from Miracles   163 8.4.9 The Argument from the Meaning of Life   169 8.5 Conclusion   171 9

Comparison between Kierkegaard’s and Plantinga’s Perspectives on the Arguments for the Existence of God   173

IV

Knowledge about the Truth of Christianity 

 177

10 Kierkegaard and the Knowledge about the Truth of Christianity   179 10.1 Introduction   179 10.2 From Subjectivity to Christian Truth; the Relationship between the What and the How of Faith   180 10.3 Subjectivity and Truth   180 10.4 The Content of the Saving Truth Associated with the Peak of Inwardness   184 10.4.1 The Human Untruth and the Divine Teacher’s Deliverance   184 10.4.2 The Divine Teacher’s Love and His Incognito   187

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10.4.3

The Definition of Faith: Highest Inwardness and Absolute Paradox   189 10.5 Conclusion   192 11 Plantinga and the Knowledge about the Truth of Christianity  11.1 Introduction   199 11.2 The Notion of Sin   200 11.3 The Extended Aquinas/Calvin Model   203 11.3.1 Internalist Legitimacy   205 11.3.2 Externalist Legitimacy   207 11.3.3 Is Faith a “Leap in the Dark”?   210 11.4 Objections to the Model and Plantinga’s Replies: Critical Observations   213 11.4.1 Linda Zagzebski’s Objections   213 11.4.2 Richard Swinburne’s Objections   216 11.4.3 The Barth-Pannenberg Dispute: William Craig’s Critical Observations   222 11.5 Conclusion   229 12 12.1 12.2 12.2.1 12.2.2 12.3 12.4 12.4.1 12.4.2 12.4.3 12.4.4 12.5 13

 199

Kierkegaard and the Rationality of the Transition between the Competing Interpretations of Existence   231 Hannay, MacIntyre and the Challenge to the Classical View on the Transition   231 Piety’s and Marino’s Defense of the Rationality of Transition   235 Marilyn Piety   235 Gordon Marino’s Account of the Transition   241 MacIntyre’s Answer to Piety’s and Marino’s Defences of the Rationality of the Transition(s)   243 Evans’ Externalist Model   244 “Virtue” Epistemology   244 Anticipations of the Externalist Model   245 Classical Foundationalism versus Kierkegaard’s Epistemology   248 Kierkegaard and the Externalist Epistemology   250 Concluding Evaluation of the Debate   251 Comparison between Plantinga’s and Kierkegaard’s Views on the Knowledge of Christianity   255

Conclusions  Bibliography  Index   299

 263  285

Table of Abbreviations Kierkegaard Danish: Pap. SKS

Søren Kierkegaards Papirer, vols. I to XI-3 (1909-1948) (ed. by Peter Andreas Heiberg, Victor Kuhr and Einer Torsting). Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag. second, expanded ed., vols. I to XI-3 (1968-1978) (ed. by Niels Thulstrap), vols. XIV to XVI index by Niels Jørgen Cappelørn. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter, vols. 1-28, K1-K28 (1997-2012) (ed. by Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Joakim Garff, Jette Knudsen, Johnny Kondrup, Alastair McKinnon and Finn Hauberg Mortensen). Copenhagen: Gads Forlag.

English:

JP Søren Kierkegaard (1967-1978). Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers vol. 1-6 (ed. and transl. by Howard and Edna Hong assisted by Gregor Malantschuk) vol. 1-6, vol. 7 Index and Composite Collation. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press. CA Søren Kierkegaard (1980). The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin (ed. and transl. by Reidar Thomte). Princeton: Princeton University Press. CD Søren Kierkegaard (1995). Christian Discourses and the Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress (ed. and transl. by Howard and Edna Hong). Princeton: Princeton University Press. CUP1 Søren Kierkegaard (1992). Concluding Unscientific Postscript to ‘Philosophical Fragments’ (ed. and transl. by Howard and Edna Hong). Princeton: Princeton University Press. CUP2 Søren Kierkegaard (1992). Concluding Unscientific Postscript to ‘Philosophical Fragments’, (ed. and transl. by Howard and Edna Hong). Princeton: Princeton University Press. EO1 Søren Kierkegaard (1987). Either/Or 1 (ed. and transl. by Howard and Edna Hong). Princeton: Princeton University Press. EO2 Søren Kierkegaard (1987). Either/Or 2 (ed. and transl. by Howard and Edna Hong). Princeton: Princeton University Press. EUD Søren Kierkegaard (1990). Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses (ed. and transl. by Howard and Edna Hong). Princeton: Princeton University Press. FT Søren Kierkegaard (1983). Fear and Trembling (ed. and transl. by Howard and Edna Hong). Princeton: Princeton University Press. FSE Søren Kierkegaard (1990). For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourself (ed. and transl. by Howard and Edna Hong). Princeton: Princeton University Press. KJN Kierkegaard’ s Journals and Notebooks, vols. 1-11 (2007ff) (ed. by Niels-Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist). Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. PF Søren Kierkegaard (1985). Philosophical Fragments (ed. and transl. by Howard and Edna Hong). Princeton: Princeton University Press. PV Søren Kierkegaard (1998). The Point of View (ed. and transl. by Howard and Edna Hong). Princeton: Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111334769-204

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 Table of Abbreviations

SLW SUD WL

Søren Kierkegaard (1988). Stages on Life’s Way: Studies by Various Persons (ed. and transl. by Howard Hong and Edna Hong). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Søren Kierkegaard (1980). The Sickness unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening (ed. and transl. by Howard and Edna Hong). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Søren Kierkegaard (1995). Works of Love (ed. and transl. by Howard and Edna Hong).



Princeton: Princeton University Press 1995.

Plantinga Books:

GFE Alvin Plantinga (1974). God, Freedom and Evil. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. GOM Alvin Plantinga (1975). God and Other Minds. New York: Cornell University Press. NN Alvin Plantinga (1979). The Nature of Necessity. Oxford: Clarendon Press. WCB Alvin Plantinga (2000). Warranted Christian Belief. Oxford: Oxford University Press. WCD Alvin Plantinga (1993). Warrant: The Current Debate. Oxford: Oxford University Press. WCRL Alvin Plantinga (2011). Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion and Naturalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. WPF

Articles:

Alvin Plantinga (1993). Warrant and Proper Function. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

DRE FTR HBA PADA PAE PNT

Alvin Plantinga (1998). “A Defense of Religious Exclusivism.” In James Sennett (ed.), The Analytic Theist. An Alvin Plantinga Reader. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Alvin Plantinga (1986). “The Foundations of Theism: A Reply.” Faith and Philosophy, Vol. 3, No. 3. Alvin Plantinga (1982). “How to Be an Anti-Realist.” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, Vol. 56, No. 1. Alvin Plantinga (2007). “Preface to the Appendix ‘Two Dozen or so Theistic Arguments’.” In Deane-Peter Baker (ed.), Alvin Plantinga. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Alvin Plantinga (1979). “The Probabilistic Argument from Evil.” Philosophical Studies, Vol. 35, No. 1. Alvin Plantinga (1991). “The Prospects for Natural Theology.” In James

RBG RBPB RC

Tomberlin (ed.), Philosophy of Religion. Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview Press. Alvin Plantinga (1983). “Reason and Belief in God.” In Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff (eds.), Faith and Rationality. Notre Dame, IN: The University of Notre Dame Press. Alvin Plantinga (2000). “Religious Belief as Properly Basic.” In Brian Davies (ed.), Philosophy of Religion. A Guide and Anthology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Alvin Plantinga (2015). “Replies to my Commentators.” In Dieter Schönecker (ed.), Plantinga’s “Warranted Christian Belief.” Critical Essays with a Reply by Alvin Plantinga. Berlin/ Boston: De Gruyter.

Table of Abbreviations 

 XIII

RPE Alvin Plantinga (2001). “Rationality and Public Evidence: A Reply to Richard Swinburne.” Religious Studies, Vol. 37, No. 2. RSP Alvin Plantinga (1996). “Respondeo.” In Jonathan Kvanvig (ed.), Warrant in Contemporary Epistemology: Essays in Honor of Plantinga’s Theory of Knowledge. Savage: Rowman and Littlefield. RZ Alvin Plantinga (2002). “Reply. Ad Zagzebski.” Philosophical Books, Vol. 43, No. 2. SP Alvin Plantinga (1985). “Self-Profile.” In James Tomberlin and Peter van Inwagen (eds.), Alvin Plantinga. Dordrecht: Reidel Publishing Company. TDSE Alvin Plantinga (2009). “Transworld Depravity, Transworld Sanctity, & Uncooperative Essences.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. LXXVIII, No.1. TDTA Alvin Plantinga (2007). “Two Dozen (or so) Theistic Arguments.” In Deane-Peter Baker (ed.), Alvin Plantinga. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. WATB

Alvin Plantinga (1997). “Warrant and Accidentally True Belief.” Analysis, Vol. 57, No. 2.

Interviews: CMRT GP

PDRE

 lvin Plantinga (2016). Can Many Religions all be True? A https://www.closertotruth.com/series/can-many-religions-all-be-true Alvin Plantinga & Hilary Putnam (2000). The God Problem. http://archives.wbur.org/theconnection/2000/07/12/philosophy-series-part-five-the-godproblem.html Alvin Plantinga (1996). Pluralism: Defense of Religious Exclusivism. https://web.archive.org/web/20171016032840/http://www.veritas.org/ pluralism-defense-religious-exclusivism/

Introduction The present work might be interesting to any person who is interested in the question whether theistic belief (more specifically the Christian belief) is rational – and ultimately whether, given our contemporary diverse culture, such faith is acceptable. In other words the query is whether any reasonable meaning can nowadays be rendered from Bible verses such as “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see,” (Hebrews 11:1) or “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven,” (Matthew 16:17)1 – which seem to suggest (at least according to some interpretations) that faith is opposed (or – to couch it in a more optimistic scenario – indifferent) to rational argumentation; hence the title of our work: “Justified Faith without Reasons?” In what follows we intend to show that the answer to the aforementioned question can be exemplified and resolved by importing ideas from Søren Kierkegaard’s and Alvin Plantinga’s affirmative take on the matter, and for this purpose we sketch a comparison of their epistemologies. At first sight such an enterprise might seem surprising, as many would point out that from plotting the issue between a continental way of philosophizing, like that of Kierkegaard (with its existentialist bent), and an Anglo-Saxon analytical one, like that of Plantinga (with its rationalist proclivities), there emerges – at least prima facie – an absolute incompatibility. Indeed, it is an undeniable fact that there are great differences (The present project exhibits these.) between the ways in which the two authors think and argue regarding the focus of their respective projects; this should not come as a surprise, given the different times and circumstances of their lives. For example, Kierkegaard says in one place that “Christianity is no doctrine; it is an existence, an existing,”2 and somewhere else (through the voice of Johannes Climacus) that, “Christianity is not a doctrine, but it expresses an existence contradiction, and is an existence communication,”3 and this despite the fact that, as David Gouwens observed, Christianity includes for the Danish philosopher beliefs and doctrines.4 This stance should not be surprising, given the cultural context in

1 NIV Bible translation. 2 SKS 23, 322, NB18:98 / KJN 7, 328 (here and hereafter no text referred to by using an abbreviation will use ‘p.’ or ‘pp.’; all other texts will). 3 SKS 7, 345-346 / CUP1, 379-380; SKS 23, 186, NB17:33 / KJN 7, 188. 4 David Gouwens, Kierkegaard as Religious Thinker, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996, pp. 34, 53. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111334769-205

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which he lived, a society in which almost everybody considered himself a Christian (Even the Danish Hegelians saw themselves as representatives of a philosophical kind of Christianity.); but Kierkegaard was painfully aware that this assessment did not correspond to reality, because for him being Christian did not consist primarily of possessing correct doctrines, but rather of living in a certain way – according to a God-given pattern. On the other hand, Plantinga’s objective has a different focus: although there are places where he writes a prescription of what a legitimate Christian lifestyle should entail, this aspect does not play a prominent role in his writings. And this may probably be attributed to the challenge of facing another cultural milieu, one in which many thinkers claim that religious language is meaningless and that religious beliefs are irrational; of course, in such an intellectual context to be a Christian is out of fashion. Therefore he argues (against the empirical positivist Verifiability Criterion of Meaning) that talk of God and religious doctrines is not meaningless5 and (against Classical Foundationalism) that theistic belief is neither irrational nor unjustified.6 Moreover, he asserts that both theistic and (in particular) Christian beliefs are warranted7 (constituting true knowledge), and in support of this view he excogitates an externalist epistemology; in this respect he uses the insights of Edmund Gettier (his former colleague from Wayne State University)8, whose famous three-page article “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?”9 furnished him with a strong support for this new kind of epistemology.10 However, Genia Schönbaumsfeld places the two authors in stark contrast, with Plantinga accusing (in her opinion) Kierkegaard of “extreme fideism” and “irrationalism” in matters of religious thought, the American Reformed epistemologist being in this context (by contrast) a strong defender of the rationality of religion (or, in a more negative assessment, a religious rationalist).11 And indeed, Schönbaumsfeld offers a quote from Plantinga which seems to validate her view, one that can be found in a chapter from Brian Davies’ Philosophy of Religion anthology: According to the most common brand of extreme fideism, however, reason and faith conflict or clash on matters of religious importance; and when they do, faith is to be preferred

5 SP, 18. 6 SP, 57-60. 7 WCB, 174, 199, 285. 8 SP, 22-23, 28-29. 9 Edmund Gettier, “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?”, Analysis 23. 6, June 1963, pp. 121-123. 10 SP, 28-29; WPF, 31-32, 36-37. 11 Genia Schönbaumsfeld, A Confusion of Spheres: Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein on Philosophy and Religion, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2007, pp. 3, 86, 138.

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 XVII

and reason suppressed. Thus, according to Kierkegaard, faith teaches “the absurdity that the eternal is the historical”. He means to say, I think, that this proposition is among the deliverances of faith but absurd from the point of view of reason; and it should be accepted despite this absurdity.12

But even if this is true, one should bear here in mind that, despite the apparent “fresh” publishing of Davies’ aforementioned Anthology (in the year 2000), Plantinga’s contribution to this book – namely chapter 4 (“Religious Belief as Properly Basic”) – is only a re-publishing of an older article, his much-discussed “Reason and Belief in God”13 (which in fact appeared in 1983, in the median period of his authorship14). Yet since then, his opinion about Kierkegaard seems to have significantly changed: Thus, in a pericope from Warranted Christian Belief (published in 2000) Plantinga clearly states that his own epistemological stance, which supports the possibility of reaching truth without appealing to any “sure and certain method”, was clearly influenced by Kierkegaard.15 Regardless, in what follows we try to show that, although there are places in which Kierkegaard argues for the absurdity of faith – while Plantinga is clearly a supporter of faith’s rationality, in the end their views seem to draw closer to each other as first sight suggests (especially if one bears in mind that Kierkegaard seems to evaluate this situation through the eyes of a classical foundationalist, while Plantinga clearly rejects such a stance). There are many other places in which their views seem to converge, and eventually to complement each other. And this probably should be of no surprise, since they in fact share a common Christian theology – and adhere (more specifically) to a magisterial type of Protestantism. As expected, for instance, both of them agree that, “Faith is not based on arguments, but rather through a direct revelation of the word, mediated by the Holy Spirit,” as both Luther and Calvin, the respective “fathers” of the Lutheran and Reformed branches of Protestantism (to which Kierkegaard and Plantinga respectively belonged) shared this view.16 Moreover, their more or less conservative perspectives on Christian theology might also be explained by

12 RBPB, 91. 13 RBG, 87. 14 During this time Plantinga’s views on Kierkegaard’s thinking might have been influenced by Abraham Kuyper, a Dutch theologian and politician who was (posthumously) a kind of theological mentor for Plantinga, but otherwise was not himself a Kierkegaard expert. At least this seems to be Stephen Evans’ view on the matter (I had a personal discussion with Evans on this subject). 15 WCB, 436-437. 16 See in this respect SP, 60 and chapter 10 from the present work.

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the fact that both of them inherit some conservative Protestant roots, Plantinga’s family being adherent of the “Gereformeerde Kerken”, a movement of religious renewal “dedicated to the practice of historic Calvinism”17 within the Dutch Reformed state church, while Kierkegaard’s family had close ties with a renewal movement within the Danish Lutheran church – the theologian and bishop Jacob Peter Mynster (who was a confessor of King Frederick VI and a close friend of Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard, Søren’s father) was one of the group’s prominent members. Interestingly, in one of the (admittedly few) places where Plantinga refers (in his writings) to Kierkegaard we can notice that the similarity between Plantinga’s views and those of Kierkegaard (at least in the way the Danish philosopher is interpreted by Stephen Evans) is striking18; consequently, the question that might be raised is: In what measure was the American philosopher’s thinking influenced by that of the Dane? And if there was indeed such an influence, was it a direct or rather an “accidental” one? Based on the few places where Plantinga refers to Kierkegaard in his authorship (twice in “Reason and Belief in God”19, once in Warrant: The Current Debate20 and once in Warranted Christian Belief21), it would seem the answer is the latter; contrast this with the frequency with which he cites theologians or philosophers like John Calvin, Thomas Reid, Jonathan Edwards and Abraham Kuyper in (most of) his major works (almost all of whom have a Reformed inclination), and the impression increases that Kierkegaard’s influence on his thinking was not very great (and that if there was an influence, it was a rather indirect one). This inference is supported in personal correspondence pertaining to the present work by Evans, a good friend of Plantinga, both having studied and obtained their PhD’s from Yale University, and having also held teaching positions at Calvin College, in Grand Rapids, MI. Evans, who is one of the leading contemporary American experts on Kierkegaard, wrote to us that, in his opinion, Plantinga “has never really studied Kierkegaard himself”, although “he has a great respect for

17 SP, 4; among others, the theologian Abraham Kuyper, premier of the Netherlands between 1901 and 1905 and founder of the Calvinist “Free University” in Amsterdam, was a prominent leader of this movement. 18 Compare in this respect WCB, 436-437 with Stephen Evans, “Realism and antirealism in Kierkegaard’s ‘Concluding Unscientific Postscript’”, in Alastair Hannay and Gordon Marino (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998, pp. 169-170; we will discuss this similarity between Kierkegaard’s and Plantinga’s epistemological views at the end of chapter 3. 19 RBG, 87, 88. 20 WCD, 98. 21 WCB, 436.

Introduction 

 XIX

Kierkegaard;” and this respect for the Dane comes (in Evans’ opinion) from Oets Kolk Bouwsma (1898-1978), an American analytic philosopher educated (like him) at Calvin College, of Dutch-Frisian origins (like Plantinga’s family) who was an expert on G. E. Moore, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard’s philosophy, and whom Plantinga greatly admired. Moreover, Evans admitted that Plantinga’s respect for Kierkegaard comes also from his appreciation for his (Evans’) own writings about the Danish philosopher. Indeed, we tend to believe that the aforementioned passage from Warranted Christian Belief, where Plantinga suggests that his view “about the relation between truth and the (lack of) method of reaching it” agrees with that of Kierkegaard, was directly influenced by Evans’ interpretation of the Dane’s epistemology. Even if this is so, however, the influence is not one-sided, but rather reciprocal, as Evans himself consistently uses Plantinga’s epistemology in order to illuminate (various aspects of) Kierkegaard’s perspective on religious belief, as is visible especially in two of his articles: “Kierkegaard and Plantinga on Belief in God: Subjectivity as the Ground of Properly Basic Religious Beliefs”22 and “Externalist Epistemology, Subjectivity, and Christian Knowledge: Plantinga and Kierkegaard”.23 Both of these also play an important role in our present work. But even if some of Plantinga’s ideas might indeed be traced, albeit through mediation, to Kierkegaard, it still seems true that most of the similarities of the American philosopher’s ideas to those of the Dane’s are rather incidental, having to do (as we have argued above) with their common Christian and Protestant tradition and eventually (as we shall argue in chapters 1 and 3) with the more or less direct contact they both had with the Common Sense tradition. In this respect we are persuaded along with Evans that it is most probable that Plantinga has not delved too deep into Kierkegaard’s philosophy and that his parallels with Kierkegaard (as Evans puts it in a message sent to us) “partly reflect rootage in the early Christian tradition, partly similarities in those with Protestant upbringings.” In the present work we opt for an interpretation of Kierkegaard’s ideas preponderantly in line with that of a class of Kierkegaard scholars such as Evans, Marilyn Piety and Merold Westphal (although many other scholars have also contributed more or less significantly to our conclusions). We do not pretend that this interpretation represents the only possible reading of his views, but this admission does

22 Stephen Evans, “Kierkegaard and Plantinga on Belief in God: Subjectivity as the Ground of Properly Basic Religious Beliefs”, in Stephen Evans, Kierkegaard on Faith and the Self: Collected Essays, Waco TX, Baylor University Press 2006, pp. 169-182. 23 Stephen Evans, “Externalist Epistemology, Subjectivity, and Christian Knowledge: Plantinga and Kierkegaard”, in Evans, Kierkegaard on Faith and the Self: Collected Essays, pp. 183-205.

XX 

 Introduction

not imply that it is a purely subjective or arbitrary elucidation; on the contrary, we believe that as an exegesis it fulfills the criteria of high academic rigor. The intention of our work is not primarily a critical evaluation of Kierkegaard’s or of Plantinga’s epistemology, although in some chapters we deal with various objections against their views (being nevertheless aware that reason is in some respects perspectival, having, even in its critical stance, no pretense to infallibility, no access to the God’s eye view, as both Kierkegaard and Plantinga would agree). Yet even if our goal is not essentially critical, neither is it chiefly descriptive. Rather the focus of our work is the measure in which the two perspectives either converge or complement each other, being able – in the end –to produce a profound and (for our times) relevant philosophical synthesis. The present work is divided into 4 main sections. The first section articulates the theme of “theoretical epistemology” common to both philosophers. The section contains 3 chapters: chapter 1, where we explore the objective epistemology of Kierkegaard, followed by chapter 2, which engages the non-religious epistemology of Plantinga, and finally chapter 3, which invites a comparison between Kierkegaard’s and Plantinga’s theoretical epistemologies. In the first chapter we start by offering various reasons for advocating a classical approach to Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous writings (according to whom the texts contain, among other things, philosophical doctrines). Then we refer to Kierkegaard’s epistemological perspective, especially to the epistemological concepts he adduces: the Leibnizean/Humean dichotomy between truths of reason and truths of fact (and the characteristics of these two types of truths). These concepts enable us to introduce on the one hand those beliefs which, from the perspective of a knowledge in a strict sense, are certain (pertaining to logic, mathematics and “immediate sensation”) and those beliefs which, from the same strict perspective, are uncertain and therefore susceptible to skepticism (pertaining to actuality – for example, perceptual beliefs); on the other hand, opposite the first aforementioned strict sense, we present those beliefs which, from the perspective of a knowledge in a loose sense, make possible an approximate knowledge though only through faith (tro). The origin of this loose form of knowledge (which presupposes faith) might be traced via Jacobi and Hamann to the Common Sense philosophy of Thomas Reid. Chapter 2 encapsulates Plantinga’s non-religious epistemology, more precisely, his “warrant” epistemological model, which starts with a rejection of the so-called classical foundationalist model of justification; instead, the model proposes a Reidian type of foundationalism, in which the warrant to our perceptual propositions is conferred by the fact that they are formed in some proper circumstances for knowledge and where the validity of the perceptual knowledge is a starting assumption of the model. To this foundationalism is added the evidentialism of Alston, Feldman

Introduction 

 XXI

and Conee, the proper function condition (in order to avoid the malfunction-problem of the cognitive equipment), the appropriate cognitive context requirement (for a good functioning of the cognitive apparatus), the “design plan aimed at producing true beliefs” stipulation (for the respective cognitive faculties), and the reliability condition (which means that a high percentage of the beliefs of the relevant cognitive faculty needs to be true). Plantinga’s model can also be called externalist in the sense that he asserts that one may know something without being able to offer evidence for one’s knowledge. As for Plantinga the real significance of Gettier problems is that they show justification, conceived internalistically, to be insufficient for warrant, and that – by contrast – the externalist accounts of warrant enjoy a certain immunity from these problems, a particular place is given in this chapter to defending his evaluation of the Gettier problem against various critiques. Chapter 3 points out some important similarities between both authors’ epistemological views: they use a similar Leibnizean/Humean dichotomy between truths of reason and truths of fact, understand in the same way the concept of immediate sensation, share similar views regarding perceptual beliefs (From the perspective of a strong concept of knowledge, perceptual belief invites skepticism, but such skepticism can be defeated, from the perspective of a weaker sense of knowledge, only through belief.) and seem to have been more or less directly influenced – in what concerns this weaker sense of knowledge – by Thomas Reid’s Common-Sense philosophy. Moreover both authors agree that, although there is no method of producing sure and objective knowledge, the classical ideal of this knowledge remains valid: there is a reality independent of us that we are attempting to know. The chapter also includes a critical discussion regarding, on the one hand, the concept of the “taking for granted” of our cognitive nature (present in Reid’s, Moore’s and Wittgenstein’s philosophy) and, on the other hand, the Kantian objection against the Common Sense ideas. Furthermore, the second section sheds light on the theme of the knowledge that God exists as exemplified by both philosophers. The second section also contains 3 chapters: chapter 4, which refers to the knowledge of God’s existence in Kierkegaard, chapter 5, which refers to the knowledge of God’s existence in Plantinga, and chapter 6, which is a comparison of their views regarding the knowledge that God exists. Chapter 4 describes the way in which the belief in God’s existence, from Kierkegaard’s perspective is somehow inherently built into our human consciousness, being a part of the so-called immanent metaphysical knowledge, which is subject to “Socratic recollection.” Any attempt to prove that God exists should be rejected as coming from a person who ignores God’s presence. This radical claim notwithstanding, it be shown that Kierkegaard still might accept, more or less implicitly, two arguments for the existence of God: a pragmatic and a moral one, and that,

XXII 

 Introduction

in any case, both despair and the awareness of the ethical imperative might act as triggering factors for the belief in God’s existence. Moreover, according to Kierkegaard, belief in God is mediated through inwardness (which might be manifested through an individual’s willingness “to renounce the relative for the sake of the absolute” – thus having chiefly to do with the way in which a person relates herself to the ethical realm). Chapter 5 presents Plantinga’s arguments for the proposition that belief in God does not need evidence in order to be rational; in this sense he rejects both the classical foundationalist criterion for proper basicality and a modified form of this criterion (which includes beliefs that are considered properly basic by almost everyone) due to their self-referential inconsistency. Instead, he proposes a private criterion of proper basicality; such a criterion must be reached (in his opinion) inductively. The chapter also offers some objections to this criterion (for example, “that any religious aberration can be taken as properly basic,” or “that there are some apparently good reasons for denying that God exists”) and shows Plantinga’s rebuttal against them. We critically address his rebuttal. Furthermore we examine a second sense, appearing in Plantinga’s later work, in which a belief can be properly basic, one that includes the notion of warrant. In this respect belief in God is produced by a cognitive faculty called “sensus divinitatis,” an input-output device which takes triggering circumstances (like seeing the splendour of a night sky, the beauty of a flower, etc.) as input, and issues theistic beliefs as output. This model involves an externalist epistemological view according to which a person who knows something does not need also to know that she knows something: for example, that she possesses the faculty of sensus divinitatis; the validity of the model depends on the existence of its “object”: if God exists, then this idea – the existence of a sensus divinitatis in us – becomes plausible. An objection to this model emerges from the evident fact that not all humans have theistic beliefs, and not all theists believe in God with the same degree of certainty. Plantinga suggests that the doctrine of original sin provides a possible way to address this empirical defeater. Chapter 6 points out an important similarity between Kierkegaard’s belief in God’s existence, which seems to belong, he thinks, to a kind of certain and universal human knowledge that can be discovered through recollection, and Plantinga’s idea that the belief in God’s existence represents a properly basic warranted truth (which suggests, again, a type of universal knowledge produced by a cognitive mechanism which shows how recollection works). However, there are also differences between their stance on the problem of the rationality of religion: Kierkegaard offers no justification for accepting belief in God without any argument (and could therefore be accused of fideism), while Plantinga at least shows that the criteria devised to refute the proper basicality of the belief in

Introduction 

 XXIII

God are not valid. Moreover, Kierkegaard rejects any arguments for the existence of God, because they seem for him to be a form of disrespect for a God who is visible for everybody, while Plantinga considers such arguments (potentially) useful in order to increase the warrant of theistic belief against various defeaters. Additionally on the one hand, Plantinga’s externalist model might contribute to a better understanding of the way in which despair and the ethical imperative might “trigger” belief in God. On the other hand, although for both philosophers sin might obliterate the sensus divinitatis, Kierkegaard’s opinion that belief in God is conditioned by inwardness might better explain why such an explanation is not a cheap ad hominem against atheists. In the third section there is an additional discussion regarding the arguments for the existence of God by both philosophers. In Chapter 7 we (critically) sketch Kierkegaard’s rejection of the arguments for the existence of God, while chapter 8 presents Plantinga’s oscillating attitude toward these arguments. Chapter 9 contains a comparison between both views on the arguments. Chapter 7 offers an evaluation of Climacus’ objections to the arguments for the existence of God (Climacus very probably, although not absolutely certainly, reveals Kierkegaard’s stance on this matter). With one exception (the critique of the ontological argument, which seems to anticipate the contemporary logico-empiricist position on the matter), these objections are found wanting. In the first general objection, Climacus seems illegitimately to leap from the objective reality of God’s existence (or non-existence) to the subjective conviction about God’s existence (or non-existence). In the second, one might find exceptions to Climacus’ assertion that one can never deduce the existence of persons from the facts of the palpable world. Further, the objection against the teleological argument is inconclusive, since, in our opinion, Climacus does not offer a clear structure to—or critique of—this argument. Lastly, the ethico-religious objection fails because, even if one would accept the reality of a sensus divinitatis, God’s existence is not yet transparently evident to us. Nonetheless, in Climacus’ treatment of all these objections we observe similarities to certain ideas of contemporary reformed epistemology: a skepticism with regard to natural theology, a belief in a sensus divinitatis and a positive assessment of the role of faith as an epistemological presupposition. The task to be dealt with in Chapter 8 is to examine Plantinga’s view on the arguments for the existence of God. During his life Plantinga has occasionally changed his assessment of this problem. In the earliest works his view exhibits a very strict (quasi–Classical-Foundationalist) conception of the project of natural theology: therefore, it comes as no surprise that during that period of his life the respective project – in his opinion – failed. Reflecting back on that past segment of his life, he will later argue that his stance (on this subject) was too pessimistic, an assessment with which we fully agree.

XXIV 

 Introduction

In his “middle” works (in which he had a less strict opinion on the meaning of natural theology, its function now being to show that religious belief is rationally acceptable) one can sense a more optimistic outlook, and contrary to his earlier dismissal, the project becomes more promising. In addressing this middle period we focus on the ontological argument. In his later works he displays an even lesser stringency regarding natural theology. Now the aim of natural theology is that of transforming belief into knowledge, by suggesting that belief in God is warranted. According to this last perspective, the arguments might be accepted as needed in order eventually to provide more warrant for the belief in God’s existence only if the person who uses them starts from the presupposition of God’s existence; they would have the role of strengthening the faith of someone whose belief might be wavering. In his article “Two Dozen (or so) Theistic Arguments” Plantinga considers that, when judged by reasonable philosophical standards, such arguments (as those from the nature of sets, or numbers, or properties, from Physical Constants, the Naive Teleological argument, the argument from the Confluence of Proper Function and Reliability, the Moral argument, the argument from Evil, etc.) are good, although not “coercive in the sense that every person is obliged to accept their premises on pain of irrationality.”24 Not all of the aforementioned arguments are developed in the aforementioned article: in fact, some of them are only mentioned by him in it – nothing more. In the following we shall try to develop, and eventually defend, many of these arguments. Chapter 9 brings to light the similarities and differences between the views of both philosophers regarding the arguments for the existence of God. Thus, in the early period of his authorship Plantinga shares with Kierkegaard (especially with the pseudonym Climacus) a similar skepticism towards their validity (but also, conversely, a skepticism regarding the so-called arguments against the existence of God), a perspective akin to Kant’s view on the same topic. Remarkably, in his later works Plantinga changes his view on the subject, arguing now that, after all, some arguments might be good (or plausible) in a broad philosophic sense, although rejecting them does not amount to simple irrationality. In this respect the presuppositions of those who accept them are essential in their decision regarding the subject. One might suggest that this view is totally opposed to what Kierkegaard had to say in this respect, but we shall argue that similar ideas could be found even in his authorship. For example, some of Climacus’ passages seem to suggest that certain arguments for God’s existence might become plausible if one takes God’s existence as the central presupposition behind their premises.

24 TDTA, 210.

Introduction 

 XXV

The fourth (and last) section explores the knowledge of the truth of Christianity as exemplified by both philosophers. The section contains 4 chapters: chapter 10, where we explore Kierkegaard’s perspective on the knowledge of the truth of Christianity, followed by chapter 11, where we set the stage for Plantinga’s view on the knowledge of the truth of Christianity, then chapter 12, which discusses Kierkegaard’s perspective on the rationality of the transition among the competing interpretations of existence, and finally chapter 13, which compares Kierkegaard’s and Plantinga’s views on the knowledge of the truth of Christianity. Chapter 10 highlights the way in which Kierkegaard’s take on Christian faith might be understood as being an externalist kind of knowledge inasmuch as it is viewed as a condition received by the believer from God; the truth which is its focus is of a subjective nature. We also discuss the sense in which for the pseudonym Climacus subjectivity can in some cases be truth whilst in others untruth, not to mention the relationship between the how and the what of faith in each of these situations. Moreover, we present the way in which Climacus almost “recreates” the content of revelation, by “deducing” it from two premises: that of the non-possession of the truth (by the learner) and that of the purported motivation of God for saving humanity (which was love). We also discuss Kierkegaard’s definition of faith, his perspective on the relationship between faith and history and the egalitarian implications of this view. In addition to this, we argue that Kierkegaard’s leaps toward faith are not merely blind leaps, but rather springs in which someone – in Westphal’s words – “knows what she is jumping towards.” Chapter 11 offers an evaluation of Plantinga’s perspective regarding the knowledge of the truth of Christianity: his intention is to oppose the de jure objection to Christianity – which suggests that one does not even need to know if the Christian religion is true in order to dismiss it; such a dismissal merely requires to prove that Christianity is irrational. By contrast, Plantinga argues that if Christianity is true, then very probably it is also rational and warranted. Moreover, he argues that for a believer faith has warrant, because God bequeathed such passion to her; thus, in principle, faith is a special kind of knowledge whose content is known through a cognitive process in which the Holy Spirit induces in a person the belief in the statements of gospel. The beliefs constituting faith are thus taken as basic and are legitimate from both an internalist and an externalist perspective: from an internalist perspective they are justified and internally rational, while from an externalist perspective they are externally rational and warranted. Plantinga also argues that these beliefs are warranted even if one cannot make a good historical case for the truth of the statements of the gospel – by his light, what’s important here is only the fact that the faith is well grounded (in an externalist sense).

XXVI 

 Introduction

The chapter then deals critically with various objections against this Plantingian model: that it is irrational because here faith seems nothing more than “a blind leap over a crevasse in the night,” that many bizarre religions might be considered rational on this basis, that it does not prove that faith has warrant, that the atheists are – contrary to Plantinga’s preoccupations – primarily interested in whether Christian theism is (given the available evidence) true and that faith requires historical arguments in order to count as real knowledge. We offer Plantinga’s rebuttals to each of these arguments. In chapter 12 we argue for the rationality of the transition between the competing interpretations of existence in Kierkegaard’s view. Against the classical view on this transition, according to which Kierkegaard had a religious goal from the beginning, we firstly present a challenge offered by Alasdair MacIntyre, according to whom we should understand Kierkegaard’s intention (from Either-Or) as that of presenting the reader with an ultimate choice between an aesthetical and an ethical stage of existence. In this respect the Danish thinker did not commend one option over the other. We then show Marilyn Piety’s and Gordon Marino’s replies to this assertion. For Piety the aforementioned “ultimate choice” interpretation is possible only when a person has a dispassionate stance toward her existence, but she offers evidence that for the Dane in reality passion permeates one’s reason in such cases. For Marino, Kierkegaard’s rationality of transition is understood in similar terms to those of the “theory choice” model of scientific rationality. MacIntyre’s response (to these rebuttals) is that, although some passions are for the Dane essential in transition, the ones suggested by both authors are not continuous between the stages. Against this we import Evans’ reply, which states that there are some ethical leanings which are present even in the aesthetic stage and that the ethicist’s problem is not firstly one of ignorance, but rather one of the unwillingness to commit himself to what he already knows. Moreover, he argues that Kierkegaard can be considered an externalist epistemologist, for whom knowledge is a matter of being rightly related to the external world; for the Dane our ability for so relating partly depends on the qualities we possess as human beings. We argue that such a view is similar to that proposed by Michael Polanyi in his philosophy of science. In the last chapter (chapter 13) we compare Kierkegaard’s and Plantinga’s perspectives on the knowledge of the truth of Christianity. Both authors share a similar view of the Christian faith, which is seen as a gift from God and has as its ground a transforming encounter with Christ. The content of faith is also similar: for Plantinga it is the gospel, for Kierkegaard God’s incarnation to save humanity. Here a disagreement will seemingly emerge in their views on the relationship between faith and reason: for Kierkegaard sometimes faith seems unreasonable, while for Plantinga there is nothing contrary to reason in it. However, this disagreement

Introduction 

 XXVII

might be only a purely semantic dispute between them related to their different epistemological backgrounds. One can also see here an important way in which Plantinga’s externalist epistemology might contribute to a better understanding of Kierkegaard’s view on faith, eliminating the stain of irrationality from it. Moreover, both authors see the historical arguments as non-essential for the knowledge of the truth of Christianity, a perspective which has egalitarian soteriological implications. Also, they both agree that Christianity implies a so-called risky leap toward faith, although for both of them this leap is not irrational, but guided by a pragmatic rationality. In addition, the two authors share the idea that there is an objective truth, although there is no method which would guarantee access to it. A specific contribution on Kierkegaard’s part to the understanding of the rationality of transition toward a Christian stage of existence is to show in detail the way in which such a transition is mediated through inwardness.

I Theoretical Epistemology

1 Kierkegaard’s Theoretical Epistemology 1.1 Introduction The aim of this chapter is to sketch an outline of Kierkegaard’s objective epistemology–more precisely, to focus on the non-ethical and non-religious aspects of his epistemology. We will opt for a realistic reading of Kierkegaard’s writings; in other words, the philosophical claims present in them can be framed as claims that can be defended or criticized by way of arguments. In some respects we agree that there is “no neutral theory that will give us a method for objectively settling the question as to how Kierkegaard should be read”1: One is free to choose between a postmodern approach to his pseudonymous writings (like Roger Poole or Luis Mackey, who suggest that these texts offer only an “endless succession of signifiers”2) and a more classical approach (according to which the texts contain, among other things, philosophical doctrines). Thus, the reader has the liberty of choosing which approach suits her best in dealing with Kierkegaard’s texts, in accord with her hermeneutical preferences. For this project the “classical” view seems to make more sense for various reasons, one of which is of utmost importance. Evans was keen to stress that: The radical postmodern Kierkegaard is a Kierkegaard who is an object of aesthetic appreciation. Such an approach to Kierkegaard allows a person to enjoy the style and literary techniques of Kierkegaard without fear of being challenged by Kierkegaard as one human person speaking to another about issues of ultimate importance. Paradoxically, such an aesthetic Kierkegaard is much less interesting, even aesthetically, than a Kierkegaard that has something to say to me, someone whose voice can challenge my beliefs and assumptions, and even the way I live my life. A conversation with a human being is much more interesting than a “conversation” with an “evanescence”.3

1 Evans, “Realism and antirealism in Kierkegaard’s ‘Concluding Unscientific Postscript’”, p. 160. 2 Roger Poole, Kierkegaard: The Indirect Communication, The University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville 1993, p. 9, cf. Evans, “Realism and antirealism” p. 155. 3 Stephen Evans, Kierkegaard: An Introduction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2009, pp. 13-14. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111334769-001

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 1 Kierkegaard’s Theoretical Epistemology

Coupling this quotation with the fact that in his book The Point of View for My Work as an Author (PV), Kierkegaard states that his intentions as an author “were religious from first to last,”4 we consider the “challenging approach” more useful and more faithful to the author’s intentions than the “aesthetical” one. However, not all agree that reading Kierkegaard’s intentions this way is legitimate. For example, Genia Schönbaumsfeld in her book: A confusion of Spheres: Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein on Philosophy and Religion5 argues that Kierkegaard’s statements from PV (regarding the religious intentions of his authorship) are not to be trusted. (A similar position is held by interpreters like Mackey and Joakim Garff). In support of this view she brings the following two entries from Kierkegaard’s Journal: The rest of what I have written can very well be used – if I am to continue being an author at all – but then I must have it be by a poet, a pseudonym. e.g. – by The Poet, Johannes de silentio Published by S. Kierkegaard. But this is in fact what provides the best proof that The Point of View for m. W. as an A. cannot be published; so it must be made into something by a third party, into [“]Possible Explanation of Mag. Kierkegaard’s Work as an Auth.[”]; then it would no longer be that book at all, because the point of the book was precisely that it was my personal statement.6

and The Point of View for My W. as an Auth. must not be published. No, no! ... The fact that I cannot present myself fully means that I am, after all, essentially a poet – and here I will remain.7

In other words, Schönbaumsfeld sheds light on the fact that Kierkegaard himself admits that in a sense PV is a distortion, and in order to solve the problem of the untruthfulness of this book he would publish this writing pseudonymously.8 She concludes that, in the end, Kierkegaard’s stages of life are not ranked (with the ethical superior to the aesthetical, and the religious to the ethical): the Danish philosopher does not try (either directly or indirectly) to tell us which of these stages represents a more “correct” form than the others; he only attempts, like Wittgenstein, to offer us “an existence-communication to be appropriated and put into practice.”9

4 Søren Kierkegaard, On my Work as an Author, in SKS 13, 12 / PV, 6; Søren Kierkegaard, The Point of View for my Work as an Author, in SKS 16, 11/ PV, 23. 5 Schönbaumsfeld, A confusion of Spheres, pp. 61-68. 6 SKS 21, 250 / KJN 5, 260-261. 7 SKS 21, 248-249 / KJN 5, 258-259. 8 Schönbaumsfeld, A Confusion of Spheres, pp. 66-68. 9 Ibid., p. 77.

1.1 Introduction 

 5

While Schönbaumsfels’ view regarding Kierkegaard’s intention to offer an “existence-communication to be appropriated” seems right, her conclusion that his writings have nothing to do with the concept of objective truth or with any other epistemological concerns is to us unconvincing. We believe Kierkegaard’s journal entries sketch a different portrait to the one she has in mind. Part of what is going on with PV is that Kierkegaard knows he has left out a great deal, particularly the part of his life dealing with his father and his former fiancée, Regine. So the story in this sense is “not complete.” If Søren assigned the book to a pseudonym, the omission would be logical – because the pseudonym would not know about this as Søren himself does. But the incompleteness of a story does not necessary imply that what is present in it is a “distortion;” it simply does not contain the whole truth. The main problem here (which would demand an eventual pseudonimity for PV) is not the supposed lack of sincerity in the author’s statements (regarding the religious intentions of his writings), but rather the lack of openness in connection with what he considers to be his past sins.10 At the same time Kierkegaard worries much about the fact that in PV he is providing “direct communication;” this is an important aspect because it seems to contradict his view that he needs to communicate to the readers indirectly. Moreover, he knows that an author’s claims about his work may not always be trustworthy. Lastly, perhaps the most important part (regarding the religious intention of his authorship) might be his invitation to readers to look at the authorship itself, and see for themselves whether his suggested interpretation (of it) makes sense (or not): If in the capacity of a third party, as a reader, I cannot substantiate from the writings that what I am saying is the case, that it cannot be otherwise, it could never occur to me to want to win what I thus consider as lost.11

10 See in this respect other journal entries from the same fragment in PV: “I thank God that it has been prevented, that I did not go ahead and publish The Point of View for My W. as an Auth., (which something within me had indeed always resisted). The book itself is true and, to my way of thinking, masterly. But this sort of thing can only be published after my death. Once a bit has been added to emphasize the fact that I am a penitent, about my sin and guilt, a bit about my inner misery – then it will be truthful… There is in fact no one to whom I can make myself entirely understood, because, in my possible extraordinariness, I of course cannot speak of what is of decisive importance to me – my sin and my guilt – in this manner.” (SKS 21, 249-250 / KJN 5, 260) 11 SKS 16, 18 / PV, 33.

6 

 1 Kierkegaard’s Theoretical Epistemology

This might be the strongest point in support of a religious view, because for many readers the religious intention of his writings seems quite evident: in fact his book Sickness unto Death is known to have “caused” some conversions to Christianity. Kierkegaard also appeals to facts – such as the fact that he wrote the Edifying Discourses at the same time he was writing the early “aesthetic” writings. Additionally, he admits in PV that he did not understand his authorship at the beginning the way he does now. Instead, he attributes the coherence of the authorship to God and says he was himself “educated” as he wrote.12 And it should be noted that even when he considers assigning PV to a pseudonym, he still puts his name on the title page as “editor.” He only does this with books to which he has a close relation such as Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Philosophical Fragments and Sickness unto Death. In the end he publishes only a shorter version of the book during his lifetime; but the essential message there is the same. In addition to that, maybe it is worth remembering a relevant episode from Søren’s life: Peter Kierkegaard’s (Søren’s brother’s) skeptical and quite malicious statement that “one should not believe what Søren affirms even when he writes under his own name,”13 evoked a violent reaction in Søren. This was, according to Alastair Hannay, the main reason behind his refusal to welcome Peter to his home and, in the end, to the hospital, on his deathbed.14 Having summarized all these reasons in advocating for a classical (and non-postmodern) interpretative view, in what follows we will approach Kierkegaard’s ideas with this presupposition in mind.

1.2 Kierkegaard’s “Theoretical Epistemology” Since we have set the tone for a classical interpretation, one can thus speak about a Kierkegaardian epistemology. Despite Lev Shestov’s “traditional” view that Kierkegaard is an irrationalist, “a person who hated reason more than anything else in the world,”15 we can say that, on the contrary, one meets in his authorship a writer who argues very rigorously. Furthermore, even if he raised many questions regarding

12 SKS 16, 56-57 / PV, 76-77. 13 Poul Egede Glahn and Lavrids Nyegard (eds.), Peter Christian Kierkegaards Samlede Skrifter, København: Schønberg 1902, vol. 4, p. 125, cf. Alastair Hannay, Kierkegaard: A Biography, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2001, pp. 422-423. 14 Hannay, Kierkegaard: A Biography, p. 423. 15 Lev Shestov, Kierkegaard and Existential Philosophy (tr. by Elinor Hewitt), Athens: Ohio University Press 1969, p. 34, cf. Robert Perkins, “Kierkegaard’s epistemological preferences”, International Journal of Philosophy of Religion, vol. 4, Nr. 4, 1973, p. 197.

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the “omnicompetence of idealism as an epistemology and as a metaphysics,” his objections were specifically directed against idealism – especially against a Hegelian type of idealism – and not antithetical to reason or “philosophy.”16 To be sure, Kierkegaard makes use of the concept of “belief.” Yet one should see not only the religious overtones of this concept, but also the fact it is used by him as a general epistemological category, with reference (as we shall see) to history and contingency: in Christianity – as Robert Perkins observed – the concept has merely a more special use and application.17 Indeed, when Kierkegaard famously said that, “Truth is subjectivity,” (an idea which has to do with the fundamentally ethical problem of the appropriation of the truth) Perkins observes that by this he does not destroy the distinction between truth and falsehood. Rather he reiterates this by insisting that one can be subjectively in untruth as well as in the truth. One’s commitment to X does not make X true. If X is untrue, then it is untrue whether or not one is committed to it. The truth or falsity of X is determined objectively without reference to one’s subjective commitment or lack thereof.18

In other words, one can speak of rationality and the use of traditional epistemological concepts in Kierkegaard thinking. It is true that he does not aspire to develop a comprehensive theory of knowledge. But the idea that there is no epistemology in his writings is not convincing; on the contrary, as we shall see in what follows, Kierkegaard employs an epistemological perspective that Perkins characterizes as “empirical realism,” in which truth is understood as “the conformity of thought to being,” being accessible to humans only as approximation.19 A classical distinction which plays an important role in Kierkegaard’s epistemology– shared also by philosophers such as David Hume and Gottfried Leibniz – is between “truths of reason” versus “truths of fact”20 (what W.V. Quine will later call “the dogma of modern thought”)21. Kierkegaard is of the opinion that knowledge, in a strict sense, applies only to the truths which are sure and certain; in particular, he associates this “strict” knowledge with the certain and necessary “truths of reason”

16 Perkins, “Kierkegaard’s epistemological preferences”, pp. 198-200. 17 Ibid., pp. 209-210. 18 Ibid., pp. 211, 213. 19 Perkins, “Kierkegaard’s epistemological preferences”, pp. 212, 214; SKS 7, 173-174 / CUP1, 189. 20 Roe Fremstedal, “Kierkegaard’s Use of German Philosophy. Leibniz to Fichte”, in Jon Stewart (ed.), A Companion to Kierkegaard, First Edition, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell 2015, pp. 36-37. 21 W. V. Quine, “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”, in William Barrett and Henry D. Aiken (eds.), Philosophy in the Twentieth Century. Vol. 2, New York: Random House 1962, pp. 102-121, cf. Perkins, “Kierkegaard’s epistemological preferences,” p. 201.

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(although there is for him also an immediate contingent cognition – associated with the sensory states – which is certain too). However, since people usually apply the expression “knowledge” to “truths of fact,” he is cautious not to “alienate his reader through the development of a technical vocabulary at odds with ordinary language,”22 and will often be found to relax this criterion of knowledge. Consequently, we can also find in his writings a loose sense of knowledge. In what follows we will concentrate on these two types of knowledge in more detail.

1.2.1. Knowledge in a Strict and Necessary (Formal) Sense A. Immanent Metaphysical Reality; Ontology and Mathematics At times Kierkegaard refers to a domain of reality which might be called immanent metaphysical reality: this domain refers to the realm of ideas and of the relations between them. A part of this realm – which is the object of two sciences: “mathematics” and “ontology”23 – is indifferent to what Kierkegaard calls “existential science”to what it means to exist. B. Ontology and Mathematics in a Formal Sense Ontology and mathematics are for Kierkegaard sciences that do not deal with being, but with the abstract realm of thinking. Since in this case the medium in which the human investigation takes place “agrees in essence with the objects of investigation,” those objects can be captured as they are in themselves and thus, “any uncertainty as to whether the effort to capture them has been successful,” is precluded – observes Marilyn Piety.24 The science of “ontology” (a concept which – very possibly – was borrowed by Kierkegaard from his teacher and friend Poul Møller) seems most likely to refer (as Gregor Malantschuk suggested) to logic. Ontology (according to Møller), “is concerned with eternal form of thought and

22 Marilyn G. Piety, Ways of Knowing: Kierkegaard’s Pluralist Epistemology, Waco, TX: Baylor University Press 2010, p. 64. 23 SKS 27, 271 / KJN 11.1, 270; “Christianity is indeed something essentially and completely different from a science like mathematics, etc., which is indifferent to the personal…” (Pap. X 6 B17 / JP 3, 3576) and “For a mathematical proposition there is proof, though in such a way that no counterproof is thinkable. It is precisely for this reason that one cannot have a conviction with respect to something mathematical. But with respect to every existential proposition, every proof also has something that is counterproof; there is a pro and a contra.” (SKS 20, 79-80 / KJN 4, 78). 24 Piety, Ways of Knowing, p. 65; Merold Westphal, Becoming a Self, West Lafayette: Purdue University Press 1996, pp. 86-87.

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being;” therefore, says Piety, “to the extent that is interpreted merely to refer to this form of thought, ontological knowledge is entirely unproblematic.”25 Møller’s definition leads Kierkegaard to describe the agreement between thought and being that constitutes here truth as being a tautology, since in this case “thought and being mean one and the same thing;”26 therefore, the “correspondence of the one to the other is objectively necessary.”27 In this way, the statements of ontology – if they refer only to the form of thought (the propositions of logic) – are certain and necessary truths, knowledge in a strict sense. Similarly, if the statements of mathematics refer only to the form of thought, they represent necessary and certain truths – and consequently also knowledge in a strict sense. C. Ontology and Mathematics as Sums of Hypothetical Claims However, there is also a sense in which ontology and mathematics are viewed as containing – by Møller’s own admission – a sum of “hypothetical claims which provide an a priori development of all the predicates that may be applied to anything that exits.”28 In this respect Kierkegaard (or better yet, his pseudonym Climacus) will see the ontological and mathematical knowledge as being also hypothetical.29 He thinks – says Piety – that the ontological and mathematical statements determine “what thought says about how things must be if they have a reality that transcends thought reality – but not that they are real in that way.”30 In this sense, observes Anton Hügli,

25 Piety, Ways of Knowing, p. 66. 26 “Ontology Mathematics. The certainty of these is absolute – here thought and Being are one…” (SKS 27, 271 / KJN 11.1, 270). 27 Piety, Ways of Knowing, p. 68. 28 Ibid., p. 66. 29 “Ontology Mathematics. The certainty of these is absolute… but on the other hand these sciences are hypotheses” (SKS 27, 271 / KJN 11.1, 270; SKS 7, 107 / CUP1, 110); Merold Westphal observes that, when Climacus says that “a logical system can be given, but a system of existence cannot be given” (SKS 7, 105 / CUP1, 109), then “the logical system that Climacus has in mind has much more in common with Whitehead and Russell than with Hegel. It defines a realm of pure being whose relation to actuality is merely hypothetical, and it resists any attempt by Hegelian ventriloquists to sneak reality into logic” (Westphal, Becoming a Self, p. 86). 30 Piety, Ways of Knowing, p. 67 (the author’s emphasis). In this respect Edna and Howard Hong observe that “according to Kierkegaard all proof lies within the sphere of thought, where one proceeds from specific propositions and draws conclusions from them. We find the best example of this demonstration in logic, including mathematics, where a proof can be said to have absolute validity. In the sphere of being, however, there is a limit to rigorous demonstration, both because there are opposite possibilities and because, everything considered, it is impossible to reach being

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 1 Kierkegaard’s Theoretical Epistemology assertions about abstract being can be transformed in hypothetical conclusions of the form: ‘If A, then B’. Whether A is the case or not, remains uncertain, but if A, then necessarily B. The conclusions are necessary, but the premises are and remain hypotheses.31

Thus, the ideas of God and perfection are so intertwined that, if God existed, he must be perfect32. Insofar as Kierkegaardian ontological knowledge is concerned, Piety says that While some ontological knowledge is clearly objective, some will turn out to be subjective. That is, ontology, to the extent that it goes beyond purely formal logic to include the semantics of expressions such as “God” and “perfection”, is not entirely indifferent to the situation of the individual knower. Even the idea of God is – according to Kierkegaard – significant with respect to what it means to exist.33

On the other hand, mathematical knowledge is less problematic for Kierkegaard (and Møller), – in the sense that it has nothing to do with subjectivity – because mathematics is interested in thought, not in the being in itself. Mathematical objects refer only to rules that govern the relationships between ideas. Whether or not these rules are legitimate even separately from thought, this is not a mathematical problem. Therefore, mathematical knowledge is ultimately unproblematic, being certain and necessary – a perfect model of knowledge in a strict sense. Needless to say, Kierkegaard rarely writes about mathematical knowledge, because he is not interested in it – his main areas of interest being ethics and religion.34

by a proof. To reach being there must be a transition from the sphere of demonstration (thought) to the sphere of actuality, a transition which can take place only by the means of a leap” (JP, “Notes”, Page 3.890, Page Break 3.891). 31 Anton Hügli, Die Erkenntnis der Subjectivität und die Objektivität des Erkennens bei Sören Kierkegaard, Basel: Editio Academica 1973, p. 89 (quoted – and translated – by Piety in Piety, Ways of Knowing, p. 67). 32 Piety, Ways of Knowing, p. 67. 33 Ibid., p. 69 (our emphasis) 34 Ibid., pp. 69-70.

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1.2.2 Knowledge in a Loose Sense A. Skepticism Regarding the Empirical Knowledge of the External World Thus far we have only analyzed what Piety considers to be for Kierkegaard the knowledge of immanent metaphysical reality – which is expressed through ontology and mathematics. Now we will turn to the Kierkegaardian view of knowledge of another important realm: Kierkegaard postulates the so-called realm of actuality – “where knowledge is the goal of such sciences as humanities and natural sciences.”35 As aforementioned, he associates knowledge – strictly speaking –, with certainty; if real, the correspondence of a mental representation with reality is certain. However, this certainty seems to disappear as soon as one turns toward the world of actuality. He relies on a number of motives which – he thinks – lead us in this case inevitably toward skepticism: a. The Contingency of the Statements Regarding the Realm of Actuality Kierkegaard is of the opinion that nothing that is actual is absolutely certain. Every representation of actuality is, by definition, contingent. The propositions dealing with this domain are non-tautological, a posteriori and synthetical.36 What emerges here is a contrast between the position of his pseudonym Climacus (the author of PF and CUP) and the views of the most prominent idealists who followed Immanuel Kant – Johann G. Fichte, Georg W. Hegel and Friedrich W. Schelling (excepting here perhaps the late Schelling) – for whom the contingent a posteriori judgments of experience were in fact identical with the a priori judgments of reason (a remark that stands in strong contradiction with the previous Kantian distinction between a priori and a posteriori).37

35 Ibid., p. 71. 36 Westphal, Becoming a Self, p. 88. 37 Thus, according to Fichte: “The apriori and the aposteriori are not two different things for a genuine idealism, but one and the same thing” (Johann G. Fichte, Erste Einleitung in die Wissenschafteslehre, GA, vol I/4, p. 206, cf. Jean Grondin, “The A Priori from Kant to Schelling,” Idealistic Studies, Vol. 19, 1989, pp. 202-221. For Fichte the aposteriori is the product, the fruit of the apriori: “This is the culminating point of the philosophy.” Ultimately, this fact leads to the destroying of the aposteriori (Ibid.). Fichte scoffed at the Kantians of his time, who believed that the apriori might be separated from the world of experience: for him the empirical experience cannot be thought apart from the apriori concepts. On the other hand, Hegel considers the notion of apriori unnecessary, because it implies dualism (the opposition apriori-aposteriori) – and thus would suggest that pure reason tolerates beside itself a nonrational world that limits the infinite claim of reason. But if reason reigns supreme – as Hegel believes – this limitation cannot be accepted (Grondin, op. cit., p. 211). Thus, for Hegel the distinction apriori-aposteriori also does not exist. For Schelling, in his early authorship, the absolute has replaced the apriori, and thus no longer stands in opposition to the aposteriori. The

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Evidently Climacus had Hegel in mind here, more precisely his idea of the necessity of historical events. For Hegel “history as a whole was necessary in some sense – only we cannot understand the necessity of what occurs at the time it occurs, but only in retrospect,”38 (Thus, one cannot prophesy the future, but by using the concept of the “cunning of the reason,” she might presumably impute necessity to the past39). Against this perspective Climacus reaffirms the Humean view that “matters of fact are contingent and that historical events are even doubly so;”40 therefore, there is no chance that historical knowledge will ever gain the certitude and unchangeability of the necessary truth:41 “Can the necessary come

absolute is the identity of the apriori and aposteriori, the I and the Not-I, the spirit and nature, subject and object – the unconditioned “which has nothing outside it.” For him, “the aposteriori is an apriori that ignores itself.” (Ibid., p. 213) The dichotomy is superfluous, because a person can state “with the same evidence … that our knowledge is originally totally and completely empirical and that is totally and completely apriori.” (Schelling, SW 528, cf. Grondin, op. cit, p. 213) The distinction makes sense only for a finite thinking; for an infinite one, it has no relevance. For Schelling the ordinary consciousness can reach this absolute identity through an intellectual intuition, in which “the knowledge of the absolute and the absolute itself are one and the same thing.” (Grondin, op. cit., p. 213) However, it seems that in his late authorship Schelling changed his mind with regard to apriori. Now he makes a distinction between “a negative philosophy, which is the product of consciousness, and a positive philosophy, which originates in a being beyond consciousness.” (Ibid., p. 215) The first philosophy is rationalistic: it tries to deduce the fundamental categories of reality using the logic of concept. For this rationalism “everything that it finds is supposed to reveal a rational necessity.” (Ibid., p. 216) Schelling criticizes this philosophy (anticipating in this sense the contemporary objections of “logocentrism”), because it is not able to attain reality, existence, positive being. By contrast, the positive philosophy proceeds not from a comprehensible – but an incomprehensible – apriori: “the brute fact of being that defies any kind of explanation. Why is there something and not just nothing?” (Ibid., p. 217) In this way, this positive philosophy renounces the apriori of rational metaphysics – which is unable by itself to attain being, to build “a bridge between its own fictions and the beings it pretends to reflect” – in order to reveal the apriori of being. Thus, in this late philosophy Schelling does not abandon the apriori, but rather starts from another type of apriori, an absolute one, which relies “on the mysterious and fundamental experience of being.” (Ibid., p. 219) 38 Stephen Evans, Passionate Reason: Making Sense of Kierkegaard’s ‘Philosophical Fragments’, Bloomington & Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press 1992, p. 127. 39 Perkins, “Kierkegaard’s Epistemological Preferences”, p. 209. 40 “Everything that has come into existence is eo ipso historical, for even if no further historical predicate can be applied to it, the crucial predicate of the historical can still be predicated – namely, that it has come into existence… Nature’s imperfection is that it does not have a history in another sense, and its perfection is that it nevertheless has an intimation of it (namely, that it has come into existence, which is the past; that it exists, which is the present)… only the eternal has absolutely no history. Yet coming into existence can contain within itself a redoubling, that is, a possibility of a coming into existence within its own coming into existence. Here, in a stricter sense, is the historical…” SKS 4, 275-276 / PF, 75-76. 41 Evans, Passionate Reason, p. 131.

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into existence? Coming into existence is a change, but since the necessary is always related to itself in the same way, it cannot be changed at all.”42 In this respect Climacus criticizes Hegel for confusing the idea of historical unchangeability with that of metaphysical necessity:43 Even if what has come into existence is most certain, even if wonder wants to give its stamps of approval in advance by declaring that if this had not occurred it would have to be fabricated (Baader), even then the passion of wonder is self-contradictory if it fools itself and falsely ascribes necessity to what has come into existence.44

b. The Untrustworthiness of Sense Perception As common sense would dictate, if a particular claim about actuality seems probable, people will be inclined to accept it as true. Contrary to this statement, Climacus affirms that “the trustworthiness of sense perception is deception,”45 – and suggests that this fact was convincingly demonstrated by Greek skepticism and modern idealism. He secures this claim by starting with immediate sensation and immediate cognition and affirming that these cannot deceive. Why? Because “sensation” is “immediate.” In fact, immediate sensation and immediate cognition are always right because they draw no conclusion about objective reality; there can be no question regarding the correctness of a sensation or impression (in an immediate sense)46. These concepts are in this sense similar to Locke’s “incorrigible ideas.”47 Problems emerge only when sensation and immediate cognition are interpreted – when a person “makes knowledge claims based on sensation.”48 In this respect Climacus writes: “The Greek skeptic did not deny the correctness of sensa-

42 SKS 4, 274 / PF, 74; Evans, Passionate Reason, p. 124. 43 “What is metaphysically necessary cannot be conceived to be otherwise than it is; in such a case we can reasonably hope to attain absolute certainty concerning the matter once we have fully understood the issue, since no alternative state of affairs is possible. What is historically unchangeable lacks this characteristic. The historical, since it involves what has come into existence with freedom, remains contingent. It may be that what has happened cannot now be changed and thus cannot become otherwise, but it remains true that it could have been otherwise. It cannot lose this contingency without losing its historicity.” Evans, Passionate Reason, p. 127. See also in this respect Perkins “Kierkegaard’s epistemological preferences”, p. 209. 44 SKS 4, 280 / PF, 80. 45 SKS 7, 288 / CUP1, 316. 46 Evans, Passionate Reason, p. 132. 47 Locke was the first proponent of the so-called “way of ideas” in epistemology. See in this respect Nicholas Wolterstorff, Thomas Reid, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2001, pp. 26, 28-30. 48 Piety, Ways of Knowing, p. 72.

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tion and of immediate cognition, but, said he, error has an utterly different basis – it comes from the conclusion I draw.”49 (He observes that Plato and Aristotle agree with the skeptic that immediate sensation and cognition cannot deceive).50 In light of this observation one can understand why Kierkegaard made the sweeping claim that “the trustworthiness of sense perception is a deception”: The idea is that – in Piety’s words – for him “sense perception underdetermines any conclusions concerning its objective significance,”51 supporting a variety of conclusions. The information provided by it is not able to determine the correspondence of its conclusion with actual reality. c. Skepticism Cannot Be Defeated without Resolution Contra Hegel, Kierkegaard rejects the idea that skepticism (in Hegel’s context, Kant’s skepticism about the possibility of knowing “the real world” – the “Ding an sich”) – can overcome itself. Hegel famously opposed the Kantian idea that human knowledge is limited to the world of appearances. On the contrary, he argued – in a quasi-Cartesian manner – that pure thought can “mediate philosophical disagreements,” find truth and incorporate truth from opposite viewpoints and progress toward increasingly more adequate perspectives until it reaches “the standpoint of absolute knowledge;” in this process it also incorporates Kantian skepticism – a skepticism which, although not completely rejected (because pure Hegelian thought, as always, preserves what is right in it), in the end “overcomes itself.”52 Climacus considers this Hegelian self-overcoming “doubt about everything” to be confused and rather superficial, affirming that “what the Hegelians say about it is of such a nature that is seems rather to favor a modest doubt as to whether there really is anything to their having doubted everything.” Contra Hegel he reaffirms an old Greek skeptic idea, according to which doubt is rather a problem of will than one of knowledge – which implies that “doubt can be terminated only in freedom, by an act of will.”53 For Climacus, says Evans, “those who adopt a global skeptical attitude basically do so because they want to be skeptics; if skepticism rests on resolution, it can only be ended by resolution.”54

49 SKS 4, 281 / PF, 82. 50 SKS 4, 282 / PF, 83n. 51 Piety, Ways of Knowing, p. 73. 52 Evans, Realism and Antirealism, 163; SKS 7, 306-308 / CUP1, 335-337. 53 SKS 4, 281 / PF, 82. 54 Evans, Realism and Antirealism, pp. 163-164; Evans, Passionate Reason, p. 133; SKS 7, 306 / CUP1, 335, 335n, 336n; Westphal, Becoming a Self, p. 75. This point is very interesting, because, as Thomas Anderson observed, it suggests that Climacus does not share Kant’s skepticism about the ability

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In contrast to Hegel, for whom the skeptical “self-reflection keeps on so long until it cancels itself,” Climacus would rather side with Schelling, who “halted self-reflection and understood intellectual intuition not as a discovery within self-reflection that is arrived by rushing ahead but as a new point of departure.”55 Also contrary to the same Hegelian idea and (according to Anders Rasmussen) in agreement with Schelling,56 Climacus argues (in another place in CUP) that: Reflection has the notable quality of being infinite. But being infinite must in any case mean that it cannot stop of its own accord, because in stopping itself it indeed uses itself and can be stopped only in the same way as a sickness is cured if it is itself allowed to prescribe the remedy, that is, the sickness is promoted.57

Climacus’ understanding of skepticism as willed standpoint seems to agree with an entire philosophical tradition (that rejected the Cartesian idea of a self-overcoming doubt), which starts with Thomas Reid, Blaise Pascal, David Hume, J.G. Hamann, Friedrich Jacobi, Schelling and continues – through John Newman, Friedrich Nietzsche, G.E. Moore, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Alvin Plantinga and many (more or less) contemporary postmodernists (like Jacques Derrida and Richard Rorty) – until the present. Yet, insofar as his emphasis on the idea of “belief” is to be understood as possibility of overcoming skepticism, he sides only with those thinkers from this list who share – in one way or other – the Common-Sense philosophical tradition.

of thought to know reality. In other words, it suggests that Kierkegaard was a realist. According to Anderson, Climacus rejects this skepticism, “dismissing as temptation any question about the reality of a thing-in-itself eluding thought. Such questions, he states, arise when thought becomes too self-reflexive and selfishly seeks to think itself (its own content), thereby refusing to do its job of thinking other things.” (Thomas Anderson, “Kierkegaard and Approximation Knowledge”, in International Kierkegaard Commentary to “Concluding Unscientific Postscript,” Macon, GA: Mercer University Press 1997, p. 198; see also SKS 7, 306 / CUP1, 335) Concerning the idea of conquering skepticism through resolution, as we shall further see, that does not mean that Climacus would promote, as some critics of Kierkegaard suggested, a kind of voluntarism – the idea that people might be able to control their beliefs voluntarily (see in this respect Evans, Realism and Antirealism, p. 163). 55 SKS 7, 306 / CUP1, 335. 56 Anders Rasmussen, “The Legacy of Jacobi in Schelling and Kierkegaard”, In Kierkegaard Studies Monograph Series 262 (08), 2002, pp. 221-222. In the same context Rasmussen observes that the adjacent idea that there is no movement in logic, which Climacus says belongs to Trendelenburg (in SKS 7, 106-107 / CUP1, 109-110), might have also an important source in Schelling: “The ideas that there is no such thing as movement in logic and that the development of dialectical thought depends on a human desire or interest are substantial in Schelling’s criticism (of Hegel).” (Rasmussen, op. cit., p. 222) 57 SKS 7, 109 / CUP1, 112.

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d. Thinking Transforms the Actuality of Being into Possibility In Climacus’ opinion, the knowledge of noumenal reality, which the “pure thought” of Hegel was supposed to achieve, is illusory, due to the fact that “the concrete actuality of the object of thought cannot itself be made an object of thought.” That is because, according to Climacus, “all knowledge about actuality is possibility,”58 which means that “when being is thought, it is transformed into possibility, and one ‘abstracts’ from its actuality, which is bound up with its concrete particularity.”59 According to Merold Westphal, for Climacus: Thinking takes place in the medium of abstraction, which means that all thinking… converts actuality to possibility. This is the Aristotelian thesis that knowledge is of the universal, restated by Hegel in the chapter entitled “Sense Certainty” in the Phenomenology, where he argues that however much we may mean the particular, we express the universals… All knowledge… has its home in the world of universals, and thus of abstraction and possibility”.60

However, although for Climacus thinking about being is concerned with possibility, it does not follow that he is a skeptic: for him the thinker’s own existence has a noumenal quality. In the same context (where he affirms his skepticism toward theoretical knowledge), he adds that: The only actuality concerning which an existing person has more than knowledge about is his own actuality, that he exists, and this actuality is his absolute interest… the requirement of the ethical upon him is to be infinitely interested in existing. The only actuality there is for an existing person is his own ethical actuality.61

In this case, as Evans observes, “only the existing individual can know himself as actuality without transforming that actuality into possibility.”62 Thus, the individual can be thought without annulling its actuality and particularity.63 Within his

58 SKS 7, 288 / CUP1, 316. 59 Evans, Realism and Antirealism, p. 164; Westphal, Becoming a Self, p. 137. 60 Westphal, Becoming a Self, p. 137. Rasmussen sees in Climacus’ critique of Hegel the influence of Schelling on Kierkegaard: “Where Kierkegaard’s criticism of Hegel is something else than irony and satire it draws substantially on that of Schelling… Thought and reflection is, according to Kierkegaard as it is to Schelling, only concerned with possibility.” (Rasmussen, “The Legacy of Jacobi in Schelling and Kierkegaard,” pp. 221-222) 61 SKS 7, 288 / CUP1, 316. 62 Evans, “Realism and Antirealism in Postscript”, p. 164. 63 In this respect Climacus says: “The ethical can be carried out only by the individual subject, who then is able to know what lives within him – the only actuality that does not become a possibility by being known and cannot be known only by being thought, since it is his own actuality; whereas

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ethically responsible subjectivity, an individual has direct contact with himself in a manner that is actual (this does not happen in a subject-object frame of representational knowledge, in which he is in touch with other objects or entities).64 At this juncture, it is worth pointing out a similarity, but also a great difference between Kierkegaard and Friedrich Jacobi (a thinker whom he appreciated in many respects). Both Jacobi and Kierkegaard stress the certainty of our existence. However, on commenting on this certainty, Jacobi – according to Rasmussen – “tries to explain the structure of our human self-consciousness.” By this he shows an interest in what one might call “theoretical self-consciousness.” By contrast, Kierkegaard is concerned only with what might be called “practical self-consciousness.”65 In this respect, Vigilius Haufniensis – the pseudonymous author of The Concept of Anxiety – affirms that: The most concrete content that consciousness can have is consciousness of itself, of the individual himself – not the pure self-consciousness, but the self-consciousness that is so concrete that no author, not even the one with the greatest power of description, has ever been able to describe a single such self-consciousness, although every single human being is such a one. This self-consciousness is no self-contemplation, for he who believes this has not understood himself, because he sees that meanwhile he himself is in the process of becoming and consequently cannot be something completed for contemplation. This self-consciousness, therefore, is action.66

e. The Continual Change of Both the Knower and the Known Both the knower and the known are for Climacus in continual change: Whether truth is defined more empirically as the agreement of thinking with being or more idealistically as the agreement of being with thinking, the point in each case is to pay scrupulous attention to what is understood as being and also pay attention to whether the knowing spirit might not be lured out into the indefinite… If in the two definitions given being is understood as empirical being, then truth itself is transformed into a desideratum (something wanted) and everything is placed in the process of becoming, because the empirical object is not finished, and the existing knowing spirit is itself in the process of becoming. Thus, truth is an approximating whose beginning cannot be established absolutely, because there is no conclusion that has retroactive power.67

with regard to another actuality, he knew nothing about it before he, by coming to know it, thought it, that is, changed it into possibility.” (SKS 7, 292 / CUP1, 320-321) 64 Westphal, Becoming a Self, p. 138. 65 Rasmussen, “The Legacy of Jacobi in Schelling and Kierkegaard,” p. 219. 66 SKS 4, 443-444 / CA, 143. 67 SKS 7, 173-174 / CUP1, 189.

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Climacus believes that humans can reach truth only as approximation – because it is impossible for an individual to arrive at an end of becoming. Thomas Anderson points out that Climacus writes here as an idealist “who identifies truth only with the completed, and, therefore, unchanging system” – and for whom the truth in the empirical domain is “a goal which can only be approximated.” An idealist considers empirical knowledge to be “called approximation in comparison to an eternal finished system.”68 Climacus does not deny here that truth is possible. In fact he clearly affirms in the context that it is – but only for God. For any existent spirit, who is situated in existence,69 it remains only an approximation: “truth… is indeed… the agreement between thinking and being, and is indeed actually the way for God, but is not actually the way for any existing spirit, because this spirit, itself existing, is in the process of becoming.”70 Once again one can clearly see here Climacus’ polemic with Hegel, who affirmed that humans can reach absolute, divine knowledge (truth) at a certain point of history, through speculative reason.71 For Hegel the path toward absolute certainty is holistic; “the absolute standpoint necessary for speculative philosophy is achieved only at the end of the journey that stops at all ports.”72 By contrast, Climacus prefers to side here with Lessing, who poignantly affirms that pure truth is only for God alone:73 Only God can write the system and understand it.74 Against the Hegelian “absolute point achieved at the end of the journey,” Climacus affirms that “there is no conclusion (absolute knowledge) that has retroactive power.”75 Climacus calls truth “approximation” in each of the two aforementioned definitions of the truth. In the first definition, the realist one (in which truth is seen as conformity of thought and being), being represents the empirical realm and is therefore characterized by contingency (lack of necessity): everything in this domain is touched by the reality of becoming.76 Consequently, in this realm truth can only be an approximation. In the second definition, the idealistic view (in which truth is the identity of being with thought), the existing human being needs to achieve the identity of thought and being. But the human being is “in the process of becoming,” unable “to abstract himself from his empirical finitude.” She is neither unchange-

68 Anderson, “Kierkegaard and Approximation Knowledge”, pp. 189, 192. 69 Westphal, Becoming a Self, p. 115. 70 SKS 7, 175 / CUP1, 190. 71 Westphal, Becoming a Self, pp. 81-82. 72 Ibid., p. 85. 73 SKS 7, 103 / CUP1, 106. 74 Westphal, Becoming a Self, p. 83. 75 SKS 7, 174 / CUP1, 189. 76 Perkins, “Kierkegaard’s epistemological preferences”, p. 212; SKS 7, 174 / CUP1, 189.

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able, like God, nor identical with the Fichtean pure “I-am-I.”77 Therefore her truth is also only an approximation.78 We will refer in more detail to the idea of truth understood as approximation in a further subchapter. Conclusion In conclusion, we can say that the Kantian distinction between appearance and reality, adopted in some measure also by Kierkegaard, implies that it is formally impossible to get behind appearances in order to find out what reality-in-itself is like. Kierkegaard holds that only the reality of the existing individual can have a different status. More precisely, theoretical knowledge (about empirical reality or actuality) is affected by the fact that sense experience underdetermines any conclusion made on its basis. In other words, there is for him, in a strict sense, no empirical knowledge.79 B. Empirical Knowledge in a Loose Sense a. Knowledge in a Loose Sense of the External World However, we need to raise a red flag at this point; Climacus does not imply a kind of solipsism, the idea that, since the agent’s own actuality is the only thing in itself that can be known, one must take a skeptical position toward the external world. On the contrary, at times he uses the term “knowledge” in a looser sense (as opposed to the previous strict sense, which demanded a kind of “classical foundationalist”80 certainty – a concept which will be presented in the next chapter). For example, he recognizes that there are many things which in daily life are regarded as known. In this respect humans can enter into contact with an external world, but all such contact presupposes belief.81 He conceptualizes the knowledge of the past in this way: 77 SKS 7, 174 / CUP1, 189. 78 Perkins, “Kierkegaard’s epistemological preferences”, p. 212. 79 Piety, Ways of Knowing, p. 79. 80 This epistemological concept will be explained in the next chapter. 81 Evans, “Realism and Antirealism”, p. 165; Piety makes some interesting clarifications in this respect: She observes – about empirical knowledge in a loose sense – that it presupposes interest from the scientist’s side, a passionate engagement with the object of his inquiry. However, this passion is not a subjective passion, but is what Climacus calls “the objective passion of the researcher” (SKS 7, 522 / CUP1, 575). But, adds Piety, “to say that the inquiry of the scientist is characterized by objective passion is not to say that it is an entirely objective inquiry. To the extent that it is passionate, it is subjective, or interested.” In this way, understanding is for Kierkegaard a subjective activity “even when the object of inquiry is not essentially subjective” (Piety, Ways of Knowing, p. 79).

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So much for the apprehension of the past. It is presumed, however, that there is knowledge of the past – how is this knowledge acquired? Because the historical intrinsically has the illusiveness [Svigagtighed] of coming into existence, it cannot be sensed directly and immediately (… ) This is precisely the belief [Tro], for continually present as the nullified in the certitude of belief is the incertitude that in every way corresponds to the uncertainty of coming into existence. Thus, belief believes what it does not see; it does not believe that the star exists, for that it sees, but it believes that the star has come into existence. The same is true of an event. The occurrence can be known immediately but not that it has occurred, not even that it is in the process of occurring, even though it is taking place, as they say, right in front of one’s nose. The illusiveness of the occurrence is that it has occurred, and therein lies the transition from nothing, from non-being, and from the multiple possible “how”. Immediate sense perception and cognition do not have any intimation of the unsureness with which belief approaches its object… Immediate sensation cannot deceive.82

The passage is admittedly not easy to understand. Especially the first example – about the coming into existence of the star – seems very obscure. There are commentators – for example Robert Roberts – who interprets this expression in the sense that here one does not doubt that a star exists, but only the apparition of the star in the past: in other words, one needs to believe (tro) in this case in its genesis.83 However, the reader can progressively see its implication by means of the second example – about the event and its occurrence – she might observe two common elements in both cases: – On the one hand an element that is immediate – the “seeing of the star” (in the first case) and the “occurrence of the event” (in the second case); these two aspects belong in the category of the “immediately sensed” and are sure. – On the other hand, an element that is illusive (the “coming into existence of the star” – in the first case – and “the fact that the occurrence has occurred, that it made the transition from non-being to being” – in the second case); these two aspects belong to the category of unsure – and one needs to believe in them. Let us return to the aforementioned distinction between immediate sensation – which is, according to Leibniz, Locke and Hume, always right, because it draws no conclusion about objective reality – and the conclusion (sense perception) itself, which represents the ground for Greek and Humean84 skepticism. As we have

82 SKS 4, 280-281 / PF, 81-82. 83 Robert Roberts says this in his Faith, Reason, and History: Rethinking Kierkegaard‘s ‘Philosophical Fragments’, Mercer University Press, Macon, GA., 1986, pp. 109-117, cf. Evans, Passionate Reason, p. 132. 84 Such a skepticism is present especially in the early Humean authorship. In his late works Hume draws closer to Reid’s Common Sense view regarding objective reality: “The great subverter of excessive skepticism is action, practical projects, the occupations of everyday life. Skeptical principles

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already seen, all contingent statements concerning the realm of actuality are such conclusions, having the property of “coming into existence.”85 In our context, one can have the immediate sensation of “seeing a star”: but this sensation implies no proof that the star really exists (the truth of sense perception): in order to arrive at its existence, one must believe in it. Evans comments the situation in this way: Both in the case of the star and the event, there is a something, a content, of which I am immediately aware. This something has been articulated by different philosophers in different ways, but he (Climacus) surely has in view what some have labeled “sense data,” and what others have thought of in terms of what might be left after a phenomenological epoche has been performed. Whatever this something is of which we are immediately aware, it cannot be identified with an object in the space-time world which we think of as “objective,” out there, so to speak. To affirm the existence of a star as an object which has “come into existence” is to affirm the existence of something more than the immediate content of my experience. It is to affirm the existence of a public object with a public history. Similarly, the affirmation that the event has occurred entails that one is committed to affirming a “transition from nothing, from non-being.” Here the event is again not simply a content in one’s consciousness but a part of the public world, and such an affirmation carries with it for Climacus inescapable risk. The risk is grounded in the logical gap between my experience, when that experience is construed as giving me certain knowledge, and the world as I ordinarily perceive it and act in it.86

Also other commentators subscribe to the view that Kierkegaard believes in the human capacity of knowing the external world. For example, Anderson states –

may flourish and triumph in the philosophy lecture-room, where it is indeed hard if not impossible to refute them. But as soon as they come out of shadows, are confronted by the real things that our beliefs and emotions are addressed to, and thereby come into conflict with the more powerful principles of our nature, skeptical principles vanish like smoke and leave the most determined skeptic in the same believing condition as other mortals.” (David Hume, An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (edited by Tom Beauchamp), Oxford: Oxford University Press 1999, p. 82). Despite that fact, he remains skeptical about everything connected with transcendence, religion and metaphysics, all legitimate knowledge being for him therefore limited to the empirical and immanent world: “But they will never be tempted to go beyond everyday life so long as they bear in mind the imperfection – the narrowness of scope, and the inaccuracy – of their own faculties. Given that we can’t provide a satisfactory reason why we believe after a thousand experiments that a stone will fall, or fire will burn, can we ever be confident in any of our beliefs about the origin of worlds, or about the unfolding of nature from and to eternity?” (Hume, An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, p. 84). 85 See also Evans, Passionate Reason, pp. 132-133. 86 See also Evans, Passionate Reason, pp. 132-133.

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against the skepticism of Mackey,87 R. Popkin88 and G. Price89 (for whom no belief and truth claim about reality in CUP and other Kierkegaardian works has cognitive warrant) – that, on the contrary, Climacus offers in fact examples of empirical statements (like the famous “The earth is round.”90), which he considers objective truths. Even his idea that empirical knowledge is an approximation is in this respect a proof, because, “if empirical reality is unable to be truly known, it would be impossible to know whether any attempted explanation of it was close to the truth or not…”91 In a similar way, Piety – against Mackey, for whom the metaphysics of Climacus in Postscript is “fundamentally antirealist or acosmic”92 (because presumably for him the only reality that exists is the ethical reality of the subject, all other ones being encountered “in the mode of possibility”)93 – argues that, on the contrary: Whether truth is defined more empirically as the agreement of thinking with being or more idealistically as the agreement of being with thinking, the point in each case is to pay scrupulous attention to what is understood as being and also pay attention to whether the knowing spirit might not be lured out into the indefinite… If in the two definitions given being is understood as empirical being, then truth itself is transformed into a desideratum (something wanted) and everything is placed in the process of becoming, because the empirical object is not finished, and the existing knowing spirit is itself in the process of becoming. Thus, truth is an approximating whose beginning cannot be established absolutely, because there is no conclusion that has retroactive power.94

At this point one might object that even antirealists – á la late Hilary Putnam in our days – would acknowledge that there is an objective and real world, about which one can make true or false statements. However, what interests us is the nature of

87 Louis Mackey, Kierkegaard, a Kind of Poet, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 1971, pp. 179-180, 189-192. 88 R. Popkin, “Kierkegaard and Skepticism,”, in Kierkegaard, A Collection of Critical Essays, Garden City NY: Doubleday 1972, p. 368. 89 G. Price, The Narrow Pass, London: Hutchinson, 1963, p. 113. 90 SKS 7, 178-179 / CUP1, 194-195. 91 Anderson, “Kierkegaard and Approximation Knowledge”, p. 191. 92 By “acosmism” Kierkegaard himself understands exactly this possible threat in his epistemological position (which sees the knowledge of the reality of the agent as the only possible knowledge), a view which could imply a presumable skepticism about the external world, in the end a kind of solipsism. Some will be tempted to see a similar acosmism in the Kantian system, as consequence of the problems associated with the concept of the thing-in-itself (CUP1, 341-342, 341n573; Evans, “Realism and Antirealism”, p. 165; CUP2, 251, n573 cf. Hegel: “the system of Spinoza was not atheism but acosmism, defining the world to be an appearance lacking in true reality.”) 93 Marilyn Piety, “The Reality of the World in Kierkegaard’s Postscript,” in International Kierkegaard Commentary to “Concluding Unscientific Postscript,” p. 169. 94 Ibid., pp. 171-172.

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this world. Is this – to use a famous Kantian distinction – the world as it appears to us (a pure phenomenal reality), or rather the world as it is in itself?95 As already mentioned, Climacus evaluates the way in which Hegel criticizes Kant’s skepticism about the knowledge of the world-as-it-is-in-itself and finds it unconvincing. But does this mean that he also accepts this Kantian skepticism, being eventually a denier of ontological realism – as many post-Kantians? We have already observed that in a strong sense knowledge for him is either necessary knowledge (in an idealist Hegelian sense) or certain knowledge in the sense of a classical type of foundationalism like that of Locke, Hume and Leibniz, for whom knowledge can consist in only two types of certain beliefs: basic foundational beliefs (self-evident beliefs – like “2 plus 2 equals 4” or modus ponens in logic – and “beliefs about how one is appeared to” – such as “It seems to me that I see something red,”) and beliefs derived from these foundational ones.96 In this strong sense Climacus is skeptical about the (theoretical) knowledge of actuality. To the necessary knowledge of the Hegelian system we have (according to him) no access (Only God has access to it, but we are not God.). Yet as regards the realm of mathematics and logic (or “ontology”), the realm immanent metaphysical reality, knowledge is for him sure and necessary, but it has no relationship with actuality, with reality. The realm of the beliefs about how one is appeared to (what Climacus might call “immediate sense perception”) also offers sure and certain knowledge, but knowledge which has no connection with reality, with real existence.

95 Evans, “Realism and Antirealism in Postscript”, p. 162. One important reason why Putnam is antirealist in his late authorship has to do with his epistemological argument against the so-called God’s eye view, according to which transcendental realism requires a “direct access to a ready-made world” and a capacity “to say how the world is” independent of theory (Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1981, pp. 49, 74, 146). John Searle formalizes the God’s eye view argument in this way: “Premise: Any cognitive state occurs as part of a set of cognitive states and within a cognitive system,”, which (according to him) implies conclusion 1: “it is impossible to get out of all the cognitive states and systems in order to observe the relationship between them and the reality for whose knowledge we use them” from which would purportedly result conclusion 2: “there is no knowledge of a reality independent of cognition.” But – he observes – conclusion 1 indeed results from the premise, but it does not imply conclusion 2 (John Searle, The Construction of Social Reality, New York: The Free Press 1997, pp. 174-175). Also Michael Devitt observes that transcendental realism does not imply any God’s eye view, and that the realist does not suggest that reality can be known independent of theory, but rather that theory helps us to understand reality, “the nature of which does not depend on any theories or concepts” (Michael Devitt, Realism and Truth, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1997, pp. 232-234; the author’s emphasis). 96 WPF, 177-178.

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But we are on thin ice if we begin to think that Climacus is committed to some sort of skepticism in general. Even if Kantian thinking leads us to skepticism and the Hegelian alternative to Kant (against skepticism) is for him a failure, Climacus has a third option, namely “faith” (which is coupled for him with a weaker form of knowledge). He does not deny the existence of the external world; he only admits that one cannot win the battle against skepticism through reason. Skepticism is for him a problem of will: it is based on resolution and therefore it can be ended also only through resolution. Therefore, even the Kantian idea of the reality “of a thing-in-itself eluding thought” is for Climacus – according to Anderson – dismissed as temptation, because it represents an instance in which “thought becomes too self-reflexive and selfishly seeks to think itself (its own content), thereby refusing to do its job of thinking other things.”97 Anderson refers here to this quote from the Postscript: when thinking turns toward itself in order to think about itself, there emerges, as we know, a skepticism. How can there be a halt to this skepticism of which the source is that thinking selfishly wants to think itself instead of serving by thinking something?98

This point (about epistemic selfishness and skepticism as its consequence) becomes even more clear when one observes its Climacian antidote: belief in other objects. For him this last concept is connected with the (already mentioned) self-knowledge of our actuality as ethical and moral agents (the only actual sure and certain knowledge accessible to us) – correlated with an epistemic openness toward others. In this respect, referring to our knowledge of the historical events of the past, he writes: Only by paying sharp attention to myself can I come to realize how a historical individuality acted when he was living, and I understand him only when I keep him alive in my understanding and do not, as children do, break up the clock in order to understand the life in it, and do not, as speculative thought does, change him into something totally different in order to understand him. But what it is to live I cannot learn from him as someone dead and gone. I must experience that by myself, and therefore I must understand myself, not the reverse: after first having world-historically misunderstood him now go further and allow this misunderstanding to help me misunderstand myself, as if I too, were dead and gone.99

This pericope leads Evans to think that according to Climacus we arrive at the external world only through belief, and that we do this because we have “a sense of

97 Anderson, “Kierkegaard and Approximation Knowledge”, p. 198. 98 SKS 7, 306 / CUP1, 335. 99 SKS 7, 136 / CUP1, 146-147.

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what it means to exist in actuality… because we know ourselves as actual agents.” He adds that we should see an individual belief about an independent reality: as a linking of thought-possibilities with that of individual’s own existence. Though I have no concept of existence, I know what it means to exist by existing. Believing that my friend John exists amounts to linking John in some ways to that concrete actuality that is thought without becoming a mere possibility, namely, my own actuality.100

b. Knowledge as Approximation, Belief and Will Let us recapitulate an essential feature of Climacus’ postulation: knowledge of actuality is possible, but only as approximation. “Thus truth is an approximating whose beginning cannot be established absolutely, because there is no conclusion that has retroactive power.”101 Here the reference is to theoretical knowledge of actuality in a weaker sense. In this respect we are able to know the objects of the external world and the events of history, but only to an approximate extent – and invoking “belief”: “This is precisely the belief [Tro], for continually present as the nullified in the certitude of belief is the incertitude that in every way corresponds to the uncertainty of coming into existence.”102 As already mentioned, for Climacus doubt is a matter of will; but belief is a matter of will as well: “doubt can be terminated only in freedom, by an act of will.”103 This means that in a sense Climacus identifies belief with a decision of our will: for him “belief is not a piece of knowledge but an act of freedom, an expression of will.”104 Some interpreters have strongly criticized this idea, seeing in it a form of volitionalism – the opinion that people might be able to control their beliefs voluntarily. They see his claims as a proof of irrationalism, because they would suggest that one can believe – for example of historical matters – whatever one would, regardless of what historical evidence one might possess.105 We can find evidence of this alleged proof of irrationalism among thinkers such as Louis Pojman and Terrence Penelhum.106

100 Evans, “Realism and Antirealism”, p. 167 (the author’s emphasis). 101 SKS 4, 174 / CUP1, 189. 102 SKS 4, 281 / PF, 81. 103 SKS 4, 281 / PF, 82. 104 SKS 4, 282 / PF, 83. 105 Another point of criticism comes from Richard Swinburne’s and William Alston’s arguments that doxastic voluntarism is logically incoherent (I owe this observation to Dr. Oliver Wiertz). 106 Louis Pojman, Religious Belief and the Will, London: Routledge 1986; Terence Penelhum, God and Skepticism, Dordrecht: Reidel Publishing Co. 1983), pp. 81-82, 114 (although Penelhum is more sympathetic toward an indirect form of volitionalism – see Evans, Passionate Reason, p. 130).

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We need to remember at every step of the way that these remarks arise from the exchange between Climacus and Hegel: Hegel, in defense of Christianity, argued that historical assertions can be transformed into necessary truths, thus gaining strong foundations and being made in this way invulnerable against the attacks of historical-critical scholarship. Against this position, as already mentioned, Climacus affirmed the Humean idea that matters of fact are contingent, and those matters of fact which are historical even doubly so. This is the context in which he refers to Greek skepticism and to the concepts of will and faith (in the sense of ordinary belief).107 The uncertainty of judgments about matters of fact makes skepticism possible – a skepticism which in turn doubts by virtue of will. Therefore, this doubt can be also terminated by virtue of will, by belief, which is “the opposite” passion “of doubt.”108 Pojman sees in this position an extreme form of volitionalism. The believer decides what he will believe and what he will not believe. But such a thing is impossible, because normally our beliefs are not under our control. Still, in defense of Climacus, one needs to see that when he equates belief with will, it does not mean that this belief is consciously chosen. Evans argues that, on the contrary, there is evidence that in this respect Kierkegaard is rather a depth psychologist and that to him humans: hardly ever make choices with full consciousness of what they are doing. In the Sickness unto Death, for example, though both despair and sin are traced to the will, the pseudonym AntiClimacus says that most people are in despair and sin unconsciously.109

This idea ensues from a passage in PF about belief and will, in which Climacus says that the Greek skeptic would agree that his skepticism is rooted in will “inasmuch as he understood himself.”110 That means that the skeptic is not always (maybe even usually) aware that he doubts because he wills to doubt. Moreover, one person can modify her beliefs only indirectly, in the middle of doing other things, and this seems also to be Climacus’ position, because he considers that both doubt and belief are passions, and passions cannot be created through direct acts of will. According to Evans: Passions are things that must be slowly cultivated and constantly renewed. Acts of willing play a role in this cultivation, and Kierkegaard regards the higher ethical and religious passions

107 Evans, Passionate Reason, pp. 131-132; SKS 4, 281-283 / PF, 81-83. 108 SKS 4, 283 / PF, 84; Evans, Passionate Reason, p. 133. 109 Evans, Passionate Reason, p. 134. 110 SKS 4, 281 / PF, 82.

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as things we are responsible to achieve. However, by and large, passions are formed on a long-term basis and they are not simply willed into existence but formed indirectly through a process of willing to do other things.111

In addition to that, in various pseudonymous books Climacus states – relying on Hume for support – that doubt is something difficult to achieve. But if doubt is difficult to achieve, it should also be difficult – not simple, as Hegel would suggest – to overcome. The same should be true of passion of faith, which is “a task for a lifetime,” not something simply obtained through an act of will.112 c. The Origin of Kierkegaard’s Perspective on Ordinary Belief Another question that might be raised concerning the origin of Kierkegaard’s – especially his pseudonym Climacus’ – perspective on ordinary belief in the existence of real objects, is whether there are forerunners with a similar perspective (who may have influenced him in this respect). The answer to this question seems to be affirmative. For example, Rasmussen sees in this respect a clear influence of Jacobi on Climacus: If we turn to Kierkegaard’s use of the word “tro” (“faith,” “Glaube”) one is struck by the many meanings of this word. Among these different meanings, the word “tro” refers to Jacobi’s notion of “Glaube”. As in the case of Jacobi, Kierkegaard claims that immediate certainty is not only a precondition to any kind of experience but also a precondition to the realization of human life…”113

The eminent type of belief, that belief which in this quote is understood as precondition to the realization of human life (in other words the Christian faith) will be the theme of another chapter. The focus of the present chapter is rather on the first kind of “immediate certainty” to which Rasmussen refers, namely belief taken in its ordinary sense (which is called in the quote “a precondition to any kind of experience”); in any case, in both respects Kierkegaard seems to have in Jacobi a forerunner. Indeed, in his writings Jacobi states that human knowing is impossible without faith: faith is for him the basis of all knowledge. If one wants to justify one’s belief in something, one needs to prove that this belief is inferred logically from another belief, and this other belief from another, and so on, until a stopping point is reached. Nor can this final point be justified (proved to be true) through reason;

111 Evans, Passionate Reason, pp. 134-135. 112 Ibid., p. 135. 113 Rasmussen, “The legacy of Jacobi in Schelling and Kierkegaard”, p. 219.

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reason can just set the above regress into motion. Thus, faith is a central requirement; only through faith can justification and knowledge be reached.114 In conclusion, the existence of objects in the external world can neither be proved nor refuted through reason; we must accept their existence through faith.115 In Jacobi’s words “Through faith we know that we have a body, and that there are other bodies and other thinking beings outside of us. A veritable and wondrous revelation!”116 Thus, although Kierkegaard and Jacobi formulate their argument somewhat differently, they have a clear commonality of ideas regarding this issue. Next to Jacobi, Johann Georg Hamann has also deeply influenced Kierkegaard’s philosophical views. For Hamann – says Gwen Griffith-Dickson – “faith” is an essential precursor for knowledge. Everything is dependent or grounded on faith… In Hamann’s epistemology, the hard division between “knowledge” and “belief” or “faith” becomes eroded. Both knowledge and faith rest on a foundation of trust; neither rest on a foundation of indubitability.117

Again, a similarity to Kierkegaard’s views on epistemology is here evident. Yet the research regarding Kierkegaard’s sources (regarding his concept of ordinary belief) points beyond Jacobi and Hamann, who were also deeply influenced in their view on this matter by Thomas Reid.118 Gary Dorrien affirms that the two authors “were indebted to Reid’s common-sense realism” and that both thought that Kant – in contrast to Reid – “wrongly lifted reason above faith and common sense.”119 According to Thomas Reid’s “common sense,” belief in external objects is not obtained “through comparing ideas,” but rather “included in the very nature of the sensation.”120

114 Gary Dorrien, Kantian Reason and Hegelian Spirit: The Idealistic Logic of Modern Theology, Oxford: Wiley Blackwell 2015, p. 64. 115 Ibid., p. 65. 116 F. Jacobi, Concerning the Doctrine of Spinoza in Letters to Herr Moses Mendelsohn, in F.H. Jacobi: The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel “Allwill,”, Montreal: McGill Queen’s University Press 1994, quote 231, cf. Dorrien, Kantian Reason and Hegelian Spirit, p. 64. 117 Gwen Griffith-Dickson, “Johann Georg Hamann”, “Knowledge”, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (revision 6 July 2017), article available at the online address [https://plato.stanford.edu/ entries/hamann/] (last visited on April 30, 2023). 118 See in this respect especially Manfred Kuehn, Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 1768-1800: A Contribution to the History of Critical Philosophy, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Press 1987, pp. 50-52, 150-152, 220-223, 227-233, 239, 242, 246. 119 Dorrien, Kantian Reason and Hegelian Spirit, p. 56. 120 Ibid., p. 57.

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1.3 Conclusion In conclusion, one can deduce – pace Evans – , two kinds of epistemic attitudes in Kierkegaard’s writings: On the one hand, there is “epistemic humility,” which borders on skepticism; the only “thing-in-itself” that can be known with certainty as actuality is our own existence as agents. A classical type of foundationalism is representative of this epistemic attitude,121 and Climacus bulks up a number of arguments in its favor: the contingency of statements regarding the realm of actuality, the untrustworthiness of sense perception, the fact that skepticism cannot be defeated without resolution, the fact that thinking transforms the actuality of being into possibility and the continual change of both the knower and the known. On the other hand we see a more optimistic picture, according to which actuality of other realities is accessible to us, though only through faith or belief. Belief allows an “approximative” and “loose” kind of knowledge, undermining in this respect the previous quasi-skeptical type of epistemology.122 A Reidian type of foundationalism seems to fit this more optimistic epistemic attitude, which is shared by Climacus (and Kierkegaard) with such forerunners like Jacobi, Hamann and (of course) Reid. In a separate chapter – in which Kierkegaard’s objective epistemology will be compared with the “non-religious” epistemology of Plantinga – more arguments will be offered to support this position.

121 Evans, “Realism and Antirealism”, p. 169. 122 Ibid., pp. 169-170.

2 The Epistemology of Alvin Plantinga 2.1 Introduction The central concept of epistemology is that of “knowledge.” In Plato’s dialogue Theaetetus, Socrates raised the question: “What knowledge actually is?” and the answer, found in his discussion with Theaetetus, was that knowledge is true belief “when accompanied by an account,”1 in other words, when accompanied by a (good) justification. From this ancient account originated the contemporary epistemological view that a belief is known by us only when it is both true and justified (or warranted). Alvin Plantinga prefers to use – when writing about knowledge and its essential components – the term “warrant.” He makes a certain distinction between “warrant” and “justification”2 and defines warrant as “(that) elusive quality or quantity enough of which, together with truth and belief, is sufficient for knowledge.”3 Plantinga is well known in the contemporary philosophical world for his contributions to the metaphysics of modality and philosophy of religion (especially on such topics as theodicy and the arguments for the existence of God). But starting in the 90’s, Plantinga began to work intensively on several epistemological topics. His industrious labor paid off by giving birth to a trilogy on warrant: Warrant: The Current Debate (1993), Warrant and Proper Function (1993) and Warranted Christian Belief (2000) which earned him the status of one of the most prominent contemporary epistemologists. Without going into too much depth of analysis, a short note will suffice to show what might be the central theme of Plantinga’s epistemology: its externalism. As opposed to internalists, who affirm that the knower can know that a certain belief has warrant (or justification), and additionally that she has epistemic access to whatever it is that makes for warrant, Plantinga is an externalist, in that he generally affirms that what makes true belief knowledge is the fact that it is “produced” by a reliable process.

1 Plato, “Theaetetus”, in Plato, Theaetetus and Sophist (edited and translated by Christopher Rowe), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2015, pp. 5, 84-85. 2 Plantinga associates the term “justification” with internalism – and considers that only the internalists identify warrant with justification. However, his option is for externalism, and for externalists there is a clear distinction between these two concepts. 3 WPF, v. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111334769-002

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In his own externalist model, Plantinga affirms that a belief is warranted only if it is produced by cognitive faculties functioning properly in a cognitive environment congenial to them, and according to a designed plan successfully aimed at truth. In what follows we will examine the process that led him to postulate such a construal.

2.2. The Relation between Plantinga’s View and Other Contemporaries’ Views on Warrant 2.2.1 Foundationalism and Coherentism; the Main Argument of Foundationalism Contemporary Epistemology is divided between two main camps regarding the way in which a belief might be warranted: foundationalism and coherentism. The difference between these two camps is in their attitude toward circular reasoning; the coherentist accepts this kind of reasoning, provided that the circle is large enough, whilst the foundationalist rejects it. Plantinga reminds us that the main reason for the foundationalist’s rejection of circularity is the importance she gives to the idea of propositional evidence, of accepting one proposition on the evidential basis of another. This does not mean that by definition evidence for a foundationalist must always be propositional; there might also be – in J. Austin’s words – “physical” evidence (for example, the “proofs” of a crime in a process: a pistol, a torn garment, traces of blood on clothes, etc.).4 However, propositional evidence is crucial in the attempt to understand the differences between foundationalism and coherentism. According to the foundationalist, there is a foundational level of beliefs which are not actually accepted on the evidential basis of other beliefs. For example, this category includes self-evident beliefs and beliefs about how one appears to be. The other beliefs, those not included in the foundational level, will be accepted on the evidential basis of the foundational (or basic) beliefs. Thus, the basic beliefs constitute the propositional evidence for the nonbasic beliefs. In a proper noetic structure, says the foundationalist, a nonbasic belief is accepted on the basis of other beliefs, which may be accepted on the basis of still others, and so on; the chain might be in principle as long as one likes. However, as we hold only finitely many beliefs, the chain must terminate somewhere, in some beliefs that are foundational (not accepted on the basis of other beliefs).

4 WPF, 177.

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If the basis relation is circular – belief A0 is accepted on the basis of A1, which is accepted on the basis of A2,..., which is then accepted on the basis of An, and again which is accepted on the basis of A0 – then, says the foundationalist, the noetic structure is improper, because warrant cannot be generated only by warrant transfer. In Plantinga’s own wording: “A belief B can get warrant from another belief A by way of being believed on the basis of it, but only if A already has warrant. No warrant originates in this process whereby warrant gets transferred from one belief to another.”5 In conclusion, circular reasoning, argues the foundationalist, is improper. Therefore, in her view, foundationalism should be adopted, and coherentism rejected.

2.2.2 Plantinga’s Critique of Coherentism How will the coherentist defend her position? If, as the aforementioned arguments of the foundationalist suggest, she appeals to circular reasoning, then she is clearly mistaken. One cannot get warrant for a belief just by showing that it is a member of a circular chain of beliefs, no matter how big this circle is. However, Plantinga anticipates the coherentist might make another move. He might argue that warrant does not arise by warrant transfer, but by coherence itself; coherence is the only source of warrant.6 In this way (at least from the perspective of the pure coherentist7) a belief is not accepted on the evidential basis of any other belief, but on the basic way, “the warrant accruing to it (if any) arising by way of coherence.”8 Although so construed coherentism seems to be more plausible, Plantinga still rejects it, and argues that coherence is neither necessary nor sufficient for warrant.9 Coherentism falls short of ideal by relying merely on a relation between beliefs (coherence being a doxastic relation). Yet the tripartite relation between experience, belief and environment is also essential to warrant.10 Plantinga strategically brings up the case of the Lost Mariner, recounted by Oliver Sacks:

5 WPF, 178. 6 WPF, 179. 7 There might be also the mixed perspective of the impure coherentism, which would allow that there can be warrant transfer, but the warrant transferred arises originally by way of coherence. 8 WPF, 179. 9 WCD, 66-86. 10 WPF, vii, 179.

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he suffered from Korsakov’s syndrome, a profound and permanent devastation of memory caused by alcoholic destruction of the mammillary bodies of the brain. He completely forgot a thirty-year stretch of his life, believing that he was 19 years old when in fact he was 49; he believed it was 1945 when in fact it was 1975. His beliefs (we may stipulate) were coherent; but many of them, due to this devastating pathology, had little or no warrant.11

(We are aware that some coherentists might vehemently reject this critique of their position. They will point out a version of coherentism that also stresses the role of evidence (See in this respect the view of such commited coherentists as Keith Lehrer12, early Lawrence Bonjour and Thomas Bartelborth, who do not see coherence as a doxastic relation. However, Plantinga chose to understand coherence in this way.13 Probably, from his perspective these non-doxastic versions of coherentism are rather camouflaged versions of fallible foundationalism).14 But even if to Plantinga coherentism is mistaken, and coherence is not the only source of warrant, he does not conclude that coherence is not a source of warrant; on the contrary, to him “the ordinary foundationalist can hold in perfect consistency that many beliefs get at least some warrant by way of coherence, and even that some beliefs get all their warrant solely by coherence.”15

11 WCD, 81. 12 Keith Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge, London: Routledge1990, p. 114. 13 In a personal correspondence Plantinga confirmed to us that he chose to hold this position. 14 Plantinga would probably hold that, since Lehrer and Bonjour accept the role of evidence in their accounts, but reject the infallibility of the propositions about our subjective states, their position in this respect is not essentially different from that of a fallible foundationalism, and we can say that in this sense the truth of the matter is rather a mixture between the coherentist and the foundationalist positions (See concerning this position A. Quinton, “The Foundations of the Knowledge”, in B. Williams, A. Montefiore (eds.), British Analytical Philosophy, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1966, p. 86.). However, due to his adherence to a Reidian type of epistemology (which will be presented in this chapter), Plantinga rather prefers a fallible form of foundationalism to a moderate type of coherentism. 15 WPF, 180 (Plantinga’s emphasis). In our opinion the acceptance of defeaters and overriders in Plantinga’s account of warrant (see WPF, 40-42) suggests that sometimes, in some respect, the appeal to coherence in his model is unavoidable. However, for a defence of a rather fallible foundationalism than coherentism, he could appeal to Chisholm’s suggestions that the relationship between the beliefs about what it appears to us as true and other beliefs is not positive, but rather negative (R. Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge (second edition), Englewood Cliffs, Prentice Hall Inc, 1977, pp. 75-76). More explicitly, Chisholm denies that before we decide that a belief about perceptions is reasonable, we should know that other judgments are evident; he agrees in this respect with Thomas Reid, who states that a basic belief should be accepted as true similar with the case of an accused before his judge (who has the right to the presumption of innocence until her guilt is reasonably proved).

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2.2.3 Classical Foundationalism and Its Rejection by Plantinga As we already have seen, Plantinga believes that coherentism is wrong: hence his choice of subscribing to foundationalism. However, he also rejects what he calls “classical foundationalism,” the kind of foundationalist position endorsed by Descartes and Locke, a view that has had a great influential role beginning with Enlightenment and reaching even present times (its truth treated by many thinkers as an unquestioned assumption). Before examining this view, it is important to emphasize a preliminary point, namely the distinction Plantinga makes between the merely descriptive notion of basic belief and mixed notion (descriptive but also normative) of properly basic belief. A belief is basic if we accept it not based on evidential basis of other beliefs. An example of this kind is “2+1=3.” The notion of proper basicality adds to the idea of basic acceptance the concept of normativity: “… a belief is properly basic for me if it is basic for me and I am justified, violating no epistemical duties, in accepting it in the basic way.”16 In light of classical foundationalism, a belief is properly basic for somebody only if it is self-evident for her (e.g. “4-2=2”) or about her immediate experience (incorrigible) (e.g. “I am being appeared to redly.”)17. In his Warranted Christian Belief Plantinga will add yet another type to these two types of basic beliefs – pace John Locke –: the propositions evident to the senses (e.g. “My current ideas of treehood are caused by something external to me,” or more general “Something is causing me to have the ideas I do in fact have.” At other times, when Locke speaks – according to Plantinga – “less carefully,” he includes among these beliefs those which refer to the “everyday knowledge we get from perception”: e.g. “My hand is moving”).18 We can deduce from his definition of properly basic beliefs that for the classical foundationalist the only propositions that are admitted as properly basic are those that are certain for her.19 The classical foundationalists propose various kinds of evidential relationships if their belief in a proposition A is to be properly supported by another proposition B. Thus, Descartes seems to suggest that a proposition “could be accepted in the superstructure of our noetic structure” only if “it is deduced or entailed from the propositions in the foundations.” Plantinga observes that according to this standard very

16 WCD, 19. 17 WPF, 182. 18 WCB, 76-77, 84. 19 WCB, 84.

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few of our beliefs would be acceptable to us.20 However, Locke admitted also in this respect a probabilistic support from the propositions of our foundations, and later Charles Pierce also admitted a kind of supporting relationship similar to that between a scientific theory and its evidence which he called “abduction.” Plantinga summarizes the classical foundationalist position as follows (He called it CP.): (CP) A belief is acceptable for a person if and only if it is either properly basic (i.e., self-evident, incorrigible, or evident to the senses for that person), or believed on the evidential basis of propositions that are acceptable and that support it deductively, inductively, or abductively.21

He criticizes this view for several reasons: Firstly, Plantinga claims that the view “was subjected to devastating criticism by Thomas Reid, who pointed out that, if it were true, very few of our beliefs would have warrant, and that the restriction of proper basicality to these two classes of beliefs is at best arbitrary.” (Reid referred in this context to the Cartesian understanding of proper beliefs as being limited only to self-evident and incorrigible beliefs.)22 For example, the beliefs produced by our memory will not have warrant according to CP. Secondly, he believes that classical foundationalism is self-referentially incoherent. It does not fulfill the conditions of justification that it lays down: According to classical foundationalism, a belief is justified for us only if it is either properly basic (self-evident, incorrigible or evident to the senses) or accepted on the evidential basis of beliefs which are properly basic. Yet this belief is itself not properly basic and “it is at least extremely hard to see that it is evidentially supported by beliefs that do meet that condition.”23

20 WCB, 84. 21 WCB, 84-85. 22 WPF, 182; WCB, 97. 23 WPF, 182; However, there was at least one critique on Plantinga’s attack on classical foundationalism. One might deny that CP has no justification and that it is self-referentially incoherent. One might argue that in fact the principle might be supported by beliefs that meet the condition. One could use in this sense the ‘particularist’ method of finding a criterion for true propositions, proposed by Roderick Chisholm. According to this method one might start from the question ‘which extent has our knowledge?’ in order to arrive at the question ‘Which are the criteria of knowledge?’. Chisholm starts from considering the extent of commonsense truths and tries to deduce from this extent a criterion for knowledge (Roderick Chisholm, Erkenntnistheorie, München: Deutscher Taschenbuch 1979, p. 170-173; Noah Lemos, Common Sense: A Contemporary Defense, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2004, ch. 6). Philip Quinn uses this Chisholmian particularist method in order to offer an inductive argument for CP. He tries to obtain a criterion of justified belief by gathering samples of

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Moreover, Plantinga adds that the vast majority of contemporary philosophers renounced it: “It has remained for the twentieth century, however, to see it into the well-deserved retirement, and at the moment the air is full of the announcements of the death of classical foundationalism.”24 However, he does not agree with the tendency of the (postmodernist) announcers of this “death” to conclude that it entails the rejection of epistemology itself, or of the very notion of truth. To think this way means “to confuse species with example: it would be like announcing the demise of the nation-state upon noting a civil war in Yugoslavia.”25 The only conclusion that follows about truth, at best, is that we do not have Cartesian certainty about it. Ironically, those who draw these radical conclusions from the problems raised by classical foundationalism think in fact similarly with its supporters; they betray concurrence with it: the only security or warrant for our beliefs, they and the classical foundationalist both think, must arise by way of evidential relationship to beliefs that are certain – that is, self-evident or about immediate experience.26

justified and unjustified belief and suggesting a principle that fits them best. He assembles representative samples of beliefs (J) that he thinks are justified and representative samples of beliefs (U) that he thinks are unjustified. Afterwards, he observes that all of the beliefs from J but none of the beliefs from U conform to CP. For this reason, he concludes (inductively) that a belief is justified if and only if it conforms to CP (Philip Quinn, “The Foundations of Theism Again” in Linda Zagzebski (ed), Rational Faith: Catholic Responses to Reformed Epistemology, Notre Dame, IN.: University of Notre Dame Press 1993, p. 22ff). Plantinga replies to this argument by denying that (at least some of) the premises of Quinn’s argument are properly basic – as the classical picture suggests they should be. The sample classes include propositions as S1 is justified in believing B1 and S2 is not justified in believing B2. He observes that these beliefs are neither incorrigible nor evident to the senses. In this case, in order to conform to CP they must be self-evident (WCB, 96). However, says Plantinga, at first sight there seems to be no case of self-evident belief that is unjustified – such that the believer has gone contrary to his duty in holding it, which is because generally our beliefs are not in our direct control (ex: Even if one is offered a million dollars, one cannot stop believing that one is over 30 years old). Still, he admits that there might be some cases of self-evidently unjustified beliefs (ex: Out of vanity and pride one might form the belief that one’s work is unduly neglected when in fact it gets more attention than it deserves). Still, the real problem of the CP supporter is that these cases “lend no support to the claim that it is unjustified to form a belief that is neither properly basic (according to classical standards) nor believed on the basis of such propositions.” (WCB, 97) Their support is too vague to buttress an inductive argument of any sort. Moreover, he argues that there are cases where it is self-evident that some beliefs not formed in accord with CP are justified. For example, the beliefs produced by our memory are (in general) justified, but they do not satisfy the requirements of CP. 24 WPF, 182. 25 WPF, 183; see also in this respect WCB, 436. 26 WPF, 183.

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2.2.4 Reidian Foundationalism As we have established, Plantinga rejects classical foundationalism. Still, he defends a particular species of foundationalism, which he names “Reidian Foundationalism.” A starting point for seeing the differences between the two sorts of foundationalism is to ask: which kinds of beliefs are properly basic? The classical foundationalist has taken as properly basic three types of beliefs: those self-evident, those incorrigible (immediately about experience), and those evident to the senses. Plantinga agrees that these kinds of beliefs are properly basic. However, he adds that many other beliefs can also be taken as properly basic. Recall that Reid pointed out that the majority of our beliefs do not conform to the CP condition. For example, our beliefs about the past, or about other persons, or about external objects (perceptive) are not, according to classical foundationalist, properly basic. They must be believed, from the classical foundationalist’s point of view, on the evidential basis of beliefs that are self-evident, incorrigible (immediately about one’s own experience) and evident to the senses.27 Justifiably, Reid doubts that this is possible. He argues – and Plantinga agrees with him – that they are also properly basic. Herein lies the great difference between the two positions: For example, although both accept that “how I am appeared” is “crucial to the question whether a perceptual judgment has warrant for us,” they differ in the way in which they relate the experience in question to the perceptual judgment triggered by it.28 For the classical foundationalist a belief (for example a perceptual one) has warrant only if one believes it “on the basis of experiential propositions29 that support it” (by the mediation of deduction, induction or abduction). This view suggests at least three requirements: 1. That a person should believe the experiential propositions (ex: It seems to me that I see a dog.). 2. That she believes the proposition in question “on the evidential basis of those experiential propositions” (“I see a dog,” is believed on the evidential basis of “It seems to me that I see a dog.”). 3. That the experiential propositions do “offer in fact evidential support for the proposition in question.”30

27 WCB, 98. 28 WPF, 183. See also Wolterstorff, Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology, pp. 23-95. 29 We would point out here that if one takes Descartes as a classical foundationalist, this characterization is not wholly correct, because it misses the rationalist aspect of classical foundationalism. Descartes shows a priori (via his apriori arguments for the criterion of clear and distinct perception and God’s existence) that our sense perception is reliable at least generally. In his argumentation he only uses a priori premises. I owe this clarification to Dr. Wiertz. 30 WPF, 184.

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By contrast, says Plantinga, the Reidian view ––disputes each of these three demands. The Reidian foundationalist bulks up his own view by listing, when “we are appropriately appeared to,” and other conditions for warrant are met,31 as components necessary for construal of knowledge. By keeping these Reidian distinctions in mind, we can see, pace Plantinga, the Reidian motives for rejecting all three aforementioned classical foundationalist’s requirements: 1. It is neither necessary that we should believe the experiential propositions (of the type “It seems to me that,” or “I am appeared to in this way”) nor (necessary) to believe that the conditions for warrant are met – in order to have knowledge. Of course, if we pay attention to our phenomenal field, it is probably impossible to fail to believe the aforementioned kind of experiential propositions. But it is not necessary to pay attention to this field (In fact, in ordinary situations we do not.) in order to have warrant for our beliefs. What is at stake and what counts is not our “believing that we are appeared in this way,” but simply our “being appeared in this way.” 2. If it is not necessary to believe the experiential propositions, then it is not necessary to believe the propositions in question (in our example the perceptual propositions) based on the evidence of the experiential propositions. 3. Moreover, it is not necessary that the experiential propositions should offer evidential support (deductive, inductive or abductive) for the propositions in question. What matters and confers warrant to our proposition is not the deductive, inductive or abductive support of the experiential propositions, but the fact that they formed in the aforementioned proper circumstances for knowledge: “being appeared in that way”, and “satisfying the other conditions for warrant.”32 We will offer in what follows two examples that evince why Reid (and Plantinga) believes that the beliefs of common sense are true and properly basic. In his inquiry about the existence of other persons, Reid affirms that: No man thinks of asking himself what reason he has to believe that his neighbor is a living creature. He would be not a little surprised if another person should ask him so absurd a question: and perhaps could not give any reason which would not equally prove a watch or a puppet to be a living creature. But, though you should satisfy him of the weakness of the reasons he gives for his belief, you cannot make him in the least doubtful. This belief stands

31 WPF, 184; As we shall see, Plantinga defines in this way the conditions for warrant: that the cognitive capacities of the believer should function properly, in an appropriate environment, and according to a design plan successfully aimed at truth. 32 WPF, 184.

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upon another foundation than that of reasoning and therefore, whether a man can give good reasons for it or not, it is not in his power to shake it off.33

Whereas in his view on perceptual knowledge, Plantinga says: Now I don’t know how to prove to someone intent on denying perceptual knowledge that we really do have it. I don’t know of any arguments that start from premises the perceptual skeptic already accepts sufficiently firmly (and accepts more firmly than he accepts perceptual skepticism) and proceed by argument forms he also already accepts, to the conclusion that we do have such knowledge. Prior to philosophical reflection, however, most of us assume that many of our perceptual judgments do constitute knowledge and thus meet whatever conditions are necessary for knowledge; this assumption is one of those natural starting points for thought of which Richard Rorty says there aren’t any; and the rational stance is it to accept it unless there are sufficiently powerful argument against it. As far as I can see, however, the arguments against it are nowhere nearly sufficiently powerful (… ) let me only say that they invariably employ premises whose claims on us (as G. E. Moore pointed out) are vastly more tenuous than the claims of the denials of their conclusions. Accepting perceptual skepticism on the basis of these arguments is a little like rejecting modus ponens on the grounds that it figures in the derivation of the contradiction in the Russell paradoxes (… )34

We could also add that Reidian foundationalism is a fallibilist type of foundationalism. If the classical foundationalist posits as properly basic only those propositions that were certain for her, the Reidian foundationalist accepts in the foundation of her noetic structure, in addition to certain propositions of this type, also propositions that are not certain (being therefore fallible).35

2.2.5 Evidentialism According to Plantinga, the classical foundationalist insists that our beliefs are formed on the basis of evidence.36 For example, a perceptual proposition like “I see a dog,” is based on such evidence as the experiential proposition “It seems to me that I see a dog.” The Reidian also accepts this idea, but adds that the evidence need not be only propositional evidence.

33 Thomas Reid, “Essays on the Intelectuall Powers of Man”, in R. Beanblossom and Keith Lehrer (eds.), Thomas Reid’s Inquiry and Essays, VI, 5, Indianapolis: Hackett 1983, pp. 278-279, cf. WPF, 66. 34 WPF, 89-90. 35 WCB, 84; Mircea Flonta, Cognitio: o introducere critică în problema cunoaşterii (Cognitio: A Critical Introduction to the Knowledge-Problem), Bucuresti: Editura All 1994, pp. 147-149. 36 WCB, 82.

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Thomas Reid added, for example – to this type of propositional evidence for the truth of a perceptual proposition – also the evidence of the senses (Plantinga will call it simply perceptual evidence). In this sense, Plantinga offers the image of a peculiarly rigid sort of person who occasionally disregards the evidence of his senses: (I am wedded to a theory according to which cacti are to be found only in the southwest; you show me a fine prickly pear in Michigan’s upper peninsula; I stubbornly refuse to believe that it is a cactus, claiming that it is really a peculiar variety of thistle). What sort of evidence is this? It isn’t, of course, propositional evidence; it is (or includes) a way of being appeared to, rather than a belief; nevertheless it shares certain salient features with propositional evidence. For this evidence is something on the basis of which, or in response to which we accept the belief in question. Second, it is in each case also something like an indication of the truth of the belief in question, in that (if things are going properly) there will be an appropriate relation of objective probability between the truth of the belief in question and the evidence on the basis of which we accept it.37

Therefore, Plantinga posits the premise that when a belief has warrant for us, we should normally have evidence for it: he suggests that for a wide variety of propositions “a properly functioning person will come to believe them only if she has some evidence – either propositional evidence, or perceptual evidence, or the testimonial evidence, or evidence of some other sort.”38 He subscribes to the models of three important contemporary defenders of evidentialism – William Alston, Richard Feldman and Earl Conee, calling their type of evidentialism after their initials: AFC – as working well in the cases of propositional, testimonial39 and perceptual evidence. However, he suggested that in a vast range of other ordinary cases their model is less plausible. He referred specifically to the case of memory, a priori knowledge, and consciousness.

37 WPF, 185-186. 38 WPF,187. 39 Some readers will be tempted to believe that testimonial evidence is also a kind of propositional evidence. But Plantinga suggests that this is not the case. He offers in this respect an example: “You are a sixth grader; your teacher tells you that the population of China exceeds that of India; you believe him. Now, conceivably you could believe him on the basis of propositional evidence, reasoning as follows: ‘Teacher says the population of China exceeds that of India; in most of the cases where I have checked to see whether what he says is true, it was; so probably it is true in this instance; so probably the population of China exceeds that of India.’ You could come to that belief in this way; but typically you would not (it would be a peculiar sixth grader who regularly formed beliefs in this fashion). In the typical case you would simply find yourself believing your teacher, just as, from days of earliest youth, you have always been inclined to believe your elders.” (WPF, 187)

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In the case of memory, even if one can find a kind of phenomenal imagery, this is “too partial, fragmentary and indistinct” – to constitute a basis on which to form a belief. The imagery is here like “a decoration, an irrelevant accompaniment of some kind; it isn’t at all like propositional or perceptual evidence.”40 The situation is similar in the case of a priori knowledge (for example modus ponens). We might have here also “a sort of scrappy and indistinct, partial and vague image (auditory or visual)” of a sentence expressing a proposition, but this image is not evidence.41 In the case of consciousness, he observed that our perceptual beliefs respond differentially to the changes in our experience, but that the associated beliefs about ourselves when holding these perceptual beliefs do not. For example, appearing one way, I form the perceptual belief “I see a squirrel leaping”; yet appearing another way, I form the belief “I see tiger lilies bending in the breeze.” But, says Plantinga, “there is a constant element in all of them: the part according to which it is I who perceive these things.”42 Moreover, it is not by virtue of similarity among our experiences that we judge that it is I who does these things: “It is not as if, had my experience been appropriately different, I would have judged that it is someone else who sees the squirrel.”43 Thus, the “I think” element from any beliefs of the form “I see…”, “I judge…”, “I believe…” “does not respond differentially to different experiential inputs.” Consequently, that part of these judgments is not formed on the basis of evidential support – and in this respect it is similar to memory and a priori beliefs. In conclusion, it seems that AFC model does not work well for memory, a priori knowledge and the “I think” element associated with our conscious beliefs. In all these cases, we possess sensory imagery, but this imagery is insufficient evidence. Yet, Plantinga points out that there is more; he says it might be possible that he did not look for evidence, even in these cases, “in the right place.” He observed that sensory imagery is not the only “phenomenal accompaniment” of memory, a priori and the “I think” type of beliefs. There is something else in the phenomenology associated with these types of beliefs, the sort of “felt inclination” or impulsion toward these beliefs. For example, memory belief has also, beyond its related sense phenomenology, a certain “felt attractiveness”: The proposition “I remember that Paul was there in

40 WPF, 188; WCB, 110. 41 WPF, 188-189, WCB, 111. 42 WPF, 189-190. 43 WPF, 190.

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California” has a sense of correctness or appropriateness about it, as opposed to the proposition that it was Tom instead.44 In a similar way, a priori beliefs have a sort of attractiveness or “perceived fittingness” about them, familiar to us all. Indeed, this fittingness, or felt inclination is present not just for memory or a priori beliefs, but also for perception or testimony, and so on. Returning to the AFC model, Plantinga observed that this model represents a better kind of evidentialism than the classical foundationalist model (which suggested that the only possible foundational evidence is propositional: the self-evident, the incorrigible, and the evident-to-the-senses beliefs) because it is more inclusive. Many other beliefs (for example, the perceptual beliefs or the beliefs of memory) are also basic (for the AFC model). However, if we wanted to be more rigorous, we should note that the AFC model seems to fall short when it deals with memory and a priori beliefs, as these beliefs do not seem to qualify as evidence. The inadequacy of the model to include these makes it incomplete. The only way the model can reach a satisfactory note is to take as evidence the aforementioned “inclination to believe” or “perceived attractiveness” elements. This would render the AFC model correct. It would gain a conceptual mobility to incorporate all known forms of beliefs. As a result, “if we construe evidences in this broad fashion,” then apparently evidentialism is a true epistemological concept; all beliefs – in order to have warrant – need to be based on evidences.45 Nevertheless, it seems that even a broader approach, a revised rendition of what counts as evidence does not guarantee success. Whilst evidence is a necessary condition for warrant, it still does not follow that is also a sufficient condition, the main reason being the problem of malfunction: A person seems to remember an event very well; still, by virtue of memory malfunction, her belief might nonetheless have no warrant for her. What is required for warrant is “the absence of cognitive pathology.” In other words, a proper function of her cognitive system is also necessary. Evidence is necessary for warrant, but insufficient; proper function is also required.46 This is the reason why in the next subchapter we will refer in detail to Plantinga’s notions of proper function and warrant.

44 WPF, 190-191; WCB, 110. 45 WPF, 192; see also WCB, 110-111. 46 WPF, 193.

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2.3 Plantinga’s Notion of Warrant Plantinga exhibits his view on warrant mainly in his Warrant and Proper Function, which is the second book from his trilogy on warrant. For this reason, in what will follow, we will attend especially to this particular book. In the first book from the trilogy, Warrant: The Current Debate, he presents a broad spectrum of contemporary accounts of warrant – for example, warrant as “having adequate evidences” (already discussed in the previous subchapter), warrant as “fulfilling one’s epistemic duty”47 (which figures in classical internalism), warrant as “having a set of beliefs that is coherent”48 (which is an example of internalist rationality)49, warrant as “having a reliable set of faculties – reliabilism,”50 etc. In each of these cases Plantinga argues that, although warrant is clearly connected with the respective epistemic value, the beliefs of the person who holds them fail in the end to have warrant, “because of cognitive malfunction.”51 2.3.1 Proper Function For Plantinga a plaguing issue for evidentialism is that this account of warrant fails when dealing with various cases of cognitive pathology. This problem compromises the integrity of all other accounts of warrant. For example, referring to Chisholm’s dutiful agent, Plantinga says he meets Chisholm’s conditions for warrant; his beliefs lack warrant, however, because “they result from cognitive dysfunction due to a damaging brain lesion, or the machinations of an Alpha Centaurian scientist, or perhaps the mischievous schemes of a Cartesian evil demon.” The same kind of example could be suggested for the other accounts of warrant. Therefore, Plantinga suggested that a necessary condition of a belief’s having warrant is that our cognitive equipment be free of such malfunction, functioning properly. A belief has warrant for us only if our cognitive apparatus “is functioning properly, working the way it ought to work, in producing and sustaining it.”52 More specifically, the parts of noetic equipment involved in the formation and sustenance of a belief should function properly53 if that belief is to have 47 WCD, ch. 2. 48 WCD, ch. 4,5,6; WCB, 112. 49 WCB, 110-112. 50 WCD, ch. 9. 51 WPF, 4. 52 Ibid. 53 Plantinga also makes a distinction between properly functioning cognitive equipment and a normally functioning cognitive equipment (if we take this second term in a broadly statistical sense).

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warrant for us. Proper function is a great requirement. Despite this intuitive fact, there is an additional element: Another requirement for a belief is that it should be formed in an appropriate cognitive environment.

2.3.2 Appropriate Cognitive Environment As we know, an automobile, even if it is in a perfect working order, does not run well on the top of a mountain or under water. In the same way, says Plantinga, a belief, even if produced by a properly working cognitive apparatus, has no warrant if it is formed in an inappropriate cognitive environment. He offers in this respect an example: You have just had your annual cognitive checkup at MIT; you pass with flying colors and are in splendid epistemic condition. Suddenly and without your knowledge, you are transported to an environment wholly different from earth; you awake on a planet revolving around Alpha Centauri. There conditions are quite different; elephants, we may suppose, are invisible to human beings, but emit a sort of radiation unknown on earth, a sort of radiation that causes human beings to form the belief that a trumpet is sounding nearby. An Alpha Centaurian elephant wanders by; you are subjected to the radiation, and form the belief that a trumpet is sounding nearby. There is nothing wrong with your cognitive faculties; they are working quite properly; still, this belief has little by way of warrant for you.54

As result, another component should be added to warrant: Our faculties should function properly in an environment appropriate to our epistemic apparatus.

2.3.3 Degrees of Warrant Plantinga seeks to complete his concept of warrant by adding another aspect: that of degrees of warrant. He asserts that our cognitive faculties might work properly in an appropriate environment, but some beliefs produced by them might have more warrant than others. Thus, the belief “7 + 5 = 12” has more warrant for him than the rather

A person’s system might function far from the statistical norm, but still function properly: After a nuclear disaster nearly all people could be left blind; nevertheless, the few sighted remained would still have properly functioning eyes, although, statistically speaking, the blinded ones would have “normal” sight (WPF, 10). 54 WPF, 6 (see also WCB, 155-161).

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dim and indistinct memory belief that “forty years ago I owned a secondhand sixteen-gauge shotgun,” although both beliefs are produced by properly functioning cognitive faculties functioning in an appropriate environment. The first belief is more firmly believed than the other.55 He concludes that, “if both belief B and B* have warrant for a person S, then B has more warrant than B* for S if and only if S believes B more firmly than B*.” Thus, knowledge demands “both true belief and a certain degree of warrant.”56

2.3.4 The Design Plan However, Plantinga observed that there might be some beliefs produced by perfectly functioning faculties, in an appropriate environment that still lack warrant. For example, a person’s belief that she will recover from a dreadful disease might be much stronger than the belief governed by statistics of which she is aware. Sigmund Freud suggested that religion is an illusion which arises “from the oldest and strongest and most insistent wishes of mankind.”57 This idea, says Plantinga, suggests that according to Freud religious belief does not arise from cognitive malfunction of some cognitive module, but rather “by way of wish fulfillment.” Still, illusion and wish fulfillment have their function in the life of human beings. According to Freud, “they enable humans to mask the grim, threatening, frightening visage of the world.” As a result, even if religious belief is not necessarily the result of malfunction – being produced by cognitive faculties functioning as they should – it still does not enjoy warrant (at least if one accepts Freud’s view on it). The problem in the two examples is that the elements in our cognitive faculties responsible for the production of those beliefs – either optimism enabling one to survive a grave illness, or wishful thinking – have not as their ultimate purpose the production of true beliefs. On the contrary, they are aimed at something else: survival and “capacity to carry on in our nasty world.” Inevitably, we need yet another condition for warrant, namely the design plan of our cognitive faculties involved in producing our beliefs should have as its goal true beliefs. Plantinga says in this respect: “What confers warrant is one’s cognitive faculties working properly, or working according to the design plan, insofar as that segment of the design plan is aimed at producing true beliefs.”58 55 WPF, 8. 56 WPF, 9. 57 WPF, 13; WCB, 138-139. 58 WPF, 16 (see also WCB, 155); By using the term “design” Plantinga does not necessary affirm that human beings have been literally designed – by God, for example. He uses this term in the sense in

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2.3.5 Reliability Even if Plantinga added “to the zeroeth approximation” of his account of warrant (according to which “a belief has warrant for us only if it is produced by our cognitive faculties functioning properly in an appropriate environment”) also the condition that “the design plan governing the production of the respective belief must be aimed at producing true beliefs” – he still believes that the model is insufficient. He gives an example to support this (suggested by Richard Swinburne, Ian Foster and Thomas Senor): (… ) suppose a well meaning but incompetent angel – one of Hume’s infant deities, say – sets out to design a variety of rational persons, persons capable of thought, belief and knowledge. As it turns out, the design is a real failure; the resulting beings hold beliefs, all right, but most of them are absurdly false.59

The depiction in this example seems to meet the requirements of the initial suggested conditions for warrant: The beliefs of these persons are functioning properly (in a cognitive environment for which they were designed) and the design plan governing her cognitive modules is aimed at truth. However, the beliefs of these beings do not have warrant. Therefore, another condition needs to be added: that the design plan should be a good one. More precisely, the probability of a belief’s being true once it meets all three aforementioned conditions should be high. This, says Plantinga60, “is the reliabilist constraint on warrant, and the important truth contained in reliabilist accounts of warrant.”61

which Daniel Dennett, for example, uses it when saying that a given organism possesses a certain design produced by evolution (WPF, 13; Daniel Dennett, Brainstorms, Cambridge: Bradford Books 1978, p. 12). 59 WPF, 17; David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Part V, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill 1947, p. 169. 60 WPF, 17. 61 Plantinga agrees that we ordinarily take for granted that when our cognitive faculties – specifically those aimed at producing true beliefs – function properly in an appropriate environment, the beliefs they produce are for the most part true. If they are not for the most part true, then we have no proper function. Still, he holds this fourth condition (of reliability) because he wants to say that it is not obviously entailed by the notion of proper function itself (WPF, 18, 18n). For example, he offers in this respect a quotation from Patricia Churchland (where she clearly suggested that there is no evident correlation between a belief being produced by cognitive faculties functioning properly and its being true): “Boiled down to essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in

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2.3.6 Plantinga’s Notion of Warrant In conclusion we may sum up Plantinga’s view on warrant thus: A belief has warrant for us if and only if it is “produced by properly functioning faculties, functioning in a congenial environment,” and according to a design plan aimed at producing true beliefs that is good. In his words: to a first approximation, we may say that a belief B has warrant for S if and only if the relevant segments (the segments involved in the production of B) are functioning properly in a cognitive environment sufficiently similar to that for which S’ faculties are designed; and the modules of the design plan governing the production of B are (1) aimed at truth, and (2) such that there is a high objective probability that a belief formed in accordance with those modules (in that sort of cognitive environment) is true.62

2.4 Plantinga’s Externalism 2.4.1 The Gettier Problems Philosopher Edmund Gettier published in 1963 a three-page paper63 which, in Plantinga’s words, has “wrought havoc” in contemporary epistemology. As its title suggests, the paper questioned the old view that “knowledge is justified true belief.” In Gettier’s opinion, “belief, truth and justification are not sufficient for knowledge.”64 One of his arguments in this regard (retold by Plantinga) is the following: Smith comes into your office bragging about his new Ford, shows you the bill of sale and title, takes you for a ride in it, and in general supplies you with a great deal of evidence for the proposition that he owns a Ford. Naturally enough you believe the proposition Smith owns

the four F’s: feeding, fleeing, fighting and reproducing. The principle chore of nervous systems is to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive… Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost.” (Patricia Churchland, Journal of Philosophy 84, October 87, p. 548) It is true, Hume’s infant deity intended that the design plan of his creature’s cognitive system be aimed at truth (although he did not achieve his goal); by contrast, the evolutionary mechanism about which Churchland speaks, although it has to do also with the cognitive faculties, is aimed at survival. However, Churchland’s quote is still relevant for the distinction Plantinga wanted to make between reliability and proper function. The nervous system functions properly, but it might not be reliable. 62 WPF, 19. 63 Edmund Gettier, “Is justified True Belief Knowledge?”, Analysis 23, 1963, pp. 121-123. 64 WPF, 31-32.

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a Ford. Acting on the maxim that it never hurts to believe an extra truth or two, you infer from that proposition its disjunction with Brown is in Barcelona (Brown is an acquaintance of yours about whose whereabouts you have no information). As luck would have it, Smith is lying (he does not own a Ford) but Brown, by happy coincidence, is indeed in Barcelona. So your belief Smith owns a Ford or Brown is in Barcelona is indeed both true and justified; but surely you can’t properly be said to know it.65

As one can easily observe, in this case we naturally infer a justified true belief from a justified false belief (that Smith owns a Ford). Therefore, some of the early attempts at repairing the classical view on knowledge as justified belief in order to remain valid were to stipulate that a belief constitutes knowledge only if it is true and justified, and its justification is not obtained by inference from a false belief. But this solution did not resolve the problem.66 Some philosophers modified the aforementioned example so as to obviate the appeal to false premises when justifying the conclusion.67 Furthermore, there are also other Gettier examples which avoid this problem. For example, an illustration formulated by Bertrand Russell (long before the apparition of Gettier’s article) invites us to imagine that it is noon; a person happens to look at a clock that stopped at midnight (previous night). His belief (that it is now 12:00) is true and in a sense justified, “but clearly not knowledge.”68 There have been many other attempts to provide a “fourth condition”69 (beyond the three conditions that characterize the classical view of knowledge: truth, acceptance of it – belief, and justification of its acceptance), and many attempts “to add an epicycle or two to circumvent Gettier.” However, in Plantinga’s opinion, “in most cases the quick response has been another counterepicycle that circumvents the circumvention – which then calls for a counter-counterepicycle, and so on…”70 Plantinga thinks that the Gettier examples really show that the internalist accounts of warrant – the accounts which suggest that the knower must know that a certain belief has warrant (or justification) for her, and that she has epistemic access to whatever it is that makes for warrant – are fundamentally wanting.

65 WPF, 32. 66 Ibid. 67 R. Feldman, “An alleged Defect in Gettier Counter-Examples”, in P. K. Moser, A. van der Nat (eds), Human Knowledge, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2002, p. 308. 68 Bertrand Russell, Problems of Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1912, p. 132, cf. WPF, 33. 69 See in this respect Carl Ginet, “The Fourth Condition”, in D.F. Austin (ed.), Philosophical Analysis. A defence by Example, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers 1988. 70 WPF, 32. Plantinga suggests in this respect the “penetrating and encyclopedic account of this literature” of Robert Shope (The Analysis of Knowing, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1983).

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The common denominator in Gettier type examples is the fact that “in each of these cases it is merely by accident that the justified true belief in question is true. It just accidentally happens that Brown is in Barcelona,” or that “the clock stopped at midnight and the viewer happened to look at it exactly at noon.”71 As all of these cases show, although a true belief was formed and the faculties involved were functioning properly, there was still no warrant. The reason for this had to do with the “local cognitive environment” in which the respective beliefs were formed. This environment was in one way or other misleading; it deviated from the paradigm situations for which the faculty in question was designed. Thus, Smith, a usually reliable person, was lying. “Credulity is part of our design plan,” whereby for the most part we believe what our fellows will tell us, but this principle does not work well when our fellows lie. Likewise, “the clock has unexpectedly stopped.” (The clock does not function in the paradigm situation for which it was designed to be used.)72 What is important in Gettier situations is that here the believer is justified in her beliefs, having done all that could be expected of her, and that the final lack of warrant “is in no way to be laid to her account.” Internalism in epistemology is a view about cognitive accessibility according to which what confers warrant to a belief “must be accessible, in some special way,” to us. In all Gettier cases “the cognitive glitch,” observes Plantinga: has to do with what is not accessible to the agent in this way.... What is essential to Gettier situations is the production of a true belief that has no warrant – despite conformity to the design plan in those aspects of the whole cognitive situation that are internal, in the appropriate sense, to the agent… There is conformity to the design plan on the part of the internal aspects of the cognitive situation, but some feature of the cognitive situation external (in the internalist sense) to the agent forestalls warrant.73

In conclusion, Plantinga believes that the real significance of Gettier problems is that they show justification, conceived internalistically, to be insufficient for warrant; by contrast the externalist accounts of warrant will enjoy a certain immunity from these problems.74

71 WPF, 33. 72 WPF, 33-36; However, Plantinga offered also another example, pace Alexius Meinong, which suggested that the cognitive glitch in the Gettier cases is not necessarily related to our cognitive environment, but could be also associated with the malfunctioning of the agent’s faculties (WPF, 35-36). 73 WPF, 36. In fact, as John Greco suggests, truth is by definition a feature external – in the ultimate sense – to our epistemic access (John Greco, “Justification Is not Internal” in Mattias Steup, Ernest Sosa (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing 2005, pp. 257-269). 74 WPF, 36-37.

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2.4.2 A Critique of Plantinga’s Solution to Gettier Problems Some philosophers question Plantinga’s notion of warrant and thereby its suitability to resolve the Gettier type problems.75 Among these, Peter Klein proffers an illustration that suggests that a belief could meet Plantinga’s conditions of warrant and still be true by accident: Jones believes that she owns a well-functioning Ford. She forms this belief in perfectly normal circumstances using her cognitive equipment that is functioning just perfectly. But as sometimes normally happens, unbeknownst to Jones, her Ford is hit and virtually demolished – let’s say while parked outside her office. But also unbeknownst to Jones, she has just won a well-functioning Ford in the Well-Functioning Ford Lottery that her company runs once a year.76

In the aforementioned example it is clear that, had Jones’ Ford not been hit and demolished, Plantinga’s conditions for warrant would have obtained and Jones would have known that she owned a Ford. But in the actual situation her belief is produced, according to Klein, by the very same processes functioning in the same way in the same cognitive environment. Consequently, in either of these situations Jones knows that she owns a well-functioning Ford, or not. But clearly one is a case of knowledge, the other is not. Therefore, it would seem Plantinga’s view on warrant is wrong.

2.4.3 Plantinga’s Reply In his “Respondeo”77 to Klein’s, Feldman’s and others’ critiques of his account of warrant (and in his essay “Warrant and accidentally true belief”78), Plantinga answers to this challenge by developing a distinction between cognitive maxi-en-

75 See in this respect Peter Klein, “Warrant, Proper Function, Reliabilism and Defeasibility” and Richard Feldman, “Plantinga, Gettier, and Warrant” in Jonathan Kvanvig (ed), Warrant in Contemporary Epistemology: Essays in Honor of Plantinga’s Theory of Knowledge, London: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers 1996; Anhold Thorsten, Gettier, Korrekte epistemische Funktion und der vernünftige Glaube an die Existenz des christlichen Gottes – Eine kritische Auseinandersetzung mit Alvin Plantingas Rechtfertigungsbegriff (Inauguraldissertation zur Erlangung des Grades eines Doktors der Philosophie im Fachbereich Philosophie und Geschichtswissenschaften der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main) 2004, pp. 81-83. 76 Peter Klein, “Warrant, Proper Function, Reliabilism and Defeasibility”, p. 105. 77 RSP, 307-378. 78 WATB, 140-145.

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vironments and mini-environments. A cognitive maxi-environment is to him more global and general than a cognitive mini-environment. Thus, the cognitive maxi-environment on our planet would include such (macroscopic) features as the presence of air and light with their properties, of some objects detectable by our cognitive systems, of other people, of the regularities of nature, etc. In this maxi-environment are our cognitive faculties designed (by God, by evolution or by both God and evolution), or in some other environment similar to it. On the other hand, a cognitive maxi-environment might contain a multitude of different cognitive mini-environments: for example, some in which Jones’ Ford is hit and destroyed by another vehicle, or one in which her Ford is not hit and destroyed. The important idea here is that some cognitive mini-environments are misleading (for example that in which Jones’ car is destroyed). In these cases (where the maxi-environments are right but the mini-environment are wrong) we do not have truth, warrant and knowledge. A belief could still be true, but only by accident, and therefore it could not qualify as knowledge. In Plantinga’s words: S knows p, on a given occasion, only if S’ cognitive mini-environment, on that occasion, is not misleading – more exactly, not misleading with respect to the particular exercise of cognitive powers producing the belief that p. So the conditions of warrant need an addition: the maxi-environment must indeed be favorable or appropriate, but so must also the cognitive mini-environment.79

A mini-environment will be considered favorable for an exercise of our cognitive faculties when this exercise “can be counted on to produce a true belief in that cognitive environment.”80 However, this account of warrant does not sound very convincing to Anhold Thorsten. He raises the question: “When do we really know that our mini-environment is favorable for our faculties? Which are the criterions for ‘favorableness’?”81 Plantinga’s retorts: “when the exercise of our faculties can be counted on to produce true belief in the respective cognitive environment” does not seem very

79 WATB, 143-144. 80 WATB, 144. 81 “Das Problem, das sich nun stellt, ist, wann eine Mini-Umgebung für die Ausübung unserer kognitiven Fähigkeiten bzw. epistemischen Module für günstig zu befinden ist? Welche Kriterien für Günstigkeit gibt es? Diese Fragen werden von Plantinga leider nicht näher erörtert, so dass eine tatsächliche Bestätigung über das Gerechtfertigtsein von Meinungen einer bestimmten Person S nicht erfolgen kann.” (Thorsten, Gettier, korrekte epistemische Funktion und der vernünftige Glaube an die Existenz des christlichen Gottes – Eine kritische Auseinandersetzung mit Alvin Plantingas Rechtfertigungsbegriff, p. 83).

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satisfactory to Thorsten, probably because Thorsten would continue to ask: “But how can we know that the exercise of our faculties can be counted on to produce true beliefs?” We suspect Plantinga would answer this critique similarly to the way he did in a certain measure in his “Warrant and accidentally true belief”: our cognitive faculties are not maximally effective – not only that there is much we aren’t capable to know, but also in that we are sometimes prone to err, even when the maxi-environment is right and the relevant faculties are functioning properly.82

In other words, one can think of a great number of scenarios where it is impossible for us to have access to whatever it is required for warrant. Due to Plantinga’s option for an externalist epistemology, he believes that “we may sometimes think we know something when in fact we do not, and conversely, that we may sometimes know something without being able to offer (all) evidences for this knowledge (in other words, we might know something without knowing that we know it).” Nevertheless, an externalist as opposed to an internalist has a “more robust sense of our human finitude, being adept of a more modest kind of epistemology.” At this point the critics of externalism might say that such an appeal to the “epistemic context” in dealing with the various errors which may appear in our cognitive processes (even though we are in the right maxi-environment) is pointing toward a serious weakness of the externalist view. And indeed, this contextualism seems to be a real problem for Plantinga’s position, of which he seems to be very aware (as we already have seen above). In his defense we can say that, first of all, the internalist alternative does not seem here to be in a better position: As the American philosopher has shown, this view has big problems, one of these being that of the malfunction. Secondly, it is important to know whether Plantinga’s model functions well in those cases where he makes use of it: for example, in the confrontation with postmodernism and in his own philosophy of religion. We hope to show in what will follow that this is indeed the case. And thirdly, it is important to note that he is not a “fanatical” externalist. As we shall see, he makes use (in his writings) not only of externalism, but also of internalism, and this in an eclectic way, depending on the specific philosophical problems he has to solve.

82 WATB, 144-145.

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2.5 Conclusion We are able now to draw some conclusions and to offer a summary of what we have explored in this chapter. William Alston, in reference to the book Warrant and Proper Function, claims that Plantinga’s account of warrant represents “a contribution of the first order of importance to epistemology.” Indeed, we cannot but share this sentiment, that this epistemology offers an interesting view of knowledge, a view that seems both plausible and convincing. That is not to say that Plantinga builds this epistemology in a vacuum; on the contrary, he constructed it by engaging in a constant dialogue with other traditional and contemporary views on warrant. In many cases he agreed with certain parts of these accounts and incorporated them into his own model of warrant. Thus, as we have seen, he is a defender of a Reidian kind of foundationalism (Our knowledge has foundations, but these foundations are fallible and include also the beliefs of common-sense knowledge). He also concurs, in a certain measure, with evidentialism (Our knowledge, seen in a broad sense, is based on evidences, although these evidences are insufficient for a comprehensive model of warrant.), but he also rejects the mainstream versions of evidentialism. Moreover, he agrees with the reliabilism (Our cognitive faculties need to be reliable, the probability of a belief produced by them being true should be high in order to have knowledge. But again, Plantinga sees this condition as merely necessary, but insufficient for his account of warrant.). As described at the end of our elaborations, he is an externalist (For him a believer need not have epistemic access to whatever it is that makes for warrant. She may sometimes think she knows something when in fact she does not, and conversely, she may sometimes know something without knowing that she knows it or how she knows it.). Nevertheless, he sometimes uses internalism in order to solve various philosophical problems. His position on the dispute between modernism and postmodernism is also original: He disagrees to a certain extent with both philosophical perspectives, whilst partially agreeing with some of their points. Thus, against modernism (especially classical foundationalism), he agrees that we can no longer claim for truth that Cartesian kind of certainty suggested by modernists. But against postmodernism, he does not see in this partial relativization of truth the disappearing of the very concept of truth and the “death” of epistemology (ideas which are proclaimed by some postmodernists).83

83 Speaking about some postmodern claims about the “death” of truth, Plantinga affirms that their supporters sometimes “seem to oscillate between a momentous but clearly false claim (that there

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Plantinga manages to combine all of these classical and contemporary insights into a unique and original synthesis. His account of warrant is also essential for his religious epistemology (and his philosophy of religion in general), but the religious implications of his epistemology are complex, and do not constitute the subject of this chapter.

is no such thing as truth at all) and a sensible but rather boring claim (there is no such thing as truth, conceived in some particular and implausible way).” (WCB, 425) That is because they generally will not deny that there is such a thing as the way the things are, which is associated with the commonsensical view on truth; rather they will tend to say there is no such thing as truth understood in a certain way, for example, requiring a “detailed structural correspondence between the way the world is and English or German sentences.” (WCB, 425) Plantinga offers several objections to Rorty’s more specific view that we do not discover, but rather construct, the truth, one that he considers fatal. He admits that there is a sense in which we could say that truths are made by human beings: we make it the case that a given sequence of sounds or marks is, indeed, a sentence and thus capable of being true or false. But from this it would not follow “that we make a given sentence true, or that it is by virtue of something we do that a given sentence is in fact true. We make it the case that the sequence of marks ‘There once were dinosaurs.’ is a sentence and thus capable of being true or false. It does not follow that we make it true that there once were dinosaurs.” (WCB, 435; see also in this respect William Alston, “Yes, Virginia, There Is a Real World”, Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 52, No. 6, 1979, pp. 779-808).

3 Comparison between Plantinga’s and Kierkegaard’s Theoretical Epistemologies If one was to consider the different times and circumstances in which Kierkegaard and Plantinga lived, one would not be surprised to notice a wide range of philosophical interests and preoccupations that each of the two were passionate in pursuing. Plantinga has, at least in many of his books and articles, a predominant interest in epistemology: he is deeply preoccupied with the problem of epistemological justification, more precisely, with how to obtain warranted beliefs and what conditions must be fulfilled in order that a belief count as “real knowledge.” Of course, his interest in this matter is not purely theoretical. he needs this model in order coherently and consistently to articulate the rationality of religious belief, in particular, the rationality of Christian faith. He created the model in the context of his dealing with various skeptics found within his own field of expertise, namely, analytical philosophy of religion. Whereas Plantinga is consumed by this enterprise, Kierkegaard’s references to theoretical epistemology are rather tangential. Nevertheless, Kierkegaard does not hesitate to utilize this subject in order to attack the Hegelian-inspired liberal theology prevalent in the Denmark of his times. Thus, both authors have an underlying religious motivation in dealing with these matters, although in Kierkegaard’s case, more precisely the case of the pseudonym Climacus, the epistemological interest seems somehow secondary. While both individuals come from different philosophical and cultural contexts, their epistemological positions and their views on the subject seem strikingly similar. A first similarity between Kierkegaard and Plantinga is both authors’ use of the same Leibnizean/Humean dichotomy between truths of reason and truths of fact. The necessary truths of reason represent what Kierkegaard would call beliefs whose certainty is absolute. This category contains statements of logic (what he calls “ontology”) and mathematics; in this case thought and being are identical.1 Plantinga would also identify these truths of reason as (among others) properly basic “self-evident truths,” truths he considers to be warranted. Piety characterizes these Kierkegaardian certain beliefs as knowledge in a strict sense, a knowledge which cannot deceive. But not only the necessary truths of reason (logical and mathematical) seem to be part of this certain knowledge. Also “immediate sensation” is for Kierkegaard certain, a “knowledge (which)

1 SKS 27, 271 / KJN 11.1, 270; SKS 7, 105-107 / CUP1, 109-111. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111334769-003

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cannot deceive.”2 This immediate sensation refers to such experiential (“how I am appeared to”) propositions as “I am appeared redly” or “It seems to me that I see a dog” (Evans says that they are beliefs about “sense data” –“what might be left after a phenomenological epoche has been performed”.3) In a similar way, Plantinga would call the above propositions “immediately about one’s experience” or “incorrigible” and agrees, together with the classical and Reidian foundationalists, that they are “properly basic,” which means they are not accepted on the evidential basis of other beliefs and that one is justified (violating no epistemical duties) in accepting them in a basic way.4 In other words, he thinks these beliefs are warranted as well. However, there are for Kierkegaard (more precisely for his pseudonymous Climacus) some types of propositions, namely the contingent propositions about actuality (concerning the knowledge of sense perception), which are uncertain from the perspective of knowledge in a strict sense; they represent in this respect a ground for epistemic skepticism. Again, Climacus’ view is here similar to that of Plantinga: experiential propositions (the propositions about immediate sensation) do not confer support for the warrant of the propositions about perceptual belief; the skeptic is not convinced, even starting from the premises he accepts firmly (experiential propositions), that these propositions about sense perception are true and certain.5 (Plantinga, pace Reid, says, as already mentioned, that no arguments which start from premises that are admitted by a perceptual skeptic can convince him that perceptual knowledge is possible ‒ if he intends to deny such knowledge.)6 Thus, for Climacus there is ‒ in a strict sense ‒ no perceptual knowledge, no knowledge of the actuality of the empirical world. In this context one can also speak about a kind of epistemic modesty in what concerns the Kierkegaardian knowledge of actuality. Whenever we attempt to know the domain of actuality, our thought transforms this domain (of actuality) into possibility, and this leads to an abstraction from reality to a loss of the concrete particularity through thought.7 This epistemic humility is seen also in the fact that he considers the full attainment of truth an impossibility; we can reach truth about actuality only as approximation. In this respect truth, in the sense of comprehending a completed, unchanging system, as in Hegelian idealism, is possible, but only for God. As spirits situated in existence, with a limited human perspective, we are

2 SKS 4, 282 / PF, 83n. 3 Evans, Passionate Reason, pp. 132-133. 4 WCD, 19. 5 “The Greek skeptic does not deny the correctness of sensation and of immediate cognition, but, says he, error has an utterly different basis ‒ it comes from the conclusion I draw.” (SKS 4, 281 / PF, 82) 6 WPF, 89 7 SKS 7, 288 / CUP1, 316.

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compelled to accept humbly that truth remains only an approximation.8 And as we shall see, this epistemic humility regarding the possibility of reaching the truth and knowledge is also shared by Plantinga (who sees in Reid in this respect a precursor). But even if a strict knowledge of the domain of actuality (in what concerns the exterior world) is impossible, that does not mean that no knowledge of this domain is possible. The mere fact that Climacus refers to the possibility of an approximate knowledge suffices to suggest that ‒ at least in part ‒ one can reach truth. Accordingly, Piety refers to the existence of a knowledge in a loose sense in Climacus’ writings9: Climacus recognizes that there are many things which in daily life are regarded as known. For example, humans can enter into contact with an external world and with the past ‒ but all such contact presupposes belief.10 Herein we find another feature that merits attention. One can observe a certain relationship between belief and will in Climacus’ authorship. He reaffirms the old Greek skepticism idea that “doubt is rather a problem of will than one of knowledge” (against Hegel, who thought the contrary), which means that doubt can be eliminated only through an act of will.11 He references this idea in his discussion of the dichotomy he makes between the certain knowledge of immediate sensation and the uncertain knowledge of the sense perception. In other words, the skepticism of the transition from the certainty of the first type of knowledge to the uncertainty of the second one can be conquered only through an act of will. But in the same context he speaks about “belief” (Tro), which in principle achieves the same goal. It has to do with “the uncertainty of the coming into existence,”12 a “coming into existence” which is identified (by Evans) with the transition from immediate sensation to sense perception (with reference to the world of known objects from daily life).13 That means that in a sense Climacus identifies belief with a decision of our will: for him “belief is not a piece of knowledge but an act of freedom, an expression of will.”14 (We do not refer here to belief in a specific Christian sense.) One might possibly see here Friedrich Jacobi’s influence on Kierkegaard. Jacobi stated that human knowing is impossible without faith. For him one needs to reach

8 SKS 7, 173-174 / CUP1, 189. This epistemic humility is also present in the writings of Hamann, who deeply influenced Kierkegaard’s thought – and is not excluded that Hamann, who knew the writings of Reid, might have been influenced in this respect by the Scottish philosopher. 9 Piety, Ways of Knowing. p. 79. 10 SKS 4, 280-281 / PF, 81-82. 11 SKS 4, 281 / PF, 82. 12 SKS 4, 281 / PF, 81. 13 Evans, Passionate Reason, pp. 132-133. 14 SKS 4, 282 / PF, 83.

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a stopping point in justification, a point which itself cannot be justified through reason.15 In this respect it comes as no surprise that Plantinga should agree with Kierkegaard’s view on faith (regarding the objects of the external world). He was deeply influenced in this matter by Thomas Reid, the Scottish philosopher who even during his life had a deep impact on Jacobi and Hamann,16 two German thinkers who in many respects were philosophical mentors for Kierkegaard. It needs to be reiterated that Plantinga agrees with Reidian foundationalism that beliefs about the past, beliefs about the existence of other persons and beliefs about the existence of other objects are properly basic, which means they are also warranted and that there are no arguments that start from premises which the perceptual skeptic already accepts to the conclusion that we do have knowledge of such beliefs. In principle Plantinga’s position here is similar to Nicholas Wolterstorff’s interpretation of Reidian ideas about Common Sense17 as representing a taking for granted of the reliability of our cognitive faculties (in the above case the reliability of our perceptual faculty).18 And even if Kierkegaard might have not proffered a precise view on perception, surely his view of the belief in the validity of the knowledge of our sense perception can be considered an instance of belief in the reliability of our perceptual faculties. Yet how much validity might this idea possess in our times (of taking for granted of the reliability of our cognitive faculties)? Wolterstorff utilizes Wittgenstein’s considerations on the concept of “taking for granted,” from his late work On Certainty, as a tool that offers strong support in sustaining the plausibility of this epistemological approach.

15 Dorrien, Kantian Reason and Hegelian Spirit: The Idealistic Logic of Modern Theology, p. 64; Rasmussen, “The legacy of Jacobi in Schelling and Kierkegaard”, p. 219. 16 Dorrien, Kantian Reason and Hegelian Spirit, pp. 56-57; see in this sense again Kuehn, Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 1768-1800: A Contribution to the History of Critical Philosophy. 17 Wolterstorff tries to understand what exactly Reid wanted to say, and in some respects to understand Reid better than he understood himself. Although his interpretation of Reid is just one of many, he suggests it is legitimate, because in many instances Reid’s thought, especially concerning the idea of Common Sense, is somewhat confused, sometimes even self-contradictory: For example, in some instances Reid suggests that people have access in an explicit way to the principles of Common Sense, whereas in other instances he recognizes that one need not have conscious access to the principle of Common Sense in order to think and act according to them in practice (Belief in the reliability of our cognitive faculties need not be explicit, but in all normal persons it is implicitly present.) (Wolterstorff, Thomas Reid and the story of epistemology, pp. 215-231, 244-246). 18 Wolterstorff, Thomas Reid and the story of epistemology, p. 246.

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Wittgenstein’s conception incorporates the things which all people must take for granted in their everyday lives, using the expression “our shared world picture.”19 In his examination of G.E. Moore’s famous refutation of skepticism and such actions as offering reasons, raising doubts, asking questions, etc., he observes that in all these activities we need to take some things for granted. For example, when one asks somebody, “what color do you see?” he does not at the same time question whether that person understands English, or if she has forgotten the names of the colors in the color spectrum. Wittgenstein asks himself if this taking for granted is always only a local phenomenon, or if there are some things which we always take for granted, never questioning them ‒ and his answer is that indeed there are things we always take for granted, considering them to be conditions of our actions. The idea is that our operation of giving grounds to our actions must always come to an end.20 He adds that in the belief-system of all adults there are some deeply ingrained beliefs, for example “objects don’t just disappear,” and calls the totality of these beliefs “our world picture,” a framework of beliefs shared by us all. These ingrained beliefs are exempt from doubt, therefore seemingly certain, but not infallible, for, logically speaking, they might be false. However, if a person were to doubt these beliefs, we should consider her insane, or deeply confused.21 The striking similarities between this view and the “Common Sense” doctrine of Reid, Plantinga and (arguably) Climacus are quite evident. The only difference is that for Reid and the other two, the compelling factor in accepting this picture is “the constitution of our nature.” By contrast, for Wittgenstein we take these things for granted for the sake of performing of our everyday life activities. He tries to avoid the concept of a shared human nature.22 Interestingly, Reid would probably agree with Wittgenstein’s picture; he would only see it as incomplete, and Wolterstorff considers his stance in this sense to be better than that of Wittgenstein, because, even if one stops performing all activities to which Wittgenstein refers, one will still take for granted the reliability of our perceptual faculties.23

19 Ibid., pp. 231-232. 20 Ibid., pp. 233-234. 21 Ibid., pp. 236-239. 22 Despite this assessment of Wolterstorff, there are some places in Wittgenstein’s works (for example, in “Philosophical Investigations”) where he seems to refer to a common human nature in connection with the grammar of mental concepts (pain) (I owe this critical observation to Dr. Wiertz.). 23 Wolterstorff, Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology, pp. 242-244.

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It is known that Kant famously criticized the Common Sense ideas, which were very present in Germany’s cultural milieu during his time, in his “Introduction” to the Prolegomena of Any Future Metaphysics. Kant emphasizes that: To appeal to common sense when insight and science fail, and no sooner – this is one of the subtle discoveries of modern times, by means of which the most superficial ranter can safely enter the lists with the most thorough thinker and hold his own. But as long as a particle of insight remains, no one would think of having recourse to this subterfuge.24

But Wolterstorff replies to this Kantian objection by arguing that Reid’s doctrine of Common Sense is first of all a doctrine regarding the burden of proof. For him “the burden lies not on the philosopher who holds that there are external objects, but on the one who holds that there are not.” The significant dispute between Reid and his fellow (but also other later) philosophers (Here even Kant – with his idealist constructivism ‒ might be also included.) “lies in their thinking that they have successfully borne the burden of proof, whereas Reid thinks they clearly have not.”25 Plantinga agrees with the above argument when he says, against Richard Rorty (and siding with G. E. Moore), ‒ that “many of our perceptual judgments do constitute knowledge,” considering such an idea “a natural starting point for truth,” affirming that we normally tend to accept it as long as there are no sufficiently powerful arguments against it, and adding that in his opinion this is indeed the case, because the arguments against it use flimsier premises than the counterstatements of their conclusion.26 In a similar vein, although Kierkegaard does not directly raise the problem of the plausibility of Common Sense doctrine, one can nevertheless find in his writings a similar attitude: as Piety observes with reference to a passage from CUP (1:39), rejecting thereby the antirealist and “acosmic” interpretation of Mackey, for Climacus, “One cannot help but believe in the reality of the world... The reality of other people is...self-evident... It is nonsense he argues, to demand of someone with whom one comes into contact that he or she prove he or she is really there.”27 Lastly, one can also observe an interesting commonality of epistemic attitudes shared by both Kierkegaard and Plantinga, in spite of the great temporal distance which separates them. Accordingly, one can see in Kierkegaard’s writings – as Evans suggests (and we have mentioned in chapter 1) ‒ two kinds of epistemic stances: on the one hand a rejecting of classical foundationalism (In this respect he

24 Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena of Any Future Metaphysics, cf. Wolterstorff, op. cit., p. 215. 25 Wolterstorff, Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology, p. 247. 26 WPF, 89-90. 27 Piety, “The Reality of the World in Kierkegaard’s Postscript,” pp. 171-172.

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seems to be a “postmodern.”), on the other hand an acceptance of the traditional “realistic” account of knowing, which has as its ideal the attainment of truth. (On this matter he seems to have a “modern” or even a “premodern” understanding of truth.) Thus, he rejects a premise common to both classical foundationalists and antirealist postmodernists, “that if there is to be knowledge of objective reality, there must be some method of obtaining certain knowledge about reality.” Both parties differ only in how they assess the truth of the two terms of this premise: “The classical foundationalist, from Descartes through Husserl, concludes that since there is objective knowledge, there must be such a method. The antirealist concludes that since there is no such method, there is no knowledge of objective reality.” But Kierkegaard rejects this premise: even if there is no method of producing certain and objective knowledge, the ideal of this knowledge remains valid: “There is a reality independent of us that we are attempting to know.”28 Because this reality is independent of our minds, it naturally follows that our beliefs have a risky character. But this does not mean that it is always hard to obtain a sense of reliability in them. As Evans further observes, “Kierkegaard seems to be of the opinion, shared by Hume and Reid and Moore, that certain kinds of beliefs are just natural...they are called by life itself.”29 Notice a striking parallel between Kierkegaard and Plantinga: The second thinker seems to agree with what the first has to say on this point almost entirely; in fact, he even admits that Kierkegaard is an inspiration for his epistemological convictions: Thus, regarding the postmodernists, Plantinga writes that they “nearly all reject classical foundationalism; in this they concur with most Christian thinkers.” But unfortunately many of them also “believe that the demise of classical foundationalism implies...that there is no such thing as truth at all, no way things really are.”30 On the other hand, he reacts to the classical foundationalism of the modernists by saying that “it arose out of uncertainty, conflict, and...disagreement...Life without sure and secure foundations is frightening… ; hence Descartes’s fateful effort to find a sure footing for the beliefs with which he found himself.”31 To these views Plantinga offers a third option ‒ which he openly admits is identical with that of Kierkegaard:

28 Evans, “Realism and Antirealism”, pp. 169-170. 29 Ibid., p. 171; to this point one may add that also other contemporary philosophers, like (the early) Hilary Putnam, Devitt and John Searle reached similar conclusions, being in this respect supporters of a direct realism. 30 WCB, 436. 31 WCB, 436.

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Such Christian thinkers as Pascal, Kierkegaard and Kuyper, however, recognize, that there aren’t any certain foundations of the sort Descartes sought – or, if there are, they are exceedingly slim, and there is no way to transfer their certainty to our important non-foundational beliefs about material objects, the past, other persons, and the like. This is a stance that requires a certain epistemic hardihood: there is, indeed, such a thing as truth... but... there is no sure and certain method of attaining truth by starting from beliefs about which you can’t be mistaken and moving infallibly to the rest of your beliefs… This is life under uncertainty, life under epistemic risk and fallibility.32

32 WCB, 436-437 (our emphasis).

II Knowledge about the Existence of God

4 Kierkegaard and Knowledge about the Existence of God This section aims to account for knowledge of God from a Kierkegaardian perspective. More precisely it will focus on the twofold issue, the knowledge that God exists and that he is a certain kind of being. An immediate inventory of Kierkegaard’s reputation among readers tells us that for many he is a fideist, a person for whom belief in God has no rational grounds. According to this perspective a theist needs, in order to adhere to his own metaphysical option, to make “the irrational leap of faith.” Our intent is to dispute such characterization and subsequently argue that this perception is false. We will discover that in order to support theistic belief, Kierkegaard utilizes certain ethical and existential arguments, thus relating the knowledge of God to universal aspects of human experience.

4.1 Kierkegaard and the Subjective Knowledge Kierkegaard proposes that knowledge of God has strong ties to our subjectivity; therefore it is important to understand how Kierkegaard understands this (last) concept. According to Hermann Deuser, Kierkegaard’s concept of subjectivity was actually a retort to a problem raised by the idealist philosophy, which, featuring such elements like ‘res cogitans’, ‘transcendental apperception’ and ‘the unity of subject and object’, missed (and, even more than that, positively ignored) “the human being in her concrete subjectivity.”1 But what does it mean to understand humans in their concrete subjectivity? This is a valuable question that merits our attention, and we will treat it accordingly. 4.1.1 The Knowledge that God Exists; the Subjective Immanent Metaphysical Knowledge For Kierkegaard the knowledge that God exists is somehow ‒ as Piety would say ‒ “built in our human consciousness.”2 In a well-known passage from Concluding Unscientific Postscript, he writes this:

1 Hermann Deuser, “Kierkegaards Verteidigung der Kontingenz:,” Kierkegaardiana 15, 1991, p. 104. 2 Piety, Ways of Knowing, p. 117; See also the famous quotation from SKS 11, 129-130 / SUD, 13-14, in which “the other,” who is God, is essential for the constituency of the self: in Kierkegaard’s view he is the creator of the self and its point of reference. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111334769-004

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To demonstrate the existence [Tilvær] of someone who exists [er til] is the most shameless assault, since it is an attempt to make him ludicrous, but the trouble is that one does not even suspect this, that in dead seriousness one regards it as a godly undertaking. How could it occur to anyone to demonstrate that he exists unless one has allowed oneself to ignore him; and now one does it in an even more lunatic way by demonstrating his existence right in front of his nose.3

In his famous “Philosophical Fragments” he also posits that this knowledge ‒ like the truths of mathematics ‒ is gained, in good Socratic (or Platonic) fashion, through recollection: One does not have faith that God exists [er til], eternally understood, even though one assumes that God exists. That is an improper use of language. Socrates did not have faith that God existed. What he knew about God he achieved through recollection, and for him the existence of God was by no means something historical.4

Even if a person is not able to demonstrate the idea that God exists, this does not seem to deter her from the conviction that it corresponds to reality: for Kierkegaard “real atheists do not exist.”5 But how do we obtain this kind of knowledge (or belief) about God? The Danish philosopher holds that this happens through a person’s wishing to be convinced by it. There are nevertheless some people who resist the force of this knowledge in its push to control their minds; this explains – at least in part – why belief in the existence of God is not shared by all people.6

3 SKS 7, 495 / CUP1, 545. 4 SKS 4, 286 / PF, 87. 5 See in this respect Piety, Ways of Knowing, p. 118 and Pap. V B 40 / JP 3, 3606. However, it is interesting that later in his Journal he retracts the phrase “I do not believe that God exists, but I know it,” ‒ suggesting that it is too strong; he explains that he put together these two propositions only in order to contrast them. He asserts now that “even from the Greek point of view the eternal truth, by being for an existing person, becomes an object of faith and a paradox,” adding that this kind of Greek Socratic faith is different from Christian faith (Pap. VI B 45 / JP 3, 3085). 6 See in this respect the following passage from JP: “(… ) There (has) never been an atheist, even though there certainly have been many who have been unwilling to let what they know (that the god exists) get control of their minds. It is the same as with immortality. Suppose someone became immortal by means of another’s demonstrating it – would that not be infinitely ridiculous? Therefore there has never been a man who has not believed it, but there certainly have been many who have been unwilling to let the truth conquer in their souls, have been loath to allow themselves to be convinced, for what convinces me exists, but the important thing is that I become immersed in it.” (Pap. V B 40 / JP 3, 3606). In his book Kierkegaard’s Analysis of Radical Evil (London and New York: Continuum 2006) David Roberts offers more details regarding this process of obscuring and denying the knowledge of God’s existence.

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Thus, one can have a sense as to why knowledge about God’s existence belongs in the realm of subjective knowledge: it has the capacity deeply to influence the person who possesses it, being essentially related to her existence. This knowledge is for Kierkegaard part of the immanent metaphysical knowledge which is subject to Socratic recollection. This metaphysical knowledge has in turn an objective component (which refers to such domains as mathematics and ontology/logic – and is indifferent to the existence of the concrete individual)7 and a subjective one (related to the existence of the individual and incorporating the knowledge of the existence of God, the knowledge that each individual has a soul and the knowledge that there are eternally valid norms for human behavior).8 It is in this sense that Kierkegaard says with respect to the existence of God, immortality, etc., in short, with respect to all problems of immanence, recollection applies; it exists altogether in every man, only he does not know it, but it again follows that the conception may be inadequate.9

The point connects well with Karl Barth, who suggested (more than a century later) that “a conception of deity and an obligation to fulfill the moral law are the basic forms of religion, constituting, more or less, universal features of human existence.” 10 Why should the knowledge that God exists be included in the subjective immanent metaphysical knowledge? Because it is immanent, being somehow part of the content of human consciousness, the realm “of the ideas and their relations”11; and it is also, in Piety’s words metaphysical (or ontological) subjective because “it goes beyond purely formal logic to include the semantics of expressions such as ‘God’ and ‘perfection’,” and therefore it is “not entirely indifferent to the situation of the individual knower.”12 Subjective knowledge by its nature is also prescriptive: as Piety (again) observes, for Kierkegaard:

7 Pap. X 6 B 17 / JP 3, 3576; SKS 27, 271 / KJN 11.1, 270: “Christianity is indeed something essentially and completely different from a science like mathematics, etc., which is indifferent to the personal.”; SKS 19, 388 / KJN 3, 386: “Aristotle gives an important definition of science… The objects of science are things that are capable of being only in one single way; that which is scientifically knowable is thus the necessary, the eternal. For everything that is absolutely necessary is also absolutely everlasting.” 8 Piety, Ways of Knowing, pp. 116, 128. 9 Pap. V B 40 / JP 3, 3606. 10 J. A. Di Noia, “Religion and religions,” in John Webster (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2000, p. 246. 11 Piety, Ways of Knowing, p. 64. 12 Ibid., p. 69.

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 4 Kierkegaard and Knowledge about the Existence of God the certainty of the knower that a given mental representation corresponds to reality will be… inexorably intertwined with his appreciation of his subjective necessity of the correspondence of his existence to the substance of this representation.13

Thus, the knowledge that there is a God is deeply connected with the impression of a (moral) obligation related to him: all people have a subjective conviction that they have a duty to God, says Kierkegaard.14 Oddly enough, an individual always possesses an impression of this duty, even if he, in Piety’s words, “is engaged in the activity of obscuring it from himself.”15 Moreover, the certainty of God’s existence is proportional to the measure in which a person agrees that her life should correspond to God’s laws. And even if her life is not in agreement to God’s laws, a person might still be sure that God exists, because, though she fails to do God’s will, she might still feel guilty for her failure. Therefore, if this is the case, her guilt represents in fact an agreement “with the reality of this duty,” which may in fact be “the first step down the path of the fulfillment of the duty.”16

4.2 The Knowledge that God Exists and Its Relationship to Ethics The preliminary conclusion that we can deduce thus far is that for Kierkegaard “the knowledge that God exists” (the belief in God) is a subjective conviction that appears to be common to all people – although many of them might somehow obscure it, being “unwilling to let what they know (that God exists) get control of their minds.”17 The difference in their attitude toward the idea of God’s existence is related to the way in which people relate to their moral duty. In what follows we will focus more deeply on this relationship. In Kierkegaaard’s view the belief in God is not, as one might expect, proper only to what he calls the religious stage of existence. On the contrary, the ethicist ‒ the person who lives in a stage of existence in which morality has priority over all other aspects of human life ‒ believes in God too. Kierkegaard ‒ writes Evans – did not believe that ethical life is:

13 Ibid., p. 119. 14 Ibid., p. 120. 15 Piety, Ways of Knowing, p. 121; Søren Kierkegaard, “Judge for Yourself!,” in SKS 16, 172-173 / FSE, 117-118. 16 Piety, Ways of Knowing, p. 124. 17 Pap. V B 40 / JP 3, 3606.

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free from risky metaphysical commitments, a kind of humanistic stance that does not require belief in God...Kierkegaard’ ethicists are invariably devout and pious individuals who believe in God and participate in the life of the church.… Kierkegaard’s ethicists see their ethical duties as divine commandments.18

So, in this respect they do not differ from religious people in what regards their belief in God, although, as we shall see, to see ethical duties as divine commandments means not that the ethicists will necessarily believe in the personal God of monotheism. Some of them might just say: “there ought to be a God,” a reference to the idea that for them the ethical imperatives have power (this although they might still not yet believe in God).19 The main distinction between the ethicist and religious person refers to the confidence in their capacity of fulfilling the ethical task given by God. The ethicists are confident that they can fulfill this task by themselves. By contrast, religious people believe that the demands of the ethical life cannot be fulfilled through their own efforts. They know that there is a gap “between what ethics requires and what human choice can achieve.”20 Therefore, for the ethicist the relation with God is neither individual nor personal ‒ rather the demands of God are seen as general rules. Thus, any duty becomes for him a duty to God. However, according to Kierkegaard, “if no more can be said than this, then it is also said that I actually have no duty to God.”21 By contrast, the religious person is aware that she is incapable of being what she ought to be through her own ethical effort. The religious individual seeks to determine “his relation to the universal [the ethical] by his relation to the absolute [God], not his relation to the absolute by his relation to the universal.”22 This person, says Evans, “has a personal relation to God; she takes as her model the biblical Abraham, who was justified not by ethical deeds but by faith, an attitude of personal trust in God.”23 In any case, when thinking to belief in the existence of God, it is important to see that both the ethicist and the religious believe in God and try to respect his ethical norms.

18 Stephen Evans, Kierkegaard’s ethic of love, New York: Oxford University Press 2004, p. 49 (our emphasis). 19 Piety, Ways of Knowing, p. 120. 20 Evans, Kierkegaard’s ethic of love, p. 49; John Hare, The Moral Gap: Kantian Ethics and God’s Assistance, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1996. 21 SKS 4, 160 / FT, 68. 22 SKS 4, 162 / FT, 70. 23 Evans, Kierkegaard’s Ethic of Love, p. 50.

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4.3 Inwardness and Gaining the Belief in God As we have seen, belief in God is for Kierkegaard intimately bound up with taking into account God’s ethical absolutes – and this attitude is present in both ethical and religious stages, being related to the life of subjectivity and the presence of inwardness into an individual. How is the concept of inwardness to be understood? On the one hand Hannay understands it as “a mental state involving some form of conflict,” when the believer (in faith) “fastens on to what he wants, in spite of the uncertainty that he will get it.”24 On the other hand Evans sees the concept as covering a larger area than that of religious faith. He equates it with “subjectivity”: when the individual develops passions – understood as enduring emotions that give shape and direction to his life, for goals which are eternal. In this case the concept (and also subjectivity) is defined as “the affective dimension of human life that must take center stage if we are to understand human existence.”25 In Evans’ case inwardness has also something to do with the ethical (not just with the religious): In inwardness the ethical ideals become part of the life of the ethicist. A genuine moral life begins when the individual understands that he is not totally defined by his social obligations (the Hegelian Sittlichkeit), but rather that he has an absolute ethical task which raises him above social conformism. When the human being encounters this ethical absolute, he meets in fact God.26 Indeed Climacus seems to identify God with the ethical (in the experience of inwardness) at various points: The direct relationship with God is simply paganism, and only when the break has taken place, only then can there be a true God-relationship. But this break is indeed the first act of inwardness oriented to the definition that truth is inwardness. Nature is certainly the work of God, but only the work is directly present, not God. With regard to individual human being, is this not acting like an illusive (svigefuld) author, who nowhere sets forth his result in block letters or provides it beforehand in a preface? And why is God illusive? Precisely because he is truth and being illusive seeks to keep a person from untruth. The observer does not glide directly to the result but on his own must concern himself with finding it and thereby break the direct relation. But this break is the actual breakthrough of inwardness, an act of selfactivity, the first designation of truth as inwardness.27

24 Alastair Hannay, Kierkegaard: The Arguments of the Philosophers, London and New York: Routledge 1999, p. 126. 25 Evans, Kierkegaard: An Introduction, pp, 19-22, 34, 35. 26 Evans, Kierkegaard’s Ethic of Love, p. 88. 27 SKS 7, 221-222 / CUP1, 243-244.

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In another place, referring again to the deep relationship between the ethical and the belief in God, Kierkegaard affirms that freedom is like the lamp of Alladin: “When a person rubs it with ethical passion, God comes into existence for him.”28 Here, observes Westphal, “ethics is the presupposition of religion. In the ontological order, God comes first; in the transcendental order, the ethical is prior. Together they define the domain of subjectivity.”29

4.4 How Inwardness Works: Triggering Factors for Gaining the Belief in God However, some commentators have opined that, although for Kierkegaard living in the ethical stage (for example) leads to a conviction in the existence of God, this does not mean that the people who live ethically are necessarily aware of this divine reality. In this respect Evans writes: … though an encounter with the ethical is an encounter with God, it is by no means always the case that the ethical individual recognizes this fact. On the contrary, a person may gain an impression of ‘the infinitude of the ethical’ without realizing that this involves an impression of God.30

Piety also suggests that it is possible that a person should be uncertain of God’s existence, but nevertheless to have: a relatively well-defined idea of what kind of behavior God, if he existed, would require of people and to feel such a strong obligation to conform her behavior to what she imagines would be these requirements that she would say something of the order of ‘there ought to be a God’, even if it turned out there was not one.31

However, is there not a contradiction between the idea that one could feel the infinitude of the ethical imperative (in other words, should live in the ethical stage) and the fact that one might not believe in God, given the previous assertion that the belief in God characterizes the ethical stage? In response, we might say that even if this contradiction is tenable, it is not very significant for our discussion, due to the fact that the ethical stage ‒ if we under-

28 SKS 7, 129 / CUP1, 138. 29 Westphal, Becoming a Self, p. 105. 30 Evans, Kierkegaard’s Ethic of Love, p. 88. 31 Piety, Ways of Knowing, p. 120.

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stand it as a sphere of existence in which we are called to obey a divine task which raises us above social conformism ‒ is rather a transitory stage between the two others (aesthetic and religious), lacking stability.32 We will better understand why this is so by looking closer to the way in which subjectivity could trigger belief in the existence of God. In what follows, we will set the stage for two different perspectives pertaining to this subject, perspectives which at first sight might seem contradictory, but upon examination could prove the opposite.

4.4.1 Schulz: Existential Despair as a Triggering Factor The first perspective belongs to Heiko Schulz, who suggests that for Kierkegaard belief in God represents the pragmatic postulate of a person who wants to escape from her state of despair. He affirms that “from the perspective of someone experiencing a severe spiritual crisis God may indeed appear as a ‘postulate’, but not in the loose [viz. Kantian] sense in which it is ordinarily taken.”33 Instead, he quotes Kierkegaard – who writes that “passion… assists (that human) in grasping God with the ‘category of despair’ (faith), so that the postulate, far from being the arbitrary, is in fact necessary defense… , self-defense; in this way God is not a postulate, but the existing person’s postulating of God is – a necessity.”34 Additionally Schulz also formulates the way in which this pragmatically justified conversion (toward a belief in God) is related to the start of accepting (and acting according to) certain ethical standards: Now, if the purportedly desirable consequences of adopting the new worldview also call for the willingness, on the part of convert, to accept and act according to certain ethical standards of conduct – as in the case of many religions – then he is only justified in claiming that what he pretends to have converted to is in fact the worldview in question, if and inasmuch as he is willing actually to comply with those standards. Finally, if we who assess his belief and conduct, subscribe to those standards ourselves, then he is equally justified in claiming to be justified, if only pragmatically, in subscribing and clinging to the worldview he has been converted to.35

32 “The ethical sphere is only a transition sphere, and therefore its highest expression is repentance as a negative action.” (SKS 6, 439 / SLW, 476) 33 Heiko Schulz, “Conversion, Truth and Rationality,” in Ingolf Dalferth (ed.), Conversion: Claremont Studies in the Philosophy of Religion, Conference 2011, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2013, p. 191. 34 SKS 7, 183 / CUP1, 200n. 35 Schulz, “Conversion, truth and rationality,” p. 193.

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At first sight, Schulz’ analysis of conversion to a belief in God seems to apply only to conversion to Christianity, because in the passage he quotes and on which he builds his argument Climacus writes about a grasping of God via “the category of despair” and identifies this category with faith. Yet according to Kierkegaard’s view, faith is the specific way by which a person is healed of despair (the despair caused by sin) and has access to the salvific truth of Christianity (Religion B), to the real knowledge of God (“the truth coming from outside” ‒ revealed in the person of Jesus Christ). However, recall Kierkegaard defines the how of faith (the subjective truth) in this way: “An objective uncertainty, held fast through appropriation with the most passionate inwardness.”36 One might expect, given the above premises, that this definition would apply only to the Christian truth, the belief in the paradox of the Incarnated Christ. But this is not the case: in this passage from CUP Kierkegaard refers to the subjective truth in general (not only to the specific Christian truth); moreover, surprisingly the model for this faith is not an authentic Christian believer (to whom the aforementioned definition would surely apply), but rather a “pagan” thinker, Socrates, who incarnates the immanent religious life A. One can sense almost an admiration regarding this pagan, when Climacus writes: He stakes his whole life on this ‘if’; he dares to die, and with the passion of the infinite he has so ordered his whole life that it might be acceptable – if there is an immortality. Is there a better demonstration for the immortality of the soul?37

The relevancy found here is that the note in CUP on which Schulz builds his argumentation appears in the same context in which the above quotation it is found. Moreover, as we know, each transition toward a “superior stage of life” (not only that from religion A to religion B) is ‒ in Kierkegaard’s view – characterized by a certain despair which could be “healed” only by an adherence to the new paradigm of existence. Given the aforementioned reasons, we find the applicability of Schulz’ model to subjective knowledge in general tenable.

4.4.2 Roberts and Evans: the Normativity of Ethics as a Triggering Factor The second perspective regarding the way in which subjectivity could trigger belief in the existence of God belongs to Roberts and Evans, who suggest that for

36 SKS 7, 186 / CUP1, 203. 37 SKS 7, 185 / CUP1, 201; see also Westphal, Becoming a Self, pp. 120-121.

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Kierkegaard the consciousness of the absolute normativity of ethics (in the ethical inwardness) leads to a consciousness of God’s existence. Evans and Roberts highlight that, according to Kierkegaard, if we start from the premise that God created each of us in order to become selves, then our duty to become a self implies at the same time a correct relation with God. We relate correctly to God when we fulfill the duty which he gave us. In this respect, we are all sufficiently endowed by him to perform the duty of actualizing our ethical potentialities. Thus, Kierkegaard’s ethics is a synthesis of the Aristotelian perspective of ethical duty understood as self-actualization and the Kantian perspective of ethical obligation (in which ethical duty must be fulfilled “without concern for results”).38 Irrespective of whether Kierkegaard’s ethics is partially influenced by Kant’s ideas, it does not mean that he is – as a moral philosopher ‒ a representative of Enlightenment. On the contrary, Alasdair MacIntyre claims that Kierkegaard is the first thinker who realized the failure of the Enlightenment project in its attempt of grounding ethics in human reason.39 His solution to this problem – according to Roberts and Evans – is “not to ground ethics in an act of human will, but to seek to recover divine authority as the basis for ethics.”40 To Kierkegaard the only possible explanation for the constraining power of the ethical normativity is its origin in divine authority. For him ‒ as Roberts and Evans observe – “without the sense of being accountable or responsible to someone or something ‘higher’, ethical life lacks earnestness.”41 And, as a consequence, the converse should also be true: If ethical life implies earnestness, then we have the sense of being responsible to someone (or something) higher. It is true that the modern world has developed alternatives to the idea (of grounding the ethical on divine authority). Kierkegaard finds none of them convincing. One of these alternatives is to place the moral obligation on the individual: the alternative proposed by the existentialists. A person commits herself to a self-chosen ideal, faithfully trying to fulfill it. However, for Kierkegaard such an account “cannot do justice to the actual character of the ethical life. A freely adopted ideal cannot bind if its normativity stems from the person’s choice, for such a choice can always be undone.”42 According to him: “The deficiency in the most noble human

38 Evans, Kierkegaard’s Ethic of Love, p. 90. 39 Alasdair MacIntyre, “Excerpt from Chapter 4 of After Virtue,” in John Davenport (ed.), Kierkegaard After MacIntyre: Essays on Freedom, Narrative and Virtue, Chicago: Carus Publishing Company 2001, p. xxxv. 40 Robert C. Roberts and Stephen Evans, “Ethics,” in The Oxford Handbook of Kierkegaard (ed. by John Lippitt) Oxford: Oxford University Press 2013, p. 215. 41 Roberts and Evans, “Ethics,” p. 216. 42 Ibid., p. 216.

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enthusiasm is that, as merely human, in the ultimate sense it is not powerful itself, because it has no higher power over itself.”43 Another alternative is offered by Kant, who grounds the ethical normativity in human reason. Kierkegaard rejects this view in a journal entry: Kant held that the human being was his own law (autonomy), i.e., bound himself under the law he gave himself. In the deeper sense, what this really postulates is lawlessness or experimentation. Its earnestness will be no more rigorous than were the blows that Sancho Panza inflicted on his own backside.44

43 SKS 9, 190 / WL, 190. 44 SKS 23, 45 / KJN 7, 42. In this context, it might be worth mentioning an interesting and surprising assessment regarding the deep relation between religion and ethics (with its political implications) coming from Jürgen Habermas, a philosopher who considers himself – following the wording of Max Weber – “religiös unmusikalisch” (“religiously unmusical”) (see in this respect the radio program “Religionsphilosophie von Jürgen Habermas – Alt, aber nicht fromm” vom Juli 14, 2019, published online at [https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/religionsphilosophie-von-juergen-habermas-alt-aber-nicht-100. html?fbclid=IwAR2jpG6VEuKYnANNu-C4uANbVqJimsyMrpPS4ELwVtmc0V3hr5LqEhxpLAs], last visited on April 30, 2023). Thus, in an interview with Eduardo Mendieta, Habermas said that “Christianity has functioned for the normative self-understanding of modernity as more than a mere precursor or a catalyst. Egalitarian universalism, from which sprang the ideas of freedom and social solidarity, of an autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, of the individual morality of conscience, human rights, and democracy, is the direct heir to the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of continual critical appropriation and reinterpretation. To this day, there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a postnational constellation, we continue to draw on the substance of this heritage. Everything else is just idle postmodern talk.” (Jürgen Habermas, “A Conversation about God and the World”, in Ciaran Cronin and Max Pensky (eds.) Time of Transitions: Jürgen Habermas, Cambridge: Polity Press 2006, pp.150151). Also Nicholas Smith observes that Habermas “insists that religious concepts may have a ‘semantic content’ whose capacity to inspire, and by implication to sustain hope, is both ‘indispensable’ and untranslatable into the rational discourses of postmetaphysical philosophy” (Nicholas Smith, “Rorty on Religion and Hope”, Inquiry, Vol. 48, No. 1, February 2005, p. 77). And in the above quoted radio program Jan-Heiner Tück observes that the Jewish idea of “God’s image” in humans is philosophically translated by Habermas as meaning that “all persons should be equally treated.” One might say that such a translation contradicts Smith’s point about the untranslatability of the rational discourse. But this would be the case only if “person” represents a secular concept. However, as Denis de Rougemont has argued, this concept has a Christian provenience, being related to the early church’s effort (in the fourth century AD) to understand the intratrinitarian relationships in God (Denis de Rougemont, Man’s Western Quest, New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers 1957, p. 40). Therefore, in some respects one is no more justified in taking the meaning of the term “person” seriously than in taking the meaning of the expression “the image of God in man” seriously. Thus, Habermas seems to agree with Nietzsche that if a society wants unification, a counterweighting to its fragmentation, then it needs to have some myths (in order to achieve its intended harmonizing goal); but in contrast to Nietzsche he also believes that these unifying myths are to be found in the Judeo-Christian tradition, and that they cannot be replaceable, but rather need to be continually reappropriated in our society.

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The problem that Kierkegaard points out in a comical ad absurdum manner is in the unwarranted authority of reason. Even if reason might dictate to humans how they must behave, “why should they care so much of being rational?”45 Secondly, several philosophers see Kant’s principle as being too abstract, especially if meant to tell real humans what they should do. People conceive who they are in different ways and therefore will tend to see their obligations differently.46 But “a moral obligation cannot come simply from how I think of myself, but rather it tells me how I should think about myself.”47 A third alternative is to ground the moral obligation in society. The burden of moral obligation seems to be rooted in a social agreement made (presumably) by humans. However, Kierkegaard thinks that neither such a view would work, because never in history was such an agreement made: Should the determination of what is the law requirement perhaps be an agreement among, a common decision by, all people, to which an individual must submit? Splendid – that is, if it is possible to find the place and fix the date for this assembling of all people… and if it is possible, something that is equally impossible, for all of them to agree on one thing!48

In contemporary philosophy, the idea of considering divine authority as the basis for ethics was promoted by Oxford philosopher Robert Adams. For Adams, “God, who is a loving personal Being, is identified with the Good, a transcendent and infinite reality… Moral obligations are identified with the commandments of this loving God.”49 Akin to Kierkegaard, Adams argues that his position is superior to other alternatives from contemporary secular philosophy (like utilitarianism, expressivism or intuitionism).50 Though Evans thinks Adams’ view, like that of Climacus, “is unlikely to be accepted by many contemporary secular philosophers,” he is of the opinion that “there seems to be no reason in principle why a religiously grounded ethic cannot be put forward into contemporary ethical debates.”51

45 Roberts and Evans, “Ethics,” p. 216. 46 Ibid., p. 217. 47 Ibid., p. 217. 48 SKS 9, 119 / WL, 115. 49 Evans, Kierkegaard’s Ethic of Love, pp. 90-91. 50 Robert Adams, “Moral Arguments for Theistic Belief,” in God (ed. by Timothy Robinson), Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company 2002, pp. 90-112; Evans, Kierkegaard’s Ethic of Love, p. 91. 51 Evans, Kierkegaard’s Ethic of Love, p. 91; Philip Quinn suggested that divine command ethics has experienced a recent revival: The supporters of this approach have successfully rejected all the objections of their opponents. However, to him this theory needs also a positive argument. He tries to offer such an argument in the local and limited field of theology (see Philip Quinn, “The Recent Revival of

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4.4.3 Triggering Factors: Externalist and Internalist Epistemological Justification We can now summarize the two aforementioned perspectives regarding the triggering factor for the belief in God’s existence and draw some conclusions: In the first perspective (of Schulz) the triggering factor is a pragmatic postulate. In Schulz’s view the awareness of the ethical imperatives comes after (or with) the postulation of the belief in God. In this case the ethical stage includes belief in God. In the second perspective (that of Evans and Roberts) the triggering factor is ethical inwardness: The awareness of the ethical seems to come, at least in some cases, before the attainment of the belief in God, as it is possible for someone to gain the impression of the infinity of the ethical without a simultaneous belief in God. Here the ethical stage does not necessarily include belief in God (although it might). As we have already seen, the relation of the ethicist to God (if there is one) is rather formal than individual and personal, because for him the demands of God are seen as general rules; his relationship to God is not personal, because he does not actually need God’s assistance in order to fulfill his duty. In a sense, he does not need God. By contrast, one cannot imagine a religious person without belief in God. The religious person knows that she is incapable of being what she ought to be by her own ethical effort: She knows that she needs God. For this reason, her relation to God is eventually marked by an attitude of personal trust (in God) triggered by her experience of guilt and gratitude.52 The second perspective, although apparently contradictory to the first one (saying that the ethical stage might imply for some people only an awareness of God’s moral imperatives but not conjoined with a belief in God as in the first case), does not represent a significant contradiction, the explanatory factor being that the ethical stage is, in Kierkegaard’s thinking, a rather transitional than a steadfast level of existence, eventually mediating the movement from the aesthetical to the religious stage: Sooner or later a sincere ethicist will understand his own moral bankruptcy.53 If this person remains (even after this “revelatory” understanding) in the ethical stage, she will live in hypocrisy. In the latter case, if she is comfortable with her position, she lives only apparently as an ethicist; actually, she behaves as

Divine Command Ethics,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 50, Supplement (Autumn 1990), pp. 345-365). 52 Evans, “Kierkegaard and Plantinga on Belief in God: Subjectivity as the Ground of Properly Basic Religious Beliefs,” p. 179. 53 See in this respect what Frater Taciturnus says in SKS 6, 439 / SLW, 476.

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an aesthete. Hypocrisy represents an ethical stance that for an ethical type of subjectivity is self-contradictory. In the end, the two perspectives have one essential thing in common. Either from pragmatical or from ethical reasons ‒ or maybe for both pragmatical and ethical reasons – people can finally attain belief in the existence of God. These reasons trigger in them the (subjective) knowledge that God exists; Thus, they arrive at it through a kind of pragmatic and/or ethical recollection. This knowledge seems to be universal; all people (depending on their choices) are able to reach it. In addition to that, one might observe that this process of transition from non-belief to belief in God is in both cases rationally justified. In the first case (the Schulzian one) we have a pragmatic type of justification: It is rational to believe in God, inasmuch as this belief helps the believer to defeat despair. Of course, this pragmatic justification offers no warranty that the object of belief – God in our case – is real (rather than a fiction produced by our human psychological needs, a kind of Freudian “heavenly father”). If we take into account only the believer’s internalist point of view, chances are few that he would enter into contact with any real divine entity at the end of his pragmatic reasoning. The internalist epistemology54 is not able to offer us any sure access to truth (if one defines truth in a classical way, as correspondence between statements and facts). As John Greco suggests, truth is a feature external to our epistemic access – being a concept better fitted for an externalist epistemology.55 On the other side, if God is real, and he created us beings capable of finding relief from our existential despair only when postulating his existence, then we are also justified in believing that our pragmatic postulate will lead us toward truth. An externalist epistemology might offer a real solution in this respect, because it says – á la Plantinga’s externalist model (as we shall better see in the following chapters) ‒ that a belief can be warranted if it is gained by way of a reliable process, according to a design plan aimed at producing true beliefs.56 God might have created us in such a way as to achieve belief in him by this kind of pragmatic process of coming to belief in him when seeking relief from our despair (We will refer in more detail to this Plantingian solution in the next chapter.). It is true that such an externalist epistemological solution does not offer a kind of Cartesian certainty to our knowledge. Plantinga’s agrees that, “we may sometimes think we know something when in fact

54 Internalism in epistemology is a view about cognitive accessibility according to which what confers warrant to a belief ‘must be accessible, in some special way’, to us. Conversely, externalism is the view that what confers warrant to a belief is not accessible to us, at least not in a certain measure. 55 Greco, “Justification is Not Internal,” pp. 257-269 56 WPF, 19.

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we do not, and conversely, that we may sometimes know something without being able to offer (all) evidence for this knowledge.” But that is, again, just another argument for the idea that an externalist, in contrast to the internalist (who in essence remains a disciple of Descartes), “has a more robust sense of human finitude.”57 In the second perspective, God seems to be a good explanation for the awareness of the earnestness of our ethical norms. It is rational to believe in God because this belief helps us to explain the earnestness of our ethical experience. We have here, however, rather an explanatory than a pragmatic type of justification. The reasoning seems to convey a kind of implicit moral argument for the existence of God, even though in principle, as we shall see in another chapter, Kierkegaard opposes any arguments for God’s existence. However, this explanation seems not to be an instance of positive abduction, but rather a kind of Popperian hypothesis which has resisted all the attempts of falsifying it. As Philip Quinn has argued, the idea of divine authority as a foundation for an ethic has not yet been refuted (despite all skeptic moral philosophers’ efforts to this effect).58 Still, Adams’ observation that God’s hypothesis might be the best explanation for the finding that moral facts are perceived as objective (Their validity does not depend on what the humans think about them.) and non-natural (they cannot be stated entirely in the language of science) may also suggest a certain abductive dimension to the moral argument for God’s existence.59 By all means, this second perspective seems to have also a certain internalist justification – as opposed to the first one. However, since ‒ in the same Popperian vein ‒ we cannot a priori exclude that someone might (sometime) find a refutation against it, yet we can say that even then an externalist appeal to the hypothesis of God as our creator remains the best argument for the purported warrant of the aforementioned belief: God might have created us in such manner that, when realizing the infinity of the ethical in our lives, we should start believing in him. Arguments for this externalist type of warrant for our belief in God in Kierkegaard’s writings can be seen in at least two quotations. In the first one (from his journal) this idea it is implicitly stated: In all the usual talk to the effect that Johannes Climacus is mere subjectivity, etc., people have completely overlooked the fact that, in addition to all the rest of his concreteness, in one of the final sections he points out that the remarkable thing is that there is a How that has the

57 Evans, “Externalist Epistemology, Subjectivity, and Christian Knowledge,” p. 189. 58 Quinn, “The Recent Revival of Divine Command Ethics,” pp. 345-365. 59 Adams, “Moral Arguments for Theistic Belief,” pp. 116–140 (see more details in this sense in chapter 8).

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property that when it is precisely indicated, the What is also given – that this is the How of “faith”. Here, indeed, maximum inwardness is in fact shown to be objectivity.60

In the second one (from his Christian Discourses), this idea it is stated explicitly: Truly, no more than God allows a species of fish to come into existence in a particular lake unless the plant that is its nourishment is also growing there, no more will God allow the truly concerned person to be ignorant of what he is to believe. That is, the need brings its nourishment along with it; what is sought is in the seeking that seeks it; faith is in the concern over not having faith; love is in the self-concern over not loving… The need brings with it the nutriment along with it, not by itself… but by virtue of a divine determination that joins the two, the need and the nourishment.61

In conclusion, we might say that, according to Kierkegaard, each person seems to have an analogue to what Plantinga would call “a sensus divinitatis faculty”; she becomes aware of God’s existence through a recollection mediated by her moral experience and/or by the pragmatical necessity of seeking relief from her existential despair. We will present Plantinga’s view in this respect in the next chapter.

4.5 Conclusion: Desirable Consequences of the Idea of an “Inwardly Conditioned” Religious Knowledge In conclusion, we will present some positive consequences ensuing from the postulation that religious knowledge is mediated by inwardness. Evans argued that if God existed, then this Kierkegaardian path conducive to belief in him is to be expected, due to its desirable effects. Among these positive effects he enumerates: 1. “If the knowledge of God is conditioned by inwardness, human freedom is protected.” If God should really love humans, he would have them obey him freely, but if humans saw his presence too obviously, they would be inclined to obey him just for self-protective reasons, even if they did not really like him.62 2. If the knowledge of God is inwardly conditioned, then human equality will always be protected. For Kierkegaard, God is always impartial.63 If the knowledge of God were mediated by our intellectual acuity, or education, or possessions, etc.,

60 SKS 22, 414 / KJN 6, 420. 61 SKS 10, 251 / CD, 244-245. 62 Evans, “Kierkegaard and Plantinga on Belief in God,” p. 180. 63 Westphal, Becoming a Self, pp. 107, 128; Evans, “Kierkegaard and Plantinga on Belief in God,” p. 180.

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this principle would be violated, because with respect to these things people may be very different. 3. “If the knowledge of God is conditioned by inwardness, then the process of coming to know God will be a process in which the individual is spiritually developed.”64 In coming to know God, the individual will be more authentic and will grow spiritually. 4. “If the knowledge of God is conditioned by inwardness, then it is ensured that the person who becomes aware of God becomes (also) aware of God’s true nature.” Only the person who comprehends such inward passions as guilt, repentance and gratitude would be able to grasp such divine qualities as “the one who offers forgiveness”, “the one who empowers the individual to make a new beginning” and “the gracious giver of every good gift.”65 Silvia Walsh also reminds us that for Kierkegaard: the way to go about forming a true conception of God is by turning inward, where one comes to know God not as an external object but ‘more intimately’ or personally as a transcendent subject to whom one must be related in absolute devotion or else not at all.66

These consequences constitute another argument for the coherence, plausibility and relevance in our days of Kierkegaard’s account of religious knowledge.

64 Evans, “Kierkegaard and Plantinga on Belief in God,” p. 180. 65 Ibid., p. 181. 66 Silvia Walsh, “Kierkegaard’s Theology,” in The Oxford Handbook of Kierkegaard (ed. by John Lippitt et al.), Oxford: Oxford University Press 2013, p. 295.

5 Plantinga and the Knowledge about the Existence of God Plantinga’s understanding of the knowledge of God’s existence can be summed up as a body of literature that has developed over time. If in his medial philosophical writings (for example, Reason and Belief in God) he devoted his time to the idea that belief in God was properly basic with respect to justification, in his last works (for example in Warranted Christian Belief) he focused more on the idea that belief in God is also properly basic with respect to warrant. The idea that this belief comes to us in an unmediated way, without the (necessary) support of any argument, is a constant prevalent in his entire religious epistemology.

5.1 Proper Basicality with Respect to Justification 5.1.1 The Classical Foundationalist View of Knowledge Plantinga observed that many theists and objectors of theism adopt ‒ regarding belief in God ‒ a so-called evidentialist approach, according to which belief in God, in order to be rational, needs evidence.1 In general, those who hold this view also accept a certain version of foundationalism – which, as we already saw in chapter 2, is that epistemological position according to which some propositions from our noetic structure are properly basic (which means both basic and justified), while others are not; those that are not, are

1 RBG, 39-40, 47-48. As we have seen in chapter 2, if we construe evidence in a broad fashion, then in Plantinga’s view evidentialism is apparently a true and useful epistemological concept: all beliefs ‒ in order to have warrant ‒ need to be based on evidence (WPF, 192). But can we say that even belief in God – since (as Plantinga argues) it is warranted – needs to be based on evidence? Is is true that Plantinga, as we will argue in this chapter, accepts the view that belief in God is not baseless (RBG, 74); moreover, he affirms that the operation of sensus divinitatis, which produces this belief, “will always involve the presence of experience of some kind or other” (for example sensory imagery – as in the case of the conversion of apostle Paul ‒, or being frightened, or feeling grateful, delighted, or having a feeling of awe, or the sense of numinous, etc.); but in spite of all these, Plantinga avoids affirming (as he seemed to do earlier, in WPF) that the warrant this belief has is based on experience (He avoids affirming this also for a priori – and probably memory and consciousness – beliefs.). In any case, he considers the answer to this question (whether belief in God is based on evidence) “unimportant and optional” (WCB, 181, 183-184). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111334769-005

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incorporated in the structure only on the basis of evidence, an evidence which ultimately could be traced back to properly basic propositions. If one understands noetic structure as all the propositions which a person believes, “together with certain epistemic relations that hold among her and these propositions,”2 then foundationalism is construed, according to Plantinga, as “a thesis about rational noetic structures.” A rational noetic structure is one in which a person, by holding it, does not violate any epistemic duties: “every non-basic belief is ultimately accepted on the basis of the basic beliefs”3 and “the non-basic beliefs are proportional in strength to their support from foundations.”4 In this context a classical foundationalist is a foundationalist for whom one proposition is properly basic if and only if it is either self-evident, evident to the senses or incorrigible. As we already saw in chapter 2, the classical foundationalist principle of proper basicality can be thus formulated: Principle 1: The proposition p is properly basic for a person S if and only if p is either self-evident, or incorrigible or evident to the senses for S.5

2 RBG, 48. 3 RBG, 52. 4 RBG, 55. 5 RBG, 59; in his article “Reason and Belief in God”, Plantinga affirmed that for St. Thomas Aquinas properly basic are only the propositions that are self-evident and those that are evident to the senses (like “There is a tree outside my window,” or “This wall is yellow.”) and that in this respect the great theologian is an epitome of classical foundationalism. He also suggested that for Aquinas the belief that God exists was not among these propositions; one can accept it only if one has evidence for it (RBG, 48). However, John Zeis argued that Aquinas did not hold a version of evidentialism; on the contrary, St. Thomas accepted that some people might believe in God without any support from natural theology, without being considered for this reason irrational. In this case, Aquinas would agree that for some people faith – even without evidence – can be a warranted and justified belief (John Zeis, “Natural Theology: Reformed?,” in Linda Zagzebski (ed.), Rational Faith: Catholic Responses to Reformed Epistemology, p. 73). Zeis adds in support of this idea also the following quotations from Aquinas: “there is the inspiration given to human minds, so that simple and untutored persons, filled with the gift of the Holy Spirit, come to possess instantaneously the highest wisdom and the readiest eloquence,” (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, I, 6) and, “Beneficially, therefore, did the divine mercy provide that it should instruct us to hold by faith even those truths that human reason is able to investigate.” (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, I, 4, cf. Zeis, op. cit., p. 77 n.56). According to Zeis, in Aquinas’ thinking, “there is no dichotomy between faith and knowledge. Faith is a sort of knowledge. The transmutation project (in which Aquinas is engaged) is to transmute faith which is already a knowledge (cognition) into demonstrative knowledge.” (Zeis, op.cit., p. 78n.56). In fact, even Plantinga admits that for Aquinas‘ belief in God seems to be accepted as properly basic (RBG, 47) being “implanted in us by nature” (WCB, 167) thus seemingly contradicting his above assessment about Aquinas’ view. In addition to this (probably as a reaction to Zeis’ critique) Plantinga renounced

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5.1.2 The Critique of the Classical Foundationalist and of Modified Foundationalist Views on Belief in the Existence of God Plantinga opposes the view that, in order rationally to believe in God, one needs evidence. He suggests, as we will show in what follows, that belief in God is properly basic, being built (and in a justified way built) into the foundations of our noetic structure. Obviously, the classical foundationalist would not agree; she would insist that the only propositions which are properly basic are those that are either self-evident or evident-to-the-senses or incorrigible; the proposition “God exists” does not belong to these categories. But is principle 1, which defines classical foundationalism, true? Plantinga does not think so. In this respect he offers two arguments: First of all, if this principle were true, it would have the implausible implication that some beliefs regarding ordinary everyday life – like those about the past or entailing that there are persons distinct from ourselves – are not probable (with respect to these foundations).6 However, the defenders of foundationalism might object to this point that this list ‒ (of properly basic kinds of propositions) suggested by the classical foundationalist ‒ is too narrow: Why not expand it? What if we also included the beliefs about the past and about the existence of other persons? Would not this modified form of foundationalism (the Reidian type of foundationalism, to which we already referred in chapter 2) cover all beliefs related to ordinary everyday life? John Zeis, for example, suggested that this inclusion might in fact coincide with the Aristotelian-Thomistic view, according to which “all knowledge begins with senses.” For Zeis, Aristotelians have never bothered about the justification conditions for beliefs like ‘S is in pain’ or ‘I had coffee this morning’ and… this is because they would consider them epistemically as having the same degree of warrant with beliefs like ‘This is a tree,’ ‒ for which there was… no puzzle concerning its justification.7

(in WCB) presenting Aquinas as the epitome of classical foundationalism and preferred to consider John Locke as its manifestation. Locke indeed accepted as properly basic only the beliefs which are self-evident, evident to the senses and incorrigible (the incorrigible beliefs represent his own addition to Aquinas’ list) . He might be also considered the epitome of evidentialism – considering rationally acceptable only those beliefs for which there are good arguments (WCB, 91). 6 RBG, 59. 7 Zeis, “Natural Theology: Reformed?” pp. 59-60.

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In fact, Zeis believes that one can use in this respect the principle that “only those expressions which have criteria can serve as expressions of properly basic beliefs” ‒ in which criteria for the application of a belief (for example “S is in pain”) must be understood in Wittgenstein’s sense: as meaning-relevant experiential features which are shared (or shareable) by a linguistic community.8 For example, in the case of the proposition “there is an elephant,” its criteria could be “the visible presence of an elephant himself” ‒ but also his picture, or a verbal explanation of the meaning of the sentence. In case of the expression being in pain the criterion would not be a representation of the object, but “a typical behaviour associated with it.”9 As a matter of fact, even Plantinga himself admits that most people accept the existence of other persons and of the past ‒ and suggests that the classical foundationalist criteria for properly basicality (1) could be replaced with another, more plausible one: Principle 2: p is properly basic for S if and only if p is either self-evident, or incorrigible or evident to the senses or is accepted as basic by nearly everyone.10 (Plantinga is not quite ready to admit that the deliverance of the memory could be taken as basic by other persons – excluding here only the person who has these memories herself. Zeis ‒ following Wittgenstein’s model ‒ is more optimistic in this respect). But even if the first argument (brought by Plantinga against classical foundationalism) might not be extraordinarily strong – since classical foundationalism could be replaced with a modified and more moderate form of foundationalism ‒, his second argument seems to be utterly damaging not only to classical foundationalism, but also to any modified-moderate form of foundationalism: This second argument examines principle 1 and finds it unconvincing (and therefore untrue) – because it is self-contradictory. Firstly, the principle itself cannot be deduced (or argued by induction) ‒ from propositions that are either self-evident or evident-to-the-senses or incorrigible: for Plantinga “no foundationalist has provided such an argument” so far.11 Secondly, the principle itself is not properly basic ‒ because it is neither self-evident nor evident-to-the-senses nor incorrigible.

8 Ibid., pp. 53, 59. Zeis affirms that, according to Wittgenstein, “We have clear criteria for claims like ‘S is in pain’ and ‘There is a tree’ not only because of a particular sort of experience which prompts the belief, but also because a convention is established in the linguistic community for the appropriate assertion of such claims.” 9 Zeis, “Natural Theology: Reformed?” p. 54. 10 RBG, 62. 11 RBG, 60.

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In addition, Plantinga argues that neither principle 2 (the modification of classical foundationalism) is true ‒ because, again, it is self-contradictory. Firstly, it is not properly basic ‒ because it is neither self-evident, nor incorrigible, nor evident-tothe senses (and at least to some people – including Plantinga himself – it does not seem to be basic). And secondly, unless someone can find an argument to support it starting from propositions which are properly basic (according to its own criterion of proper basicality), the principle is not true (or, in any case ‒ according to its own formulation ‒ it should not be believed).12

5.1.3 Plantinga’s Inductive Criterion for Proper Basicality Now we can frame the problem this way: How can we find a plausible criterion of proper basicality? Plantinga posits that the proper way for finding such a criterion is that of induction. In this respect, he suggests that: We must assemble examples of beliefs and conditions such that the former are obviously properly basic in the latter and examples of beliefs and conditions such that the former are obviously not properly basic in the latter. We must then frame hypotheses as to the necessary and sufficient conditions of proper basicality and test these hypotheses by reference to those examples. Under the right conditions, for example, it is clearly rational to believe that you see a human person before you: a being who has thoughts and feelings, who knows and believes things, who makes decisions and acts. It is clear, furthermore, that you are under no obligation to reason to this belief from others you hold; under those conditions that belief is properly basic for you.13

Thus – following this inductive procedure – one can find (says Plantinga) a criterion of proper basicality according to which belief in God is properly basic. Excursus: the Origins of Plantinga’s Idea that Belief in God is Properly Basic Plantinga argues that his pleading for an unmediated (by argument) belief in God is supported by such Reformed theologians as Jean Calvin, Herman Bavinck and Karl Barth: he observes that all these authors support the view that belief in God is properly basic,14 thus rejecting classical foundationalism.

12 RBG, 62. 13 RBG, 76. 14 RBG, 72; “(The belief in God) is such that it is rational to accept it without accepting it on the basis of any other propositions or beliefs at all. In fact, they think the Christian ought not to accept belief in God on the basis of argument; to do so is to run the risk of a faith that is unstable and wavering,

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Thus, Bavinck suggests that we believe in the existence of the external world around us, the self and moral laws “directly” and “spontaneously,” without arguments. These beliefs are neither self-evident, nor incorrigible, nor evident to the senses. Bavinck is of the opinion that the same holds for our belief in the existence of God.15 Plantinga endorses this argument (adding that in the same way we believe in the past and in the existence of other minds)16 and develops it in more detail (especially in his book God and Other Minds).17 Calvin’s argument for the proper basicality of the belief in God is a little different. According to him, God created us with a tendency toward belief in Him, a so-called sensus divinitatis.18 The idea is not new: it was suggested in antiquity by

subject to all the wayward whim and fancy of the latest academic fashion.” Moreover, for them “one who takes belief in God as basic is not thereby violating any epistemic duties or revealing a defect in his noetic structure; quite the reverse. The correct or proper way to believe in God, they thought, was not on the basis of arguments from natural theology or anywhere else; the correct way is to take belief in God as basic.” (RBG,72). 15 RBG, 64-65. 16 RBG, 65. 17 GOM, 187-271. 18 “There is within the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, an awareness of divinity. This we take to be beyond controversy. To prevent anyone from taking refuge in the pretense of ignorance, God himself has implanted in all men a certain understanding of his divine majesty… Yet there is, as the eminent pagan says, no nation so barbarous, no people so savage, that they have not a deepseated conviction that there is a God. So deeply does the common conception occupy the minds of all, so tenaciously does it inhere in the hearts of all! Therefore, since from the beginning of the world there has been no region, no city, in short, no household, that could do without religion, there lies in this a tacit confession of a sense of deity inscribed in the hearts of all.” (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, book 1 (translated by Ford Lewis Battles), Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1960, pp. 43-44, cf. RGB, 65-66). An interesting (possible) confirmation of the existence of such a sensus divinitatis can be found in the studies on children’s reasoning done by the cognitive psychologist Justin Barrett – who suggested that they possess an in-born tendency toward faith in God – similarly to the in-born capacity of humans to walk on two feet (a capacity which in certain contexts can be actualized only by humans, not also by other animals): see Justin Barrett, Born Believers: The Science of Children’s Religious Belief, New York: Free Press 2012. Another cognitive psychologist who shares Barrett’s ideas is Jesse Bering (see Jesse Bering, The Belief Instinct: the Psychology of Souls, Destiny and the Meaning of Life, New York: W.W. Norton & Company 2011).

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philosophers like Seneca19 and Cicero (in fact, Calvin quotes a passage from Cicero’s “De Natura Deorum” in support of his position).20 And Barth’s argument for the proper basicality of the belief in God focuses on another aspect: It criticizes the idea of basing belief in God on evidence and arguments as being “inappropriate” for a Christian ‒ because it starts from the standpoint of unbelief. For him any attempt to adduce evidence to persuade the unbeliever is mistaken: If the natural theologian rejects the standpoint of unbelief, he still needs this standpoint to instantiate the process of argumentation (in his attempt to convert the unbeliever), an instance that leads him to mislead (and even deceive) his interlocutor; if, on the other hand, he accepts this standpoint for himself, then “his ultimate commitment” is to “the deliverances of reason” ‒ not to God.21 At this last point, however, Plantinga does not fully share Barth’s position: “If there were good arguments for the existence of God, that would be a fact worth knowing in itself ‒ just as it would be worth knowing (if true) that the analogical argument for other minds is successful.”22 And he adds that one can very well use the standpoint of unbelief only in order to show to the unbeliever that if the offered argument is good, according to what he already believes, his atheism is inconsistent; and this without accepting for herself the standpoint of

19 The following quote from Seneca is relevant: “We are accustomed to give considerable weight to the preconception of all people and our view is that it is an argument that something is true if all people believe it; for example, we conclude that there are gods from this reason among others, that there is implanted in everyone an opinion about gods and there is no culture anywhere so far beyond laws and customs that it does not believe in some gods.” (Seneca, Ep. 117.6, cf. Antonello Orlando, “Seneca on Prolepsis: Greek Sources and Cicero’s Influence,” in Jula Wildberger and Marcia Colish (eds.), Seneca Philosophus, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 2014, p. 46). 20 The fragment from Cicero, although it does not refer to theism (but rather to polytheism) – is relevant: “(Epicurus) alone perceived, first, that the gods exist, because nature herself has imprinted a conception of them on the minds of all mankind. For what nation or what tribe of men is there but possesses untaught some ‘preconception’ of the gods … You see therefore that the foundation (for such it is) of our inquiry has been well and truly laid. For the belief in the gods has not been established by authority, custom or law, but rests on the unanimous and abiding consensus of mankind; their existence is therefore a necessary inference, since we possess an instinctive or rather an innate concept of them; but a belief which all men by nature share must necessarily be true therefore it must be admitted that the gods exist. And since this truth is almost universally accepted not only among philosophers but also among the unlearned, we must admit it as also being an accepted truth that we possess a ‘preconception,’ as I called it above, or ‘prior notion’ of the gods.” (Cicero, De Natura Deorum Academica, I. xvi-xvii (translated by H. Rackham), Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press 1967, pp. 45, 47). 21 RBG,71. 22 RBG, 73.

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unbelief.23 In this sense, one can make ‒ as William Craig (and in slightly different words John Zeis) suggested ‒ a distinction between the idea of knowing that God exists – which might come directly through God’s revelation (or through sensus divinitatis) ‒ and showing that God exists ‒ which means to use arguments to convince other people that God exists (or to show that their “unbelief” in God incoherent).24 But, in any case, Barth seems to be right in stating that for a believer “to accept the standpoint of unbelief is inappropriate, because (in this case) his ultimate commitment is to reason”:25 In this case one’s belief could waver post any intellectual challenge – e.g. the latest philosophical argument in fashion, depending on the success or lack thereof.Plantinga fully endorses this last Barthian point: The standpoint of the believer should be his belief in God. For this reason, he exemplifies this belief as properly basic.

As has been clearly stated, the perspective that belief in God is properly basic is at odds with criterion 1 or 2, because it is neither self-evident, nor incorrigible, nor evident-to-the-senses nor accepted as basic by nearly everyone. Furthermore, Plantinga is of the opinion that a criterion for proper basicality can be private: it does not need to be accepted by every person: Accordingly, criteria for proper basicality must be reached from below rather than above; they should not be presented ex cathedra but argued to and tested by a relevant set of examples. But there is no reason to assume, in advance, that everyone will agree on the examples. The Christian will of course suppose that belief in God is entirely proper and rational; if he does not accept this belief on the basis of other propositions, he will conclude that it is basic for him and quite properly so. Followers of Bertrand Russell and Madelyn Murray O‘Hare may disagree; but how is that relevant? Must my criteria, or those of the Christian community,

23 In this respect Plantinga affirms that a natural theologian “offers or endorses theistic arguments, but why suppose that her own belief in God must be based upon such argument? And if it is not, why suppose she must pretend that it is? Perhaps her aim is to point out to the unbeliever that belief in God follows from other things he already believes, so that he can continue in unbelief (and continue to accept these other beliefs) only on pain of inconsistency. We may hope this knowledge will lead him to give up his unbelief, but in any event, she can tell him quite frankly that her belief in God is not based on its relation to the deliverances of reason.” (RBG, 71). 24 William Lane Craig, “Classical Apologetics” in Steven Cowan (ed.), Five Views on Apologetics, Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House 2000, pp. 28-30, 34, 45-55; Zeis, “Natural Theology: Reformed?,” p. 68. 25 Martin Luther makes in this respect an interesting distinction between the magisterial versus the ministerial use of reason. In its magisterial use, reason puts himself above the Gospel, as a magistrate, judging the truth or the falsity of the Christian message. Luther ferociously attacked this kind of reason, famously calling it “the Devil’s whore.” (Martin Luther, “Sermon Based on Romans 12:3”, in Luther’s Works, ed. by John Doberstein, Augsburg: Augsburg Fortress Publishing 1959, vol. 51, pp. 373-374). By contrast, in his ministerial use, reason submits to (and serves the) Gospel, being a useful instrument for the defense and understanding of faith. In affirming this ministerial use, Luther places himself in the Augustinian-Anselmian tradition which follows the motto: “I believe in order to understand.”

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conform to their examples? Surely not. The Christian community is responsible to its set of examples, not to theirs.26

In this respect Plantinga’s position is at odds with Wittgenstein’s view that no private criterion should be accepted as legitimate, because it does not allow a distinction “between my thinking that something is so and its being so,” by contrast with a public criterion, in which is stipulated “the use of an expression”: Wittgenstein posits “no publicly observable circumstance” that could serve as a criterion for the belief that “God is speaking to me now.” However, Zeis observes that “Wittgenstein’s attack on private criteria is not… universally accepted.” In fact, Plantinga’s view is structured in such a way that the criterion for using the expression “God is speaking to me,” is not utterly private: It is (at least) shared by the Christian community.27 Moreover, Zeis writes that, although he “never had an experience which would justify a claim like ‘God is speaking to me now’,” it would be arrogant (for him) to

26 RBG, 77; however, a serious critique of this way of arguing came from Patrick Lee, who suggested that, if one affirms that God implanted in us a tendency to believe in him in certain circumstances (for example contemplating a starry night), then this starry night does not function for one as evidence for the belief in God, but rather more like a triggering factor, a ground for this belief. But for Lee this belief is not epistemically warranted for a person if she is not aware of the fact that God implanted this tendency in her (Lee appeals here to the internalist principle – rejected by Plantinga – that, in order to know something, one needs to know that one knows (this) something. Moreover, Lee suggests that in sensation and memory (which are sources of properly basic belief, according to Plantinga), we do not have an experience that triggers our belief – as Plantinga argues is the case for the belief in God: On the contrary, in this case ‘the known object itself appears to the knower, and the knower is aware… of that fact, rather than the knower just finding himself having a belief’ triggered by a mechanism implanted in her by God. Lee’s internalist argument is serious ‒ although even here Plantinga would probably insist that – despite these differences ‒ his externalist model allows both types of beliefs to be warranted. And in the case of memory, he would probably insist that this faculty seems to hold a rather medial position between the faculty of sensation and that of sensus divinitatis – because for memory, even if the knower has a kind of phenomenal imagery, this imagery is too partial, fragmentary and indistinct to constitute a basis on which to form a belief (Patrick Lee, “Evidentialism, Plantinga and Faith & Reason,” in Linda Zagzebski (ed.), Rational Faith: Catholic Responses to Reformed Epistemology, pp. 142-145; WPF,192). And even if one cannot deny that between sensation and memory and sensus divinitatis seems to exist a qualitative difference, here Plantinga might argue that these distinct faculties need not be identical types ‒ only analogical (his criterion for sensus divinitatis is private; that for memory is not); and that, despite their differences, both types of faculties fit an externalist interpretation ‒ the beliefs produced by them having warrant without being accepted on the evidential basis of other beliefs (WCB, 342-343). 27 Zeis, “Natural Theology: Reformed?” p. 57.

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suggest that “the same is true about Abraham, Moses, St. Paul, St. Teresa, or Plantinga and Alston for that matter…”28

5.1.4 Answering the Great Pumpkin Objection; Properly Basic Beliefs as Grounded Beliefs However, an ad absurdum type objection is often raised against the above defense (of the belief in God): “What about the Great Pumpkin or Flying Spaghetti Monster demur?” In Plantinga’s words: If belief in God is properly basic, why cannot any belief be properly basic? Could we not say the same for any bizarre aberration we can think of? What about voodoo or astrology? What about the belief that the Great Pumpkin returns every Halloween? Could I properly take that as basic?29

Plantinga responds by emphasizing that there is a relevant difference between the belief in God and the belief in the Great Pumpkin (and this is the case even though the Reformed Epistemologists do not possess “a full-fledged criterion of proper basicality”). Such a (purported) Reformed criterion – along with the aforementioned relevant difference associated with it ‒ needs to reckon with the fact that a properly basic belief, although not based on other beliefs, is not therefore groundless; in his own words “I believe that I am perceiving a tree only after having an experience of a certain type”: in Roderick Chisholm’s language, after “my being appeared treely

28 Ibid., p. 61; in addition to that, Zeis suggests that there is a way in which Plantinga’s view (that private propositions like, “God is speaking to me now,” might be considered properly basic) might be defended: by considering them “privileged access beliefs” ‒ beliefs which are, in William Alston’s view, “justified by having truth-warrant” ‒ their grounds being “not distinguished from the fact which makes them true.” (Zeis, “Natural Theology: Reformed?” p. 63). An example of this kind would be, “I feel sleepy,” ‒ in which case “there is no difference between one’s being sleepy and one’s being conscious that one is feeling sleepy” (Ibid., p. 62); by contrast, there is a clear difference between the propositions I see a table and It seems to me that I see a table: the ground that makes the first proposition true is the second proposition; the fact that makes the proposition true is “that there is a table in front of me.” In the same way, says Zeis, “what would justify my believing that God is speaking to me now is its being grounded in the truth that God is speaking to me now; but being true that God is speaking to me now cannot function as a warrant for anyone else’s believing that God is speaking to me now.” (Ibid., p. 63) It is interesting that, although Zeis sees his model as able to justify Plantinga’s ideas, he also admits that this way of justifying can he also used (for example) by a member of the so-called “Great Pumpkin’s” sect (Ibid., p. 65). Plantinga – as we shall see in the next subsection – is not convinced of this last idea. 29 RBG, 74.

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to.” This experience “plays a crucial role” in the formation and justification of my belief.30 The same thing can be said about the belief in God. In fact, Plantinga suggests various kinds of experiences which might trigger the belief in God’s existence: there is in us a disposition to believe propositions of the sort this flower was created by God or this vast and intricate universe was created by God when we contemplate the flower or behold the starry heavens or think about the vast reaches of the universe… Upon reading the Bible, one may be impressed with a deep sense that God is speaking to him. Upon having done what I know is cheap, or wrong, or wicked, I may feel guilty in God‘s sight and form the belief God disapproves of what I have done. Upon confession and repentance I may feel forgiven, forming the belief God forgives me for what I have done. A person in grave danger may turn to God, asking for his protection and help; and of course he or she then has the belief that God is indeed able to hear and help if he sees fit. When life is sweet and satisfying, a spontaneous sense of gratitude may well up within the soul; someone in this condition may thank and praise the Lord for his goodness, and will of course have the accompanying belief that indeed the Lord is to be thanked and praised. There are therefore many conditions and circumstances that call forth belief in God: guilt, gratitude, danger, a sense of God‘s presence, a sense that he speaks, perception of various parts of the universe.31

Thus, Plantinga’s argument is that this belief is not groundless; therefore, it can be properly basic ‒ by contrast with the belief in the Great Pumpkin, which is groundless indeed. For him: God has implanted in us a natural tendency to see his hand in the world around us; the same cannot be said for the Great Pumpkin, there being… no natural tendency to accept beliefs about the Great Pumpkin.32

However, Hugo Meynell objects that such an argument seems “merely sophistical” unless Plantinga shows us the constituents of his warrant model for belief in God ‒ “other than asserting a tendency to support one’s own beliefs and to undermine those of one’s opponents.”33 In other words, his allegation is that Plantinga is guilty of committing textbook straw man fallacy.

30 RBG, 79 31 RBG, 80-81; of course, in this case we observe that the belief in God’s existence is not, in a strict sense, properly basic; rather beliefs like “God has created all these things,” or “God forgives me” are properly basic. The proposition “There is God” is rather a consequence of these propositions – and therefore only in a loose sense properly basic (RBG, 82). 32 RBG, 78. 33 Hugo Meynell, “Faith, Foundationalism, and Wolterstorff,” in Linda Zagzebski (ed.), Rational Faith: Catholic Responses to Reformed Epistemology, pp. 100-101.

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However, Meynell’s critique lacks the force it intends to have if he only appeals to a “Great Pumpkin” kind of objection. The Great Pumpkin is an invention, just a little playful joke devoid of any possible attribute that could generate a reaction, a belief in any given agent: no human seriously believes in it (There is indeed a small community that pretends to worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but we have no serious devotion here, only a comical attempt to parody Intelligent Design ideas). If a group consciously comes up with such a personage, it would hardly be convincing that they actually believe in him. Very probably they have no experience related to him and no in-born tendency to accept beliefs about him. Regarding this argument, even Michael Martin (a prominent atheist critic of Plantinga’s philosophy of religion) admits it is a non-starter.34 But one might ask a similar, yet a more serious sort of question: how robust is a Plantingian defense against such challengers as voodooism,35 Hinduism, Islam or naturalism? Plantinga admits that one can find other religious models such that if their system of beliefs were true, it could have warrant; in fact, he suggests that theistic religions like “Judaism, Islam, some forms of Hinduism, some forms of Buddhism, some forms of American Indian religion” could agree with his model. However, he adds that the same thing is not true for other belief-systems like “voodooism, or the belief that the earth is flat, or Humean skepticism, or philosophical naturalism.”36 Yet why couldn’t the last set of beliefs be as warranted as the former one?

34 Michael Martin, Atheism: A Philosophical Justification, Philadelphia: Temple University Press 1990, p. 272, cf. WCB, 345. 35 For example, although Michael Martin admits that the “Great Pumpkin Objection” against Plantinga’s model is not valid, he still argues that a similar critique starting from the voodoo religion is valid. Plantinga calls this type of critique “the Son of the Great Pumpkin” objection (WCB, 345). 36 WCB, 350; We need to specify that here Plantinga does not refer only to the possibility of the existence of an analogue of sensus divinitatis in other religions or philosophies and worldviews, but also to an analogue in these systems of beliefs of the more specific Christian idea of the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit (IIHS), a warranted cognitive process which brings Christian belief into existence. According to this model, the things of the Gospel, which are found in the Scripture “are things that Christians come to grasp, believe and endorse by virtue of the work of the Holy Spirit in creating faith in their hearts.” Moreover, according to the model, faith (or the knowledge made possible by faith) has warrant, because this belief “came into existence by a belief-producing process functioning properly in an appropriate cognitive environment, according to a design plan successfully aimed at production of true beliefs.” As we can see, here Plantinga recognizes a significant difference between the extended model and other cases of warranted belief. The extended model does not view the belief in question as produced by a natural faculty, but by a cognitive process, which involves a special activity on the part of the Holy Spirit. We will focus on this extended model in another chapter.

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Because ‒ Plantinga argues – the flat-earthers’ belief, although it once seemed to have warrant for certain people, strong later defeaters convinced the great majority that it does not37 (and Plantinga will argue, as we shall see in another section, that ‒ by contrast ‒ Christianity does not have such strong and convincing defeaters). As regards Humean skepticism, Plantinga argues it does not have warrant because it is self-defeating; if the model is true, then it is also ‒ according to its own definition ‒ unreliable (and therefore unwarranted).38 And regarding naturalism, as Plantinga repeatedly argues, if it is true that our cognitive faculties have emerged only by the mediation of the mutation/natural selection process (without any kind of divine guidance), then it is most likely the case that they are not reliable ‒ in which case the beliefs they produce, including the purported one that “naturalism is true,” do not have warrant.39 Moreover, if the idea that God has implanted in humans a natural tendency to believe in him seems plausible to a theist, the same cannot be said (in our opinion) about a naturalist ‒ for whom no God (or spirit) is available to implant in his mind (along the evolutionary process) an analogue “sensus atheismus.” However, it seems unclear (to us) why voodooism, if true, cannot offer – following the same model – a warranted belief in its gods. Why should sensus divinitatis be attributed only to theistic gods, but not also to the gods of this religion? One should not forget that, from a Christian point of view ‒ according to what Apostle Paul says in the first chapter of his Epistle to the Romans ‒ the polytheistic form of religiosity is a degeneration of original theism. And one should also take into account the fact that the hypothesis of sensus divinitatis was initially suggested (in antiquity) by three polytheist thinkers: Epicurus, Cicero and Seneca.40 Thus, why should the voodooists’ belief in their gods not be considered an output of sensus divinitatis? We have addressed this problem in an exchange of e-mails with Dr. Plantinga. He told us that, when writing Warranted Christian Belief, he was not aware that voodooism also implies belief in polytheism, in more personal divinities. But as soon as he apprehended this, he agreed that, like many other religions, voodooism allows the possibility of an analogue of sensus divinitatis. In this way, he clarified

37 WCB, 352-353. 38 WCB, 350. 39 WCB, 350-351. 40 See in this sense: Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Ep. 117.6, cf. Antonello Orlando, “Seneca on Prolepsis: Greek Sources and Cicero’s Influence,” in Seneca Philosophus, ed. by Jula Wildberger and Marcia Colish, Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter 2014, p. 46; Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Natura Deorum, trans. by Harris Rackham, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1967, pp. 45, 47.

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to us that such an analogue is plausible not only for theistic religions, but for any religion that allows the existence of personal gods. This explanation seems plausible. A universe without personhood does not allow for the existence of any real intention in it. Conversely, the possibility of a sensus divinitatis has to do with the intentions of a “supernatural” person (regardless of whether god or spirit) in helping humans gain belief in her existence through the mediation of such a cognitive mechanism.

5.1.5 Philip Quinn’s Critique of Plantinga’s Inductive Criterion for Proper Basicality However, for Philip Quinn, the inductive criterion for proper basicality proposed by Plantinga “would seldom, if ever, be properly basic for intellectually sophisticated adult theists in our culture.”41 The problem these sophisticated adult theists encounter is a culture rich in many potential and substantial defeaters of their theistic beliefs. According to Quinn: it seems plausible to suppose that conditions are right for propositions like ‘God is speaking to me’ and ‘God disapproves of what I have done’ to be... properly basic for me only if (i) either I have no sufficiently substantial reason to think that any of their potential defeaters is true, or (ii) I do have some such reason, but for each such reason I have, I have an even better reason for thinking the potential defeater in question is false.42

And Quinn affirms that for him the aforementioned propositions are not properly basic, because he knows many substantial reasons for denying that God exists and because it is not the case that for each of these substantial reasons he knows a better reason able to defeat it.43 What are the substantial reasons against belief in God (to which Quinn refers)? Firstly, the atheological argument from evil, and secondly theories which affirm that the belief in God is either illusory or projective, like those suggested by Marx and Freud. What is Plantinga’s answer to these critiques?

41 Philip Quinn, “On Finding the Foundations of Theism”, in Kelly James Clark (ed.), Readings in the Philosophy of Religion, Peterborough: Broadview Press 2008, p. 208. 42 Philip Quinn, “The Foundations of Theism,” in Faith and Philosophy, Vol. 2, No. 4. October 1985, p. 483. 43 A similar critique of Plantinga’s perspective on proper basicality can be found in John Greco’s article “Natural Theology and Theistic Knowledge”, in Zagzebski (ed.), Rational Faith: Catholic Responses to Reformed Epistemology, pp. 192-195.

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Firstly, he tackles Marx and Freud’ theories; accordingly, he does not find them to be reasonably cogent, and furthermore the only role they might play is that of providing a naturalist explanation for the universality of religious belief (and eventually of discrediting religious belief “by tracing it to a disreputable source.”)44 As Plantinga will later argue (in WCB), if theism is false, maybe these theories would be a good way of thinking about it; but if theism is true, these theories cannot constitute defeaters for a believer45). And even if these theories could be convincing for some people, one could in the same way argue that St. Paul’s argument (from Romans 1) – according to which failure to believe in God is caused by human sin and rebellion ‒ should be equally convincing. On the other hand, the atheological argument from evil poses (in Plantinga’s opinion) a tougher challenge than the critiques of Marx and Freud (Quinn considers its most plausible version – the probabilistic one.). However, Plantinga suggests that no atheologian has yet developed a successful probabilistic argument from evil.46 Moreover, Plantinga adds another objection to Quinn’s critique: Quinn suggests that if we take a proposition (p) as properly basic, but we also have substantial reason to believe that a certain defeater (q) is incompatible with this proposition, then it would be irrational to continue believing in (p) as long as we have not found whatsoever evidence (r) would disprove defeater (q). However, Plantinga doubts

44 FTR, 308. 45 WCB, 368; Plantinga suggests that if Freud’s complaint – that wish fulfillment is the source theistic belief – is to be successful, it should meet two conditions: It must show that theistic belief indeed arises from a mechanism of wishful thinking, and it must show that this mechanism “is not aimed at the production of true beliefs” (WCB, 194-195). Plantinga argues – convincingly in our opinion ‒ that Freud did not prove the first condition (WCB, 194-198). But even if this condition were fulfilled, this would not prove that theistic belief has no warrant. Freud should prove also the second condition: that the wish fulfillment mechanism is not aimed at the production of true beliefs. But Freud has not proved this second point either. He takes for granted the idea that theism is false, and therefore accepts apriori that the mechanism is not aimed towards truth. But, of course, a theist could here suggest that if God exists, then perhaps he has designed us in such a way that we might come to know him in this way; therefore, if he is right, then the mechanism is aimed toward truth (WCB, 197-198). 46 FTR, 309. In this sense he argues that the probabilistic argument from evil deals with probability theory, more precisely with Bayes Theorem ‒ and that we meet here difficulties in assessing the apriori and aposteriori probabilities of the existence of God in the context of evil: As a result, the atheological argument from evil is subjective ‒ its value depending on the presuppositions of the person who evaluates it (PAE, 10-18, 48).

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that reason (r) needs to be distinct from (p) if one is to remain rational in believing (p) in spite of (q).47 He offers in this respect an example: I write a letter to a colleague, trying to bribe him to write the Endowment a glowing letter on my behalf; he indignantly refuses and sends the letter to my chairman. The letter disappears from the chairman‘s office under mysterious circumstances. I have a motive for stealing it… ; and I have been known to do such things in the past… The evidence against me is very strong; my colleagues reproach me for such underhanded behaviour and treat me with evident distaste. The facts of the matter, however, are that I didn’t steal the letter and in fact spent the entire afternoon in question on a solitary walk in the woods; furthermore, I clearly remember spending that afternoon walking in the wood.48

The person in the above example can undoubtedly continue believing in her innocence and it would be the right thing to do, despite all known defeaters. Thus, we do not necessarily need to find a defeater against the defeater of our belief in God in order to remain rational in holding this belief. Plantinga suggests that in this case, Quinn’s quoted proposition can be cashed in this way: If you believe (p) in the basic way and you have reason to believe in a defeater (q) of (p), then if you are to be rational in continuing to believe (p) in this way, (p) must have more warrant for you then (q) does.49 In principle we do not always have the advantage of our belief in God having more warrant than its defeater. In this respect, Plantinga agrees ‒ in spite of some critics who suggested the contrary ‒ that the fact that belief in God is properly basic does not imply “that it is immune to argument, objection or defeat”; it is as sensible to objection as any other type of belief which is accepted in a basic way.50 In this case, we need to find, as Quinn suggested, a defeater against the defeater of our theistic belief. But this extrinsic defeater, says Plantinga: need not be evidence for the falsehood of those defeaters; they may instead undercut the alleged defeaters; they may be for example, refutations of atheological arguments (and here Christian philosophers can clearly be of service to the rest of Christian community).51

However, the web of issues expands further: What will happen if, eventually, the extrinsic defeater needs also to be utilized as evidence for the falsehood of the

47 FTR, 310. 48 Ibid. 49 FTR, 311. 50 WCB, 343-344. 51 FTR, 312.

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defeaters; what if we could not even find an undercutter for the defeater? In this case, observes Quinn ‒ in his last rebuttal to Plantinga’s reply ‒ in order to rescue basic theistic belief, we need natural theology: If basic theistic beliefs (such as ‘God is speaking to me’) do not in such circumstances have enough warrant to serve as intrinsic defeater- defeaters of all the potential defeaters of theism, natural theology might come to the theist‘s rescue. Suppose there is a sound deductive argument for the existence of God. If the theist comes to see that it is valid and to know its premises and, bases belief in God on those premises, belief in God will come to have a great deal of warrant for the theist. The increment in warrant might well be sufficiently large that belief in God comes to have more warrant for the theist than all its potential defeaters. So this is another way in which natural theology might improve the theist’s epistemic situation. Its fate, then, may turn out to be no small matter even if it is conceded to the Reformed Epistemologist that belief in God can be properly basic on certain special conditions.52

What would Plantinga’s reaction be in response to this fragment? It is most likely the case that he would not disagree very much with this suggestion. As Quinn himself observes,53 Plantinga affirms ‒ in a passage from “Reason and Belief in God” ‒ that “natural theology could be useful in helping someone move from unbelief to belief.”54 We may add here his statement from the article “Two Dozen (or so) Theistic Arguments” ‒ according to which theistic arguments “can serve to bolster and confirm… , perhaps to convince.”55 (However, as we have seen, Plantinga’s tendency is to affirm that, in reality, either the belief in God has enough warrant to serve as intrinsic defeater, or its supposedly defeaters can be defeated by extrinsic undercutters rather than by extrinsic counterevidences). The greater disagreement between Quinn and Plantinga might rather come – as Quinn suggests – in their evaluation of the need for natural theology among the contemporary adult theists in the USA. For Quinn, many American theists “need natural theology” if they want to escape irrationality in their theistic belief. For Plantinga ‒ believes Quinn ‒ not so many… 56

52 Philip Quinn, “The Foundations of Theism Again: A Rejoinder to Plantinga,” in Linda Zagzebski (ed.), Rational Faith: Catholic Responses to Reformed Epistemology, p. 39 53 Ibid., p. 34. 54 RBG, 73. 55 TDTA, 210. 56 Quinn, “The Foundations of Theism Again: A Rejoinder to Plantinga,” p. 44.

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5.2  Proper Basicality with Respect to Warrant Up until this section we have focused on the subject of proper basicality with respect to justification. As we know, according to this type of proper basicality, a belief is properly basic for a person when it is, firstly, basic for her, and, secondly, when that person is justified in believing it. This kind of proper basicality was mainly the subject of Plantinga’s article “Reason and Belief in God” – where he focused on answering the evidentialist objections against theistic belief. His evaluation of this subject continues to be optimistic in his later book Warranted Christian Belief: It is really pretty obvious that a believer in God is or can be deontologically justified. You think about the matter carefully and at length, considering the Freud & Marx complaint and all the rest, but it seems clear or obvious… that there is such a person as God: how could someone sensibly claim that you were being irresponsible or derelict with respect to some epistemic duty? 57

However, Plantinga adds that there is another sense in which a belief can be properly basic: if it is, firstly, basic for a person, and secondly, if it has warrant. For example, Plantinga argues that perceptual beliefs are properly basic in this respect: They are usually accepted as basic beliefs, and they usually have warrant – which means, according to his formulation of this concept, that they are produced by cognitive faculties in a congenial epistemic environment according to a design plan successfully aimed at truth. According to Plantinga’s epistemological model, “theistic belief produced by sensus divinitatis can also be properly basic with respect to warrant;”58 our cognitive faculties were designed by God. The purpose of sensus divinitatis ‒ in line with God’s design ‒ is to offer us true beliefs about God, when it works properly. We can think of the sensus divinitatis cognitive faculty as “an input-output device” which encodes (triggering) circumstances (like seeing the splendour of a starry night, the beauty of a flower, the guilt after having done something wrong, the perception of forgiveness after confession and repentance) as input, “and issues as output theistic beliefs.”59 If these beliefs are strong enough, they become knowledge. Plantinga’s externalist epistemological perspective claims that a person who knows something – for example, knows that God exists (by way of the sensus divinitatis) – does not need to know that she knows this fact. She needs not to know that

57 WCB, 179. 58 WCB, 179-180. 59 WCB, 174-175.

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she has a faculty (sensus divinitatis) which instantiated this belief.60 The important feature is only that this faculty exists, and that it works properly. Plantinga needs this externalist model because it helps him to show how many people (especially those who are less theologically informed) can know that God exists even if they cannot explain how they got this knowledge. Moreover, it offers him a kind of proper basicality that is graded, to explain how the warrant of a belief can increase or decrease; and it gives him a pass (in both its justification and warrant version) ‒ an explanation for the Barthian suggestion that belief in God should not depend on the last fashion of the philosophical argumentation on this matter.61

60 WCB, 180. 61 At the last point the observation could be made that this Barthian suggestion can be accommodated ‒ at least in a certain sense ‒ by Patrick Lee’s reply to evidentialism. Thus, Lee denies – against the evidentialists (who proportion a belief to the degree of evidence brought in its support) ‒ that a belief needs to be epistemically warranted if it is to be morally justified. Instead, he argues that a religious belief ‒ and the certainty associated with it ‒ is morally justified if one supplements the evidence available with a desire for simultaneously respecting other human goods than the truth (which is already connected to the evidence). (Lee, “Evidentialism, Plantinga and Faith & Reason,” pp. 152, 159). For example, in a marriage proposal a woman can accept the respective proposal after seeing some signs that her future husband is a good person and his claims to love her are credible, “although she cannot prove that his proposal is sincere.” In the same way, there are signs that God is speaking “in the words and deeds of the prophets and of Jesus” (and that he invites us to a “personal communion” with him). But the Christian act of acceptance of this invitation ‒ and the certainty connected to this act ‒ “are motivated not just by the evidence, but also by a desire for the personal communion offered.” (Ibid., pp. 153-154) This perspective (which is greatly influenced by John Henry Newman) can in a sense be an answer to the aforementioned Barthian complaint, because, according to this model, it is possible to believe in God in a proper way even when the balance seems to incline against belief. One reason for this is the fact that sometimes the available evidence can be misleading; trust can thus give no assent to what seems to speak against our religious convictions (Ibid., p. 157). However, this model would probably not be acceptable for Plantinga, because it still needs at least a certain amount of evidence before deciding to believe; and Plantinga, like Barth and Calvin, has the opinion that evidences are not necessary for belief (and this despite the fact that he himself is of the opinion that certain arguments for the existence of God are valid).

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5.3 Conclusion In conclusion an important idea needs to be mentioned: A legitimate question related to Plantinga’s understanding of the way in which people arrive at the belief in God is: How verisimilar is his model of proper basicality? His answer is that the validity of the model depends on the existence of its “object”: If God exists, this idea of sensus divinitatis becomes plausible. If God does not exist, it loses its plausibility too.62 In Plantinga’s words, if theism is true, then any de jure objection against theism is closely related to the correlated de facto objection against it.63 As regards our pursuit, if the Plantingian general model of warrant (presented already in chapter 2) is valid and God indeed exists, then the application of this model to the idea of sensus divinitatis (which was the main subject of the present chapter) becomes at least a possible epistemological explanation for (and justification of) the existence of theistic belief. But one might raise in the end the following complaint: How useful is this approach? Is it that important to know that theistic belief is warranted if God exists? The answer might be “yes” – because there is a category of atheists who say “we cannot prove that God does not exist, but we can bring evidence that belief in him is irrational: the fact that there are not enough arguments for his existence and the fact that there are many counterarguments against it. And if belief in God is irrational, then one should avoid it.” As we have seen, Plantinga regards this objection as useless. Arguments do not play an essential role for a warranted theistic belief. If God exists, then belief in him is warranted ‒ by mediation of sensus divinitatis ‒ despite an eventual lack of arguments (although to him, as we will see, some arguments still seem plausible ‒ and none of the potential counterarguments are successful defeaters).

62 WCB, 186-189. 63 WCB, 350.

6 Comparison of Plantinga’s and Kierkegaard’s Views Regarding the Knowledge about the Existence of God Despite some inevitable differences, one can find many similarities between Kierkegaard and Plantinga in what concerns their opinion about the belief in God’s existence. Climacus, a pseudonym who – as we shall see in the next chapter ‒ resembles Kierkegaard’s position, believed that the knowledge of God’s existence is somehow “built in our human consciousness.”1 Thus, in a well-known passage from Concluding Unscientific Postscript, he wrote ‒ concerning all attempts to demonstrate God’s existence ‒ that God is always in front of our nose, and therefore any attempt to demonstrate his existence is ludicrous.2 This knowledge belongs to the immanent metaphysical knowledge, that kind of knowledge which is a subject of Socratic recollection. This knowledge incorporates an objective side (which has to do with such domains of reality as mathematics and ontology/logic ‒ which are indifferent to the existence of the concrete individual)3 and a subjective side (interested in the individual’s existence, which incorporates the “knowledge that there is a God,” the knowledge that each individual has a soul, and the knowledge that there are eternally valid norms for human behavior).4 If Kierkegaard regards belief in God’s existence as belonging to a kind of certain and universal human knowledge which can be discovered by everybody through recollection at a certain stage in life (similarly to mathematical truths), Plantinga regards belief in God as properly basic – a warranted belief that is the product of a reliable faculty whose design plan is successfully aimed at truth (like all other human cognitive faculties). Thus, according to both thinkers this belief represents quasi-universal knowledge that is essentially a product of our subjectivity (For Kierkegaard this knowledge is mediated by inwardness, for Plantinga it is private), which in certain circumstances can be made accessible to any of us. However, there is a difference in their approach to the problem: Kierkegaard posits that all people believe in God; yet he offers no justification for the rationality

1 Piety, Ways of Knowing, p.117. 2 SKS 7, 495 / CUP1, 545. 3 SKS 27, 271 / KJN 11.1, 270; SKS 19, 388 / KJN 3, 386. 4 Piety, Ways of Knowing, pp. 116, 128; “With respect to the existence of God, immortality, etc., in short, with respect to all problems of immanence, recollection applies; it exists altogether in every man, only he does not know it…” (Pap. V B 40 / JP 3, 3606). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111334769-006

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of holding such a belief without any argument. This stance could be easily taken by its critics as an instance of irrational fideism. In dealing with such a charge – as Evans observed – Plantinga’s model might be a welcome contribution to the debate, because it suggests that this accusation of irrationality (in holding this belief) is not justifiable.5 Although his argument is mainly negative, only showing the lack of validity of those principles of proper basicality which exclude (or do not cover) the idea of belief in God, it is still sufficiently strong to eliminate this idea of the stigma of irrationality.6 It is essential to highlight the difference between the two thinkers in their approach to the subject pertaining to construal of arguments for God’s existence. We saw that Plantinga did not refuse them as tools to increase the warrant of theistic belief – when this belief is attacked by some defeaters. Kierkegaard on the other hand seems (at least prima facie) to reject any such arguments, considering any use of them a ludicrous sign of ignoring God’s presence. However, belief in God is for Kierkegaard deeply connected with solving the problem of despair ‒ and this might constitute an eventual pragmatic argument for the existence of God.7 The same belief is also essentially connected to the ethical realm: in fact, it seems that Climacus indirectly accepts a kind of moral argument for the existence of God, by suggesting – pace Roberts and Evans ‒ that divine authority constitutes the fundament of ethics.8 Thus, despite his claims to the contrary, the arguments seem not totally excluded from his approach to this subject. Yet framing this solution in response to despair and the ethical realm invites other problems: why should we believe that the (pragmatic) need for relief in despair would lead someone to God? Or that discovering the ethical path is a good guide toward divinity? Kierkegaard suggested that, when we approach God in a certain way (with a certain subjectivity), he we will help us to find him: “the remarkable thing is that there is a How that has the property that when it is precisely indicated, the What is also given – that this is the How of “faith”. Here, indeed, maximum inwardness is in fact shown to be objectivity.”9 Here again, Plantinga’s externalist model of warrant – with its “sensus divinitatis” ‒ that faculty which functions according to a design plan successfully aimed

5 Evans, “Kierkegaard and Plantinga on Belief in God: Subjectivity as the Ground of Properly Basic Religious Beliefs,” p. 173. 6 Ibid., p. 172. 7 Schulz, “Conversion, truth and rationality,” pp. 191-193. 8 Roberts and Evans, “Ethics,” p. 215. 9 SKS 22, 414 / KJN 6, 420 (the author’s emphasis).

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at truth and offers belief in God as output ‒ might help us better to comprehend the situation: If there is a God and he created us beings capable of finding relief from existential despair when believing in his existence, then we are also justified in believing that our pragmatic religious solution (in dealing with despair) will lead us to truth. Again, God might have created us in such a way that ‒ when realizing the infinity of the ethical (in our lives) – we might start believing in him. Despair and ethical experience might be ‒ in Plantinga’s words – “triggering” factors for arriving, via sensus divinitatis, at belief in God. And finally, Kierkegaard and Plantinga share similar views regarding the reason why not all humans believe in God ‒ namely the problem of sin. For Plantinga the doctrine of original sin provides a possible way to address this empirical defeater: it suggests that, due to the presence of sin, the function of the sensus divinitatis is (more or less) damaged (or corrupted) in almost all human beings. In a similar vein, for Kierkegaard belief in God is not shared by all people, because some of them “do not want to allow this knowledge to control their minds.”10 However, if we explain unbelief through the suppression caused by sin, the idea will resound to many atheists as cheap ad hominem. Therefore, if Plantinga’s discussion were to stop here, something would be missing in his story. Fortunately, Kierkegaard seems to offer a welcome contribution to this problem ‒ by adding that religious knowledge is mediated through “inwardness.” The dependency of the knowledge of God on inwardness explains why this knowledge is not universal. When one person sins, she “fails to be herself,” which means ‒ according to Sickness unto Death ‒ that she is “failing to be grounded in God.” This means a lack of inwardness, which in turn blocks someone’s ability to know God.11 Certainly, an atheist or agnostic might not find this argument to be any different from that of Plantinga. But what makes Kierkegaard’s “inwardness”

10 Pap. V B 40 / JP 3, 3606. 11 Evans, “Kierkegaard and Plantinga on Belief in God”, p. 181; a theological question might be raised in this context: The sinner who due to her sinfulness requires God most urgently is separated from the relieving faith in God by this same sinfulness. How does God deal with this paradox – according to Kierkegaard? The answer would be that God always allows humans freedom either to draw more to him or to reject him. The lack of access to the objective religious truth is not the real problem of the sinner, but the fact that either she refuses to take steps toward the ethical truth (when confronted with it in the aesthetic stage), or is aware of her sinfulness but does not seek any relief of it (in the ethical stage – and perhaps in the religious stage A); otherwise, if she seeks help, God is always willing to offer it to her.

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solution more convincing is its in-detail analysis, dialectical subtlety and existential depth. Kierkegaard’s contribution to the subject not only proffers an answer to the accusation of “ad hominem” against Plantinga’s model, but also ‒ as Evans observed ‒ carries additional welcomed consequences: “If the knowledge of God is conditioned by inwardness, human freedom and equality are protected.” Moreover, this knowledge can bring with it spiritual development and a certain awareness of God’s nature.12

12 Evans, “Kierkegaard and Plantinga on Belief in God”, p. 180.

III Arguments for God’s Existence

7 Climacus and the Arguments for God’s Existence 7.1 Introduction Kierkegaard’s rejection of the arguments for the existence of God is well known. In this chapter we will try to evaluate his pseudonym Johannes Climacus’ position on this issue. In Philosophical Fragments, Climacus dedicates a whole section to this problem: he starts from the theme of self-knowledge in Socrates and observes that it leads to a collision with the unknown.1 In this unknown can be found the divine (or, more precisely, the divine can be understood as being the unknown):2 But what is this unknown against which the understanding in its paradoxical passion collides and which even disturbs man and his self-knowledge? It is the unknown. But it is not a human being, insofar as he knows man, or anything else that he knows. Therefore, let us call this unknown the god.3

In this context of negative theology, Climacus discusses the arguments for the existence of God and finds them unconvincing. In fact, he rejects both positive and negative kinds of arguments for God’s existence. We must not mistakenly believe that negative theology would be a better path for attaining knowledge of God than natural theology. All attempts to know the divine through the mediation of reason are in his view doomed to fail. God’s revelation, his initiative to reveal himself to us, is the only way human beings may know him.4 Accordingly, in this article, we will focus only on Climacus’ attempts to evaluate and reject the positive arguments for the existence of God. However, before making this evaluation, we will turn briefly to some problems raised by the relation between Kierkegaard, the pseudonymous author Johannes Climacus, and the aforementioned counter-arguments.

1 Evans, Passionate Reason, p. 63. 2 In this respect, Climacus seems to have something in common with Schleiermacher, who famously argued that religion can be localized in feeling (Gefühl), and that this feeling is related to our self-consciousness (Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, [ed. by H.R. Mackintosh and J.S. Stewart], Bloomsbury: T&T Clark 1999, pp. 5-17). When we are self-conscious, we are also conscious of the fact that we are limited. We are thus aware of our dependence on something that exists beyond ourselves, experiencing a feeling of absolute dependence—which in fact represents our consciousness of being in relation to God. However, Climacus’ view is similar to Schleiermacher’s only at first glance. In the end, he will reject this negative approach to the divine, just as he rejects the positive approaches. 3 SKS 4, 207 / PF, 39. 4 Evans, Passionate Reason, pp.72-73. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111334769-007

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On the one hand, one may inquire to what degree Climacus’ ideas coincide with those of Kierkegaard; we have touched in part this subject in the first chapter. As we have already seen in chapter 1, Kierkegaard demanded that one make a distinction between his authorship and that of the pseudonymous authors: If a person would quote a particular passage from his books, she should in all cases cite the respective pseudonymous author’s name.5 For this reason, we will invariably follow this rule, always quoting Climacus as the author of the counter-arguments under discussion. On the other hand, one should not forget that Kierkegaard initially wrote the Fragments under his own name; only later did he replace it with that of Johannes Climacus.6 Even then, Kierkegaard signed the title page of the book with his own name as its editor. Moreover, he did the same for the other book authored by the pseudonym Climacus, Concluding Unscientific Postscript.7 This might suggest a commonality of thinking between Kierkegaard and Climacus, though how much commonality is difficult to appreciate. According to Evans, Climacus’ views coincide in many respects with those of Kierkegaard, with the key difference that Climacus sees himself as a humorist and not a Christian ‒ conversely from Kierkegaard’s apparent view of himself.8 Moreover, we should add that Climacus’ books contain many ideas similar to those of the non-pseudonymous writings authored by Kierkegaard in the same period. Additionally, Kierkegaard affirmed in The Point of View for My Work as an Author that all his writings, including the pseudonymous ones, have a religious intention behind them.9 Throughout, he is a “maieutic” author who wants to entice his readers into choosing an ethico-religious way of existing.10 Nevertheless, in contrast to the above-mentioned considerations, there are authors who argue against a deep commonality of thinking between Climacus and Kierkegaard. In this, they follow, as already mentioned in chapter 1, the urging of Peter Kierkegaard, Søren’s brother, who famously said that one should not believe what Søren affirms even when he writes under his own name.11 In other words, ‘Søren Kierkegaard’ is just another pseudonym. Mackey takes this position, stating that “when a man fabricates as many masks to hide behind as Kierkegaard does,

5 Pap. X-6 B 145 / JP 6, 6786; Westphal, Becoming a Self, p. 8; Evans, Kierkegaard: An Introduction, p. 25. 6 Niels Thulstrup, “Commentator’s Introduction,” in PF, lxxxv; Evans, Passionate Reason, pp. 6-7. 7 Evans, Kierkegaard: An Introduction, p. 27. 8 Evans, Passionate Reason, pp. 10-12. 9 SKS 13, 517 / PV, 23. 10 Tilo Wesche, Kierkegaard: Eine philosophische Einführung, Stuttgart: Philip Reclam 2003, pp. 169171, 174. 11 Glahn and Nyegard (eds.), Peter Christian Kierkegaards Samlede Skrifter, vol. 4, p. 125.

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one cannot trust his (purportedly) direct asseverations.”12 This view is apparently shared by Edward Mooney, with the difference that the latter rejects the supposition that the variety of masks presented by Kierkegaard “would betray a penchant for deception.”13 To balance Peter’s statements, however, one should observe that he might have had a personal interest in denying the veracity of Søren’s direct authorship ‒ especially due to his brother’s polemics against the Danish church hierarchy.14 Furthermore, Søren’s reaction to his brother’s statement was quite violent. This was the main motive behind his declination to welcome Peter to his home, and, in the end, to the hospital, and to his deathbed.15 Additionally, there are authors, such as Roberts, who suggest we read in an ironic key such objections to the arguments for God’s existence as we find in the “Interlude” of the Philosophical Fragments. In Roberts’ view, they are bad arguments, parodies of genuine proofs, witnessing the humoristic character of Climacus, their pseudonymous author.16 Accordingly, it would be interesting to assess the degree to which Climacus’ ideas (including the objections evaluated in this article) truly belong to Kierkegaard, and, perhaps, to what degree we should read them ironically. However, in what follows, we choose not to focus on this subject, as, in a certain sense, it is not a matter of concern for this inquiry. Whether or not we can read Kierkegaard’s thoughts behind Climacus’ ideas, or whether or not the Climacean writings reflect (in a sober way) the former’s convictions, neither of these posibilities essentially have an effect on our reconstruction and assessment of the arguments presented. Finally, although we quote Climacus as the author throughout, this inquiry consistently seeks to assess the arguments themselves, not to guess at Climacus’ intentions. This strategy should agree with Climacus’ own position, who in some places frankly admits that he has no opinions about the issues he raises.17 As Howard and Edna Hong stated, “no thinker and writer ever tried as Kierkegaard did to leave the reader alone with the work. The dialectic of thought and existence is properly that

12 Louis Mackey, Points of View: Readings of Kierkegaard, Tallahassee: Florida State University Press 1986, pp. 187-190. 13 Edward Mooney, “Pseudonyms and ‘Style’,” in The Oxford Handbook of Kierkegaard (ed. by John Lipitt and George Pattison), Oxford: Oxford University Press 2013, pp. 196-197. 14 Mooney, “Pseudonyms and ‘Style’,” p. 196. 15 Hannay, Kierkegaard: A Biography, pp. 422-423. 16 Robert Roberts, Faith, Reason and History: Rethinking Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments, Macon: Mercer University Press 1986, p. 7: cf. Evans, Passionate Reason, p. 6. 17 Westphal, Becoming a Self, p. 15.

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of the reader with the work, not of the reader’s curious interest in the writer.”18 This attitude, one might add, corresponds to the modern Gadamerian approach to hermeneutics, which suggests that in interpreting a text the main task of a hermeneutician is not to guess at the intentions of the author, but rather to understand the text itself (even if this understanding is inevitably coloured by the subjectivity of the interpreter).19 In brief, we now intend to focus on an evaluation of Climacus’ position concerning the arguments for God’s existence. Firstly, he offers two general objections against these kinds of arguments. When dealing with the second of these objections, he refutes specifically the ontological argument. Secondly, he offers a critique of the teleological argument. And, thirdly, in Concluding Unscientific Postscript, he proposes an ethico-religious objection to these types of arguments. In what follows, we offer an evaluation of these aforementioned arguments.

7.2 The First General Objection Climacus’ first objection is formulated in the following way: It hardly occurs to the understanding to want to demonstrate that this unknown (the god) exists. If, namely, the god does not exist, then of course it is impossible to demonstrate it. But if he does exist, then it is foolishness to want to demonstrate it, since I, in the very moment the demonstration commences, would presuppose it not as doubtful ‒ which a presupposition cannot be, inasmuch as it is a presupposition ‒ but as decided, because otherwise I would not begin, easily perceiving that the whole thing would be impossible if he did not exist.20

Climacus’ reasoning seems to proceed as follows: There are only two possibilities; either God exists or not. 1. If God does not exist, then we cannot prove (or offer valid arguments) that he exists ‒ because no such kind of argument exists. 2. If God does exist, however,

18 See the preface of Gregor Malantschuk, Kierkegaard’s Thought, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1971, p. viii: cf. Westphal, Becoming a Self, p.15. 19 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald Marshall, London: Continuum Publishing Group 2006, pp. 180-184, 296-297; Westphal, Becoming a Self, pp. 9-10; see also Gadamer’s meaning of understanding as “agreement” (Verständigung), in Jean Grondin, “Gadamer’s Basic Understanding of Understanding” in The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer, ed. by Robert Dostal, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2010, pp. 39-42. 20 SKS 4, 207 / PF, 39.

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a. nobody would try to prove his existence if she did not already accept presupposed it; b. but if she already presupposed his existence, then there is no necessity of trying to prove it.21 The first horn of the dilemma (1) seems (apparently) evident: If God does not exist (objectively) the arguments for his existence cannot be valid. However, Schulz saw a problem with this quasi-evident statement: The aforementioned fact does not imply that the attempt to prove God’s existence is futile. A person might accept the existence of God as a hypothesis that needs to be proven even if God does not exist. For, the respective person might be ignorant about God’s non-existence (the non-existence of God being an objective fact to which the arguer does not have access), and as a result the person is justified in her attempt to prove it.22 Or, if one is an atheist, convinced that God does not exist (the subjective understanding of the

21 Evans, Passionate Reason, p. 65. 22 Heiko Schulz, “A Phenomenological Proof? The Challenge of Arguing for God in Kierkegaard’s Pseudonymous Authorship,” in Kierkegaard as Phenomenologist: An Experiment, ed. by Jeffrey Hanson, Evanston: Northwestern University Press 2010, p. 104. It must be observed that there are two ways of understanding Climacus’ objection (valid for both horns of the dilemma). Firstly, one can see God’s existence (or non-existence) as an objective fact. In fact, this is the main (stated) premise of the argument. Secondly, one can see the objection as referring to the subjective conviction of the arguer regarding God’s existence (or non-existence). In fact, this subjective conviction seems to be the real premise of the argument, which is especially clear in the second horn of the dilemma. With this objective-subjective dichotomy, one can see a certain confusion in Climacus’ argument: the existence (or non-existence) of God is an objective possibility. To know that God exists (or not) is not a fact to which a person has direct access: the truth about God’s existence and non-existence is a matter of externalist epistemology. However, the conviction that God exists (or not) is rather a subjective fact, to which a person has direct access, being a matter of internalist epistemology. Climacus seems to jump illegitimately from the objective reality of God’s existence (or non-existence) to the subjective conviction about God’s existence (or non-existence). It is evident that, although God might exist, a person could have, from a subjective point of view, at least three options: she could be convinced that he exists (because she has a certain intuition or a certain good ‒ or apparently good ‒ argument in this respect); she could have doubts that he exists (because she might not have such good arguments, or because no such arguments exist); or she could even be convinced that he does not exist (because she might not possess serious arguments for his existence, and she might also possess some apparently good arguments against his existence). A similar kind of judgment can be made for the case in which God might not exist. In any case, from a subjective point of view, as we could see, there are not only two options (the conviction that God exists and the conviction that God does not exist) ‒ as Climacus’ suggested; there are also the options of agnosticism, of doubt, of probable existence, etc.

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objection), one might try to formulate an argument for God’s existence only to show that it fails.23 The second horn of the dilemma (2) seems to be even less convincing. For one, even if the idea (2.a) that without being convinced of God’s existence nobody will try to prove it is psychologically plausible, it is not evident that this rule is without exceptions. Someone might not be convinced of God’s existence but still might try to prove it. For example, Plantinga is generally skeptical regarding the perspectives of natural theology.24 He suggests, however, that an argument for God’s existence, if successful, could in principle “serve to bolster and confirm… perhaps to convince.”25 Someone who is doubtful or undecided could in principle find a good (or apparently good) argument for God’s existence and be convinced by it. Next, the second idea (2.b) of the second horn of the dilemma ‒ if somebody is already convinced of God’s existence, then she will not try to prove it ‒ is no more convincing: as Evans suggested, there are situations when an argument can strengthen the faith of a believer. Further, it can have value in convincing other people of God’s existence.26 Moreover, Climacus affirms that, when the demonstration starts, someone who presupposes that God exists cannot take this supposition as doubtful, because a presupposition cannot be doubtful. If this were the case, one would not begin an argument ‒ because no such argument is available if God does not exist. Here, Climacus seems mistakenly to use two different meanings of the term “presupposition” in the same passage: the meaning of working hypothesis (which can be proven or disproven by arguments), and the meaning of unquestioned paradigm (in the modern Kuhnian sense of the term “paradigm”). When discussing the arguments for the existence of God, one should use, in our opinion, only the first of these meanings. And yet, even if this first objection against proving God’s existence is unconvincing, Climacus’ reasoning here seems to anticipate his other critiques of the theistic arguments, by suggesting that the theist and atheist positions work in reality as unquestionable presuppositions rather than as hypotheses that could be defended by arguments.

23 Schulz, “A Phenomenological Proof?,” p. 105. 24 GOM, 3-111. This skepticism about the perspectives of natural theology is shared also by other representatives of reformed epistemology: see in this respect Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Introduction,” in Plantinga and Wolterstorff (eds), Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God, pp. 7-8. 25 TDTA, 210. 26 Evans, Passionate Reason, p. 65.

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7.3 The Second General Objection The second general objection against the arguments for God’s existence seems more promising. It says that it is difficult to demonstrate that something exists in general ‒ and that God exists in particular. In other words, to argue from theoretical premises toward existence is impossible. Climacus formulates this objection in the following way: If, however, I interpret the expression “to demonstrate the existence [Tilværelse] of the god” to mean that I want to demonstrate that the unknown, which exists, is the god, then I do not express myself very felicitously, for then I demonstrate nothing, least of all an existence, but I develop the definition of a concept. It is generally a difficult matter to want to demonstrate that something exists… The whole process of demonstration continually becomes something entirely different, becomes an expanded concluding development of what I conclude from having presupposed that the object of investigation exists. Therefore, whether I am moving in the world of sensate palpability or in the world of thought, I never reason in conclusion to existence, but I reason in conclusion from existence. For example, I do not demonstrate that a stone exists but that something which exists is a stone. The court of law does not demonstrate that a criminal exists but that the accused, who does indeed exist, is a criminal… If I wanted to demonstrate Napoleon’s existence from Napoleon’s works, would it not be most curious, since his existence certainly explains the works, but the works do not demonstrate his existence, unless I have already in advance interpreted the word “his” in such a way as to have assumed that he exists.27

The argument seems to suggest that one can never deduce the existence of God (or of anything else) by way of argument, if this existence is not somehow presupposed from the beginning in premises. Otherwise, no factual existence can be proven by argument. Climacus does not explain why this statement is true; he simply offers examples to support it. However, at the origin of the statement seems to be Kant’s famous idea that existence is not a real property.28 An object may have many properties (shape, color, weight, etc.), but existence is not one of them (as Gottlob Frege would say, existence is “a second order predicate”).29 In his Journal Kierkegaard reiterates

27 SKS 4, 207–208 / PF, 39-40. 28 At least this is Evans’ opinion (see Evans, Passionate Reason, p. 65). 29 Gottlob Frege, The Foundations of Arithmetic, transl. by J.L. Austin, Oxford: Blackwell 1950, pp. 59, 64, 65. For Frege the first order predicate says something about the nature of a being. For example, in the sentence ‘This man is bald,’ the word ‘bald’ is a first order predicate. By contrast, a second order predicate rather says something about a concept. For example, in the proposition ‘The horses are numerous,’ the word ‘numerous’ does not say something about the horses, but rather that the concept ‘horse’ has more exemplifications, in this case, more concrete forms of existence.

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this idea by stating that “Kant is right to say: ‘Existence, no new definition of content is added to a concept’.”30 For Kierkegaard, the distinction between thought and being (or between what is merely thought and what is) is all-important. In order to avoid idealism, it is essential to maintain this distinction. Thought deals with possibility, being with actuality. Between a possible and an actual being there is, in Kierkegaard’s view, not a difference of properties or of content, but of mode. If we add to this Kantian position the empiricist (and later logical-empiricist) idea that a demonstrative argument can only develop the definition of a concept (and nothing more), then Climacus’ argument becomes even more intelligible. One cannot obtain as the conclusion of an argument the actuality of a being if this actuality was not also present in its premises.31 When Climacus refers to reasoning understood as moving from the world of thought toward existence, his argument seems convincing. In this case, he appears to agree with Hume that demonstrative proofs apply only to the relations of ideas, and that one can never conclude matters of fact from relations of ideas. We shall see in the next section how he applies this principle to the evaluation of the ontological argument.32 However, when Climacus refers to reasoning understood as moving from the world of sensate palpability toward existence, his argument seems less convincing (and some of his examples less conclusive). For example, although it is true, in a sense, that in a court of law the accused should first of all exist and only after that be proven guilty or not guilty, in another sense, one could say (following Evans’ critique33) that some facts (the traces of blood left at the scene of a crime, a broken window, etc.) might in certain cases prove that a criminal exists. From this, we may conclude, against Climacus, that what he calls “reasoning to existence in the world of sensate palpability” is still defensible. However, it appears that Climacus anticipates this counterargument by his attempt to demonstrate Napoleon’s actuality from his works. In this context, he sug-

30 SKS 22, 435 / KJN 6, 440. 31 Evans, Passionate Reason, p. 66. 32 Climacus agrees with Hume here regarding the distinction between “relation of ideas” and “matters of fact.” Hume defines these types of statements as follows: “… of the first kind (Relations of Ideas) are the sciences of Geometry, Algebra and Arithmetic; in short every affirmation which is either intuitively or demonstratively certain… Propositions of this kind are discoverable by the mere operation of thought, without dependence on what is anywhere existent in the universe… Matters of fact are not ascertained in the same manner… The contrary of every matter of fact is still possible.” (David Hume, Enquiries: Concerning the Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. by L.A. Selby-Bigge, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1902, pp. 25-26) 33 Evans, Passionate Reason, p. 67.

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gests that the works cannot demonstrate Napoleon’s actuality. At best, they demonstrate the works of a great general; but to say that they refer to Napoleon’s existence means to have assumed in advance that he exists. The conclusion is that there is no absolute relation between Napoleon and his works.34 We have already suggested that between some facts, such as the facts of a crime, and the concluded existence of a criminal, it is possible to find an abductive relation, that is, an inference to the best explanation. However, in this example, Climacus argues that between the deeds of a specific person and his existence we can have, to use the language of contemporary philosophy of science, a type of argument called subdetermination of the theory by the observational facts. In other words, the same facts can accommodate a multitude of theories. In our example the same historical works might originate in a multiplicity of historical personages.35 But is a subdeterminational argument valid here? Is this kind of argument always present in the logic of reasoning to existence in the world of sensate palpability? Even in the philosophy of science the universality of this type of argument is a matter of debate.36 The argument seems valid when deducing the various interpretations of quantum mechanics. But in other situations ‒ such as the discovery of neutrino37 or, in criminalistics, when arguing for the existence of a burglar ‒ an abduction type argument seems to be more plausible. For this reason, Climacus’ argument concerning reasoning to existence in the world of sensate palpability seems to us inconclusive.

34 SKS 4, 207–208 / PF, 40-41. 35 Some critics might object here that an abductive relation between the material facts (from the premise) and the existence of the criminal (from the conclusion) does not exist. From material facts one cannot conclude personal agents. But to us this kind of relation seems possible. It is plausible that in certain situations one can conclude various causes from some facts. These causes can be, as in our example, either impersonal (an earthquake, a strong wind) or personal (the criminal). It does not seem to us that the personal or impersonal character of the agent in any way affects the validity of the argument. 36 For this type of argument, see Bas van Fraassen, The Scientific Image, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1980; Andre Kukla and Joel Walmsley, “A Theory’s Predictive Success Does Not Warrant Belief in the Unobservable Entities in Postulates,” in Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Science, ed. by Christopher Hitchcock, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing 2004, pp. 133-148. Against this argument, see John Greenwood, “Two Dogmas of Neo-Empiricism: The ‘Theory-Informity’ of Observation and the Quine-Duhem Thesis,” Philosophy of Science, vol. 57, 1990, pp. 553-574; H. Brown, “Incommensurability and Reality,” in Incommensurability and Related Matters, ed. by Paul Hoyningen-Huene and Harold Brown, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers 2001, pp. 123-142; Peter Lipton, Inference to the Best Explanation, Abingdon: Routledge 2004. 37 Alexander Bird, Thomas Kuhn, Princeton: Princeton University Press 2000, p. 230.

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To complicate matters further, for Climacus, such a subdeterminational type of reasoning does not apply to God.38 According to him, while between Napoleon and his deeds there is no absolute relation, in reference to God this type of absolute relation does exist: Only God can do God’s works.39 This, Climacus explains, leads us to another problem. Though with this type of absolute relation God’s existence could be proven from his works, the question now emerges: Which are these works? With this question Climacus begins his critique of the teleological argument. However, before evaluating what the author of the Fragments has to say about the teleological argument, we first intend to weigh his position regarding the ontological argument, as stated in the Fragments in a note related to the second objection to the arguments for God’s existence.

7.4 The Critique of the Ontological Argument Climacus refers to a version of the ontological argument proposed by Spinoza, according to whom one can deduce from the concept of God his being as an essential quality. For Spinoza, a thing of maximum perfection also has maximum necessary being. Climacus’ formulation of the argument goes as follows: … Spinoza… by immersing himself in the concept of God, aims to bring being [Væren] out of it by means of thought, but, please note, not as an accidental quality but as a qualification of essence… He says: “… quo res sua natura perfectior est, eo majore existentiam et magis necessariam involvit; et contra, quo magis necessariam existentiam res sua natura involvit, eo perfectior [in proportion as a thing is by its own nature more perfect, it entails a greater and more necessary existence; and conversely, in proportion as a thing entails by its own nature more necessary existence, the more perfect is].” Consequently, the more perfect, the more being; the more being, the more perfect.40

Interestingly, Climacus does not refer here to the classical Anselmian interpretation of the argument (Proslogion ch. 2). Had he used this version, which starts from the

38 It would have been interesting to see a subdeterminational type of argument applied to the problem of arguments for the existence of God. Surely, some philosophers and theologians might argue that such an approach motivates the failure of any and all arguments. From the facts of the world one could deduce many things: the non-existence of god, the existence of many gods, the existence of only one god (but with limited power and wisdom), the existence of an evil demiurge, the existence of a theistic all-powerful and perfectly wise creator, and so on. Of course, there are also philosophers (like Richard Swinburne) who might oppose this conclusion. This type of debate seems interesting—but Kierkegaard does not follow this line of argumentation. 39 SKS 4, 209 / PF, 42. 40 SKS 4, 208n / PF, 42n.

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idea of maximum of perfection in order to arrive at the existence of God, his critique would have been quite easy: a simple reiteration of Kant’s counterargument that existence brings no new predicate to a concept. (From this Kantian perspective, Anselm’s statement that an entity that exists is greater than an entity that does not exist needs to be rejected.) However, Spinoza’s version of the ontological argument is more difficult to counter, as for him the being to which the argument refers is not mere factual being, but rather necessary being. (In fact, this version of the argument is also present in Proslogion ch. 3 ‒ but many exegetes believe that here Anselm argues not for God’s existence, but rather that a certain aspect referring to him is real.)41 Plantinga, who is a well-known contemporary supporter of the argument, uses the same form of argument. For him, the mere factual being version of the argument is also untenable, but the necessary being option is still defensible.42 In any case, for Climacus the argument represents nothing more than a tautology: This, however, is a tautology. This becomes even clearer in a note, nota II: “Quod hic non loquimur de pulchritudine et aliis perfectionibus, quas homines ex superstitione et ignorantia perfectiones vocare voluerunt. Sed per perfectionem intelligo tantum realitatem sive esse… [we do not speak here of beauty and other perfections which men have wanted, through superstition and ignorance, to call perfections. By perfection I mean precisely reality or being… ]”. Consequently, the more perfect the thing is, the more it is: but its perfection is that it has more esse (being), which means that the more it is, the more it is. So much for the tautology… 43

For Climacus, the origin of this tautology lies in the confusion between two meanings of the concept of being: the factual and the ideal one. He thus writes: What is lacking here is a distinction between factual being and ideal being. The intrinsically unclear use of language ‒ speaking of more or less being, consequently of degrees of being

41 Brian Davies, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2004. 42 NN, 213-217. Such thinkers as Charles Hartshorne and Norman Malcolm held similar positions (cf. NN, 212-213; Norman Malcolm, “The Ontological Argument: A Contemporary Discussion,” in The Existence of God, ed. by John Hick, New York: Macmillan Publishing 1964, pp. 47-70). Other thinkers, such as Peter Geach, Peter van Inwagen and Peter Millican criticized Plantinga’s endorsement of the argument (Peter Geach, Providence and Evil, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1977, pp. 3-28; Thomas Flint and Alfred Freddoso, “Maximal Power,” in The Existence and Nature of God, ed. by Alfred Freddoso, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press 1983, pp. 81-113); Peter van Inwagen, “Ontological Arguments,” Nous, vol. 11, no. 4, November, 1977, pp. 375-395; Peter Millican, “The One Fatal Flaw in Anselm’s Argument” in Mind, vol. 113, no. 451, July 2004, pp. 437-476). However, Plantinga adds that, in order for the argument to work, one must first accept one premise that might be debatable. One can reject this premise without being accused of irrationality (NN, 217-221). 43 SKS 4, 208–209n / PF, 42n.

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‒ becomes even more confusing when that distinction is not made… With regard to factual being, to speak of more or less being is meaningless… Hamlet dialectic, to be or not to be, applies to factual being. Factual being is indifferent to the differentiation of all essence ‒ determinants, and everything that exists participates without petty jealousy in being and participates just as much. It is quite true that ideally the situation is different. But as soon as I speak ideally about being, I am speaking no longer about being but about essence.44

Climacus’ idea, and his critique of the argument, is that the necessary being to which Spinoza refers is not a factual being (which would normally be the goal of an argument for the existence of God), but rather an ideal being, the being of essence.45 In this sense, he states as follows: The necessary has the highest ideality; therefore it is. But this being is essence, whereby it expressly cannot become dialectical in the determinants of factual being, because it is… In the old days, this was expressed, even though somewhat imperfectly, as follows: if God is possible, he is eo ipso necessary (Leibniz). Then Spinoza’s thesis is quite correct and the tautology is in order, but it is also certain that he completely circumvents the difficulty, for the difficulty is to grasp factual being and to bring God’s ideality into factual being.46

In other words, Climacus accepts that one can deduce necessary being from the concept of God, but only on the condition that this necessary being should be understood in an ideal and conceptual sense (not in a factual and actual one). In the end, his critique of the ontological argument is essentially an objection of the logical empiricist kind. According to this view, the argument is only a development of the definition of the concept of God, and a definition is only an analytical and also a priori statement. More precisely (and in contrast with Kant’s notion of the synthetic a priori), all a priori statements are analytical and, as a result, sterile. The predicate adds nothing to the concept (or content) of the subject ‒ it merely affirms what is already presumed in the subject. In a similar vein, the ontological argument cannot affirm in the conclusion what is not already presumed in its premises.47

44 SKS 4, 209–210n / PF, 42-43n. 45 The same argument can be seen in a note from the Journal in which Kierkegaard affirms that the idea that essentia involves existentia is valid only for “relationships of ideality”: the ideal existence of the concept is indifferent to whether or not the respective concept is actualised in real world – this existence is only conceptual (not also factual). Only in this sense is Leibniz’ statement ‒ that if God is possible then he is also necessary – valid (SKS 22, 435, 435n.a / KJN 6, 440). 46 SKS 4, 210n / PF, 42n. 47 As it is well known, Descartes used a form of the ontological argument in which he suggested that from the concept of God one can deduce his existence just as from the definition of a triangle one can deduce the idea that the sum of its angles is 180°. However, the logical empiricists argued that Descartes’ example is wrong, as, with the Riemannian geometries and Einsteinian application of

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Certainly, there are philosophers, such as Quine, who criticize the logical empiricist view on the analytic-synthetic distinction by denying the existence of analytical sentences. But even if this kind of critique were plausible, this fact would not ‒ in our opinion ‒ present good news for the ontological argument. A supporter of Quine would probably be even more skeptical about the argument than a logical empiricist. For Quine also rejected the idea of a priori truths ‒ following in this respect the tradition of John Stuart Mill (a tradition perpetuated in present times by Michael Devitt and others).48 Doubtless, there are also philosophers who reject the empiricist view of the analytical-synthetic distinction for opposite reasons: they hold that the Kantian belief in synthetic a priori truths (or, more precisely, in non-analytical a priori truths) is still defendable. Among contemporary supporters of this view are Plantinga49 and Laurence BonJour.50 However, as BonJour himself observed in the preface to his In Defense of Pure Reason, this view is held in present times ‒ among the epistemologists ‒ only by a small minority.51 Regarding the statement if God is possible, he is eo ipso necessary, Evans observed that it is also defended by Plantinga and suggested that Climacus accepted it in a Plantingian way too.52 In this sense, Climacus would agree that, if one believed in God’s existence, one would evidently also accept as a premise the possibility of his existence; if, however, one rejected the idea that God exists, then one would also reject the idea that his existence is possible.53 In other words, the acceptance of the validity of the ontological argument is for Climacus ‒ as also for Plantinga54 ‒ dependent on the choices and presuppositions of the arguer.

these geometries to macrocosm, the sum of the angles of a triangle can in some contexts be greater than 180°. Thus, all depends on the kind of geometry one presupposes in the premises. In other words, in the conclusion of the “triangle argument” one obtains only what one initially postulated in the premises. In the same way, from the concept of God in the premise of the ontological argument one can obtain no more than a concept in its conclusion (see also Gottfried Gabriel, “Carnap and Frege,” in The Cambridge Companion to Carnap, ed. by Michael Friedman and Richard Creath, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2007, pp. 73-74). 48 See in this respect Michael Devitt, “There Is No a Priori,” in Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, ed. by Matthias Steup and Ernest Sosa, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing 2005, pp. 105-115. 49 WPF, 103n2. 50 Laurence BonJour, “In Defense of the a Priori,” in Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, pp. 98-105; Laurence BonJour, In Defense of Pure Reason: a Rationalist Account of A Priori Justification, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998. 51 BonJour, In Defense of Pure Reason, p. xi. 52 Evans, Passionate Reason, p. 67; NN, 212-213. 53 Evans, Passionate Reason, p. 67. 54 Plantinga only argues that the ontological argument, in a revised Anselmian form, is rational, not

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However, this interpretation does not seem very convincing. In our opinion, Climacus did not contemplate the idea that someone could deny the possibility of God’s existence. For him, the only problem was that necessary existence (which can be deduced from this possibility) should never be taken in a factual sense (as by Plantinga), but only in a conceptual and ideal sense. Only in this case might the above statement (if God is possible, he is eo ipso necessary) be valid.55 Accordingly, we believe there are good reasons to appreciate Kierkegaard’s critique of the ontological argument as plausible. Moreover, our view is also supported by the observation that even Plantinga ‒ who seems somewhat more optimistic about the plausibility of the argument ‒ recognized that many rational persons could, in good conscience, reject his version of the argument as unconvincing.

7.5 The Critique of the Teleological Argument We already anticipated Climacus’ critique of the teleological argument at the end of section two of this chapter. His idea is that between God and his works is an absolute relation. For this reason one can in principle deduce God’s existence from his works. However, the problem is that these works are not so evident to us, as they “do not immediately and directly exist.” This is because the wisdom of God in nature is not “right in front of our noses.” Sometimes we meet here “the most terrible spiritual trials.”56 Climacus means to suggest that one cannot,57 with pure objectivity, and without any mediation (which means without any subjective contribution), see God’s works in nature. When we apply to nature our objective reason, we may see some wisdom and order in things,58 but also “terrible spiritual trials.”59 Which positive arguments and which objections Climacus has in mind here remains unclear. As for the posi-

that its conclusion is proven or established. In order to prove the conclusion, one must also accept as true a central premise: that the exemplification of the property maximal greatness is possible. But Plantinga recognizes that this premise, although reasonable, is not indisputable: many reasonable thinkers could reject it, so that it shares the fate of many other philosophical ideas (NN, 214-217, 220, 221). 55 SKS 22, 435, 435n.a / KJN 6, 440. 56 SKS 4, 246–247 / PF, 42. 57 In this respect Climacus says, “so long as I am holding to the demonstration (… ) the existence does not emerge…” (SKS 4, 248 / PF, 42-43). 58 Climacus does not directly say which are these (positive) signs of God’s existence in nature, but we could indirectly deduce them from the context, especially in the following passage: “at the god’s request, he casts out his net, so to speak, to catch the idea of fitness and purposiveness…” (SKS 4, 211 / PF, 44). 59 SKS 4, 209 / PF, 42.

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tive arguments, he likely has in mind the various types of design one tends to see in nature (various signs of “fitness and purposiveness”),60 though he does not name any of these signs specifically. As for the objections, he again makes no precise reference, but only gestures toward the many terrifying devices and many subterfuges with which nature disturbs us. Here, he likely has in mind various forms of apparently unjustified suffering and cruelty from nature. Due to this lack of precision concerning the objective view of the signs of God’s existence in nature, it is difficult to assess Climacus’ critique of the teleological argument. The positive side of the argument is in no way clearly presented; its premises and its logical structure are not clearly exposed. Likewise, the negative critique of the argument is no more clearly presented. Additionally, even if nature shows signs of terror, suffering, or cruelty, we should not forget that connected with the problem of evil in the universe is that of theodicy. Many Christian philosophers have tried to resolve the challenge of the reality of evil in the world, in some cases attempting to justify God’s actions in spite of the evil in the world, and in other, more recent, cases ‒ as in Plantinga’s ‒ hoping to show that the idea of a good and all-powerful God creating a world which contains evil is logically possible – or, in any case, not logically impossible.61 Whether or not such attempts to solve the problem succeed is a subject of debate. Climacus himself does not try to evaluate the situation.62 However, we believe he is right in observing that this objective manner of construing and defending arguments for God’s existence is always an unstable enterprise. It is never a finished activity, as there will always be new counterarguments, rebuttals and counter-rebuttals, renewed examples of evil in the world (which seem to bring devastating blows to the camp of theodicists), and so on.63

60 SKS 4, 211 / PF, 44. 61 NN, 164-196; WCB, 473-512. See also some counterarguments against Plantinga’s position in Richard Otte, “Transworld Depravity and Unobtainable Worlds,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. LXXVIII, no.1, January 2009, pp. 165-177, and Plantinga’s reply in TDSE, 178-191. 62 Regarding the problem of theodicy, it seems Climacus is in agreement with the Lutheran tradition, which affirms that God is truly revealed to us only in the crucifixion of Jesus. (Luther famously contrasted a theology of the cross with a theology of glory.) From this perspective, human beings might have many dark experiences in this world ‒ a situation which seems from a Christian point of view unexplainable and unjustifiable. But a believer, in spite of these instances, does not lose his confidence in the goodness and love of God. He looks to the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross and sees there revealed ‒ in spite of all life’s vicissitudes ‒ the love of God. Climacus might also share Kant’s skepticism (from his years of mature thinking) toward any theodicy ‒ but also, conversely, his idea that all objections against God’s existence cannot be successful (see Immanuel Kant, Über das Mißlingen aller philosophischen Versuche in der Theodizee, Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag 2008). 63 SKS 4, 209–211 / PF, 42-43.

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Still, against Climacus’ critique, it might be said that a similar (unstable) situation is shared by many other philosophical arguments. In many cases, the philosophers’ argumentative approach is a never-ending story.64 And yet, says Climacus, one can see God’s works in nature (and can demonstrate his existence) by bringing ideality to this view of nature ‒ or, as he puts it, by regarding the works of nature ideally. Climacus explains this idea more clearly in the following passage: Therefore, from what works do I demonstrate it (the existence of God)? From the works regarded ideally ‒ that is, as they do not appear directly and immediately. But then I do not demonstrate it from the works, after all, but only develop the ideality I have presupposed; trusting in that, I even dare to defy all objections, even those that have yet not arisen. By beginning, then, I have presupposed the ideality, have presupposed that I will succeed in accomplishing it, but what else is that but presupposing that the god exists and actually beginning with trust in him.65

In other words, Climacus’ idea is that, in order for the teleological arguments to succeed, one needs to start from faith, from the presupposition (and belief) that God exists. Evans explains this idea very clearly: The starting point of the proof is not simply nature as it immediately appears to us, but nature interpreted according to a certain ideal, nature understood as the work of God. Climacus argues that the acceptance of such an interpretation of nature is equivalent to “presupposing that the god exists.” Thus, the belief in God, which the proof is supposed to support, is actually supporting the proof, rather than the other way around… Climacus does not really deny the possibility of a sound argument for God’s existence from the works of God in nature. What he denies is that such an argument… can be known to be sound independently of some subjective faith. His real target is the notion that such a rational proof could be a substitute for faith.66

In order to clarify this (counter) argument, Climacus puts forth two examples: In the first, he argues that Socrates had the same approach to the matter: he would advance the teleological argument, but always presuppose in advance the existence of God ‒ and thus “infuse nature with the idea of fitness and purposiveness.”67 This presuppositional position allowed Socrates to believe in God and the purposiveness of nature in spite of the many situations which seem to suggest the contrary: Socrates, says Climacus, “casts out his net, so to speak, to catch the idea

64 NN, 220-221. 65 SKS 4, 209–210 / PF, 42. 66 Evans, Passionate Reason, pp. 68-69. 67 SKS 4, 211 / PF, 44.

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of fitness and purposiveness, for nature comes up with many terrifying devices and many subterfuges in order to disturb.”68 The same idea appears in a previous passage: “Trusting in that (ideality), I even dare to defy all objections, even those that have not yet arisen.”69 This might also be Climacus’ answer to the problem of theodicy (which he does not otherwise develop in detail): To believe in God’s goodness in spite of the world’s suffering and cruelty is in the end a matter of faith. Interestingly, this approach is also shared to some degree by such reformed apologists as Plantinga, who wrote in one article that belief in God could be so warranted as intrinsically to defeat all considerations brought against it.70 Additionally, we might deduce the following idea from this example: For a believer, the teleological argument is good; he starts with the idea of God’s existence and also finishes with it. In this case, not only in the conclusion of the argument, but also in its premises, is God present (This could be the idea behind the expression infuse nature with the idea of fitness.). The grounds on which the theistic argument is made are not belief-neutral. For this reason, the argument’s premises are not acceptable for all people, but only for those who are already believers. The opponents of religious belief will probably tend to deny these premises, especially when they seem to lead towards a conclusion contrary to their convictions.71 And, as the reformed philosopher Kelly James Clark stated (referring to the same subject), this

68 SKS 4, 211 / PF, 44. 69 SKS 4, 210 / PF, 42. 70 FTR, 310. Plantinga illustrates this idea with the case of a person who knows that he did not commit any crime, although all evidence seems to show the contrary. 71 A quotation from Evans is relevant in this context. He writes: “Once it is conceded that the recognition of such an argument requires faith and cannot be a substitute for it, he (Climacus) seems to have no objection to such arguments… In speaking of the proofs of God as requiring faith, I mean only that they require the acceptance of a premise that is not self-evident or undeniable, or perhaps the adoption of a way of seeing the world which is equivalent to accepting such premises. Regardless of the merits of any of the other criticisms of natural theology given by Climacus, his view here seems eminently defensible. Arguments of God’s existence may be sound, and even recognizable as sound, but it does not seem that such arguments depend on premises that any sane, rational person who understands them must accept. Otherwise, why would so many sane, rational persons fail to accept them?” (Evans, Passionate Reason, p. 69). One may find a similar position in Plantinga, TDTA, 210 and NN, 220-221. Regarding this quasi-positive assessment of the arguments for God’s existence in Evans’ aforementioned quotation, one can also see in Plantinga’s thinking an evolution from a skeptical assessment of the theistic proofs in his early philosophy (for example, in his GOM) toward a more positive appreciation of them in the later writings. He suggested thus that the standards of evaluating from his early writings were too extreme: no philosophical arguments of any consequence could live up to them (cf. WCB, 69; Graham Oppy, “Natural Theology,” in Deane-Peter Baker (ed.), Alvin Plantinga, p. 40).

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seems to be the fate “of most arguments concerning matters of fundamental human concern.”72 Although some might object today concerning this apparently irrational and fideistic appeal to the belief in God (taken as ultimate presupposition of existence), we should not forget that for Climacus there is no pure objective approach toward existence. Our attitude toward reality is always interested; we can never evade our subjectivity.73 If someone does not approach reality with theistic presuppositions, he will surely approach it with other kinds of presuppositions: naturalistic, pantheistic, etc. Presuppositions are inevitable ‒ and this concern toward presuppositions might show some commonality between Climacus’ approach and those of the presuppositionalist philosophers and apologists.74 In the second example, Climacus argues that faith in God, without arguments, is the natural attitude of the believer: And how does the existence of God emerge from the demonstration? Does it happen straightway? It is not here as it is with the Cartesian dolls? As soon as I let go of the doll, it stands on its head… So also with the demonstration ‒ so long as I am holding on to the demonstration (that is, continue to be one who is demonstrating), the existence does not emerge, if for no other reason than that I am in the process of demonstrating it, but when I let go of the demonstration, the existence is there. Yet this letting go, even that is surely something; it is, after all, meine Zuthat [my contribution]. Does it not have to be taken into account, this diminutive moment, however brief it is—it does have to be long, because it is a leap. However diminutive this moment, even if it is this very instant, this very instant must be taken into account.75

Accordingly, for a believer, when the argument comes, belief in God’s existence diminishes rather than gets stronger. Again, emphasized here is the contribution of the believer to the process of believing, through what Climacus calls a leap or the letting go of the proof. The notion of leap is understood here (for such interpreters as Evans) as an existential movement from the objective speculation (in which, in a disinterested manner, one construes arguments for God’s existence), to the subjective existence (in which one takes the existential standpoint of a concretely existing person). The objective speculation and the subjective existence are for Climacus mutually exclusive.76

72 Kelly James Clark, “Reformed Epistemology Apologetics,” in Five Views on Apologetics, ed. by Steven Cowan and Stanley Gundry, Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House 2000, p. 282. 73 Piety, Ways of Knowing, pp. 43-44. 74 See R.G. Collingwood, An Essay on Metaphysics, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1969, p. 15; John Frame, “Presuppositional Apologetics,” in Five Views on Apologetics, pp. 209-210, 215-216, 227. 75 SKS 4, 210 / PF, 42-43. 76 Evans, Passionate Reason, pp. 70-71.

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But is this subjective contribution of ours just an arbitrarily chosen presupposition, a free-willed decision to believe in God? In the next, and last, critique of the arguments for the existence of God, we shall see some motives for believing that Climacus denies this idea, by suggesting that faith functions not as an arbitrary choice, but rather as a type of knowledge unmediated by arguments.

7.6 The Ethico-Religious Critique of the Arguments In the Concluding Unscientific Postscript Climacus adds another critique – beyond the aforementioned objections from the Fragments ‒ to the arguments for God’s existence. Because this critique affirms that any attempt to prove God’s existence raises problems on ethical and religious terms, Schulz called it “the ethico-religious argument.”77 In the following (in part already quoted) passage Climacus introduces this problem: To demonstrate the existence [Tilvær] of someone who exists [er til] is the most shameless assault, since it is an attempt to make him ludicrous, but the trouble is that one does not even suspect this, that in dead seriousness one regards it as a godly undertaking. How could it occur to anyone to demonstrate that he exists unless one has allowed oneself to ignore him; and now one does it in an even more lunatic way by demonstrating his existence right in front of his nose. A king’s existence [Tilværelse] or presence [Tilstedeværelse] ordinarily has its own expression of subjection and submissiveness. What if one in his most majestic presence wanted to demonstrate that he exists? Does one demonstrate it, then? No, one makes a fool of him, because one demonstrates his presence by the expression of submissiveness, which may differ widely according to the customs of the country. And thus one also demonstrates the existence of God by worship ‒ not by demonstrations.78

Thus, according to Climacus, a person who tries to demonstrate God’s existence does not respect him. This attempt makes God ludicrous, by trying to argue his existence in spite of the person’s location in front of his nose. This is in fact a sign of ignoring his presence. If such a situation would be disrespectful (and hilarious) with respect to a human person (especially if that person were a great political authority), it is even more disrespectful with respect to the divine authority. The appropriate reaction in front of a great authority, especially if she is God, the supreme authority, is submission and worship. As Schulz says, according to Climacus: “if God actually exists… then any human attempt to prove that he exists excludes the possibility of properly relating to him… (and is therefore) inappropriate on ethico-religious

77 Schulz, “A Phenomenological Proof?”, p. 105. 78 SKS 7, 475–476 / CUP1, 545-546.

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terms.”79 This argument seems convincing if all its premises are true. However, one might question one of its main premises: the idea that the arguer is totally aware of being before God, indeed, right in front of his nose. For, as long as our (earthly) history goes on, God seems to remain hidden and invisible to our eyes. Thus, in a sense, our historical situation does not perfectly mirror the analogue of sitting in front of an earthly king. Climacus seems to affirm here that structurally human beings are aware of God’s existence,80 they seem to possess in this respect an analogue to what Calvin would call sensus divinitatis, thus believing that God exists without the mediation of any argument.81 This is, again, an idea with which the reformed epistemologists are in full agreement. Belief in God would be for us as natural as the position of standing on its head for a Cartesian doll ‒ as the previously quoted example suggested. Even if one granted that the arguer was indeed aware of being before God, would this by definition make an argument for God’s existence disrespectful? In our opinion, that is not evident. God’s presence, even as sensus divinitatis, does not seem as overwhelming as the (eschatological) experience of seeing him face to face. For this reason, the arguments (if such arguments exist) might not finally be disrespectful. As already suggested when evaluating Climacus’ first objection, such arguments might even be useful (as, for example, in strengthening a person’s faith).82

7.7 Conclusion In this chapter we have evaluated five objections brought by Climacus to the use of arguments in order to prove God’s existence. The first, which starts from the presupposition either of God’s existence or non-existence, in order to deny the usefulness of any argument for God’s existence, is found wanting—though, by its formulation, it opens the way for the presuppositional kind of argumentation present in many of the following objections. Climacus seems here to jump illegitimately from the objective reality of God’s existence

79 Schulz, “A Phenomenological Proof?,” p. 106. 80 In other places, Kierkegaard also writes about an awareness of God’s existence due to one’s religious upbringing: a person believes in God because her parents told her that he exists (see SKS 20, 417 / KJN 4, 418). Moreover, Schulz suggests (as we have already seen in chapter 4), that Kierkegaard offers also a phenomenological argument for God’s existence, according to which a person takes God to be real whenever she “desperately wants to be herself” (Schulz, “A Phenomenological Proof?” p. 117). 81 See, for example, Wolterstorff, “Introduction,” p. 8; WCB, 168-175. 82 See, again, Schulz, “A Phenomenological Proof?”, p. 104.

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(or non-existence) to the subjective conviction about God’s existence (or non-existence). The second, which affirms that the reasoning from theoretical premises toward existence is impossible, is, in our opinion, partly valid, partly ambiguous. When Climacus refers to reasoning from the world of thought toward existence, his argument seems convincing. In this sense, we agree with him that from the Humean relations of ideas ‒ to which the world of thought refers ‒ one can, through demonstration, obtain only relations of ideas (and no actual objects or being). But when Climacus refers to reasoning from the world of sensate palpability toward existence, his argument seems less convincing. We believe there are cases in which one might conclude from the facts of the palpable world the existence of persons, and that between some facts and their purported author there might be either no absolute relation (as Climacus suggests) or a (quasi) absolute relation (contrary to Climacus’ opinion). The third objection, against the ontological argument, which in the end appeals to an empiricist (or logical empiricist) type of reasoning ‒ according to which the conclusion of the argument is only a development of the definition of the concept of God ‒ suggests that the argument is essentially a tautology; this objection seems plausible. The fourth objection, against the teleological argument, is in our opinion inconclusive: Climacus did not show why the argument does not work; in fact, he did not offer a clear structure to ‒ or critique of ‒ it. His main critique seems to be that the evil and disorder from the world make the argument inconclusive and defective. He does not try to explain why a theodicy is not possible; for this reason the value of this objection remains ambiguous. The fifth and last objection, according to which the attempt to prove God’s existence in front of his nose is a disrespectful enterprise, seems to us unconvincing. For God’s existence, even if one might agree with the idea of a sensus divinitatis, is not transparently evident to us (as it would be the case of standing in front of a visible person). As long as God remains hidden, there might always be space for arguments regarding his existence. One can gather at least three things from Climacus’ objections to these arguments. Firstly, for him, all arguments are wanting and in some respects a failure. There are no successful arguments for God’s existence. Secondly, one can use some of these arguments with success, so long as one takes God’s existence as the central presupposition behind their premises. One can have a successful argument, only so long as ‒ through faith ‒ one infuses nature with purpose (At least this seems to be the case with the teleological argument.). Moreover, in this way, one can believe in God’s goodness in spite of the world’s

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suffering and cruelty; the atheological argument from evil thus loses its power. In addition, Climacus’ view has another implication: Even unbelief in God may be a presupposition. Atheism is in the end also a kind of faith, because in all essential matters where human beings have interests we are never purely objective; our thinking always has a circular component. Accordingly, when a skeptic or atheist sees an argument that leads toward affirming God’s existence in conclusion, he might be inclined to deny one or more of the argument’s premises (We will discuss more about this idea in the next chapter.). And thirdly, Kierkegaard seems to affirm that people have an inborn tendency to believe in God without the mediation of arguments (a kind of sensus divinitatis). Surely, this tendency might not be active in all human beings, but all of them are born with this possibility. On some occasions this tendency can be activated: In fact, in the ethical and religious stages of life all people tend to manifest this sensus divinitatis.83 Interestingly, these last three theses are also central tenets of the reformed epistemology movement. In this respect there seems to be a deep commonality of thinking between Johannes Climacus and the representatives of reformed apologetics, as we shall see in the next chapter.

83 See, for example SKS 7, 112 / CUP1, 138; SKS 23, 45 / KJN 7, 42; Pap. V B 40 / JP 3, 3606.

8 Plantinga’s Arguments for the Existence of God 8.1 Introduction An exposition of the arguments for God’s existence as depicted in Alvin Plantinga’s work is not a simple enterprise. Given the problem of natural philosophy was always the focal point of his thinking, his treatment of the subject has always been deep and comprehensive, not to mention the fact that he changed his view and evaluation of the matter over time. As Graham Oppy observed, in his earliest works (for example in “God and Other Minds” (1967)) Plantinga had a very strict conception of the project of natural theology (It must show that God’s existence “follows deductively or inductively from propositions that are obviously true and accepted by nearly every sane man… together with propositions that are self-evident or necessarily true”);1 he argued that the project was doomed to failure.2 Following the early period, in his “middle” works, for example, in “God, Freedom and Evil” (1974) and “The Nature of Necessity” (1974), he had ‒ in Oppy’s opinion ‒ “a tolerably less strict opinion of the project”3 (the function of natural theology being that of showing that religious belief is rationally acceptable4); given a less stringent attitude, he now views the project as promising. In his later works, for example, in “Two Dozen (or So) Theistic Arguments” (1986), “The Prospects for Natural Theology” (1991), and “Warranted Christian Belief” (2000), he displays an even lesser stringency regarding natural theology (Now the aim of natural theology is that of transforming belief into knowledge by “providing warrant for the belief in God” ‒ in other words, “adding to belief that quality … that distinguishes knowledge from mere true belief”).5 According to this last perspective, the arguments might be accepted as needed in order to provide warrant for the belief in God’s existence only if the person who uses them starts from the premise (or presupposition) of God’s existence.6 Consequently, theistic arguments (if they are good) may confirm or strengthen the belief that God exists when an individual’s belief is wavering. Plantinga considers that, when judged by reasonable standards, such arguments as those from the

1 GOM, 4. 2 Graham Oppy, “Natural Theology”; in Deane-Peter Baker (ed.), Alvin Plantinga, p.15. 3 Ibid., p. 15. 4 GFE, 2. 5 PNT, 294. 6 Oppy, “Natural Theology”, p. 29. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111334769-008

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nature of sets, or numbers, or properties, or proper function, or morality,7 or the cosmological, teleological and ontological proofs,8 etc., all can play a role in confirming or strengthening theistic belief. The primary goal of this essay is to evaluate Plantinga’s later works’ perspective on the arguments for the existence of God. However, we will also (partially) discuss Plantinga’s treatment of the arguments from his earlier works, but only for the sake of contrasting his early perspective with that of the later works. Due to lack of space, a pursuit involving a detailed account from his middle period will be avoided; this median phase is in any case a period of transition, anticipating (and thus having much in common with) the later period. Regardless, we will excavate from the middle stage Plantinga’s treatment of the ontological argument (from “The Nature of Necessity”), because there we find his well-known defense of the argument. However, before evaluating Plantinga’s view on the arguments, one might ask if this is not from the very start a lost cause, given that after the Kantian “Copernican revolution” in philosophy the idea of proving God’s existence seems entirely obsolete. Did not Kant clearly show that we cannot legitimately apply our concepts beyond the world of experience? How could any informed person, post Kant, legitimately use her human concepts to refer to the noumenal world in general and to God in particular? Plantinga is aware of this problem, but argues that the Kantian critique is not convincing, because at its core Kant’s system is either incoherent, or lacks its purported radicalism. Firstly, for Plantinga, the Kantian perspective (or at least one of its interpretations), seems to suggest that nothing would exist without the creative structuring activity of persons. But this perspective seems to him incoherent. In this respect he states that: it is impossible that the things we know, trees and mountains and animals – exist, but fail to be in space-time and fail to display object-propriety structure; indeed, we might think it impossible that there be a thing of any sort that doesn’t have properties. If so, then Kant’s view implies that there would be nothing at all if it weren’t for the creative structuring activity of persons. Of course, I don’t say that Kant clearly drew this conclusion; indeed, he may have obscurely drawn the opposite conclusion; that is part of his charm. But the conclusion in question seems to follow. The fundamental thrust of Kant’s Copernican Revolution is that the things in the world owe their fundamental structure and perhaps their very existence to the noetic activity of our minds.9

7 PNT, 312. 8 RBG, 30. 9 HBA, 48. Related to this critique of Plantinga, Nicholas Wolterstorff says that the anti-realists based on Kantian reasons want to affirm, and not to deny, what well-established science tells us: There

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Here the incoherence is due to the fact that Kant’s perspective seems to imply that the “Ding-an-sich” does not exist, because nothing exists without the creative structuring of persons; but this would be self-defeating for the Kantian system, which is built around this concept. Secondly, Plantinga observes that the above reservations are valid only if we refer to the classical and once most dominant interpretation of Kant’s, namely the two-world picture, according to which there are two realms of objects: the realm of the phenomena (the realm of experience ‒ which itself depends on us for its existence), and the realm of noumena (which is not dependent on us – and about which we have no intuition, or direct experience). However, according to Plantinga, another interpretation of Kant has more recently acquired majority status in the philosophical circles – that in which the categories of existence and causality can be applied to the Ding-an-sich. According to this interpretation there are not two worlds: a world of phenomena and, underlying it, a world of noumena. There is only one world and only one kind of objects, but there are two ways of thinking about this world. In this case, the phenomena-noumena distinction is not between two kinds of objects, but rather between how things are in themselves and how they appear to us.10 Plantinga quotes Westphal, who suggests that, according to this second interpretation of Kant, the object and property that would disappear from the world in absence of human knowers are “not object and property per se,” but substance and accident “as defined by human temporality.” The same would be valid for truth and falsity, and so on. In Westphal’s view, “We are in this way back to the tautology that in the absence of human cognition, the world as apprehended by human minds would disappear.”11 But if this interpretation is true, says Plantinga,

were stars and dinosaurs and trilobites before there were human beings. Wolterstorff observes that “if the existence of things depends on our activity of conceptualizing, then any statement that says or implies that so and so’s existed before conceptualizing took place is false. Someone might suggest that perhaps the anti-realist does not assume this. Perhaps his idea is rather that once the appropriate conceptualizing takes place, then not only present tense propositions concerning the existence of things become true, but also past tense propositions. Though there never was a time when trilobites (presently) exist was true ‒ for that, the existence of the human beings at the time would have been necessary – there is a time when trilobites existed is true... This past tense proposition became true when the necessary conceptualizing occurred. But this interpretation, though it diminishes the conflict with science, does so by assaulting fundamental intuitions concerning time. If K’s exist was never true, how can K’s existed be sometime true?” (Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Are Concept-Users WorldMakers?” in Philosophical Perspectives, vol. 1, Metaphysics 1987, p. 237). 10 Devitt, Realism and Truth, p. 59; WCB, 12. 11 Merold Westphal, “In Defense of the Thing in Itself”, Kant-Studien 59/1, 1968, p. 170, cf. WCB, 14. Related to the fact that ‒ according to this interpretation ‒ Kant refers to substance and accident “as

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how could that perspective constitute a Copernican revolution, according to which objects must conform to our minds and not our minds to objects, as previously thought? A tautology cannot determine a revolution. Much of this second picture would be accepted even by such pre-revolutionaries as Aristotle and Aquinas.12

The conclusion in this one-world Kantian perspective is that there is no necessary prohibition for applying our concepts to the “Dinge” and to God alike. As Plantinga puts it, there would be nothing at all special about God; what holds for him also holds for everything else. But those theologians who suggest that Kant showed we cannot refer to and think about God presumably believe that Kant showed there is a special problem about God; they don’t think that what Kant really showed is that we can’t talk or think about anything.13

In conclusion, Plantinga rejects the Kantian objections against the possibility of referring to God by arguing that Kant’s system is either incoherent (according to the two-world interpretation of the Kantian system), or inoffensive (according to the one-world interpretation). He would apply a similar kind of critique to the similar objections raised by such modern varieties of Kantianism like neo-Kantianism or social constructivism.14

defined by human temporality”, one should not forget that for Kant our mind partially creates the world as we know it – with its laws – thus guaranteeing the necessity of these laws. In this respect Euclidian geometry (which permeates Newtonian physics) describes our mind’s way of necessarily organizing our spatial sensations. In this way, our experience no more reveals the external world, but rather the forms and categories of human mind. However, more than a century later new types of geometry appeared (for example, the Riemannian and the Lobatchevskian ones), and Albert Einstein showed that in astronomy Riemann’s geometry – and not the classical Euclidian geometry ‒ works; in other words, there is a dichotomy between the classical mathematical and the physical geometry of the universe – which shows that, after all, the Euclidian geometry is not ‒ as Newton and Kant thought – a necessary and universal science (see Eric T. Bell, The Magic of Numbers, New York: Dover Books 1946, pp. 373-376). 12 WCB, 13-14. 13 WCB, 16. 14 Related to the disputes between a social constructivism of a Kuhnian type (influenced by neo-Kantianism) and metaphysical (and scientific) realism, see for example the articles of Paul HoyningenHuene, Eric Oberheim and Hanne Andersen, “On Incommensurability”, in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Vol 27, No.1, 1996, and Eric Oberheim, P.Hoyningen-Huene, “Incommensurability, Realism and Meta-Incommensurability”, in Theoria, vol 12, 1997 (in favor of the constructivist view), and the articles of Howard Sankey “Incommensurability: The Current State of Play” in Theoria, Vol.12, No. 3, 1997, and Michael Devitt, “Incommensurability and the Priority of Metaphysics”, in Incommensurability and Related Matters, edited by P. Hoyningen-Huene and H. Sankey, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers 2001 (in favor of the realist perspective).

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Moreover, it is worth mentioning that – as Neil Manson observed – modern science tends to reject (for example) the Kantian suspicion (in the first antinomy of pure reason from the “Transcendental Dialectic” ‒ in the Critique of Pure Reason) regarding any discussion about the universe seen as a unified object (and also the logical-positivist suspicion regarding the meaning of the concept “universe”); in the past such suspicions tended to eliminate from the start any talk concerning a possible cosmic teleological argument.15 But in the middle of the past century, says Manson, A series of breakthroughs in physics and observational astronomy led to the development of the Big Bang model and the discovery that the Universe is highly structured, with precisely defined parameters such as age, mass, entropy (degree of disorder), curvature, temperature, density, and rate of expansion. Using clever experimentation and astounding instrumentation, physical cosmologists were able to determine the values of these parameters to remarkably precise degrees. The specificity of the Universe prompted theoretical exploration of how the Universe would have been if the values of its parameters had been different. This led to the discovery of numerous “anthropic coincidences” and supported the claim that the Universe is fine-tuned for life – that is, that the values of its parameters are such that, if they differed even slightly, life of any sort could not possibly have arisen in the Universe… So the discovery of the Big Bang… resurrect[s] the possibility of mounting a cosmic design argument. 16

8.2  The Perspective on Natural Theology from the Early Works As we already anticipated, in his early works Plantinga had a very strict perspective on the project of natural theology, a perspective which he will later describe as inadequate – due to what he will consider to be an uncritical attachment from his side to the prevailing foundationalist and evidentialist philosophical paradigm that dominated the academic world at the time. His strategy in this period was to argue that there are no successful pieces of natural theology ‒ by picking and criticizing what he considered to be the best arguments for the existence of God of his time: the cosmological argument (in the form of the third way from the five ways of Aquinas), the ontological argument, and the teleological argument. Once he showed that these three arguments failed, the conclusion was that natural theology failed too.17

15 Neil Manson, “Introduction”, in Neil Manson (ed.), God and Design: The Teleological Argument and Modern Science, London & New York: Routledge, 2003, p.3; See also Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, New York: Bentam Books 2017, pp. 8-10. 16 Manson, “Introduction”, p. 4. 17 Oppy, “Natural Theology”, p. 16.

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However, even if this evaluation of the arguments might be correct, it is still not evident that his assessment of the value of natural theology would be necessarily correct too. As Graham Oppy has written, “He...could be wrong in his assumption that he has examined the most plausible arguments that are available to us.”18 And in fact it is true that some philosophers of religion consider (for example) that the “Kalam” version of the cosmological argument might be a successful piece of natural theology (given our knowledge of the universe at the present moment).19 Why did not Plantinga choose, for example, this version of the argument, instead of Aquinas’ third way? – a critic might ask. Needless to say, Oppy believes that Plantinga’s treatment of the arguments is exemplary.20 Yet while we can appreciate one’s reasoning, we can still dispute the conclusion derived from such reasoning. In fact, even Plantinga, in his later works, would reevaluate this pessimistic position from his early writings.

18 Ibid., p. 18. 19 See, for example, in this respect Michael Petersen, William Hasker, Bruce Reichenbach and David Basinger, Reason and Religious Belief: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1991, pp. 74-76. Against such critiques of the Kalam argument as one may find in Stephen Hawking A Brief History of Time (London: Bantam Press 2017) and The Grand Design (London: Bantam Press 2010), see the replies of Henry Schaefer in “The Big Bang, Hawking, and God,” in Science and Christianity: Conflict or Coherence? (Athens GA: The University of Georgia Printing Department 2004, pp. 45-76), John Lennox in God and Stephen Hawking: Whose Design Is It Anyway? (Oxford: Lion Hudson 2011) and William Lane Craig and James Sinclair, “The Kalam Cosmological Argument” in W. L. Craig and J.P. Moreland (eds), The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, Oxford: Blackwell 2009, pp. 101-201. For the seriousness with which Arthur Eddington (Einstein’s “disciple”), and the astrophysicist and priest Georges Lemaître saw the religious implications of Big Bang, see Mark Midbon’s article “‘A Day Without Yesterday’: Georges Lemaître & the Big Bang” (in Commonweal Magazine Vol. 127, No.6, March 24, 2000, pp. 18-19” and the exchange between Eddington (in Arthur Eddington, “The End of the World : from the Standpoint of Mathematical Physics”, in Nature, Vol. 127, No. 3203, March 21, 1931, p. 450) and Lemaître (in Georges Lemaître, “The Beginning of the World from the Point of View of Quantum Theory”, in Nature, Vol. 127, No. 3210, May 9, 1931, p. 706) in this respect. Eddington, at Lemaître’s suggestion that the world had a definite beginning – in which all its matter and energy were concentrated in one point – , replied: “The notion of a beginning of the world is for me repugnant.” Lemaître’s answer was that, “If the world has begun with a single quantum, then the notion of space and time would altogether fail to have any meaning at the beginning.” In January 1933 both Lemaître and Einstein traveled to California for a series of seminars. After Lemaître detailed his theory, Einstein (who initially opposed it) stood up, applauded, and said: “This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened.” (cf. Midbon, “‘A Day Without Yesterday’: Georges Lemaître & the Big Bang”). Another scientist who believed the Big Bang theory has theological implications is former NASA director Robert Jastrow (see in this respect the article: “A Scientist Caught between Two Faiths: Interview with Robert Jastrow”, in Christianity Today, August 6, 1982). 20 Oppy, op. cit. p. 160.

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8.2.1 The Cosmological Argument What are the problems that Plantinga finds with the cosmological argument, more precisely, with the third way of Aquinas? He reformulates the argument in this way: a. There are at present contingent beings (things for which it is possible to be or not to be). b. Whatever can fail to exist, at some time does not exist. c. Therefore, if all beings are contingent, then at one time nothing existed – from b. d. Whatever begins to exist is caused to begin to exist by something else already existing. e. Therefore, if at any time nothing existed, then at every subsequent time nothing would exist – from d. f. Hence if at one time nothing existed, then nothing exists now – from e. g. Hence if all beings are contingent, then nothing exists now – from c and f. h. Therefore, not all beings are contingent – from a and g. i. Hence there is at least one necessary being – from h. j. Every necessary being either has its necessity caused by another being or has its necessity in itself. k. It is impossible that there be an infinite series of necessary beings each of which has its necessity caused by another. l. Therefore, there is a necessary being having of itself its own necessity, and this all men speak of as God (from i, j, and k).21

Prima facie, as Plantinga observes, proposition b. is not obviously true and, moreover, proposition c does not follow evidently from it. However, a more cautious analysis would render b not obviously true only when one understands the concepts of necessity and contingency as logical necessity and contingency. Plantinga acknowledges an alternative interpretation of Aquinas, endorsed by Peter Geach, which replaces the notion of logical necessity with that of “imperishable existence that has no liability to cease.”22 In a similar vein, the notion of contingency implies, according to the interpretation of Etienne Gilson and F.C. Copleston, that, if a being can be or not be, then, in an infinite period of time surely all of its possibilities will be realized (Otherwise the respective possibility is not worthy of being called “possibility”).23 As a result, any contingent being, after a period of time, will cease to exist (a conclusion which agrees with the proposition b.). If one accepts this interpretation of the notion “contingency” (which to us does not seem

21 GOM, 5-6. 22 P.T. Geach and G.E.M. Ascombe, Three Philosophers, Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1961, p. 115, cf. GOM, 7, 22-23. 23 Etienne Gilson, The Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. E. Bullough, Cambridge, 1929, p. 85; F.C. Copleston, Thomas Aquinas, pp. 119-120, London, 1955, cf. GOM, 11.

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absolutely convincing24 ‒ but which might indeed represent St. Thomas’ view on contingency), then one might see the term contingent as approximately equivalent with the term temporal. Given these conceptual clarifications, it seems that, if the proposition c (that “if all beings are contingent, then at one time nothing existed.”) is true, then the argument is valid, and its conclusion true. But is this proposition true? Is it really true that there cannot be an infinite number of contingent and temporal beings, causing each other to exist during an infinite time? The answer to this proposition seems to be negative, and in this case the argument (as formulated by Aquinas) seems to fail.25 And this is also Plantinga’s conclusion. Given this line of reasoning, if we were to stop at this point, Plantinga’s skepticism regarding the argument’s value would be legitimate. Yet one might wonder if a slight modification of the argument might not render it viable. We believe that indeed, if one thinks of the statement d (that “Whatever begins to exist is caused to begin to exist by something else already existing,”), and supposes that it is possible to continue back with this series of contingent beings ad infinitum, then there is a problem with this infinite regress: It suggests, as Brian Davies has written, that there can exist an infinite series of effects without any cause. But this image seems contradictory: if all members of a series are effects, then the series itself is an effect. And this effect must have a cause.26

24 We offer in support of our skepticism a counterexample: Is it not possible in principle that a physical particle could exist for eternity in our world, although it could, in some conditions (which will never be here realized) cease to exist? Maybe such a particle does not exist in other worlds, or it exists there only for a short period – yet in our world it could exist eternally (if our world is eternal… ). It is true, maybe Gilson would interpret such a particle as being not contingent, but rather necessary; this lack of real possibility of realizing its own extinction could be interpreted by him as a sign of necessity. To us such an argumentation seems a little bit ambiguous. And in any way, could not in this case the atoms of Democritus qualify as necessary beings, even as beings having their necessity in themselves? 25 Geach suggests that with this accepting of an infinite series of temporal beings, the argument still does not fail, but we will not follow his argument here. He observes that even Aquinas seemed to agree with such an “infinite series” possibility, when he wrote that one cannot prove by reason alone that the universe has a beginning (For St. Thomas the doctrine of Creation ex Nihilo is “accessible” to Christians only through revelation.); see in this respect Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Question 46, Article 4; E. Gilson, The Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, p. 85. 26 Brian Davies, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1993, p. 91. We admit that we combined here a defense of the third way (of St. Thomas) with a standard defense of the second way (which understands God as an uncaused cause), but we do that because, as the third way is understood by Geach and Gilson, it becomes very similar to the second way.

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In the same context, recall the reaction to Kai Nielsen’s statement that if a series were infinite, “there would be no need for there to be a first cause to get the causal order started… since an infinite series can have no first member,”27 to which James Sadowsky replied that: It is just as difficult for any supporting member (of an infinite series) to exist as the member it supports. This brings back the question of how any member can do any causing unless it first exists. B cannot cause A until D brings it into existence. What is true of D is equally true of E and F without end.28

Of course, such a necessary cause of the infinite series of effects might exist at the beginning of this series (which means that the series is in fact finite), or it might exist, if the series is indeed infinite, outside it. Richard Swinburne argues for such a conclusion in his treatment of the cosmological argument.29 In light of this reasoning, we might say that Plantinga’s critique of the cosmological argument, as posited in St. Thomas’ third way version, is correct; however, there are reasons to consider that a modified version of this argument could indeed be successful. And such a successful outcome could furnish one with a good reason to believe that there is an eternal being which possesses the attribute of aseity.30 And it is worth highlighting that in his “Two Dozen (or so) Theistic Arguments” Plantinga has changed his mind and now considers this argument to be a good one, but not in the way proposed by Geach (which understands God’s necessity in terms of his aseity), but rather in his own version, which understands necessity and contingency as logical concepts. Moreover, he distinguishes his interpretation from that of Swinburne, who is of the opinion that – from a logical point of view – God is a contingent being.31

27 Kai Nielsen, Reason and Practice, New York: Harper & Row, 1971, p. 171. 28 James Sadowski, “The Cosmological Argument and the Endless Regress” in International Philosophical Quarterly, Vol.20, 1980, p. 465. One may find a similar argument in G. W. Leibniz, “On the Ultimate Origination of Things,” in Philosophical Essays (trans. R. Ariew and D. Garber), Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing 1989. 29 Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God, Oxford: Clarendon Press 2004, pp. 137-145. 30 One can see that this argument for a being possessing aseity is nothing else then a modern attempt to find what the ancient Greek philosophers called “the arché”, the origin or principle lying behind nature. 31 TDTA, 217.

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8.2.2 The Ontological Argument In “God and Other Minds” Plantinga examines the two forms of Anselm’s ontological argument: the classical one presented in Proslogion chapter II, and Norman Malcom’s formulation of the argument based on Proslogion chapter III. He first starts with a criticism of various objections raised against the ontological argument based on Proslogion II, in particular against Kant’s claim that the argument fails because it relies upon the idea that existence is a predicate,32 against Jerome Shaffer’s objection that it relies on a tautology (its conclusion being “an intensional statement about the meaning of the concept of God”)33 and against William Alston’s objection that it fails to distinguish between existence in understanding and existence in reality (that it “predicates real existence of a being assumed to have existence in the understanding”).34 Plantinga’s conclusion is that all these aforementioned objections fail, and that “we do not yet have a general refutation of Anselm’s argument.”35 On the other hand, he also argues that none of the most obvious ways of stating the argument succeed (for example, the Proslogion III version of Norman Malcolm, which understands the attribute of God’s existence as necessary existence);36 but despite this conclusion, he affirms that no one has yet demonstrated that all its possible versions fail.37 However, as we will see, Plantinga will change in his coming writings this “moderately” pessimistic perspective regarding Anselm’s argument. He will later affirm that there is a certain premise of the argument which, once accepted, could provide (in his words), “a victorious ontological argument.” And, because we will later refer to this more optimistic version as well, we postpone our evaluation of the argument until then.

32 GOM, 29-38. 33 Jerome Shaffer, “Existence, Predication and the Ontological Argument” in Mind, LXXI, 1962, p. 307, cf. GOM, 44. 34 William Alston, “The Ontological Argument Revisited”, in Philosophical Review, LXIX, 1960, pp. 452-474; GOM, 50. 35 GOM, 63. 36 GOM, 65-94. 37 GOM, 64.

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8.2.3 The Teleogical Argument Plantinga’s treatment of the teleological argument is not very different from that of Kant: He opines that the argument “deserves to be mentioned with respect”38 ‒ and like Kant, believes that the argument does not necessarily prove the existence of the God of theism (It might prove the existence of a grand architect, but nothing more).39 Plantinga discusses two Humean objections against the argument: one against its formal validity, the other against the argument’s pretense that it could prove the existence of the God of theism. He will reject the first Humean objection, but will fully agree with the second one. The form of the argument, in Hume’s version, is this: 1. The “productions of human contrivance” are the products of intelligent design. 2. The universe resembles the productions of human contrivance. 3. Therefore, probably the universe is a product of intelligent design. 4. Therefore, probably the author of the universe is an intelligent being.40

Hume’s first objection to this argument is that the universe is not similar to the productions of human intelligence, and adduces more “logical” reasons in this respect: The first reason is that no whole resembles its parts (In our case, the universe cannot resemble its parts). Plantinga denies this reason: There are many instances in which the whole may resemble its parts; it all depends “on the specific whole and parts” taken into discussion.41 The second reason is that we cannot draw an inductive conclusion about the universe as long as we are unable to experience the origin of various universes. Plantinga disputes the idea that “nothing unique and singular can be subject of an analogical argument” as being too strong: We can, for instance, make legitimate inferences about “the largest crow in the Amazon jungle.”42 Another reason for Hume’s skepticism regarding the world’s similarity to the objects of human contrivances is that a more legitimate similarity would be to an

38 GOM, 95, 106; Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (tr. N.K. Smith), London: Macmillan, 1953, p. 520. 39 GOM, 109. 40 GOM, 97. 41 GOM, 98. 42 David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, (ed. by Norman Kemp Smith), New York: Thomas Nelson 1947, p. 150, cf. GOM, 98-99.

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animal or a vegetable than to a machine.43 Plantinga replies that the Humean analogical argument can be transformed into an inductive one of the following form: 1. Everything that exhibits curious adaptation of means to ends and is such that we know whether or not it was the product of human intelligent design, was in fact the product of intelligent design. 2. The universe exhibits curious adaptation of means to ends. 3. Therefore, the universe is probably the product of intelligent design.44

Framing it this way renders Hume’s last reason powerless, because plants and animals themselves exhibit curious adaptation of means to ends (like machines): “Eyes, for example, are often cited as having this property.”45 As a result, Plantinga concludes that Hume’s first objection is inconclusive; he probably calls it inconclusive and not totally wrong, because logically one cannot exclude an explanation of the “curious adaptation of means to ends” in the animal or vegetable world through a random process like that suggested by the neo-Darwinian evolution (We cannot be sure about the truth of premise 1). The second Humean objection, as we already anticipated, is fully accepted by Plantinga. Hume suggests, as Plantinga understands him, that “on the evidence to which the teleological argument draws our attention… the existence of a powerful designer who is morally indifferent is as probable as the existence of (theistic) God.”46 This idea seems to Plantinga to be just an instance of a more general (and legitimate) objection, according to which the universe could have been: designed as well by one person as by several persons, created as well ex nihilo as from a preexistent material, as well by the same person who designed it as by another, as well by an omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good creator as by a less knowledgeable, powerful and good deity or even by an infant and irresponsible deity, as well by an eternal spirit, without body, independent of physical objects as by a perishable and embodied spirit, dependent on the physical objects.47 Plantinga’s conclusion is that the teleological argument is, like the cosmological and ontological one, an unsuccessful piece of natural theology; as a result, the project of natural theology fails. And if we accept his premises and his very high standards of evaluation, it leads us to agree with his assessment of the issue. But

43 Hume, op. cit. pp. 171, 172, 176; GOM, 104. 44 GOM, 99-100. 45 GOM, 106. 46 GOM,109; Hume, op. cit., p. 108. 47 GOM, 109-110.

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should we accept these standards? And is there no place for a cumulative value of these arguments? As we shall see, Plantinga’s later works exhibit a Plantinga who changes his mind regarding the worth of natural theology and the value of its arguments.

8.3 The Ontological Argument during Plantinga’s Middle Work As we already stated in the introduction, throughout the period of his middle work, the function of natural theology was for Plantinga that of showing that religious belief is rationally acceptable.48 This new turn of events leads him to reassess the ontological argument and to argue that, if one accepts certain presuppositions, the argument is successful. Plantinga starts by importing from the observations of J.N. Findlay, that God, if he exists, must possess his various excellences, like wisdom, goodness, power, etc., in a necessary manner. In order suitably to express this, Plantinga invokes modal logic; that is to say that if there is an unsurpassable greatness of God in this actual world (A), then for a believer “this unsurpassable greatness must be valid in all other worlds.” Plantinga follows up with a distinction between the attributes greatness and excellence: “the excellence of a being in a world W depends only upon its properties in W, while its greatness in W depends... also upon its excellence in other worlds.”49 He also defines the property unsurpassable greatness as “having maximal excellence in every possible world.” After these definitions he suggests a simple version of the argument: 1. There is a world in which unsurpassable greatness is exemplified. 2. The proposition, “A thing possesses unsurpassable greatness if and only if it has maximal excellence in every possible world,” is necessary true. 3. The proposition, “Whatever has maximal excellence is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect,” is necessary true. 4. P is a universal property if and only if P is instantiated in every world or in no world. 5. The property possesses unsurpassable greatness is universal in this sense (from 1., 2. and 4.). In other words, the property possesses unsurpassable greatness is instantiated in every world. 6. In this case, possesses unsurpassable greatness is also instantiated in our world. 7. As a result, maximal excellence is instantiated in our world (cf. 2. and 6.)

48 GFE, 2. 49 NN, 214.

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8. Consequently, a being who is omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect exists in our world (cf. 3.). In other words, God exists.50

The argument seems to Plantinga valid: The only problem is to know if the first premise: “that there is an essence entailing unsurpassable greatness” is true. Plantinga believes (or rather has the intuition… ) that this premise is indeed true. In this way he concludes that the argument is sound.51 However, he also agrees that a sane and rational man could understand premise 1, and yet reject it – by remaining agnostic, or at the very least, accepting the possibility of the existence of the property “no-maximality”;52 but in any case, he adds that “the same thing goes for any number of philosophical claims and ideas.”53 He exemplifies this by using the idea that Quantum Mechanics requires us to give up the Principle of Distribution from logic: in the same way that a physicist can deny a principle of logic for the sake of “simplifying physical theory,” one could also accept the premise of the existence of an essence entailing maximal greatness for the sake of simplifying theology.54 In the end Plantinga states that the conclusion of the argument is not proved or established, but that it is “rational to accept it.”55 This last idea corresponds with his views (from this middle period of his authorship) that the function of natural theology is that of showing that religious belief is rationally acceptable. However, in referring to the concept of maximal greatness, William Rowe has written that this is an “extraordinary” property: If there is only one possible world which does not include an all-powerful, omniscient, and perfectly moral being, then this property is impossible; in no possible world could it be instantiated.56

50 NN, 216. 51 NN, 216-217. 52 NN, 220; See the same conclusion regarding the ontological argument in Michael Murray and Michael Rea, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 135; another contemporary philosopher is Peter Millican, who similarly starts from the supposition that the Anselmian something than which nothing greater can be thought represents a legitimate nature (and that in this way one can escape many objections brought to the argument, including the Kantian suggestion that existence is not a property, or the separate realm objection of John Mackie, William Alston, Graham Oppy – shared also by Kierkegaard ); but in any case Millican argues that even this interpretation of Anselm fails – see in this respect Millican, “The One Fatal Flaw in Anselm’s Argument”, pp. 437-476. 53 NN, 221. 54 NN, 220. 55 NN, 221. 56 William Rowe, “Modal Versions of the Ontological Argument,” in Louis Pojman (ed.), Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company 1994, p. 76.

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Rowe agrees that, if it were a rule that one must not accept a premise unless one can prove it or has some good evidence for it, Plantinga would be unjustified in accepting his premise. But the ‘rule’ just mentioned is difficult to defend.57

Plantinga seems to believe that under certain circumstances an individual should be allowed to believe a proposition even when she has no serious evidence for it; for example, when there is no serious reason for the falsity of the respective proposition. And Rowe admits that indeed, the idea of maximal greatness is not clearly impossible. Therefore, he concludes that “it may be permissible for someone to believe Plantinga’s premise.” However, Rowe highlights that Plantinga wants to make an even stronger statement, namely “that it is evident that believing his premise is permissible.” For him this claim is “excessive”: we need to be much clearer about the circumstances that must obtain for Plantinga’s premise to be acceptable before we declare its acceptability with the unabashed assurance Plantinga here expresses.58

In our opinion his cautious, moderate-positive assessment of the Plantingian ontological argument is legitimate. However, objections raised against Plantinga’s argument tend to multiply. For example, John Hick suggested that, if one follows Plantinga’s reasoning, one can invent – in a similar way – a demonic ontological argument: starting from the premise “There is a possible world W in which maximal evil is instantiated,” one might deduce the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent and absolutely depraved being.59 But should we accept Hick’s objection? Plantinga seems to suggest (in his argument) the existence of a theological intuition (present at least in some religious persons), a so-called – in Peter Millican’s words – “extravagant Meinongian entity”;60 he follows here ‒ as stated in the introduction of the present argument – Findlay’s suggestion that a religious person sees the divine perfections as necessary attributes of divinity; as we saw, he could see this

57 Ibid., p. 77. 58 Ibid., p. 77. 59 John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent, London: Macmillan 1989, pp. 78-79. 60 Millican, “The One Fatal Flaw in Anselm’s Argument,” p. 437.

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intuition similarly to that of the physicist who, for the sake of Quantum Physics’ simplicity was ready to give up the Principle of Distribution. By contrast, nobody seems to possess the intuition that maximal evil represents a necessary divine perfection. Robin Collins observed that it is no arbitrary act to attribute to God the quality of goodness; according to Anselm and other philosophers (including Kurt Gödel61), a perfect good being is “greater” than one that is not good. Therefore, a maximal being can only be construed as perfectly good.62 As Plotin and Augustin suggested, evil does not exist substantially, but only as deprivation of substance, as a parasite on the substance of the good; moreover, by contrast with all other dualities, the good/evil dichotomy is deeply asymmetrical – always the good being preferred to the evil. Therefore, evil cannot be considered a divine perfection. Ultimately the conclusion is that Plantinga’s ontological argument might indeed work (although, like Rowe, one cannot be sure that it indeed functions). In any case, we are less convinced that there is nothing to it, as Hick suggests. Some people might have the intuition of a necessary all-powerful, omniscient and perfectly good concrete being; but fewer (or no) people seem to have the intuition of a maximal evil being (or, referring to the debate from chapter 5, – of a necessary Flying Spaghetti Monster).

8.4 The Perspective on Natural Theology Extracted from the Later Works In the essay “Two Dozen (or so) Theistic Arguments,” – one of his later works, Plantinga examines Swinburne’s statement that a good argument is “one which has premises that everyone knows.” Plantinga opines that “maybe there aren’t any such arguments…”63 We can say indeed that a maximally good argument is one that meets the conditions appropriate to classical foundationalism: that of “following deductively or inductively from propositions that are obviously true and accepted by nearly every sane man… together with the propositions that are self-evident or necessarily true.”64 One can encounter indeed such arguments in mathematics or

61 Kurt Gödel, “Ontological Proof”, in Solomon Feferman (ed.), Kurt Gödel Collected Works, Vol. III, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1986, p. 403-404; like Plantinga later, Gödel starts from the premise of the possibility of God’s existence and concludes that God necessarily exists in the actual world. 62 Robin Collins, “The Multiverse Hypothesis”, in Bernard Carr (ed.), Universe or Multiverse, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2007, p. 463. 63 TDTA, 210. 64 GOM, 4.

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in logic. However, he affirms that “the theistic arguments that follow” – in the essay Two Dozen (or so) Theistic Arguments – “do not meet that exalted standard,” and adds that, “few if any philosophical arguments do.”65 But then, the question is “what could be the criterion for a good argument?” His best proposal in this sense is this: an argument with the conclusion p is a good one “if it would convince an audience of ideal agnostics who had a design plan as the human, except that the design plan specifies no inclination to believe p or its denial.”66 But even in that case he thinks that whether or not the argument will convince an agnostic depends in part on what else she subscribes to; for him “there is no reason to believe that all ideal agnostics would react in the same way to the argument.”67 However, to the more practical question: “What can possibly accomplish the argument (or arguments) which will follow?” Plantinga suggests that, first of all, for an atheist the arguments “aren’t good for much of anything.” In fact, there is a possibility that a person might, when confronted with an argument he sees to be valid for a conclusion he deeply disbelieves from premises he knows to be true, give up (some) of those premises; in this way you can reduce someone from knowledge to ignorance by giving that person an argument seen to be valid from premises he or she knows to be true.68 Yet one might wonder what role these arguments have in the life of a believer. As we already anticipated in the introduction, in the later works Plantinga asserts that the arguments for God’s existence might be assimilated as needed in order to provide warrant for the belief in God’s existence; according to this view they work only if the person who uses them starts from the premise (or presupposition) of God’s existence.69 In this case the theistic arguments (if they are good) may confirm or strengthen the belief that God exists (when this belief is wavering). They could in principle “serve to bolster and confirm… perhaps to convince.”70 Plantinga states (again) at the end of his introduction to the essay “Two Dozen (or so) Theistic Arguments,” that the arguments “are not coercive in the sense that

65 PADA, 205; see also in this respect the similar distinction made by Wiertz between an ideal, perfect rationality of an ideal rational subject, and the gradual and minimal rationality of the concrete humans (in Oliver Wiertz, “Zum Begriff und zum Problem der religiösen Irrationalität in religionsphilosophischer Perspektive,” in Religion und Irrationalität, Jochen Schmidt und Heiko Schulz (eds.), Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2013, pp. 215-219, 226, 230, 235-242). 66 PADA, 208. 67 Ibid. 68 TDTA, 210. 69 Graham Oppy, op. cit., p. 29. 70 TDTA, 210.

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every person is obliged to accept their premises on pain of irrationality.”71 One can conclude in this respect that, as pertains to the effectiveness of these arguments, the presuppositions of those who listen to them are essential. In what follows we will evaluate some of the arguments presented by Plantinga in his “Two Dozen (or so) Theistic Arguments”: the Metaphysical arguments (the arguments from Intentionality, from Collections, from Natural Numbers and from Concepts), the argument from Physical Constants, the Naive Teleological argument, the argument from the Confluence of Proper Function and Reliability, the Moral argument, the argument from Evil, the argument from Miracles, C.S. Lewis’ argument from Nostalgia and the argument from the Meaning of Life.

8.4.1 The Ontological (or Metaphysical) Arguments: the Arguments from Intentionality, from Collections, from Natural Numbers and from Concepts The argument from intentionality starts from the observation that propositions have (the quality of) intentionality (or aboutness). In other words, they have the capacity of representing reality ‒ and this fact is closely related to “their being true or false.” For many philosophers, like Sellars, Rescher and Husserl, it seems incredible that they could be true separately from the activity of mind. The problem with this construal is that there are “far too many propositions” for human thinkers to be able to think them. Plantinga offers an example of this sense: the fact that there is a proposition for “each real number that is distinct from Taj Mahal.” Thus, says Plantinga, a possible solution to this problem would be, “to think of propositions as divine thoughts. Then in our thinking we would be literally thinking God’s thoughts after him.”72 A similar observation can be made about sets: Many philosophers (among them Georg Cantor) understood sets as being collections: things whose existence depends on the intellectual activity of “collecting” or “thinking together.” But again, there are “far too many sets” in the world to account for by humans. That would require “an infinite mind” – that of God.73 Another similar observation can be made about natural numbers: they could be thought as “dependent upon or even constituted by intellectual activity.” Again, “there are too many of them” to be the result of mere human thinking. We should think of them as God’s ideas.

71 Ibid. 72 TDTA, 210-211. 73 TDTA, 211-212.

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A similar assessment can also be made about properties: they seem to be similar to concepts (Many philosophers have in fact understood them as “reified concepts”). But again, there are properties which were never thought by a human mind; they might be again the concepts of a divine mind.74 Thus, Plantinga’s argument seems to start from the observation of an apparent contradiction: there are some things in our minds which seem to be, in a certain way, outside our minds too ‒ in the world. The problem is that the things in our mind are quantitatively much fewer than the same things outside our minds (although one might argue the things in mind and those outside the mind are either identical or, in any case, correlate to each other). Plantinga suggests that the postulation of an infinite mind (the mind of God) could solve this problem. He follows in this respect the Augustinian and Thomist tradition, which localized the Platonic ideas in God’s mind. He quotes in this respect (in his article “How to Be an Anti-Realist”) St. Thomas, who affirmed that, even if there were no human intellects, there could be truths because of their relation to the divine intellect. But if, per impossible, there were no intellects at all, but things continued to exist, then there would be no such reality as truth.75

Evidently, many would be dissatisfied with such a solution. One would have to appeal to an ancient alternative in this respect: that of Platonism. The true Platonists, observes Plantinga, hold that there is a world of Ideas (to which belong such things as propositions, numbers and properties), which exists independently of everything else, including our minds and their noetic activity. Such thinkers as Plato (and also Bertrand Russell and Edmund Husserl temporarily) seem to have believed in this world. However, these persons seem to have been rather the exception: according to Plantinga, Platonism “has been a rare bird in our philosophical tradition.”76 But what are Plantinga’s arguments against Platonism? He does not directly answer this problem; one possible answer could be – given the aforementioned arguments – that the thought of seeing the Ideas as independent of our minds does not seem convincing. This would mean that they would gratuitously “double” the number of universals, by locating them both in “nature” (in an abstract non-spatial and non-temporal realm) and also in thought. Moreover, it does not take into consideration the way in which these Ideas seem to be generated by the activity of

74 TDTA, 213. 75 Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate, Q. 1, A. 6 Respondeo, cf. HBA, 68. 76 HBA, 68.

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mind, according to the aforementioned arguments: thus, the propositions are normally seen as the products of a mind. Similarly, the sets are, as suggested by Cantor, generated by mind’s activity of collecting. The properties are also the product of mind’s activity of conceiving (being understood as reified concepts). Furthermore, one might wonder what Plantinga’s view on universals is, in this context. He seems to believe, as Craig suggests, in conceptualism – a doctrine according to which “universals are abstracted from particulars” – as opposed to Platonism, in which the universal concepts from our minds are “instantiations of the independent and abstract a-temporal and a-spatial universals.”77 In this respect, Plantinga would be a proponent of “divine conceptualism,” the idea that the Platonic forms are divine ideas – the abstract Platonic objects having a conceptual reality only as “contents of God’s mind”; this is a perspective on God embraced historically by the majority of Christian theologians.78 However, Craig raises some objections against this position (as might be seen from his review of Plantinga’s book Where the Conflict Really Lies). If, according to Plantinga, numbers are God’s thoughts, and sets His mental collectings, then “when I collect mentally the objects on my desk into a set, this is obviously not God’s activity, but mine, so that I do not in fact grasp the set of objects on my desk ‒ which seems wrong.”79 He also criticizes the solution offered by Plantinga to this problem, suggested in the following quote from “Where the Conflict Really Lies”: According to classical versions of theism, sets, numbers, and the like... are best conceived as divine thoughts. But then they stand to God in the relation in which a thought stands to a thinker. This is presumably a productive relation: the thinker produces his thoughts. It is therefore also a causal relation. If so, then numbers and other abstract objects also stand in a causal relation to us. For we too stand in a causal relation to God; but then anything else that stands in a causal relation to God stands in a causal relation to us. Therefore, numbers and sets stand in a causal relation to us, and the problem about our knowing these things disappears.80

77 William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, Downers Grove IL: IVP Academic 2003, p. 506; conceptualism appeared in mediaeval times in Abelard’s philosophy, and in a modified form, as moderate realism, it was adopted by Thomas Aquinas. This perspective would be very influential during the Middle Ages (see in this respect Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, vol. II, New York: Image Books Doubleday 1993, pp. 150-155). 78 Craig and Moreland, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, p. 505. 79 William Craig, “Alvin Plantinga’s Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion and Naturalism”, article online found at the address: William Craig, “Alvin Plantinga’s Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion and Naturalism”, [https://www.reasonablefaith.org/images/uploads/Alvin_ Plantinga_Where_the_Conflict_Really_Lies_Science%2C_Religion%2C_and_Naturalism.pdf], last visited on April 30, 2023. 80 WCRL, 291.

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But to Craig this answer is unsatisfying. He reformulates Plantinga’s argument in this way: Premise 1: God is the cause of mathematical objects (B is the cause of A). Premise 2: God is the cause of us (B is the cause of C). Conclusion: The mathematical objects are causally related to us (A is the cause of C perceiving them). But for him this reasoning seems: to overlook the directionality of causal relations. If A is the cause of B and B is the cause of C (A→B→C), then, plausibly, A is causally related to C. But if B is the cause of A, and B is also the cause of C (A←B→C), then why think that A and C stand in any causal relation, especially in one that has a direction such that C is affected by A? Clearly, Plantinga needs to say more to explain how we acquire knowledge of the mental events in God’s mind.81

But it is highly suspicious that Plantinga suggests something like A→B→C. He is well aware that A←B→C and that this does not directly imply A→C. Rather the idea is that, since B→A, and since A and C have something in common (the fact that both are caused by B), then this represents a possible (but, of course, not necessary) explanation of why A→C. But how can God explain our causal relation with mathematical objects? Plantinga suggests that he does that by causing the mathematical objects to be, and then by causing these objects to enter in causal relation to us (due to our similarity to him as intellects). Does that mean that we have access to God’s mind and thoughts? Maybe so – but that would be only a limited access to these specific thoughts. It is quite obvious that the great theistic religions would allow such forms of access to God’s mind: What else is prophecy and prayer if not a reciprocal communication of thoughts between God and men? God sends his thoughts to men (prophecy), and men send their thoughts to God (prayer). Maybe, thinking the Platonic Ideas from God’s mind is something akin to prophecy: a continuous prophecy in which we are able, at any moment, to read some of God’s eternal thoughts. Finally, are these Plantingian arguments strong enough to convince even an atheist? Probably not, as Plantinga already anticipated. However, in these arguments he offers at least a solution to these problems ‒ which from a naturalistic point of view seem irresolvable.

81 Craig, “Alvin Plantinga’s Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion and Naturalism”.

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8.4.2 The Argument from Physical Constants As the “argument from physical constants” Plantinga refers to the well-known (and debated) argument for the existence of God from the fine-tuning of the universe (FTA). He quotes in this respects many physicists, some of them atheists (like John Barrow, Martin Rees, Brandon Carter, Stephen Hawking and Paul Davies), who argue that many physical constants and features of our universe (like the rate of universe’ expansion, or the cosmological constant, the strong force, the weak force, the electromagnetic force, the gravity and the proton/neutron difference), are finely tuned in order to allow life “as we know it” to exist (the fine tuning ranges from 1 part in 10 to one part in 10 to the power of 53).82 Plantinga considers some explanations of this phenomenon (such as the one that “no matter how things had been, it would have been anyway extremely improbable,” or such as the Anthropic Principle ‒ which says that “a necessary condition of these values of the physical constants to be observed at all (by us or by other living beings) is that they have very nearly the values they do have”), and he finds them utterly unsatisfactory. Against the first explanation he gives this ironic example: We are playing poker; each time I deal I get all the aces; you get suspicious: I try to allay your suspicions by pointing out that my getting all the aces each time I deal is no more improbable than any equally specific distribution over the relevant number of deals. Would that explanation play in Dodge City (or Tombstone)?”83

Against the second one (the Anthropic Principle) he offers the well-known “firing squad” example (proposed by John Leslie): Let us suppose that a prisoner stands in front of a firing squad composed of very well-trained marksmen. What would the prisoner say if all the marksmen fired at him, but all of them missed? Would he laugh and comment that the event did not require any explanation because if the marksmen had not missed, he would not be there to observe them having done so? Evidently, the prisoner’s comment would be absurd. All the marksmen having missed him is indeed an event requiring explanation: Either it was an accident (a very lucky event), or otherwise everything was planned (e.g. All the marksmen

82 TDTA, 215-216; WCRL, 194-198. 83 TDTA, 216.

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decided to miss the target because they were bribed). The first possibility seems very improbable; therefore, the second one becomes very plausible.84 Plantinga’s conclusion is that the theistic explanation is the simplest; there is no mystery here: God is the one who has “tuned” these constants.85 However, in “Where the Conflict Really Lies” he seems to have renounced this enthusiasm regarding FTA. He now contemplates the hypothesis that there may be many universes, possibly an (almost) infinite number, as some new contemporary scientific theories seem to suggest.86 But could this idea solve the mystery of the fine-tuning argument (for a naturalist)? Again, an analogy given by John Leslie will help us understand the situation more clearly. The probability of the existence of a firing squad which by accident misses its target is increased if at the same time there are an infinite number of such executions. Given an infinite number of executions, it is possible for one in which all the marksmen miss their target. Thus, the concept of Multiverse helps to increase the probabilistic resources needed to make the existence of a fine-tuned universe plausible. But even if this Multiverse exists, we still need a designer, says Plantinga. That happens due to the so-called “This Universe” objection, which suggests that, on the many-world hypothesis, it is likely that some world or other is fine-tuned for life, but no more likely that this world is thus fine-tuned. Plantinga concedes that this argument is weaker than the previous one. And indeed, as Neil Manson and others suggest87 «This Universe» objection is not much different from «This Planet» objection, which to contemporary cosmologists does not sound very convincing. He also argues that the case made by Lydia and Timothy McGrew and Eric Vestrup, which states that the values of the parameters involved in FTA have no logical limits, and that the half-open interval they can take [0, infinity] is not normalizable, also weakens the case for FTA.88 Regarding McGrew’s argument, we can observe that philosophers like Swinburne, argued that the trap of non-normalizability could be avoided if one, for

84 Elliott Sober, “The Design Argument”, in Neil Manson (ed.), God and Design: The Teleological Argument and Modern Science, p. 46. 85 TDTA, 216. 86 He quotes in this sense Roger White’s article “Fine-Tuning and Multiple Universes” in Nous, vol. 34, 2000. 87 Neil Manson, “Introduction” in God and Design, pp. 20-21. 88 Timothy McGrew et al., “Probabilities and the Fine-Tuning Argument”, in God and Design, p. 201; WCRL, 205-208.

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example, “would ascribe higher intrinsic probabilities to lower values of constants and variables.”89 On the other hand, it is interesting to point out that the problem of normalizability was not (yet) raised by the many physicists who positively assess the value of FTA, among whom we find well known atheists like Stephen Hawking or Stephen Weinberg. It very well may be the case that these physicists believe that the variation of the value of the constants in relation with themselves (especially in the case of the rate of the expansion of the universe) and in relation with each other (especially in the case of the value of the fundamental forces of the universe) represents a sufficient reason for building a case for FTA. In our opinion, despite the problem of normalizability, which might in some measure weaken the FTA, as Plantinga suggests, in the present scientific context one can still make a case for the original Fine-Tuning Argument. This conclusion is probable, given that at the moment there are good scientific reasons for questioning the reality of the Multiverse.90 The Multiverse hypothesis fails to convince as long as its supporters do not find a mechanism for producing it, a mechanism backed by a convincing scientific theory. Indeed, there are proponents of the Multiverse objection to FTA who suggest that some such backing theories might exist. The best attempts in this respect are the Inflation Theory and the String Theory (more precisely the M-theory). Still, these theories are very speculative at this moment.91 They are not confirmed by

89 Swinburne, The Existence of God, p. 178n. 90 That does not mean that theism is necessarily incompatible with the idea of Multiverse ‒ see in this respect WCRL, 214-215, and Jeff Zweering, Who’s Afraid of the Multiverse, Glendora, CA: Reasons to Believe 2012. 91 Some prominent astrophysicists – like Roger Penrose, George Ellis and Lee Smolin – , criticize, for example, M-theory (the main source for the Multiverse objection to FTA) for being at this moment rather metaphysical than scientifical (see in this respect George Ellis, “Does the Multiverse Really Exist?” in Scientific American, vol. 305, no. 2, August 2011, pp. 38-43 , his conference entitled “On the Nature of Cosmology Today” (Copernicus Center, 2012) at this online address: [https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=tq8-eLGpEHc] (last visited on April 30, 2023), and the interview taken to Roger Penrose by Alister McGrath (September 21, 2020) at this online address [https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Dg_95wZZFr4] (last visited on April 30, 2023)); Metaphysical elements might be included in a scientific theory, but they have another nature than the rest of it, belonging to a domain not accesible to experimenting and verification. (Thomas Kuhn for example included a metaphysical component into his “disciplinary matrix”, but saw it distinct from the other verifiable components of the matrix); moreover, even among the proponents of this theory there are some, like David Gross, and to some extent Edward Witten, who reject any application of the Anthropic Principle to the theory; this group of string theorists do not like Leonard Susskind’s idea of transforming a failure (that of finding a single theory describing all of reality – they found instead a virtually infinite number of string theory solutions) – into a success (see String Theory for Dummies, Indianapolis: Wiley Publishing 2010,

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experiments, and some physicists see them as not even testable (There is presently a debate on this.). Moreover, both theories themselves require the fine-tuning of certain of their constants in order to be viable.92 Additionally, it is not certain that these theories provide enough variability for the constants of those universes, or a sufficient number of those universes, for allowing a universe with carbon-based life to exist. For all these reasons, some physicists (for example, George Ellis, Paul Davies and John Polkinghorne) believe that at present the Multiverse explanation is rather metaphysical than scientific. In this respect they believe that both the Intelligent Designer explanation and the Multiverse explanation are equivalent in their explanatory pursuit. Regardless, according to the current scientific situation, a theist can still find in FTA a good argument for the existence of a Cosmic Designer. Conversely, a naturalist could reply that some future scientific theories might solve the problem (in the Multiverse direction). Both theist and naturalist can, in a rational way, maintain their metaphysical presuppositions – although, in our opinion, the fine-tuning findings in our universe are probably more surprising for a naturalist than for a theist.

8.4.3 The Naive Teleological Argument This argument is suggested by Swinburne, who affirmed that the world’s fabric is constituted by many different bits of matter, existing over endless time (or possibly beginning to exist over endless time)… (This) matter is complex, diverse, but regular in behavior. Its existence and behavior need explaining in just the kind of way that chemical combinations needed explaining; or it needs explaining when we find all the cards of a pack arranged in order.93

pp. 304-305, a book with a funny, but otherwise very informative character ‒ written by the American physicist Daniel Robbins). 92 See in this respect a comment of John Leslie on the inflation theory: “Davies, Ellis and others argue that such inflation would itself have needed very accurate tuning to occur at all and to leave roughness of just the right amount to lead to galaxies. Two components of an inflation-driving ‘cosmological constant’ might have had to balance each other with an accuracy of better than one part in 10 to 50.” (John Leslie, “The Anthropic Principle Today” in John Leslie (ed.), Modern Cosmology and Philosophy, Amherst: Prometheus Books 1998, p. 291). See also in the same sense the article of the physicist Robin Collins “The Many Worlds Hypothesis as an Explanation of Cosmic Fine-Tuning”, in Faith and Philosophy, vol. 22, no. 5, 2005, pp. 645-666. 93 Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God, Oxford: Clarendon Press 2004, p. 288, cf. TDTA, 216-217.

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Of course, Swinburne knows that a skeptic might immediately raise the objection that there is nothing to be explained in the fact that our universe is ordered: unless it were an orderly place, “we should not be here to comment the fact.”94 But Swinburne’s response to this objection invokes again a “firing squad” Leslian kind of example. He similarly concludes that: the teleologist starting point is not that we perceive order rather than disorder, but that order rather than disorder is there. Maybe only if order is there can we know what is there, but that makes what is there no less extraordinarily and in need of explanation.95

This quite simple argument seems convincing. Again, what can a naturalist do to avoid this conclusion? If she is able to use the Multiverse hypothesis to escape the conclusion of FTA, she can as well use this solution to escape the consequences of this argument.

8.4.4 The Argument from the Confluence of Proper Function and Reliability According to Plantinga: We ordinarily think that, when our faculties are functioning properly in the right ort of environment, they are reliable. Theism, with the idea that God has created us in his image and in such a way that we can acquire truth over a wide range of topics and subjects, provides an easy, natural explanation of that fact. The only real competitor here is nontheistic evolutionism; but nontheistic evolution would at best explain our faculties’ being reliable with respect to propositions which are such that having a true belief with respect to them has survival value. That does not obviously include moral beliefs, beliefs of the kind involved in completeness proofs for axiomatizations of various first order systems, and the like. (More poignantly, beliefs of the sort involved in science, or in thinking evolution is a plausible explanation of the flora and fauna we see.) Still further, true beliefs as such don’t have much by way of survival value; they have to be linked with the right kind of dispositions to behavior. What evolution requires is that our behavior have survival value, not necessarily that our beliefs be true. (Sufficient that we be programmed to act in adaptive ways). But there are many ways in which our behavior could be adaptive, even if our beliefs were for the most part false.96

This argument proffered by Plantinga predictably gave rise to much dispute.97 We would offer in this respect, in favor of his view, only an argument from science. 94 Swinburne, The Existence of God, p. 156. 95 Ibid., p. 157. 96 TDTA, 218-219. 97 See in this respect the collection of essays Naturalism Defeated?: Essays on Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument, ed. by James Beilby, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 2002.

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Indeed, as Plantinga argued, the beliefs involved in science do not have an immediate survival value, and in this way could not be explained by evolution. Then, according to Plantinga, why should we believe they are true or very similar? Evolution does not promise to lead us toward truth, but only toward a greater adaptation. Indeed, there have been philosophers of science, like Bas van Fraassen, who argued exactly in this direction. According to his perspective, the success of scientific theories is based on a kind of Darwinian selection mechanism. Van Fraassen argues that each scientific theory is born in a wild competition, and only the successful theories survive. As a result, we cannot talk about any kind of scientific realism; the theories do not lead us toward truth, and all we can say about the winners of the competition is that they are the most successful in explaining the observational facts.98 However, other philosophers of science opposed van Fraassen’s views in this respect; Jarrett Leplin, for example, argued that, although van Fraassen’s view can explain the way in which we obtain successful theories, it is not also able to explain why these theories have success. By contrast, the supporters of scientific realism can explain this success: The theories are successful because they have led us toward truth.99 This latter point made by Leplin seems to us more convincing. But then another question needs to be raised: Why is it plausible to expect that our scientific theories should be able to describe reality correctly? Why is it possible to have such an amazing correspondence (or fit) between our scientific hypotheses and reality? And especially, why do we possess a “mathematical eye”- the possibility of inventing and/or discovering very complicated and counterintuitive types of mathematics through which we are able to discover such scientific theories like quantum mechanics or general relativity?100 A plausible explanation for this is that our minds are “designed” by some intelligence, not by blind processes, in such a way that they somehow correspond to, or are able to mirror nature.101 Finally, one may wonder which of the answers are open to the naturalists? Some of them, like Richard Dawkins, would admit that here we might have to do with something very mysterious in nature, but they could add that even if an intelli-

98 van Fraassen, The Scientific Image, pp. 39-40. 99 Jarrett Leplin, A Novel Defense of Scientific Realism, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1997, pp. 7-9. 100 See in this respect Eugene Wigner, “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences,” in Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 13, no. 1, 1960. 101 See also Thomas Nagel’s appreciation for this argument in his review of Plantinga’s book Where the Conflict Really Lies: Thomas Nagel, “A Philosopher Defends Religion” in The New York Times Review of Books, September 27, 2012.

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gence is hidden behind this mystery, it need not be a personal intelligence (or God): pantheism could (for them) explain this fact as well.102

8.4.5 The Moral Argument Plantinga quotes in this respect Oxford philosopher Robert Adams.103 Adams’ argument starts from the nature of right and wrong. According to him: ‒ We firmly believe that “certain things are morally right and other things are morally wrong,” (For example, torturing another person to death “just for fun” is wrong). ‒ The nature of this rightness or wrongness can be best explained by the theory that “moral rightness” consists in the agreement “with the commands… of a loving God,” and “moral wrongness” consists in the disagreement with his commands. ‒ Thus, the theory entails “with a reason of some weight” the existence of God.104 Why is this “divine command” theory the best explanation of our moral experience? Because, in Adams’ view: 1. It presents the morally right or wrong facts as “objective and non-natural facts”: objective means that “whether they obtain or not does not depend on whether any human being think they do,” and non-natural means that “they cannot be entirely stated in the language of physics, chemistry, biology, or psychology.”105 A fact prohibited or commanded by God is objective and non-natural. These two qualities seem to agree with our ethical experience. 2. It is intelligible; by contrast, other types of objective and non-natural theories ‒ like those of the intuitionists (with their “non-natural ethical properties”), or those of the Platonists (with their ideas of “the Good” or “the Just”) ‒, seem obscure and unconvincing.106

102 Dawkins, referring to the purported pantheism of Albert Einstein, wrote that in this sense he also could be called a religious person (see in this respect Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, London: Bantam Press 2006, p. 19). 103 TNTD, 224. 104 Robert Adams, “Moral Arguments for Theistic Belief,” in Rationality and Religious Belief, ed. by C. Delaney, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press 1979, p. 116. 105 Adams, “Moral Arguments for Theistic Belief,” pp. 117-118. 106 Adams, “Moral Arguments for Theistic Belief,” p. 118. Similar arguments to that of Adams can be found by A.E. Taylor, but also to such contemporary philosophers as Janine Idziak, Philip Quinn and Edward Wierenga.

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While this argument may be plausible for a theist, it may be less convincing for a naturalist, who might perceive it as a kind of “rabbit from the hat” evidence for God’s existence. Moreover, the naturalist could maintain his skepticism even if he might have no serious alternative as an explanation for his moral experience (although it is true that this would put the naturalist in an epistemically inferior position because he would have to acknowledge the existence of a phenomenonthe fact of moral experience ‒ he could not convincingly explain, when on the other side there exists a possible theistic explanation).

8.4.6 The Argument from Evil This argument is, ironically, a very interesting counterattack against the most powerful objection of the atheist brought against the idea of God’s existence: the objection from the presence of the horrifying kind of evil in our world.107 How to think about utterly appalling and horrifying evil? The Christian understanding: it is indeed utterly appalling and horrifying; it is defying God, the source of all that is good and just. From a naturalistic perspective, there is nothing much more to evil – say the sheer horror of the Holocaust, of Pol Pot, or a thousand other villains – than there is to the way in which animals savage each other. A natural outgrowth of natural processes. Hostility, hatred, hostility towards outsiders or even towards one’s family is to be understood in terms simply of the genes’ efforts (Dawkins) to ensure its survival. Nothing perverted or unnatural about it. (Maybe can’t even have these categories.) But from a theistic point of view, deeply perverted, and deeply horrifying. And maybe this is the way we naturally see it. The point here is that it is objectively horrifying. We find it horrifying: and that is part of its very nature, as opposed to the naturalistic way of thinking about it where there really can’t be much of anything like objective horrifyingness.108

What can be said about this argument? Beyond the quite convincing point that, in a naturalistic world the evil, which phenomenologically appears as horrifying,109 seems to be somehow “emasculated” (and maybe even legitimized) through the kind of reductionist naturalist explanation suggested by Dawkins, it could also be

107 Plantinga argues that the reality of evil does not represent a convincing defeater against theism, although he does not also provide a theodicy. His idea is just that either there is no logical inconsistency between the existence of evil and the existence of God, or that evil’s presence does not offer a powerfully probabilistic argument against the existence of God (see WCB,460, 462). 108 TDTA, 224-225. 109 Concerning a phenomenology of evil see: Henry Blocher, Christian Thought and the Problem of Evil, Leicester: Apollos 1994, pp. 10-11, and Simone Petrement, Essai sur le Dualisme chez Platon, les Gnostiques et les Manicheens, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1947, ch. VII.

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argued that Plantinga offers a kind of transcendental argument: In a world without meaning we should not expect that someone could ask a question about meaning. We might evaluate this world as ugly, absurd, meaningless due to the horrifying evil we find in it. Yet, there is at least a place with meaning in this world: the brain of the evaluator – where the evaluation of those evils as meaningless and horrifying takes place. And if someone would alternatively suggest that it is equally possible that an evil demiurge might have created us, the immediate question would follow: Why did this demiurge implant in our minds a moral conscience which possesses the ability to condemn even him (as evil)? What might be the naturalist reply to this argument? Maybe he could maintain that, on a scale, the horror of evil weighs heavier against God than for. The atheist’s attack from the horrifying evil notwithstanding, Plantinga’s position represents in our view indeed an argument for God’s existence.

8.4.7 C.S. Lewis’ Argument from “Nostalgia” The English philosopher and writer C.S. Lewis wrote in his book Surprised by Joy that there is in us a deep desire for a joy which is not from this world, a need that cannot be fulfilled by any earthly joys, “a nostalgia that often engulfs us upon beholding a splendid land or seascape: these, somehow speak to us of their maker.”110 In fact this search for joy played an essential role in bringing Lewis from atheism and agnosticism to Christianity.111 Plantinga assessment of this argument is this: “Not sure just what the argument is; but suspect there is one there.”112 We believe that from this one can obtain prima facie at least a pragmatic argument in favor of theism, an argument which very well reveals the role of presuppositions in assessing the arguments for God’s existence. Thus, if one adopts a naturalistic perspective, one may rapidly dismiss this argument as nothing more than pious wishful thinking. Conversely, if one is a theist, one can very well explain this desire as having been implanted in us by God in order to draw us to Him. In addition to that, the argument might also play an even more positive theoretical role in an eventual dispute between a theist and a pantheist. Both persons

110 TDTA, 227. 111 See in this respect C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy, New York, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1955, chapters XI and XIV. 112 TDTA, 227.

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believe there is rationality, a logos in the universe. Yet for the theist it is plausible to argue that, if God implanted the sensation of hunger in us, and also provided food in order to satisfy it, in a similar way he implanted in us this desire in order to satisfy it fully in a transcendent world; in the opposite camp, the pantheist could appraise this desire as irrational ‒ because it cannot be in any way gratified in a universe which does not allow for transcendence.

8.4.8 Arguments from Miracles Plantinga offers no explanation regarding these arguments, he just states the idea.113 We subscribe, again ‒ as he suggested ‒ to the value of carrying particular presuppositions, and that is what is at stake here. A naturalist would either dismiss the purported miracle stories as false accounts (following the example of Hume or Spinoza) or would say that a scientific explanation could be provided for them in the future (following the suggestion of Karl Bahrdt);114 meanwhile, they might strengthen a theist’s belief in God, reinforcing in a more direct and experiential way what he believes from other indirect sources; in any case, his worldview allows space for miracles. In his book Where the Conflict Really Lies Plantinga argues in detail why for him the divine (miraculous) action in the world is rationally and scientifically possible.115

113 Ibid. 114 See in this respect a typology of the possible opponents of miracles in Heiko Schulz’s article: “Nur das Unglaubliche ist gewiss”, in Elisabeth Gräb-Schmidt und Reiner Preul (eds), Marburger Jahrbuch Theologie, vol. XXVIII: Wunder, Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt 2016, pp. 104-105. 115 WCRL, 65-128; in this respect he states (against Rudolf Bultmann, Longdon Gilkey and John Macquarrie) that the direct supernatural action of God in the universe is possible both in a classicalNewtonian and a quantic-relativistic universe. Regarding the Newtonian universe, he observes that Newton himself did not accept a non-interventionist theology ‒ and that the miracles are here impossible only if the universe is “closed from a causal point of view”, allowing no influence from outside. But – he adds – neither classical mechanics nor classical science entails the statement that the material universe is a closed system (WCRL, 76-90). In what concerns the modern universe of quantum mechanics, he observes that it is even more opened to special divine action than the classical one. In this case the miracles are possible even if the universe is – from a causal point of view – closed; this happens because “quantum mechanics does not determine for a given set of initial conditions a specific result, only attaches probabilities to the possible results.” In this respect he quotes such philosophers of physics as John Earman and Bradley Morton, who both argue for a possible compatibility between quantum mechanics and miracles (WCRL, 92-97).

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But are there really such miracles? We tend to be open to the reality of miracles.116 There are many credible witnesses in this sense. For example, Andrew Lang ‒ one of the most important disciples of the great 19th (and 20th) century historian of religion Edward Burnett Taylor – argued in the first four chapters of his famous book The Making of Religion (1901) that many accounts of miracles found in the religious life of the primitives are indeed real. He did not just narrate these accounts in a neutral phenomenological fashion, as did other anthropologists; rather he himself engaged in research in order to evaluate the purported miraculous element from the stories: the extent to which, for example, through magic, divination or spirit possession, real information, inaccessible by natural means, is provided. The result of his research proved to be, from his point of view, positive; moreover, he brought in his book many arguments that these occult achievements belonging to primitives are identical with the many similar experiences described by the parapsychological research of his time.117 His argument is that in fact one of the main sources of religion might be this type of experience.118

116 And this against the skepticism of David Hume, who famously stated the criterion according to which, in order for one legitimately to believe in a miracle, the falsity of the witness regarding the miracle must be less plausible for one than the miracle itself. But, as Charles Gaskin observes, Hume does not consistently hold to his principle (and is “obscurantist” in his attitude) when he admits the very good witness to the healing-miracle of Marguerite Perrier (the niece of Blaise Pascal), but still refuses to admit it, because “it violates the laws of nature” (See in this respect David Hume, Dialogue Concerning Natural Religion; with Of the Immortality of the Soul, Of Suicide, Of Miracles (ed. by R. Popkin), Indianapolis: Hackett 1998, p. 121n7, and Charles Gaskin, Hume’s Philosophy of Religion, London: Macmillan 1978, p. 125). 117 For example, he refers in this respect to the attempts of a commission of Paris’ Academy of Medicine (starting with the year 1825) to examine the so-called “animal magnetism” (which means hypnosis – coupled in some cases with somnambulism). The results – presented in the Academy’s Report from 1831 – attested (in some patients) the presence of clarvoyance, of the prediction with great chronological accuracy of some future events and (eventually) the manifestation of some unusual physiological transformations – for example, a lack of corporal sensibility and a sudden increase of the physical power. But, as Lang observed, the Academy lacked the courage to publish the report openly, due to the tendency of the French cultured public of those times to reject apriori any explanation which did not fit the reigning naturalistic paradigm (Andrew Lang, The Making of Religion, Lenox, MA: Hard Press Publishing 2013, ch. 2). The report can be read in: J.C. Colquhoun, Isis Revelata: An Inquiry into the Origin, Progress and Present State of Animal Magnetism, Edinburgh: MacLachlan&Stewart 1836, vol. II, pp. 193-293). 118 Lang, The Making of Religion, ch. 3, 4; Lang was in 1911 president of the Society of Psychical Research. A similar perspective on miracles can be seen in Fiona Bowie, “Miracles in Traditional Religions”, in G. Twelftree (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Miracles, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2011, pp. 167-183, and in Otto Betz and Werner Grimm, Arbeiten zum Neuen Testament und Judentum 2, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang 1977, pp. 5-6.

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There is also another very interesting book (Wild Beasts of the Philosophical Desert: Philosophers on Telepathy and Other Exceptional Experiences) written by Hein van Dongen, Hans Gerding and Rico Sneller, which presents many great philosophers, like Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schelling, Arthur Schopenhauer, William James, Henry Bergson and Gabriel Marcel, who believed, researched, and some of whom were even involved in these kinds of parapsychological phenomena.119 An interesting fact about Gabriel Marcel and Lewis is that they too had encounters with the occult and spiritism which played an important role in their pilgrimage toward Christianity.120 Craig Keener’s quite comprehensive two-volume book, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, which consists of many well researched accounts of miracles in Christianity, past and present, is as helpful as it is informative.121 And about Jesus’ miracles, Barry Blackburn affirms that among the specialists in “Jesus Studies,” “irrespective of their faith commitments or ideology, there is general consensus that healings and exorcisms were integral to Jesus’ career.”122 And even Rudolf Bultmann, well-known promoter of “the demythologizing of the New Tes-

119 Hein van Dongen, Hans Gerding and Rico Sneller, Wild Beasts of the Philosophical Desert: Philosophers on Telepathy and Other Exceptional Experiences, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2014; to this list can be added also Hegel, although for him these phenomena were situated at the inferior limit of the psychical events spectrum (see in this respect G.W. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Spirit 1827-8 (transl. by R. Wiliams), Oxford: Oxford University Press 2007, pp. 134-137). 120 See in this respect Rico Sneller, “Gabriel Marcel and the Rootedness of Exceptional Phenomena”, in van Dongen, Gerding and Sneller, op. cit., pp. 121-135, and C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy, pp. 59-60, 173-176, 202, 203, 206. 121 Craig Keener, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, Grand Rapids, MA: Baker Academic, 2011. 122 Barry Blackburn, “The Miracles of Jesus” in Twelftree (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Miracles, p. 117. It is also interesting that for Jesus’ contemporaries it was not the reality of his miracles that was controversial, but rather their significance: if for Jesus they represented the presence of the kingdom of God, for them they represented demonic works. (Michael Wolter, “Die Wunder in der neutestamentlichen Jesusüberlieferung”, in Elisabeth Gräb-Schmidt und Reiner Preul (eds.), Marburger Jahrbuch Theologie vol. XXVIII: Wunder, Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt 2016, pp. 52-53; Stefan Alkier and David Moffitt, “Miracles Revisited. A Short Theological and Historical Survey”, in Stefan Alkier, Annette Weissenrieder (eds.), Miracles Revisited: New Testament Miracle Stories and their Concepts of Reality, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 2013, pp. 315-316.). And it is also interesting that even later critics of Christianity – like the neoplatonic philosopher Celsus (2nd century AD) and the authors of the Babylonian Talmud (4-5th century AD) – accepted the historicity of Jesus’ miracles, but considered his magical abilities to be their sources (Origen, Contra Celsum I:28 (transl. by Henry Chadwick), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953, pp. 28–31; Talmud Bavli (Babylonian Talmud), Sanh. 107b., Firenze II.1.8–9, cf. Peter Schäfer, Jesus in Talmud, Princeton: Princeton University Press 2007, pp. 34-35.).

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tament” program, admitted that “there can be no doubt that Jesus did the kind of deeds which were miracles to his mind and to the minds of his contemporaries, that is, deeds which were attributed to the supernatural, divine cause; undoubtedly he healed the sick and cast out demons”123 – although, of course, Bultmann believed that these phenomena, though real, must have some natural explanation. While the variety of witnesses’ accounts regarding the reality of the “miracle” phenomena is fairly large, how could these constitute an argument for the existence of God? The problem is very complex. As expected, a naturalist has the option to say that the majority of phenomena of the type “telepathy” and “foreknowledge” might represent nothing more than some innate human capacities not very well understood today, but otherwise explainable in a more or less distant future. Is this a valid answer? This view may have some plausibility; but even if this position were true, it would still be difficult to understand how these capacities could have appeared through strictly naturalist neo-Darwinian processes.124 Moreover, many of these so-called parapsychic capacities appear in the context of an encounter with various purported supernatural entities – for example spirits or God – , and some of them are very difficult to explain merely in “telepathic” terms.125 Would it not be simpler to believe that such telepathic or divinatory expe-

123 Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus and the Word, New York: Scribner’s 1934, p. 173. 124 At least this is the position of Sigmund Freud, who was very impressed with the telepathical capacities of Frau Seidler, a medium from Berlin whom he visited in 1909 (together with his friend Sándor Ferenczi). However, he had the opinion that her ability to read others’ thoughts – which he called “thought transference” – was not a psychical phenomenon, but rather a “purely somatic one” (Sigmund Freud, C.G. Jung, Briefwechsel, (ed. by. W. McGuire und W. Sauerländer), Frankfurt am Main: Fischer 1974, p. 474; Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, vol. 3, The Last Phase 1919-1939, New York: Basic Books 1957, pp. 384-385). A similar position seems to be maintained by him some years later, when he writes that he is “not entirely convinced, but prepared to be convinced… If there is such a thing as telepathy as a real process, we may suspect that, in spite of it being so hard to demonstrate, it is quite a common phenomenon”. He also adds that, if this thought transference exists, it is only an archaic, atavistic remnant of an earlier stage in our biological evolution (Sigmund Freud, “Dreams and Occultism”, in Sigmund Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, (trans. J. Strachey), vol XXII (1933-1934), London: Hogarth Press 1953-1974, pp. 54-55). 125 A relevant example in this respect can be found in Carl Jung’s memories. In this instance he remembers two strange events that happened in the summer of 1898 in his house, which, he says, have – through their consequences – strongly influenced his destiny “by wiping out his earlier philosophy” and helping him “to achieve a psychological point of view” and “to discover some objective facts about the human psyche” (Carl G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, New York: Vintage Books 1989, p. 107). The first event refers to a walnut table from the dining room. One day, he, his mother and their maid “suddenly heard the sound of a report like a pistol shot.” To their surprise they saw that “the table top had split from the rim to beyond the center, and not along any joint,” and that “the

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split ran right through the solid wood,” – and this despite the fact that the table “was made of solid walnut that had dried out for seventy years,” which normally “could not have split on a summer day in a relatively high degree of humidity.” (Ibid., p. 105) They had no explanation for this bizarre event. Two weeks later another strange phenomenon happened. His mother, his sister and the maid heard a strong noise coming from the direction of a sideboard. Jung came home an hour later and found “in the cupboard containing the bread basket… a loaf of bread, and, beside it, the bread knife. The greater part of the blade had snapped off in several [pieces]; the knife had been used shortly before… and afterward put away. Since then no one had gone to the sideboard.” The next day Jung “took the shattered knife to one of the best cutlers in the town, (who) examined the fractures with a magnifying glass and (said that) the knife is perfectly sound, that there is no fault in the steel (and that) someone must have deliberately broken it piece by piece.” (Ibid., pp. 105-106) He connected these events with the fact that a group of relatives was engaged for some time in spiritism. Since that moment – according to his account – he started attending their regular séances and used his observations there for his doctoral thesis. This “experimentation” period took about two years (Ibid., pp 106-107). However, the connection to this spiritistic group was deeper than he suggests in his memories. According to the account of his niece, Stefanie Zumstein-Preiswerk (whose mother ‒ Emma Zinsstag ‒ took part in these séances and was an intimate friend of Helly Preiswerk, his cousin, who was the medium which led the séances) these meetings actually had started three years before the aforementioned events, in June 1895, at the suggestion at Jung himself. From the beginning he was, together with his mother, a fervent participant. The so-called spirit, who was contacted on these occasions, was that of Samuel Preiswerk, Jung’s grandfather (on his mother’s side), who had been a pastor of the Basel Minster church and – interestingly ‒ also a fervent spiritist (Stefanie Zumstein-Preiswerk, C.G. Jungs Medium: Die Geschichte der Helly Preiswerk, München: Kindler 1975, pp. 16-17, 37, 53). In this context it is worth mentioning that both the split round table and the “exploded” bread knife had belong to the grandfather, that the table had been used before by the group for the séances and that Jung’s mother interpreted these bizarre phenomena as invitations from her father to resume these meetings, which for a while had been interrupted (Ibid., pp. 53, 53n44, 80, 124n44). The interest in séances in Jung’s (motherly) family might seem strange today, but it was not very surprising in the Basel of those times: in the middle (until the end) of the nineteen’s century spiritism was a fashion in many western intellectual circles (Ibid., p. 16). How can these strange poltergeist-like phenomena be interpreted? Jung, who investigated several mediums, suggested that “everything that may be considered a scientifically established fact,” in what concerns such persons “belongs to the domain of the mental and cerebral processes and is fully explicable in terms of the laws already known to science” (although later in his career he will cast doubt on this exclusively psychological explanation and will try to clarify by way of “certain postulates which touch on the realm of nuclear physics and the conception of the space-time continuum.” – see C.G. Jung, Psychology and the Occult, London & New York, Routledge 2008, p. 119, 148n15; Plantinga does not exclude a quite analogous speculative explanation in what concerns God’s actions in the world – see note 115, p. 163.) Jung had, like Freud, a similar skeptical – and/or scientificoptimistic attitude – regarding the explanation of the physical phenomena associated with the occult: “If, after making allowance for conscious and unconscious falsification, self-deception, prejudice, etc., we should still find something positive behind them, then the exact sciences will surely conquer this field by experiment and verification, as has happened in every other realm of human experience.” (Ibid., pp. 125, 127) It is difficult to see how exactly science will be able to explain the aforementioned poltergeist-like phenomena that occurred in his house. We know that, for example, he did not have doubts about the honesty and sanity of the British physicist William Crookes, who wrote that on more occasions he has witnessed cases of levitation (Ibid., pp. 116-118, 125); Jung seemed to admit that the

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riences have something to do with some personal entities – since the new information available in these experiences is in the normal daily life collected only by intelligent agents?126 Maybe a more plausible way to see these phenomena is to understand at least some of them as being partially generated by some hidden human capacity, and others having as their source some more or less transcendent entity. At least this is one possible suggestion of Kurt Koch, a Lutheran theologian who did a lot of research in the domain of occult.127

phenomena seen by Crookes might be characterized (at least prima facie) as “manifestly supernatural” – but in the end suggested that “under the magical darkness of the spiritualistic séance” the accuracy of Crookes’ observations might have suffered (Ibid., p. 125-126). However, this type of “inaccuracy” explanation does not seem valid for Jung’s poltergeist case, where the “effects” of the events were of a “material” nature, easy to verify by any interested person: in fact, he said in this respect that he has “carefully kept the pieces of the knife to this day.” (Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 106) 126 At least this is the perspective of Richard Gallagher – professor of psychiatry and psychoanalysis at Columbia University (and New York Medical College) – who served for a while as scientific adviser for the “International Association of Exorcists” (see in this respect his book Demonic Foes: My Twenty-Five Years as a Psychiatrist Investigating Possessions, Diabolic Attacks, and the Paranormal, San Francisco: HarperOne 2020). Another psychiatrist with similar opinions is William Wilson from Duke University; also anthropologists like Solon Kimball (who is visiting professor at the University of Chicago), Fiona Bowie (from the University of Bristol – see in this respect her article “Miracles in Traditional Religions”, in The Cambridge Companion to Miracles, p. 181) and Edith Turner (from the University of Virginia) share an openness for similar explanations. Jung’s position in this respect is interesting: “I have… purposely avoided the question of whether spirits exist in themselves and can give evidence of their existence through material effects. I avoid this question not because I regard it as futile from the start, but because I am not in a position to adduce experiences that would prove it one way or the other.” (Jung, Psychology and the Occult, p. 146) However, he believes that what he calls “feeling” might be able to decide in this sense: “I think science has to impose this restriction on itself. Yet one should never forget that science is simply a matter of intellect, and that the intellect is only one among several fundamental psychic functions and therefore does not suffice to give a complete picture of the world. For this another function, feeling, is needed too. Feeling often arrives at convictions that are different from those of the intellect, and we cannot always prove that the convictions of feeling are necessarily inferior.” (Ibid., pp.148-149) What is exactly Jung’s position in this respect? The above quote suggests that he might, after all, believe in the existence of the spirits – through the mediation of the “feeling”. This insinuation may be confirmed by an account of the German theologian Kurt Koch, who said that in a private conversation at Zürich University, to which a friend of his participated, Jung spoked very positively about the spiritist hypothesis (Kurt Koch, “Parapsychology”, in Kurt Koch, Occult ABC, Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications 1986, pp. 155-156). 127 See in this respect Koch, “Parapsychology”, pp. 154-158.

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8.4.9 The Argument from the Meaning of Life Again, Plantinga just states this argument and does not make any comment on it. He offers in this respect – as a good example – the argument formulated by Thomas Nagel. In his article “The Absurd” Nagel affirmed that the absurd and meaningless in life appear because we cannot live our life “without making choices which show that we take some things more seriously than others. Yet we have always available a point of view outside the particular form of our lives, from which the seriousness appears gratuitous.”128 He adds: Those seeking to supply their lives with meaning usually envision a role or function in something larger than themselves. They therefore seek fulfillment in service to society, the state, the revolution, the progress of history, the advance of science, or religion and the glory of God. But a role in a larger enterprise cannot confer significance unless that enterprise is itself significant.129

Moreover, “the people can come to feel, when they are part of something bigger, that it is part of them too. They worry less about what is peculiar to themselves, but identify enough with the larger enterprise to find their role is fulfilling…” But unfortunately: if we can step back from the purposes of individual life and doubt their point, we can step back also from the progress of human history, or of science, or the success of a society, or the kingdom, power, and glory of God, and put all these things into question in the same way. What seems to us to confer meaning, justification, significance, does so in virtue of the fact that we need no more reasons after a certain point.130

Moreover, Nagel considers that nothing is ultimately meaningful: even God and living for his glory can be questionable in the end. And it is true that when Nagel refers to other things than God, he seems to be right. But is he also right when referring to God? Indeed, outside of faith, from the exterior, living for God could seem meaningless; but from within the belief he seems to be wrong: for a believer – or at least in one’s moments of belief ‒, God functions as a supreme value. This person does not make any effort to experience God in this way (as worthy of worship); this experience ‒ or phenomenology ‒ comes naturally with belief. In fact, faith in God transforms also the values from pure abstractions

128 Thomas Nagel, “The Absurd.” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 68, 1971, p. 719. 129 Ibid., pp. 720-721. 130 Ibid., p. 721.

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(which can be easily relativized) into absolutes;131 if they were only abstract ideas before, now they are alive. Moreover, to a believer the values have their location in God (according to a rather instinctive Augustinian intuition); this breathes fire and passion into them and additionally explains why God is the supreme value: He unifies all of these values and becomes their location. Nagel also states that the meaning of some entity is not necessarily related to its eternity: one can very well imagine a “sterile and boring eternity.” This point rings true; but it is also true that it is normally important for a meaningful goal to be eternal, to touch eternity somehow. By contrast, temporal goals tend to be temporally meaningful, which makes them vulnerable to being challenged: one can strive to achieve them, but once they are achieved, they seem to vanish. In a circular manner, life then again seems to lose its meaning. Moreover, the eternity promised by God could not be boring: God promises (and is able to provide) infinite and eternal fulfillment and joy: in fact seeing God’s face in Eschaton, might be the greatest joy possible ‒ because, as St. Thomas said, God as Creator is the infinite source of all created joy and pleasure, and if enjoying the joys of Creation could be a wonderful experience, what would happen when we should meet the source of this joy directly?132 This of course brings importance to the way we live our life now. It bestows meaning upon following the moral imperatives (even when we might thereby lose some immanent advantages) and it brings passion in fulfilling our God-given tasks here.133 Interestingly enough, we can borrow a quote from Wittgenstein which shows that the Austrian philosopher had a similar view on this subject: To believe in a God means to understand the question about the meaning of life. To believe in a God means to see that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter. To believe in God means to see that life has a meaning.134

131 See the difference between the aesthetic and ethical stage in Kierkegaard’s philosophy. 132 See in this respect this quote from Aquinas: “It is evident that naught can lull man’s will, save the universal good. This is to be found, not in any creature, but in God alone; because every creature has goodness by participation. Wherefore God alone can satisfy the will of man… Therefore God alone constitutes man’s happiness.” (Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I-II, q. 2, a. 8, translated by Fathers of English Dominican Province, Project Gutenberg eBook 2006). 133 The seriousness in following the ethical imperative and in fulfilling our God-given tasks represents the central goals of the ethical stage in Kierkegaard’s thinking. 134 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Notebooks 1914-1916 (Second Edition) (transl. By. G.E.M. Anscombe) (ed. by G.H. von Wright and G.E.M. Anscombe), Oxford: Blackwell 1998, p. 74.

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8.5 Conclusions As shown in this article, the arguments for the existence of God suggested by Plantinga seem convincing, especially when one uses them in a cumulative way,135 and in the presuppositional sense (as suggested by him). Maybe the ontological arguments are less powerful than he thought, and the argument from the constants of the universe is stronger than he thought. But, overall, we agree with his assessment of them. One can also observe that most of these arguments are theoretical: they tell us something about a God who is a designer, or the ground of existence, or the greatest being possible, etc. These theoretical aspects might sound interesting to philosophers, but for many other people of different trades they might seem uninteresting and irrelevant. Conversely, there are also some arguments (as that from nostalgia, or from the meaning of existence) which from a theoretical point of view may seem unconvincing: The innate desire for an eternal joy or for having a meaningful life might be nothing more than wishful thinking. But that does not render these arguments useless; on the contrary, they could have a very important practical use: they might not convince someone of God’s existence, but might be very relevant to his personal, subjective life. And even if these arguments are not able to convince someone that divinity does indeed exist, they can, without a doubt, have the role of opening her heart to hearing more about God, making her ready to take a look at other more abstract and theoretical arguments (which offer more weight to the idea of his existence). In fact, there is an interesting balance concerning the interest which the practical arguments could give rise to in their hearer. Some of the aforementioned arguments (from nostalgia and from the meaning of life) can draw a person toward God through the hope and meaning they might offer to her life. Other practical arguments (like that from morality) might have a rather opposite effect: a desire to avoid God, to escape his presence (and therefore to prefer rather ignorance of his existence). This is the case because the existence of a transcendent moral instance might have unpleasant implications for a person who does not live a moral life. Together all these arguments offer a cumulative case for the existence of a God (according to the theoretical arguments) who is relevant for our lives (according to some practical arguments) and whose acceptance or avoidance in our lives might in the end depend on our interest to relate correctly to his moral laws (according to the moral argument).

135 TDTA, 227.

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A final question might be raised: If the aforementioned arguments cannot convince an atheist – if she might reasonably continue to hold her skeptic position in spite of all efforts (of the theist apologist) – then what can these arguments accomplish? In our opinion, they could offer a common ground for a rational debate between the atheist and the theist. Moreover, they could show the proponent of contemporary neo-atheism that the case for theism is much stronger than he would like to believe.

9 Comparison between Kierkegaard’s and Plantinga’s Perspectives on the Arguments for the Existence of God Any attempt to compare Kierkegaard’s and Plantinga’s approach to the arguments for the existence of God would evince (especially when referring to the late views of Plantinga on this matter) a number of great differences and at least some similarities (depending on Plantinga’s authorship period). Thus, in his early authorship, Plantinga’s strategy was to argue that there are no successful pieces of natural theology; he picked and criticized what he considered to be the best arguments for the existence of God of that period: the cosmological, the ontological, and the teleological argument. Once he showed that these arguments failed, the conclusion was that natural theology too had failed. However, his dismissal did not stop there; he also argued that all attempts to demonstrate the opposite, namely that God does not exist were doomed to fail as well. Challenging both camps renders his approach one that is akin to Kant’s view on the same topic, namely natural theology. This is not a far stretch from that of Kierkegaard’s view on the matter (especially of his pseudonym Climacus) – for whom all arguments for God’s existence are a failure. Climacus analyzes such arguments as that of “reasoning from the world of thought toward the existence of God,” or “reasoning from the world of sensate palpability toward the existence of God,” or (more specifically) the “ontological argument” or the “teleological argument”- and argues that none of them are valid (although at the same time believing that God’s existence is evident, and that such belief does not need any argument in its defense). As we have already argued, most of Climacus’ objections to these arguments do not seem very convincing: The first one – which starts either from the presupposition of God’s existence or from that of God’s non-existence, in order to deny the usefulness of any argument for God’s existence ‒ remains wanting: Climacus seems here illegitimately to jump from the premise of the objective reality of God’s existence (or non-existence) to the subjective conviction about God’s existence (or non-existence). The second ‒ which affirms that reasoning from theoretical premises toward existence is impossible ‒ seems partly valid, partly ambiguous. When Climacus refers to the reasoning from the world of thought toward existence, his argument seems convincing: When one takes the Humean relations of ideas (to which the world of thought refers) as premises, one can obtain also only relations of ideas in conclusion (and no actual objects). But when Climacus refers to reasoning from the world of sensate palpability toward existence, his argument seems less convincing: There are cases in which one might conclude from the facts of the https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111334769-009

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palpable world the existence of human persons. The third objection (against the ontological argument) appeals to a logical empiricist type of reasoning – according to which the conclusion of the argument is only a development of the definition of the concept of God ‒ and suggests that the argument is essentially a tautology. This objection seems to us plausible. The fourth objection, against the teleological argument, seems inconclusive: Climacus did not show why the argument does not work; his main critique seems to be that the evil and the disorder of the world make the argument defective. However, he does not try to explain why a theodicy is not possible. For this reason, the value of this objection remains ambiguous. Lastly, the fifth objection ‒ according to which the attempt to prove God’s existence in front of his nose is a disrespectful enterprise – seems unconvincing: Even if one might agree with the idea of a sensus divinitatis, God’s existence is still not transparently evident to us. As long as God remains hidden, there might always be room for arguments regarding his existence. Surprisingly one of the two thinkers, at least in the last period of his authorship, changed his mind. It was Plantinga. In contrast to Climacus – Plantinga is now more optimistic for the prospect of a valid natural theology: he sees his own previous utterly negative (Kantian) view of the arguments for the existence of God as extreme and misguided, blaming this skeptical attitude on his uncritical attachment to the classical foundationalist epistemology prevalent in those times. By contrast, he argues now that, after all, some arguments might be good (or plausible) ‒ but not because they meet the high conditions appropriate to classical foundationalism (which accepts as legitimate only those conclusions that “follow deductively or inductively from propositions that are obviously true and accepted by nearly every sane man”); if that were the case, then very few (if any) philosophical arguments, would “meet these exalted standards.”1 On the contrary, he says (at the end of his introduction to the essay “Two Dozen (or so) Theistic Arguments”) that these arguments “are not coercive in the sense that every person is obliged to accept their premises on pain of irrationality.”2 In this respect ‒ in what concerns the effectiveness of these arguments ‒ the presuppositions of those who listen to them are essential. We argued in the previous chapter that his purported arguments ‒ from the aforementioned essay ‒ are good in the sense proposed by him. One might suggest that this view is totally opposed to what Kierkegaard had to say in this respect, but there are hints that in some sense ‒ at some places ‒ similar ideas could be found even in his authorship. For example, some of Climacus’ passages (in the measure in which they show a similarity to Kierkegaard’s view) seem

1 PADA, 205. 2 TDTA, 210.

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to suggest that certain arguments for God’s existence might become plausible if one took God’s existence as the central presupposition behind their premises. One can get a successful argument only when, through faith, one infuses nature with purpose (At least this seems to be the case with the teleological argument). Moreover, Climacus’ view reveals another implication: Even unbelief in God may be a presupposition. In the end atheism is also a kind of faith, because in all essential matters human beings have interests: No person is totally objective; our thinking has always a subjective component. Accordingly, one can infer from this that, when a skeptic or an atheist sees an argument which leads toward God’s existence, he might be inclined to deny one or more of its premises (or to look only to the eventual “skeptically oriented” counterexamples) in order to avoid any theistic conclusion. As we have seen, Plantinga fully concedes the positing of such a suggestion.

IV Knowledge about the Truth of Christianity

10 Kierkegaard and the Knowledge about the Truth of Christianity 10.1 Introduction In the present chapter we will attempt to answer the question: “How do we know, based on Kierkegaard’s writings, that the Christian religion is true?” Needless to say, at first sight this question might seem ‒ from a Kierkegaardian point of view – very strange. Could Kierkegaard – who is seen by many commentators as the great champion of fideism ‒ affirm the possibility of “knowing of the truth of Christianity”? If someone imputed to the Dane the intention of affirming the possibility of proving the objective truth of Christianity, the attribution would be plainly false, because ‒ as we shall see in the present text ‒ in a famous definition (of faith) he will explicitly say that the truth of Christianity is “objectively uncertain.” However, ascribing another type of knowledge, namely the subjective truth of Christianity (called by Kierkegaard faith), a passion which for Kierkegaard holds the highest truth, Climacus would tend to affirm that such knowledge is possible. This subjective knowledge has as its object the objective and uncertain truth of Christianity. In another place Climacus says that this knowledge, designated by him as The Truth, comes to us only as a gift from God ‒ God being the only being able to offer us the Condition for knowing this essential and saving Truth. Of course, many contemporary epistemologists might doubt that this subjective knowledge represents ‒ according to the criteria of the modern epistemology ‒ a justified knowledge. There are, however, among them some exceptions. The Kierkegaardian subjective knowledge ‒ although not able to satisfy the criteria of traditional foundationalist and internalist epistemologies ‒, seems (despite this) able to fulfil the requirements of other types of epistemologies, the causal and externalist ones. For example, the externalist epistemology of Plantinga would conceive Kierkegaardian faith as a real instance of warranted knowledge.

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10.2 From Subjectivity to Christian Truth; the Relationship between the What and the How of Faith In “Christian Discourses” Kierkegaard suggests that humans can discover “what they need to know in order to live truly”1 due to the fact that God has designed them with this possibility; moreover, he believes that this divinely designed way for gaining knowledge passes through their subjectivity. In this respect ‒ as we already saw (in chapter 4) ‒ he writes: Truly, no more than God allows a species of fish to come into existence in a particular lake unless the plant that is its nourishment is also growing there, no more will God allow the truly concerned person to be ignorant of what he is to believe. That is, the need brings its nourishment along with it; what is sought is in the seeking that seeks it; faith is in the concern over not having faith; love is in the self-concern over not loving… The need brings the nutriment along with it, not by itself… but by virtue of a divine determination that joins the two, the need and the nourishment.2

The first question which we should like to raise is: “How can subjectivity bring someone to a position in which God would offer her the needed (essential) truth?” The second one is: “What is the content of this truth?” and the third one is: Why should we believe that “at the peak of human subjectivity, this subjectivity (or inwardness) is shown to be objectivity.”3

10.3 Subjectivity and Truth Regarding the first question (“How can subjectivity bring someone to the position in which God would offer her the needed essential truth?”), the task involves an additional problem, one that is related to the fact that ‒ according to Climacus (in Concluding Unscientific Postscript) ‒ subjectivity (if we take this concept in a generic

1 Evans, Kierkegaard: An Introduction, p. 66. 2 SKS 10, 251 / CD, 244-245. 3 SKS 22, 414 / KJN 6, 420: “In all the usual talk to the effect that Joh. Climacus is mere subjectivity, etc., people have completely overlooked the fact that, in addition to all the rest of his concreteness, in one of the final sections he points out that the remarkable thing is that there is a How that has the property that when it is precisely indicated, the What is also given – that this is the How of “faith.” Here, indeed, maximum inwardness is in fact shown to be objectivity. And this is a twist of the subjectivity principle that to my knowledge has never previously been carried out or accomplished in this way.” (the author’s emphasis).



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sense- and not exclusive that of the Christian faith) is both truth and untruth. On the one hand he states ‒ against his “era of dispassionate objectivity” ‒ that “subjectivity, inwardness, is truth.”4 On the other hand, when contemplating the idea of going “beyond Socrates,” he affirms that (in this case) subjectivity “is in the predicament of being untruth.”5 Climacus’ intent here is to say that the assertion of subjectivity’s truth is valid only for the lower levels of human subjectivity: the ethical and the general religiosity A stage;6 in these cases a rendering of the “how” of the ethical, or general religious, conviction will also quasi-naturally produce a rendering of the “what.”7 Yet what does Climacus mean by the statement “truth is subjectivity,” and why should we associate this type of truth with ethical and religion A stages? First of all, we need to understand that for Climacus the subjective truth should not be understood as a property of a proposition (as in case of objective truth) but rather as conformity to an ideal human model, as “a key to the human life… which makes it possible to live life as it was intended to be lived.”8 In this sense one can say that a person’s life can either be true or false, depending on how much she approximates such an intended life-model in her experience (or fails to do so). Climacus posits that God, being our creator, has defined this ideal life for each of us and therefore humans should strive to live in accordance with it. If this is the case, it is not impossible to imagine that someone might have true information about God, yet fail to live according to his will; and conversely, that someone who has false conceptions about God might approximate in her life the ideal life proposed by the creator significantly better than the first person. In this sense, Climacus famously argued that a pagan who prays to his idol “with all the passion of infinity” has more truth than a so-called Christian who, although possessing true doctrines about his God, “prays in untruth.”9 That does not mean that the objective truth of someone’s opinions does not matter. For example, if a pagan believes that his god demands human sacrifices, it is difficult to see how he would manifest a true moral life, a life of respect, compassion and love toward his victims. And, as Evans observed, it is difficult for a fol-

4 SKS 7, 189 / CUP1, 207 (our emphasis); Lee C. Barrett, “Subjectivity Is (Un)Truth: Climacus’s Dialectically Sharpened Pathos,” in Robert Perkins (ed.), International Kierkegaard Commentary to Concluding Unscientific Postscript to “Philosophical Fragments,” Macon GA, Mercer University Press 1997, p. 291. 5 SKS 7, 189-190 / CUP1, 207. 6 Westphal, Becoming a Self, pp. 103-105. 7 SKS 22, 414 / KJN 6, 420. 8 Evans, Kierkegaard: An Introduction, p. 59. 9 SKS 7, 184 / CUP1, 201.

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lower of Nietzsche “to be fully committed to his beliefs that compassion is a vice,” and still, in spite of this, “to live compassionately.”10 By stating that “the pagan who prays to his idol with the passion of infinity has more truth than a so-called hypocritical Christian” Climacus wants only to say that, if one had to choose between subjective and objective truth, the first should have priority over the second. In this respect he writes: “Just as important as the truth, and of the two the even more important one, is the mode in which the truth is accepted.”11 But ideally, if a person has subjective truth, this truth should correspond to the correlate objective truth. The “how” should bring with it the “what”, “the need should bring with it the nutriment.”12 However, in the case of such lower stages of life as the ethical or the religious A, the how corresponds to what, the subjective truth to the objective one, and the real life (more or less ‒ according to the specifics of the respective stage) to the ideal model. And although Kierkegaard believes that there is no logical-objective way to demonstrate to an aesthete that the ethical life is superior to the aesthetic one, or to an ethicist that the religious A life is superior to the ethical one, nevertheless he opines that this is the case13 ‒ and that only subjectivity can convince someone of this fact.14 In this sense, “subjectivity is truth, because truth can enter human life only through subjectivity.”15

10 Evans, Kierkegaard: An Introduction, p. 63. 11 SKS 7, 225 / CUP1, 247 (our emphasis). 12 SKS 10, 251 / CD, 244-245. 13 In a Hegelian manner, for Kierkegaard each superior stage contains in some respects more truth than the inferior one. As Westphal observes, “Judge William, for example, argues that the ethical and the aesthetic modes of life are concentric rather than eccentric, that the ethical does not “detract from” or “annihilate” or “repudiate” or “destroy” the aesthetic, but it is a “transfiguration” that will “enable” it... The aesthetic is not “excluded” but “returns in its relativity” as something “dethroned”… As in the Hegelian dialectic, the relativized moment is aufgehoben, denied the absolute self-sufficiency it at first pretends to, but it is preserved as an essential element in a larger totality. Similarly, Johannes de Silentio argues that in the teleological suspension (Aufhebung) of the ethical, “that which is suspended is not relinquished but is preserved in the higher, which is its telos.” The ethical is thereby “reduced to the relative” but “it does not follow that the ethical should be invalidated.” However, in contrast to Hegel, in Kierkegaard this concentricity of stages implies no speculative reconciliation of the opposition between them (Westphal, Becoming a Self, pp. 38-39). 14 We will focus in another chapter on the theme of stages’ ranking, which is quite controversial for some commentators. 15 Evans, Kierkegaard: An Introduction, pp. 66-67.



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However, in case of religiosity B, identified by Climacus with Christianity (the religion of the revelation, characterized ‒ in his view ‒ by a maximum of inwardness) – subjectivity is defined as “untruth.” In this respect, as Lee Barrett has written, The “how” alone does not exhaustively specify the “what” of Christian faith… While religiousness A is a permanent possibility of the human spirit, Christian pathos is only possible in response to a revelation. Christian subjectivity does not naturally evolve out of the experience of humanity… An apostle must proclaim the news directly so that it can be subjectively appropriated. In this instance there is a “what” which can be at least partly indicated without a description of the “how,” even though it will not be fully understood.16

Thus, in the case of religiosity B ‒ which has to do with inwardness at its greatest peak – , the “need” does not bring with it the “nutriment” naturally. By itself, subjectivity is here “untruth.” And this is the case because “actual selves… , seen from the perspective of Christianity, are far from being fully truthful.”17 Only if God intervenes from the outside ‒ in order to bring the truth providentially – , can there be “a correspondence between nutriment and need.” But even if subjectivity is here untruth, this does not mean that it is not, in spite of it, a necessary condition for the apprehension of the truth of Christianity. As Barrett observes, Climacus “is proposing to go beyond the claim that subjectivity is truth, not backward to an objectivist sensibility. This advance presupposes the Socratic attainment of inwardness.”18 Similarly, David Law states that: religiousness A is indispensable for religiousness B. The individual must have developed the intensity of inwardness of religiousness A through resignation, suffering, and guilt, if he or she is to enter Christian religiousness.19

In any case, what seems to us fascinating (from a theological point of view) in Kierkegaard’s perspective on life’s stages, is the idea that if a person wants to live an authentic life, to be true to herself, somehow life itself will lead her toward Christianity. It is true that the last stage of this process (religiousness B) presupposes (as we shall later see) a direct intervention of God (in order to bring the saving truth);

16 Barrett, “Subjectivity Is (Un)Truth: Climacus’s Dialectically Sharpened Pathos,” pp. 300-301. 17 Evans, Kierkegaard: An Introduction, p. 67. 18 Barrett, “Subjectivity Is (Un)Truth: Climacus’s Dialectically Sharpened Pathos,” p. 300; SKS 7, 204-205 / CUP1, 224. 19 David Law, “Resignation, Suffering, and Guilt in Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript to ‘Philosophical Fragments’,” in Robert L. Perkins (ed.), International Kierkegaard Commentary. Concluding Unscientific Postscript to “Philosophical Fragments,” Macon GA, Mercer University Press 1997, p. 288.

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but even this divine intervention (if the proper subjectivity is present) seems to be in the end guaranteed by God’s providential grace.

10.4 The Content of the Saving Truth Associated with the Peak of Inwardness The second question concerning the relation between the “how” and the “what” of faith was: What is the content (the “what”) of the saving truth at the peak of inwardness? In order to answer this question, we will refer to two heuristic tools (regarding the gaining of the content of faith) used by Climacus in Philosophical Fragments. The first one (from the first chapter of this book) refers to the question: “How can the truth be learned?”; the second one (from the second chapter) refers to the analogy of divine love and the love between a king and a maiden.

10.4.1 The Human Untruth and the Divine Teacher’s Deliverance The first tool – which is a thought-project – starts with an apparently “non-threatening question”20 related to the problem of learning the truth and suggests that there are basically only two possibilities regarding this problem: Either the learner is in the possession of truth, or he is not. The model-teacher in the first case is Socrates, who elicits the truth in the learner through recollection; before gaining the truth, the learner was merely in a state of ignorance concerning the fact that he had the truth within. The teacher is here only an occasion, because his task is only that of revealing what is already known in the learner: in principle the condition for knowing the truth was possessed by the learner from the beginning.21 In the second case (in which the learner does not possess the truth) we deal with a nameless teacher. Before gaining the truth, the learner has no truth within: he is in untruth. But in this case, says Climacus, the responsibility for being in untruth belongs to him: he has chosen not to be free. Therefore, he is in fact in sin – where sin means more than simply guilt or ignorance; it means slavery and rebellion (The

20 Gouwens, Kierkegaard as religious thinker, pp, 124-125. 21 SKS 4, 218-221 / PF, 9-13.



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learner was outside the truth: he was “not coming toward it like a proselyte, but was going away from it,”22 being “polemical against the truth”23). Moreover, if the moment is to have a decisive significance in the learner’s life, then the teacher must be able to offer him the condition for knowing the truth; in this respect he will thoroughly transform the learner, making him a new person. As result, he becomes a deliverer and a saviour for the learner; moreover, he must be God, because only a God can so radically transform a person that this transformation should be a recreation or a rebirth.24 Climacus identifies this second case (about the teacher that brings the truth to the learner who is in untruth) with Christianity; he admits that he “has plagiarized Christianity” ‒ presenting it as his own thought project, when in reality he was actually “behaving like a vagabond who charges a fee for showing an area that everyone can see.”25 It is also interesting that his “deduction” of the divinity of the teacher (from the fact that he is able to recreate the learner) is very similar to one of Athanasius’ arguments for the full divinity of the Logos (from his polemics against the Arians): For Athanasius sin produces a state of disintegration in creation ‒ and therefore only through a new creation can it be expelled from the (old) creation; and if salvation

22 SKS 4, 222 / PF, 13. 23 SKS 4, 224 / PF, 15. 24 SKS 4, 222-229 / PF, 13-21; Gouwens, Kierkegaard as religious thinker, pp. 124-125; Evans, Kierkegaard: An Introduction, p. 148.There are some difficulties related to the logical deduction from the second hypothesis (that the learner does not possess the truth). For example, it is prima facie not so evident that, if the learner lacks the condition of acquiring the truth, this undesirable state necessarily happened due to his bad choice. However, Climacus offers arguments that all other available options ‒ that God is responsible for this state of want, or that some accidental non-culpable circumstances caused this situation ‒, are not convincing. If Truth is essential to the humanness of the man, then it is hard to understand why a good God would be, without any legitimate reason, a destroyer of the essential humanness of people. And if the condition of acquiring the truth were lost by humans accidentally, that would suggest that humanity did not really possess it originally ‒ because normally we think this condition is essentially linked to our humanity. As Socrates stated in his Apology, nothing can (morally) harm a good man; consequently, the moral character of a person could only be corrupted by her own free choices (Evans, Passionate Reason, pp. 35-36). Another difficulty related to the deduction has to do with the question: Why, if the initial condition was lost through our own actions, are we not able to remedy this loss by ourselves? One answer would be that, if this were the case, we should still be in the possession of the condition. Another answer would be that we do not always have the capacity to remedy the bad consequences of our wrong choices: In this sense Climacus observes that ‒ according to Aristotle ‒ the depraved persons do no longer have the power to undue their (low) moral condition (Ibid., p. 37). 25 SKS 4, 229 / PF, 21.

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demands a new creation, only the Creator can bring us salvation, because only he has the capacity of recreation.26 A central feature in this project is what it tells us about the “what” of faith. As we could see, if faith is associated with the condition given by the unknown teacher, truth is then the object of this faith; here we do not have information about the content of this truth, but at least can comprehend the fact that by ourselves we are unable to know it ‒ and that the only one who can bring this content to us, the teacher, is also our deliverer and saviour: God himself. He alone can take away the sin from our lives and is able to offer us (again) our essential humanness.27 But do we have any ground for believing that all things associated with the “what” of faith are true? We need to keep in mind that what we are dealing with here is merely a thought experiment ‒ no guarantee that any hypothesis from the experiment has anything to do with reality. The only thing we know is that the second hypothesis (regarding the learner who was in untruth) is identified with Christianity; but again, Climacus offers us here no objective reason to believe that Christianity is true. Yet on close inspection (in what concerns the thought-project associated with the divine teacher) there seems to be a clue which might suggest a relationship between this project and human subjectivity: Climacus writes that, in what concerns the possibility of the learner to know that he is in untruth, even the divine

26 Justo Gonzalez, A History of Christian Thought, Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press 1970, vol. I, pp. 296-297. 27 This idea might suggest that Climacus believes in a strong doctrine of predestination (“the Truth comes to us only from the outside, through God’s decision”) – but his view on the controversy predestination-free will is more complex than it seems at first sight. For example, Evans suggests that Climacus professes a special kind of inversed Arminianism (a doctrine that has its origin in the decisions of the semi-pelagian Council of Orange, in 526 AD), according to which the condition for the consciousness of sin, although not in our power, is given to all of us by God, in a Socratic way (SKS 4, 223 / PF, 14); but unfortunately only some of us would be willing to accept this insight. And only to those who have accepted this insight will the saving (condition of) faith be given (Evans, Kierkegaard: An Introduction, pp. 162-163). However, Barrett offers convincing arguments for the idea that both grace and freedom, or grace and responsibility, or faith as Gift and faith as Task, are equally affirmed in the Philosophical Fragments: We have in this book an antinomical (but existentially relevant) affirmation of both of them. According to him, for Climacus Christianity is rather an existence-communication than a doctrine; rather than talking about a doctrine is better to talk about “existing in a doctrine” when referring to Christianity: consequently, apparent opposite concepts like grace and responsibility must be grasped only in their passional contexts – “rooted in the specific activities of exhorting, praising, trusting and repenting, which constitute their natural environment” (Lee Barrett, “The Paradox of Faith in Philosophical Fragments: Gift or Task,” in Robert L. Perkins (ed.), International Kierkegaard Commentary. Concluding Unscientific Postscript to “Philosophical Fragments,” Macon GA, Mercer University Press 1997, p. 267).



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teacher can become a Socratic teacher ‒ an occasion for the learner to know the untruth within: If the teacher is to be the occasion that reminds the learner, he cannot assist him to recollect that he actually does know the truth, for the learner is indeed untruth. That for which the teacher can become the occasion of his recollecting is that he is untruth… The learner does not discover that he previously knew the truth but discovers his untruth. To this act of consciousness, the Socratic principle applies: the teacher is only an occasion, whoever he may be, even if he is a god, because I can discover my own untruth only by myself, because only when I discover it is it discovered not before, even though the whole world knew it. (Under the assumed presupposition about the moment, this becomes the one and only analogy to the Socratic).28

If the untruth (the sin) is within, and we are able to discover it through God’s help, it means there is in us a reality (our sin) which, when revealed (to us), proves to have a deep affinity with guilt ‒ a passion which belongs to the subjectivity associated with universal religiosity A. In this way sin, the untruth, offers us a point of contact between the general human religiosity A and religiosity B (identified with the Christian revelation). Thus, the Truth brought by the teacher (of religion B) provides an antidote against the universal calamity revealed by the same teacher – namely sin – a calamity that touches all of us, and has deep affinity with the guilt of religion A. In conclusion, religion B is not just an arbitrary invention, a thought experiment that has no relationship with reality; on the contrary, it proves to be a solution to a real human problem: the problem of sin, which, according to Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms, touches all of us (if we want to live authentic lives, to be indeed ourselves); in this way, life, more precisely our subjective life, is able to bring us ‒ without needing other additional arguments ‒ to Christianity. 10.4.2 The Divine Teacher’s Love and His Incognito As we have already mentioned, the second heuristic tool is the analogy of the divine love with the love between a king and a maiden. It adds new information to the portrait of the divine teacher and his relationship with the learner. Climacus starts from the idea that the only plausible motive for which the teacher might want to bring to his learner the truth is love. If the motivation of the Socratic teacher for teaching other people may have some connection to his own life’s circumstances, his own education, and a certain inner compulsion (the learner being eventually a chance for his need for self-understanding29) the same

28 SKS 4, 222-223 / PF, 14. 29 SKS 4, 231 / PF, 24; Evans, Passionate Reason, pp. 46-47.

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thing might not be stated about the divine teacher: the last one, being God, is not socially-conditioned by anything, and owes nothing to his learner. Therefore, Climacus believes that only love could be this motivation ‒ because “love does not have the satisfaction of need outside itself but within.”30 But ultimately, what could be the goal of God’s activity? Climacus believes ‒ using a kind of Abelardian theological argumentation ‒ that this goal should (again) be love: the possibility of a loving relationship between teacher and learner – which means that God intends to win the heart of the pupil; he desires that his learner manifest reciprocity by showing his love in return. But such a loving relationship is possible only when it is voluntary ‒ when freedom exists on both sides; and such freedom is not possible unless equality and reciprocal understanding mediate between the parties. However, when this should be the case, we face a great obstacle: between God and the learner no equality seems possible. Therefore, in order better to understand the difficulties of this situation (and eventually to find a solution to them), Climacus adduces an analogy that involves a love-story between a king and a maiden (by way of a poetical venture). The poem describes the king’s dilemma, one of unhappy love: If he elevates the maiden to his high status, he deceives her ‒ because “she is not royal.” She would be impressed with the splendours of her new position, might even experience an everlasting joy, and yet oddly would become aware that in fact, by herself, she is nothing. Therefore, she would never love her kingly husband freely, with the “bold confidence” which comes from the naturalness and authenticity possible through the sharing of an equal status.31 If, on the other hand, the king chose to overwhelm her with his splendour, only he would be glorified, not she; but if he were truly in love, he would desire her glorification, not his.32 He would wish that she should love him for what he is, not for the power and grandeur he is able to offer her. Therefore, the only solution for the king to win the heart of his beloved is to descend to her level, to come to the peasant-maiden in disguise, becoming a peasant himself ‒ and thus hoping to conquer her love apart from the “distractions of splendour, power and wealth.” In a similar way, God must become human if it is to win the love of the learner: “For this is the boundlessness of love, that in earnestness and truth and not in jest it

30 SKS 4, 232 / PF, 24. 31 SKS 4, 232 / PF, 25; Evans, Passionate Reason, p. 52; Gouwens, Kierkegaard as religious thinker, p. 125. 32 SKS 4, 236 / PF, 29.



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wills to be the equal of the beloved, and it is resolute love’s omnipotence to be able to do this.”33 Moreover, if God becomes human, if he enters into his world incognito, driven by his love for the learner, he will need ‒ in order to convince the learner of the authenticity of his love ‒ to identify himself with the lowest and most painful levels of humanity.34 Thus we can see here another sort of deduction, this time a poetical one, of a main doctrine of Christianity: The “what” which is the object of the “how” of faith seems to be enriched with some new insights: that the god who brings to the learner deliverance from untruth was motivated to his enterprise by love for the learner ‒ a passionate love which, in its desire to elicit love in the beloved, causes him to become a man; and not simply any kind of a man, but one who was ready to reach the lowest and most painful conditions of humanity, in order to convince the human being of the authenticity of his love. 10.4.3 The Definition of Faith: Highest Inwardness and Absolute Paradox Climacus offers at the end of his Concluding Unscientific Postscript a definition of faith in which the objective content (the “what”) of faith, the nature of the “how” of faith (its subjective dimension) and the relationship between them are clearly stated: Faith is the objective uncertainty with the repulsion of the absurd, held fast in the passion of inwardness, which is the relation of inwardness intensified to its highest. This formula fits only the one who has faith, no one else, not even a lover, but solely and only the one who has faith, who relates himself to the absolute paradox.35

Here the pathos of the subjectivity related to religiousness B – which is the “how,” the inwardness at its highest peak ‒, is identified by Climacus with the Christian faith itself: a distinct pathos which “cannot be confused with anything else.”36 And the content – the “what” of faith ‒ is identified with Christ, the absolute paradox, the god incarnate. In order to understand the meaning of the aforementioned definition of Christianity, it would help first to understand another definition, which Climacus offers for what might be called the generic form of subjectivity ‒ the condition of possi-

33 SKS 4, 238 / PF, 32. 34 SKS 4, 238-239 / PF, 32-33; Gouwens, Kierkegaard as religious thinker, p. 125. 35 SKS 7, 554-555 / CUP1, 611. 36 SKS 7, 553-554 / CUP1, 609-610; Gouwens, Kierkegaard as religious thinker, p. 123.

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bility for the more specific Christian form of subjectivity.37 It is formulated in this way: “An objective uncertainty, held fast through appropriation with the most passionate inwardness, is the truth, the highest truth there is for an existing person.” He adds that “this definition is a paraphrasing of faith. Without risk, no faith. Faith is the contradiction between the infinite passion of inwardness and the objective uncertainty.”38 What does the key expression “objective uncertainty” denote? Climacus wants to say that the objective truth, which is the “what” of faith, is not reachable through our human endeavours. He does not deny that some objective truths (for example, those of mathematics or of history) could be attainable by humans (the former with certainty, the latter in a more or less approximative way). But in what concerns the truths “that pertain to the essential knowing” ‒ to existence (which have to do with our self-understanding and self-choice before the ethical and before God) ‒ they are unreachable through objective paths; they are accessible only through the path of subjectivity.39 They are not obtained through a logical deduction or by an abductive argument; rather they imply a risky leap of faith, triggered by the passion of infinity. The leap is caused by this passion because this path (of subjectivity) is not disinterested: it is deeply self-involving; and the passion is infinite because it does not refer to our trivial interests, but rather to the interests that concern our eternity ‒ having to do “with the very meaning and destiny of our existence.”40 An illustration of this definition (of the generic form of subjectivity) is represented by the Socratic faith (called by Climacus also “Socratic ignorance”)41 ‒ which is considered by Climacus an analogue of the Christian faith. Thus, according to Climacus: … Socrates! He poses the question (of immortality) objectively problematically: if there is an immortality… He stakes his whole life on this “if”; he dares to die, and with the passion of the infinite he has so ordered his whole life that it might be acceptable – if there is an immortality.42

One can see in this description of Socratic wisdom two aspects, the “what” and the “how” of the previous definition of generic subjectivity: on the one hand the objective uncertainty of immortality (The reality of immortality is not certain: there is an

37 Westphal, Becoming a Self, p. 127. 38 SKS 7, 186-187 / CUP1, 203-204. 39 Westphal, Becoming a Self, pp. 115-116. 40 Ibid., p. 120. 41 SKS 7, 185 / CUP1, 202. 42 SKS 7, 184-185 / CUP1, 201.



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“if” attached to it.); on the other hand, the fact that this (objective) uncertainty is appropriated with infinite passion: due to the fact that his eternal destiny is at stake ‒ and thus having immortality in sight, Socrates made the leap: “he dare[d] to die” and “to order his life in order that it might be acceptable.” Climacus adds that, from a Socratic point of view, “the eternal essential truth is itself not at all a paradox, but is a paradox only by being related to an existing person;”43 this means that the idea of immortality does not have any paradoxical nature: the tension, or the contradiction (in a Hegelian sense) comes from the fact that the objective truth – immortality – is essential for a person who lives in time. The paradox here has something to do with the relation between two elements of the human self: the idea of eternity versus the radical temporal perspective of the self from which this idea of eternity is apprehended. According to Westphal, “it is this tension that Anti-Climacus refers to (in Sickness unto Death), when describing the human self as a synthesis of the temporal and the eternal.”44 At this point we can see the difference between the Socratic faith (or ignorance) ‒ which is just an analogue of the Christian faith ‒ and the Christian faith itself: First of all, if the objective content of the Socratic faith is the immortality, the objective content of the Christian faith is the Incarnation. The objective content of the Socratic faith (the immortality) is not paradoxical in itself: the paradox in this case appears only due to the relation between our temporal standpoint and the idea of immortality itself. By contrast, the objective content of the Christian faith is itself the paradox, “the paradox sensu eminentiori”;45 and that is the case because the paradoxical tension appears here already in the concept of Incarnation itself ‒ in the idea that immortality has entered in time. Therefore, this paradox is also designated as being “the absurd”; in Climacus’ words: “the absurd is that the eternal truth has come into existence in time, that God has come into existence in time, that God… has been born… as an individual human being.”46 Secondly, due to these differences, we have in Christian faith a less objective certainty than in the Socratic ignorance: therefore, the repulsion ‒ called in this case offence47 ‒ caused by the absurd is greater than that caused by the ignorance. Correspondingly, as a result of these differences, the “inwardness of (Christian) faith” is “infinitely deeper” than that of the Socratic inwardness.48

43 SKS 7, 187-188 / CUP1, 205 (our emphasis). 44 SKS 11, 129-130 / SUD, 13-14; Westphal, Becoming a Self, p. 122. 45 SKS 7, 188 / CUP1, 206n; Westphal, Becoming a Self, p. 122. 46 SKS 7, 193 / CUP1, 210. 47 Roberts, Kierkegaard’s Analysis of Radical Evil, p. 149. 48 SKS 7, 188 / CUP1, 205 (our emphasis); Westphal, Becoming a Self, p. 122.

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And thirdly, in the Christian faith not only our temporal standpoint blocks the relationship between us and the eternal divine perspective (as it is the case with the Socratic faith), but also our sinfulness – which, as we already have seen in the thought project, has corrupted our willingness to come to the light and truth49 (or – as stated in The Sickness unto Death – our willingness to be ourselves).

10.5 Conclusion We have reached a point where a possible answer can be offered with regard to the question whether the Christian faith is not actually irrational. First of all, the decision to make a leap of faith toward accepting an uncertain objective truth might seem to be an arbitrary step to take. But is that true? We suspect that it is not: On closer inspection, the situation proves somewhat different (and with this we start to get close to an answer to the third question: Why should we believe that “at the peak of the human subjectivity, this subjectivity is shown to be objectivity”?). To begin, the leaps – whether they originate from the aesthetic toward the ethical, or the ethical to the religiousness A, or from religiousness A to religiousness B ‒ are not blind leaps: Kierkegaard makes all efforts possible to describe to us what we are jumping toward.50 It is true that they are risky leaps,51 but he also tries to argue that a kind of epistemic risk is present more or less in almost all secular knowledge – especially in what regards the knowledge of the matters of ultimate concern – an idea with which many contemporary postmodern critiques of foundationalism or of various sorts of holism would agree.52 Moreover, these leaps are always guided by a kind of pragmatic rationality: the persons who do end up taking these leaps are motivated by despair to take these risky steps.53 As pertains to matters of existence, human reason is dialectical: When we move from stage A of existence to stage B, we take this step “not due to a ratio-

49 Westphal, Becoming a Self, pp. 123-124. 50 Westphal, Becoming a Self, p. 78. 51 SKS 7, 187, 192 / CUP1, 204, 210. 52 Westphal, Becoming a Self, p. 79; see also a similar position shared with Climacus by a contemporary of Kant, Friedrich Jacobi (Hannay, Kierkegaard: A Biography, p. 291). 53 SKS 7, 192 / CUP1, 210; Westphal, Becoming a Self, p. 80; see also the idea of another contemporary of Kierkegaard, Hamann, for whom the lived experience is the place from which one can start to ask the significant questions of life (Hannay, Kierkegaard: A Biography, p. 291). Hannay observes that also between Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard there are some similarities regarding the idea that Christianity is a risky step taken by a person in despair: for example, for Wittgenstein Christian faith is “a refuge taken by a person in an ultimate torment” (Ibid., p. 331).



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nal argument or insight that B follows necessarily from A, but because we are in despair over A.”54 We arrive at the point where A has lost its usefulness, when the requirements that drove us initially toward it prove to be unfulfilled. Be that as it may, it is worth pointing out that we have no rational guarantee over the success of the move toward the alternative stage B; the leap remains in the end risky: From the point of view of objectivity it remains non-decidable55 – although it is done in agreement with the demands of a true and authentic subjectivity. Secondly, even in the case of the religiousness B ‒ which from the point of view of rationality has at least two big problems, namely, the absurdity of the paradox of incarnation and the problem of the historicity of the Christ’ event – the allegation of irrationality does not seem to hold. It is true that some scholars – among them Hannay,56 Brand Blanshard57 and Herbert Garelick58 have suggested that the Christian paradox is understood by Climacus as being a logical contradiction. Other scholars, like David Swenson, Evans59 and Westphal60 have suggested that the contradiction is not of logical nature, but has more to do with our limited human standpoint. The latter thinkers seem to us closer to the truth; according to Climacus, the paradox “is more improbable than all things”61 – and thus it is problematic due to its low probability, not due to its purported logical contradiction. Secondly, Climacus’ affirmation that “he is not able to decide whether the speculative thinker is right” when he states that “there is no paradox,” because he sees the situation from a limited human standpoint, not from a divine one62 means that, if no additional grounds for evaluation are given, this inchoate view renders the possibility that the speculative thinker in principle could be right. This significantly reduces the probability that the contradiction allegation is correct; consequently, the paradox ‒ in Climacus’ view ‒ is not by definition logically contradictory.

54 Westphal, Becoming a Self, p. 80. 55 Ibid., pp. 80-81. 56 Hannay, Kierkegaard: The Arguments of the Philosophers, pp. 106-108; support for such views one can find in such passages: the absurd is “what can become historical only against his nature” (CUP1, 574) – see in this respect the critique of Westphal in Westphal, Becoming a Self, p. 183. 57 Brand Blanshard, “Kierkegaard on Faith,” in Essay on Kierkegaard (edited by Jerry Gill), Minneapolis, MN: Burgess Publishing Company 1969. 58 Herbert Garelick, The Anti-Christianity of Kierkegaard, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1965, p. 29. 59 Evans, Passionate Reason, p. 97-107. 60 Westphal, Becoming a Self, p.124-126. 61 SKS 4, 256 / PF, 52. 62 SKS 7, 194 / CUP1, 212.

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And last but not least, another difficult problem which arises is whether it is rational to believe in the truth of Incarnation in particular and of Christianity in general without serious evidential arguments of a historic-apologetic sort. And here we arrive at the most crucial answer to the third interrogation raised at the beginning of this essay: Why should we believe that “at the peak of the human subjectivity, this subjectivity (or inwardness) is shown to be objectivity”? Despite Climacus’ conviction that the great difference between Christianity and the Greek thought is the historical component of Christianity (especially its idea that God entered in history), he also makes the historical knowledge of Christianity almost irrelevant for faith,63 famously arguing that: Even if the contemporary generation (of Christ) had not left anything behind except these words, “We have believed that in such and such a year the god appeared in the humble form of a servant, lived and taught among us, and then died” ‒ this is more than enough.64

This is the case because for him ‒ as an occasion for the conversion of someone from a later generation ‒ a more detailed report would make no difference. But is this Climacian anti-foundationalism concerning the value of historical knowledge (as a ground for believing in the objective truth of Christianity) convincing and legitimate? Climacus does adduce some arguments in support of this historical minimalism The first one is egalitarian in nature:

63 This idea ‒ that the historical evidence is irrelevant to faith ‒ is in some respects difficult to accept: it is difficult to believe that a great amount of arguments for the idea that the things and sayings attributed to Jesus never happened in reality could not constitute a challenge for Christian faith; therefore, it is not impossible to contemplate how someone who had what could be called “an encounter with Christ” might start to have doubts about the credibility of his conversion experience due to these arguments. As Evans puts it, the persons of a certain reflective bent might “at least need to rule out the possibility that their beliefs can be shown to be false… Such a believer might admit the relevance of historical argument, while still holding to the Climacus-inspired view that what is finally decisive in settling the argument is first-hand experience of Jesus” (Evans, Passionate Reason, p. 159). As it is well known (and we will discuss in more detail in the next chapter), in the protestant camp the problem of the relevance of history for faith continued after Kierkegaard to be seriously debated – see for example in the next chapter the dispute between Karl Barth (who held in this sense a Kierkegaardian point of view) and Wolfhart Pannenberg (who criticizes Kierkegaard in many respects) ‒ which appeared after Pannenberg published his famous Grundzüge der Christologie. Barth objected that in this book his former student promoted “a Christology from below to above” ‒ see in this respect Karl Barth, Letters, 1961-1968 (translated by Geoffrey Bromiley), Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 1981, (Basel, 7 December 1964) published online at [https://moltmanniac.wordpress.com/2014/03/29/karl-barths-letter-to-wolfhart-pannenberg-2/] (last visited on April 30, 2023). 64 SKS 4, 300 / PF, 104.



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Would the god allow the power of time to decide whom he would grant his favour, or would it be not worthy of the god to make the reconciliation equally difficult for every human being at every time and in every place?65

In other words, if the first generation of Christians had, regarding their belief, an advantage over the later generations ‒ since they possess more historical arguments in their favour – then humans would not have equal chances of salvation. Another argument is related to what Evans calls “the incommensurability between authentic religious commitment and matters of intellectual evidence.”66 According to Climacus, a Christian is a person willing to take risks, to stake everything on what he believes; therefore, her faith should normally not be endangered by the tentative character of historical research concerning the central Christian event. To this Climacus adds that no evidence can be adequate if one wants to prove the paradoxical content of Christian belief; subsequently, if one believes in the paradox, then to believe in other minor historical matters associated to it is easier. Whether the evidence for these matters is poorer or richer in quality is ultimately a secondary matter: “a capital crime absorbs all the lesser crimes so also with faith: its absurdity completely absorbs minor matters.”67 But even if these arguments are sufficiently cogent to prove Climacus’ point, the question still remains: How can faith in objective truth (the truth of Incarnation) be justified68 when it relies on (and is triggered or occasioned by) such a poor historical grounding? To the believer, faith is legitimate because – although not grounded on historical facts, but only occasioned by these facts – it appeals to the transforming encounter with Christ. For this reason, the amount of historical information involved in this process is secondary.69 Faith, or the condition, must be received – according to Climacus ‒ from God: God, the Teacher,

65 SKS 4, 303 / PF, 106. 66 Evans, Passionate Reason, p. 153. 67 SKS 4, 300 / PF, 104; Evans, Passionate Reason, p. 149. 68 Of course, probably Climacus would not like the idea that faith needs justification, maintaining that, from a human point of view (and taking into account human sinfulness), faith is unreasonable; and indeed, from the standpoint of a foundational epistemology, faith is, even for Plantinga, unjustifiable and irrational. But if one renounces the foundationalist epistemology – which claims that only the beliefs based on shareable public evidences are rational – and uses for example an alternative externalist epistemology (for which a belief is rational if it is the product of a proper functioning cognitive process aimed at the obtaining of true beliefs), one has no reason to label the Christian faith “irrational” (see Evans, “Externalist Epistemology, Subjectivity and Christian Knowledge: Plantinga and Kierkegaard,” pp. 201-202). 69 Evans, Passionate Reason, p. 155.

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could not be known immediately, but only if he himself gave the condition. The person who received the condition received it from the Teacher and… can know the teacher only by being himself known by the Teacher.70

Here we clearly have a picture of the knowledge of Christian truth, which is in full agreement with the way in which Luther understood the justification of Christian faith: this faith is not based on arguments, on reason;71 rather it is possible only through a direct revelation of the Word,72 mediated by the Holy Spirit.73 The special revelation of God is a gift offered by God himself,74 through the mediation of the Scripture: in Scripture Christ, the Divine Word, is speaking to us – through the Holy Spirit. And in this revelation ‒ this direct encounter with God ‒ the sinner meets the liberating grace. Kierkegaard, who studied Lutheran theology – an endeavor which almost lead him to pursue the path of becoming a Lutheran pastor – evidently remains within the boundaries prescribed by Luther in his depiction of faith and Christian revelation.

70 SKS 4, 269-270 / PF, 68-69. 71 Dr. Martin Luthers Werke, Weimarer Ausgabe 1883-1929 (hereafter abbreviated as WA) 40, 2, 592; WA 42,42; WA 33, 284-287; WA 33, 264 ff). Luther states that not a rational decision is necessary when we hear the word of God, but a supernatural faith (WA 10, I, 1, 218) (Weimarer Ausgabe can be accessed for free at: [http://www.lutherdansk.dk/WA/D.%20Martin%20Luthers%20Werke,%20Weimarer%20Ausgabe%20-%20WA.htm] (last visited on April 30, 2023)). See in this sense also Siegbert Becker, “Luther’s Apologetics”, in Concordia Theological Monthly Vol. 29, No. 10, 1958, pp. 744-747. However, according to Becker, “While Luther believed that it was ridiculous and downright blasphemous to presume to defend Scripture with rational argumentation, yet he also believed that it was perfectly proper to point out the logical weakness in the attacks made on Scripture.” (“Luther’s Apologetics”, pp. 7-9) Thus, it seems that there is a place in Luther’s thinking for a negative kind of Christian apologetics. In fact, the Lutheran theologian Adam Francisco (from Concordia Theological Seminary) goes even further (than Becker), by arguing that – in his debates with the Jews and the Muslims – Luther used a quite traditional scholastic kind of apologetics, appealing, beyond the Old Testament scriptures, to arguments from history and the Christian miracles, and admitting that one cannot appeal in these debates to the authority of the Christian scriptures, because the opponents do not believe in it (see in this respect Francisco’s conference “Luther’s Use of Apologetics,” available at the online address: [https://video.ctsfw.edu/media/Luther%27s+Use+of+Apologetics/1_ aze3t3n9 ] (last visited on April 30, 2023)). 72 “If you want to encounter God, you must first see Him under the mask, in the Word. Then one day you can behold Him also in His majesty. For now God will not present you with anything special apart from and contrary to His command contained in His Word” (Martin Luther, “Sermons on the Gospel of St. John/Chapters 14-16” in Luther’s Works, E.T., ed. J. Pelikan (P.E), vol. 24, St Louis, MI: Concordia Publishing House 1961, p. 69). See also WA 10, 3, 357. 73 WA 36, 492; WA 42, 486. 74 WA 10, I, 1, 611; WA 33, 284.



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But what guarantee do we have that this encounter will lead us to truth? We have no guarantee other than the encounter itself; the experience is in this sense self-justifying.75 On the one hand, if Christ, the Paradox, the Teacher is indeed the person who is encountered, then he serves as the guarantor that this process brings with it truth. The faith involved in this experience is, ‒ as Plantinga would say ‒ a cognitive process that involves a special, supernatural, activity of God;76 and it has warrant (justification) because, due to God’s involvement, “it is a properly functioning process, in an appropriate cognitive environment, according to a design plan successfully aimed at the production of true beliefs.”77 On the other hand, if Christianity is not true, then one is – at least from the point of view of the objective truth associated with this experience – self-deceived. In the end, according to Climacus – and to Christian “orthodox” theology – faith does not create its object, but rather is a response to its object, to its “what.” And this object is not a simple doctrine, but rather a person, the absolute Paradox, the God incarnated, coming into the world to rescue sinners.78 Moreover, faith is not only a response to the Paradox, but also, according to Climacus, it is a response to a need –triggered by this need: the need of the sinner to be delivered from despair and guilt. Thus, faith becomes a bridge between the sinner’s despair and the Paradox that offers deliverance from this state. Referring to the people who live in Christendom, Kierkegaard said that “a person in life-peril of the spirit comes in earnest, in true

75 Gouwens points out that both Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein believe that religious belief needs no kind of foundational justification: Both Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein “explore how religious belief is something that does not stand in need of foundational justification, but becomes foundational when it is a way of life… Both thinkers broaden the context of religious belief to include moral discrimination, caring, the passions of the heart, despair rather than doubt, faith and offense, uncertainty’s risk and the resting that is trust… Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein explored religious faith as being like love, not speculation.” (Gouwens, Kierkegaard as religious thinker, p. 151) See also this quote from Wittgenstein: “But if I am really saved, – what I need is certainty – not wisdom, dreams or speculation – and this certainly is faith. And faith is faith in what is needed by my heart, my soul, not my speculative intelligence. For it is my soul with its passions, as it were with its flesh and blood, that has to be saved, not my abstract mind. Perhaps we can say: Only love can believe the Resurrection. Or: It is love that believes the Resurrection. We might say: Redeeming believes even in Resurrection; holds fast even to resurrection. What combats doubt is, as it were, redemption.” (Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, ed. by G.H. von Wright, Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1979, p. 33) 76 WCB, 246n. 77 WCB, 246. 78 Gouwens, Kierkegaard as religious thinker, p. 126.

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inwardness, to believe at least something of the considerable Christianity that he knows.”79 In other words, a person, when in great spiritual need, will tend to accept Christianity – which means that she would appropriate at least some of its doctrines;80 the need would act as an affective hook through which God would bring Christianity into her life.

79 SKS 10, 252 / CD, 246. 80 Heiko Schulz, “‘Gott selbst ist ja dies: welcherart man sich mit ihm einlässt.’ Subjektivität und Objektivität dogmatischer Reflexion bei Søren Kierkegaard,” in Heiko Schulz, Aneignung und Reflexion. II. Studien zur Philosophie und Theologie Søren Kierkegaards, Berlin: De Gruyter 2014, pp. 280, 283.

11 Plantinga and the Knowledge about the Truth of Christianity 11.1 Introduction One of the main intentions of Alvin Plantinga’s philosophical work is to show that the knowledge of the truth of Christianity is possible. His goal in Warranted Christian Belief, the book in which his view on Christianity is presented in detail, is to defeat the evidentialist de jure objection against Christian theism, which claims that even if one does not know whether Christian theism is true, one still needs to consider it epistemically defective (and to reject it) due to its lack of evidence. Plantinga’s argument is that, on the contrary, there is a deep relationship between the purported truth of Christianity and the possibility of a warranted, properly basic (non-inferential) belief in this truth ‒ between the ontological problem of the existence of Christian truth and the epistemic problem of the way in which one might know this truth.1 In other words, his main idea is that “if Christian belief is true, then very likely it does have warrantˮ2 ‒ that component which needs to be added to a true belief in order for it to constitute knowledge ‒ because, in this case, the cognitive processes which would produce belief in the truth of the central elements of the Christian faith would have been designed by God. In the first part of the same book, Plantinga presents his perspective on the knowledge of the truth of theism ‒ his so-called Aquinas/Calvin model ‒ according to which theistic belief has warrant because God has created human beings with a belief-producing faculty (or mechanism, or source of belief ‒ the so-called sensus divinitatis. As Plantinga states, “this source works under various conditions to produce beliefs about God, including [… ] beliefs that immediately entail his existence.”3 We discussed this subject in chapter 5. In a similar way, in the second part of the same book, he develops his model regarding the knowledge of the truth of Christianity ‒ the so-called Extended Aquinas/Calvin model ‒ according to which Christian faith is also a knowledge of a “certain special kind,” its content “being known by way of an extraordinary cognitive process” in which the Holy Spirit induces in us the “belief in the central

1 Stephen Wykstra, “‘Not Done in a Corner’: How to be a Sensible Evidentialist About Jesus,” Philosophical Books, vol. 43, 2002, 94. 2 WCB, 285 (emphasis mine). 3 WCB, 174, 199. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111334769-011

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message of the Scripture.”4 The presentation and evaluation of this model is the subject of the present chapter. A significant difference between the Aquinas/Calvin (A/C) model and the Extended Aquinas/Calvin model has to do with the presence (in the second model) of the concept of sin and God’s proposed remedy for it. In fact, this concept illuminates a certain continuity between the two models; discussing it is necessary due to a certain problem which confronts the A/C model: the fact that not all humans have theistic beliefs, and not all theists believe with the same degree of certainty. This last observation is astonishing, because, according to the A/C model, one should more or less expect that all human beings are theists; however, as we have discussed in chapter 5, the doctrine of original sin provides one possible way to address this empirical defeater ‒ by suggesting that, due to the presence of sin in all human beings, the function of the sensus divinitatis is more or less obliterated (and possibly healed, as we will see in the present chapter, only through the workings of God’s grace).5 Thus, due to sin and its consequences, the Extended A/C model also needs to address the Christian doctrines of the incarnation, atonement, redemption, and renewal.6 We will focus at the beginning (of this chapter) on Plantinga’s perspective on sin.

11.2 The Notion of Sin In Plantinga’s view, the notion of sin “is both astonishingly deep and deeply elusive.” In this regard, he distinguishes two aspects. One is the phenomenon of sinning ‒ of “doing what is wrong [… ] something for which the sinner is responsible;” yet “only if he recognizes that what he does is sin, or is culpable in failing to recognize that

4 WCB, 256 (emphasis mine); of course, for Plantinga the knowledge about these epistemological mechanisms and processes comes by way of revelation and private experience; but concerning a public, intersubjective perspective on these mechanisms he admits that he does not know any convincing argument for the truth of these propositions. Philosophically he presents these propositions hypothetically: If there is a God it is highly probable that this God has created us with a sensus divinitatis and so on. 5 I am indebted to Dr. Wiertz for this observation. 6 WCB, 201. Plantinga admits that, for some critics, the idea of taking such theological notions as faith and the work of the Holy Spirit seriously in a book of philosophy might be scandalous, but he suggests that this idea is “no more scandalous than the ingression into philosophy of scientific ideas from (for example) quantum mechanics, cosmology, and evolutionary biology.” (WCB, 200)



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it is,” does he warrant blame, thus being guilty.7 Another aspect is “the condition of being in sin, a state in which we human beings find ourselves from our very birth” ‒ what the Christian tradition calls “original sin” ‒ which is understood as a constant and irresistible tendency to sin. The condition of being born in this predicament (which need not entail thinking ‒ with Augustine ‒ that we are therefore culpable) is not within our control.8 But is not this Plantingian diagnostic a bit too extreme, too pessimistic? In support of this traditional Christian perspective, Plantinga adduces a quote from G. K. Chesterton as an example. Chesterton suggests that, among all the Christian doctrines, that of original sin “has the strongest claim to ‘empirical verifiability’ […]; it has been verified in the wars, cruelty, and general hatefulness that have characterized human history from its very inception to the present.”9 While one may complain that Chesterton’s view might be biased due to his orthodox Christian perspective, one could nevertheless find support for the same pessimistic view from other surprising sources: for example, from Immanuel Kant, considered by many to be the epitome of the Enlightenment. Despite this position, he criticized the illuminist philosophers of his day, particularly Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for their optimism concerning human nature, suggesting that optimism regarding the human condition has nothing to do with experience of Christianity.10 Like Chesterton after him, he found many examples in human history ‒ including in the “primitive” societies newly discovered in his day11 ‒ to support his view, and he argued (in accordance with orthodox Christian theology) that a radical evil obtains in human beings.12 His willingness to defy the spirit of his age by affirming these things was one of the main reasons such neo-orthodox theologians as Karl Barth admired him.13 Arthur Schopenhauer also follows him in this respect when, in the parable “Die Stachelschweine,” he represents human beings as porcupines ‒ characterized by “many repugnant features and insupportable mistakes” ‒

7 WCB, 206-207 (emphasis mine). 8 WCB, 207. 9 Ibid. 10 Immanuel Kant, Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft (ed. by von Bettina Stangneth), Hamburg: Felix Meiner 2003, 22. 11 Ibid., pp. 40-41. 12 Ibid., p. 46. 13 Dorrien, Kantian Reason and Hegelian Spirit. The Idealistic Logic of Modern Theology, p. 499. A contemporary philosopher who reaffirmed and developed the Kantian view on this subject is John E. Hare (in his book The Moral Gap. Kantian Ethics, Human Limits, and God’s Assistance, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1996).

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who need to “keep distance” from each other if they wish not to hurt themselves.14 Another surprising source of support for this pessimistic view of human nature comes from Theodor Adorno, whom some people might consider the epitome of the Critical Theory school of thought. In his address “Erziehung nach Auschwitz,” he spoke about some people’s tendency to treat themselves and others as objects, not as persons (the so-called “verdinglichtes Bewusstsein”): to fetishize technology by transforming it from a means of human self-preservation into an end, and conversely, to transform human beings from ends in themselves into means (or objects). The result is such people’s lack of capacity to love other people, to pursue the good of others: they are cold people, always driven by their interests (or the interests of their group) to act against the interests of others.15 This kind of attitude created the possibility of Auschwitz ‒ and can lead toward a new Auschwitz anytime.16 Moreover, the grave fact is that this coldness, this lack of love ‒ so says Adorno ‒ is present, to a certain degree, in each of us.17 In Plantinga’s view (which, in essence, he shares with the Reformed tradition to which he belongs), original sin has affected both human intellect and human will. Cognitively, it prevents its victim from obtaining a proper knowledge of God and his love, glory, and beauty ‒ producing a malfunction of the sensus divinitatis. Moreover, it distorts one’s capacity to discern between good and evil, between what is worth loving and what is worth hating.18 Volitionally and affectively, original sin produces an affective disorder: one loves and hates the wrong things, seeking one’s own personal glorification instead of the kingdom of God, loving oneself more

14 Arthur Schopenhauer, “Parerga und Paralipomena,” 396, in his Sämtliche Werke (ed. by Wolfgang von Löhneysen), vol. 5, Stuttgart: Cotta 1965, p. 765. 15 Theodor Adorno, “Erziehung nach Auschwitz,” in his Erziehung zur Mündigkeit, Frankfurt/ Main: Suhrkamp 1971, pp. 98-101. 16 Ibid., pp. 101,103. 17 Ibid., pp. 101-102. Charles Taylor, although a Catholic philosopher, also presents a similar perspective and appreciates many aspects of Critical Theory ‒ particularly its humanistic, emancipatory spirit. Taylor identifies (in a certain sense) original sin with our human lack of “transcendence” (by which he means a radical movement of de-centring the self, followed by a consequent re-centering in God ‒ coupled with a flourishing in agape, unconditional love for others). When transcendence is missing, when self-centeredness dominates us, then even our loftiest actions ‒ driven by our highest humanistic ideals ‒ can easily transform (themselves) into despotism, contempt (a superiority complex), and ruthlessness in shaping “refractory human material”: “we safely locate all evil outside us” but are blinded from seeing it in us ‒ easily becoming “centres of hatred” in ourselves (Charles Taylor, A Catholic Modernity? Charles Taylor’s Marianist Award Lecture with responses by William M. Shea, Rosemary Luling Haughton, George Marsden and Jean Bethke Elshtain, ed. by James L. Heft, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1999, pp. 20-22, 33-35). 18 WCB, 207, 214-215.



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than anything else, and therefore ‒ due to pride ‒ eventually becoming inclined to hate both one’s neighbor and God (who are seen as obstacles to the fulfillment of one’s desires or threats to one’s self-sufficiency). At some level, says Plantinga, we know what is to be loved, but we find ourselves drawn to what is wrong.19 In this respect, Plantinga opposes Socrates’ opinion that a person cannot really do that which they know is wrong; in his opinion, Socrates is mistaken here because he “fails to see the possibility of affective disorder, as opposed to intellectual deficiency or ignorance.”20 In addition, Plantinga believes that, even in the state of sin and without regeneration, humans typically have at least some knowledge of God and of moral law, because the condition of sin involves damage to, but not the total obliteration of the sensus divinitatis.21 In this respect, his view coincides with the views of Jean Calvin22 and Emil Brunner. Throughout his entire theological career, Brunner affirmed the presence of a “point of contact” for divine grace in human beings.23

11.3 The Extended Aquinas/Calvin Model We have seen that, according to Plantinga, humanity has fallen into the great calamity known as sin. The Christian solution for escaping from this predicament is the plan of salvation instituted by God ‒ namely, “the life, atoning suffering and death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the incarnate second person of the trinity”24 ‒ what Jonathan Edwards would call “the great things of the gospel.”25 For us, the

19 WCB, 208; in this respect, Plantinga’s perspective coincides with that of the apostle Paul (Rom 7:18-23), Kant, and John Hare (see Philip L. Quinn, “Kierkegaard’s Christian Ethics,” in The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, p. 350). 20 WCB, 208-209 (emphasis mine). 21 WCB, 210. 22 WCB, 177. 23 Emil Brunner, Natur und Gnade, 2nd ed., Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck) 1935, pp. I-II. 24 WCB, 243. How exactly one can interpret the doctrine of atonement is a difficult question; a good discussion of this problem ‒ taking into account some of the suggestions of Lewis, Colin Gunton, Richard Swinburne, Eleonore Stump, and Philip Quinn ‒ can be found in Stephen Evans, The Historical Christ and the Jesus of Faith. The Incarnational Narrative as History, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1996, pp. 80-83, 90-97. 25 WCB, 80. According to Plantinga, these beliefs are embodied in the Apostle’s Creed, the Nicene Creed, and “in the creeds of more specific Christian communities [the New Catholic Catechism, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Augsburg Confession, the Westminster Catechism, and so on]” (WCB, 202).

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result of this plan is “the possibility of salvation from sin and renewed relationship with God.”26 How did God inform us about this plan? According to Plantinga, he accomplished this via a three-level process: firstly, through the Bible, the library of books which he inspired, the central theme of which is the gospel, the good news of God’s salvation; secondly through the Holy Spirit, who repairs “the ravages of sin” among believers and helps them believe and endorse “the great things of the gospel”; and thirdly through faith, which is a gift of the Holy Spirit. This gift involves a cognitive element (“the knowledge of the availability of redemption and salvation through the person and work of Jesus Christ”) and a volitional element, a “sealing of our hearts” (in which the believer not only cognitively knows about the gift of God’s salvation, but also personally accepts it, “committing himself to the Lord”).27 With regard to faith, the third element of this divine plan, Plantinga here endorses Calvin’s definition ‒ faith is “a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit.”28 Plantinga affirms that this scheme of salvation represents traditional Christianity, as endorsed by theologians such as Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, and Barth.29 His intention is to argue that, from an epistemological point of view, this model has justification, rationality, and warrant ‒ in other words, a person can legitimately believe and even know that Christian belief is true. His suggestion is that Christian faith is not a natural cognitive faculty, like memory, perception, reason, testimony, or ‒ conforming to his proposed Aquinas/Calvin model ‒ sensus divinitatis. Rather, according to what he calls “the Extended Aquinas/Calvin model” (a model which he claims both Calvin and ‒ at least partially ‒ Aquinas30 endorse), faith is a supernatural gift, a belief-producing process which comes to us “by the way of the work of the Holy Spirit.”31 He adds that “the beliefs constituting faith are typically taken as basic; that is, they are not accepted by way of argument from other propositions or on the evidential basis of other propositions.”32 But even if these beliefs are taken as basic, they are legitimate from both an internalist and an externalist point of view.

26 WCB, 243. 27 WCB, 243-244. 28 Jean Calvin, Institutes III, ii, 7, p. 551; cf. WCB, 244. 29 WCB, 245. 30 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 2, a. 9, reply ob. 3; q. 6, a. 1, respondeo, cf. WCB, 249 together with n. 18. 31 WCB, 245, 256, 258. 32 WCB, 250.



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11.3.1 Internalist Legitimacy As we already saw in the first chapter, internalism is the epistemological perspective which states that “the knower can know that a certain belief has warrant (or justification) for her, and that she has epistemic access to whatever it is that makes for warrant.”33 From an internalist perspective, Plantinga argues that the beliefs constituting faith are both justified and internally rational. In what follows Plantinga’s epistemological model (presented by us in chapter 1) is developed (in certain respects) in more detail. A Justified Beliefs Firstly, Plantinga argues that, if the Christian belief of a person is the result of the inward instigation of the Holy Spirit, and this belief seems to that person to be obviously true ‒ even after she has reflected on the various objections offered ‒ then that person will be (internalistically) justified with respect to her belief: “there will be nothing contrary to epistemic or other duty in so believing.”34 Thus, the de jure objection applied to the epistemic justification of Christian belief fails. As we already have seen, essential for understanding this argument is Plantinga’s observation that the classical foundationalist picture, which has dominated the philosophical world for quite some time, has been roundly dismissed in contemporary philosophy. This classical picture ‒ as shown in chapter 2 ‒ has been dismissed due to at least two fatal objections: it is self-referentially incoherent,35 and as critics such as Thomas Reid and Cardinal John Newman have observed, it does not conform to “the vast majority of our beliefs.”36 For example, Newman wrote that “the assent which we give to facts” is not “limited to the range of self-consciousness. We are sure beyond all hazard of a mistake, that our own self is not the only being existing; that there is an external world [… ] and that the future is affected by the past.”37 None of these propositions are “probable with respect to what is certain for us,” nor do they meet “the classical conditions for being properly basic.”38 Nevertheless, they are still justified in a basic way.

33 Valentin Teodorescu, “The Epistemology of Alvin Plantinga,” Annals of the Academy of Romanian Scientists Series on Philosophy, Psychology, Theology and Journalism, vol. 6, 2014, p. 115; see also WPF, i. 34 WCB, 246. 35 WCB, 93-94. 36 WCB, 97. 37 John Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of A Grammar of Assent, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame 1979, 149, cf. WCB, 97. 38 WCB, 98.

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In the same way, Plantinga argues, Christian belief could be justified in a broadly deontological way, when it is taken as basic. He lends plausibility to his argument in the following quote by imagining a person who holds precisely this type of belief: She doesn’t believe on the basis of propositional evidence; she therefore believes in the basic way [… ]. She reads Nietzsche, but remains unmoved by his complaint that Christianity fosters a weak, whining, whimpering, and generally disgusting kind of person: most of the Christians she knows or knows of ‒ Mother Teresa, for instance ‒ don’t fit that mold. [… ] she has a rich inner spiritual life, the sort described in the early pages of Jonathan Edwards’s Religious Affections [… ] ; she is often aware, as it strongly seems to her, of the work of the Holy Spirit in her heart, comforting, encouraging, teaching, leading her to accept the “great things of the gospel” [… ]. She could be mistaken, a victim of illusion or wishful thinking, despite her best efforts [… ]: nevertheless, she isn’t flouting any discernible [epistemic] duty [… ] ; she is doing her level best; she is justified.39

B Internally Rational Beliefs Secondly, Plantinga suggests that Christian belief is ‒ from an internalistic perspective ‒ internally rational: similarly to the case of justification, there is no de jure objection related to this epistemic feature. This internal rationality represents also an internalist form of rationality, understood as “proper function.” To understand this “proper function” type of rationality, one needs to start from the observation that the rational faculties (of rational creatures) can function either properly or pathologically. When they function properly, without any dysfunction, one might speak about their “proper function” and the fact that the respective person is rational. This type of rationality can be characterized initially as “a matter of proper function of all belief-producing processes ‘downstream from experience’”‒ in this respect, one can think of sensory imagery, the type of experience current in vision, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching; perceptual beliefs are formed in response to such experience.40 These beliefs will be internally rational if they function properly: when a grey elephant appears, an internally rational person will not form the belief that they are perceiving an orange flamingo.41 But Plantinga observes that there is also a type of experience that differs from sensory imagery, in which the phenomenal experience is either missing or very fragmentary: the experience of memory, or that of a priori beliefs. This type of

39 WCB, 100-101. 40 WCB, 110. 41 Ibid.



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“doxastic” experience is one in which one deals only with beliefs. An example of this type of experience malfunctioning can be seen in a person living with Alzheimers ‒ when one’s memory has ceased to function properly. However, Plantinga thinks that certain types of clearly dysfunctional doxastic behavior might still be called internally rational, due to the fact that the proper functioning of the respective rational faculty only demands (from an internalistic point of view) that all persons with the same antecedent beliefs and current experiences would form the same kind of belief in reaction to these experiences; this situation is possible even in some cases of clear malfunctioning.42 In this respect, he suggests an example (initially offered by Descartes): There are people “whose cerebella are so troubled and clouded by the violent vapours of black bile, that they [… ] imagine that [their heads … ] are made of glass.”43 Plantinga is of the opinion that this kind of response does not necessarily preclude internal rationality, because these unfortunate persons are perhaps subjected to “overwhelming doxastic experience,” and therefore their belief that their heads are made of glass is “utterly obvious to them.”44 What is essential in order for a person to be considered internally rational is that their beliefs are coherent, or rather “sufficiently coherent to satisfy proper function”: that a person would draw correct inferences in accordance with the information to which they have access, among other things.45 In the case of Christian beliefs, due to the testimony of the Holy Spirit, the great things of the gospel seem quite plausible and compelling to the believer: if these propositions encounter “no undefeated defeaters,” and if they cohere with other beliefs, then “there will be nothing [… ] contrary to proper function in accepting the beliefs in question”‒ they are thus internally rational.46

11.3.2 Externalist Legitimacy In contrast with the internalist ‒ who, as we have already seen, affirms that the knower can know that a certain belief has warrant (or justification) for them, and that they have epistemic access to whatever it is that constitutes warrant ‒ an externalist denies that this kind of access to the basis of one’s knowledge is always possi-

42 WCB, 110-112, 246. 43 René Descartes, Meditations, Meditation I, cf. WCB, 111-112. 44 WCB, 112. 45 Ibid. 46 WCB, 255.

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ble. For the externalist, things other than internal mental states might also operate as justifiers. In this respect, they tend to be reliabilist, suggesting that what turns true belief into knowledge is the fact that it is produced by a reliable process.47 Plantinga believes that Christian belief is also justified from such an externalist point of view; it is externally rational and warranted. A Externally Rational Beliefs For Plantinga, Christian belief is externally rational; there is (again) no de jure objection related to this epistemic feature. External rationality means that there is no malfunction either downstream or upstream from experience; in this respect, all of a person’s cognitive faculties function properly.48 In the Cartesian example above, we saw that the madmen with imagined glass heads were internally rational, according to Plantinga; that is, as far as they had access to their beliefs, their rationality functioned properly. However, they were externally irrational: from an externalist point of view ‒ which was not accessible to those (sick) people ‒ their cognitive faculties did not function properly. Plantinga argues that Christian belief is also “held by people whose rational faculties are not malfunctioning, or at any rate not malfunctioning in a way that involves clinical psychoses.” In this respect, he observes that there are many Christians “able to hold jobs, some even as academics” ‒ although he also jokingly adds that, “[o]f course [… ] this latter guarantees little by way of cognitive proper function.”49 B Warranted Christian Beliefs Finally, for Plantinga, Christian belief is also warranted. If this belief is accepted by faith at the instigation of the Holy Spirit, it is “produced by cognitive faculties working properly.” Like vision, which is designed by God to produce certain perceptual beliefs, the process which produces faith is designed by God “to produce this very effect.” When this happens, the process is working properly: It satisfies the condition of external rationality, which Plantinga identifies as the first condition for warrant.50

47 George Pappas, “Internalist vs. Externalist Conceptions of Epistemic Justification,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, August 2014, in [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justep-intext], last visited on April 30, 2023. 48 WCB, 246. 49 WCB, 112-113. 50 WCB, 257.



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But in order for the entire process to be warranted (and thus that faith should represent real knowledge), it requires more than proper function; it also needs to work “in an appropriate epistemic environment [… ] according to a design plan that is aimed at truth and is furthermore successfully.”51 Plantinga argues that his model meets each of these three additional conditions. To see more clearly what Plantinga means by warrant, we can remember briefly that warrant is that quality or quantity “which distinguishes knowledge from mere true belief.”52 In order for a belief to have warrant, the process or faculty producing it needs to function properly. But this notion of proper functionality is related to that of design. This last notion need not necessarily have religious overtones; it simply means that, when an organ or system works properly, “it works as it is supposed to work.” This proper working is established by its design or plan.53 However, many systems are designed to work in a certain environment. For example, our respiratory systems do not function properly on top of Mount Everest due to the lack of oxygen. The same is true of our cognitive faculties or processes: They work well only in the environment for which they were designed. (A planet on which radiation impeded the function of memory would not constitute an appropriate cognitive environment for human beings.)54 Plantinga argues that this second condition of warrant is fulfilled by the Christian faith: faith is designed by God for the environment in which humans find themselves, “including the cognitive contamination produced by sin.”55 Yet these two conditions alone are not sufficient to constitute warrant. Normally a belief-producing faculty functions to produce true beliefs, but it is possible that some belief-producing faculties and processes would furnish beliefs with other virtues ‒ for example, surviving in a cruel, unjust, and threatening world. As we have seen in chapter 5, according to Sigmund Freud, this is the reason why human beings began believing in the existence of a supernatural, all-powerful, good, protective father.56 Therefore, one needs to add that the design involved in producing a warranted belief needs to be aimed at the production of true belief (and not at

51 WCB, 256 (emphasis partly mine). 52 WCB, 153; see for more details WPF. 53 WCB, 154. 54 WCB, 155-161. 55 WCB, 257. 56 Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion (trans. by James Strachey), New York: W.W. Norton 1961, p. 30; cf. WCB, 138-139.

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other outcomes, such as survival or psychological comfort).57 This is the third condition for warrant. In addition, this design (which leads to the warranted belief) needs to fulfill a fourth and final condition in order to be successfully aimed at truth, because otherwise it might be possible that the respective cognitive process is badly designed and would only very rarely produce true beliefs.58 Plantinga argues that belief in the great things of the gospel (which is the product of this process) is in fact true; through the involvement of the Holy Spirit, “faith is a reliable belief-producing process” which is “successfully aimed at the production of true beliefs.” The result is that faith is knowledge because “it satisfies the conditions that are jointly sufficient and severally necessary for warrant.” If the degree of warrant, which is determined by the strength of faith, is high enough, “then the beliefs in question will constitute knowledge.”59 But is this belief indeed knowledge? Is it indeed warranted? If the Christian faith is not true, says Plantinga, then the answer to this question is probably negative. But if it is true, then probably the model is also true, and consequently the Christian faith is rational and warranted.

11.3.3 Is Faith a “Leap in the Dark”? As we have seen above, according to Plantinga’s model, Christian belief is an immediate, properly basic belief, which has warrant for knowledge. This belief is not usually the conclusion of an argument. It is not accepted on the evidential basis of other beliefs, not even “as the conclusion of an argument from religious experience.”60 Moreover, the belief is warranted even if one cannot make a good historical case for the truth of the great things of the gospel: I don’t need a good historical case for the truth of the central teaching of the gospel to be warranted in accepting them. I needn’t be able to find a good argument, historical or otherwise, for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, or for his being the divine Son of God, or for the Christian claim that his suffering and death constitute an atoning sacrifice whereby we can

57 WCB, 155. 58 WCB, 156. 59 WCB, 257-258. 60 It is true that religious experience is “intimately associated” with the formation of a warranted Christian belief, but it does not constitute a premise in an argument for the truth of this belief; rather, it plays a causal role in its genesis, being an occasion for its formation (see WCB, 258-259).



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be restored to the right relationship with God [… ]; the warrant floats free from such questions. It doesn’t require to be validated or proved by some source of belief other than faith, such as historical investigation. 61

One can see in Plantinga’s position a clear theological similarity with Karl Barth, who also believed that historical knowledge cannot be the basis of faith. For Barth, Jesus Christ ‒ the Word of God and the midpoint of the gospel ‒ is knowable only in faith, by God’s revelation through the Holy Spirit.62 Of course, this coincidence is explainable through the fact that both thinkers are Reformed theologians and are trying to emulate Calvin in this respect. Thus, Plantinga offers as support for his view a quote from Calvin’s Institutes, in which the French reformer points to Scripture’s quality of being – through the work of the Holy Spirit ‒ “self-­ authenticating.”63 But is not this perspective (on the knowledge of Christian belief) irrational and irresponsible ‒ like a blind leap over a crevasse in a cold night, when one cannot see how far away the other side is? Based on both inner (phenomenological) and exterior reasons, Plantinga denies any similarity between his epistemological model and this leap in the dark. Phenomenologically, the jumper “does not know and has no firm beliefs about what there is out in the dark.” The jumper is not really convinced that he can jump the crevasse; he just hopes he can do it. Otherwise he has no chance of surviving, because “the temperature is dropping.”64 By contrast, says Plantinga, Christian faith represents a certain knowledge. For a person who has faith, the great things of the gospel seem ‒ at least in certain paradigmatic instances ‒ obvious and compelling. The Christian believer not only hopes to survive the jump, but also has an inner assurance that he will survive, which comes as component of the gift from God which is faith.65

61 WCB, 259. 62 See in this respect Karl Barth, “Fifteen Answers to Professor von Harnack,” in The Beginnings of Dialectic Theology, ed. by James Robinson, trans. by L. De Grazia and K. Crim, Richmond: John Knox Press 1968, pp. 167-170; Karl Barth, The Göttingen Dogmatics. Instruction in the Christian Religion, trans. by Geoffrey Bromiley, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 1991, vol. 1, 3; Dorrien, Kantian Reason and Hegelian Spirit, pp. 475-476, 480. 63 Jean Calvin, Institutes, vii, 5, 80-81; cf. WCB, 260-263. 64 WCB, 263. 65 WCB, 263-264. This idea of inner assurance has probably to do with the way such biblical verses as “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (John 20:29), “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven” (Matthew

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Thus, from an insider perspective, the phenomenologies of the Christian’s vs. the jumper’s faith are different.66 Furthermore, from an externalist, outside point of view, Christian faith is also not a leap in the dark ‒ because, as we have already seen, it meets the conditions of external rationality and warrant.67 Commenting on Jesus’ words to Thomas in John 20:29, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed,” Plantinga writes, “[T]hose who have faith have a source of knowledge that transcends our ordinary perceptual faculties and cognitive processes, a source of knowledge that is a divine gift.”68 Plantinga also suggests another interesting (and different) way in which one might arrive at a belief in the truth of the great things of the gospel. He starts with a quote from Jonathan Edwards, in which the American philosopher suggests that a believer first sees the beauty and glory of the things of the gospel, and then, either immediately or by a quick inference, begins to believe that they are true, that they come from God.69 It is true that, if these great things of the gospel are false, then this leap from the beauty of the gospel toward its truth is just another erroneous intuition ‒ an analogue to Freud’s idea that our wishful thinking in seeking comfort and protection in a cruel and hostile world has mistakenly invented a heavenly father. But if the great things are true, then maybe God created us according to a design which “has as its purpose the production of true belief, even if it goes by way of perception of beauty”70 ‒ in the same way in which, according to Stephen Weinberg, physicists first accepted the theory of general relativity not because it was based on good evidence, but because it was beautiful.71

16:17) and “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.” (Romans 8:16) (NIV translation) are understood in many Reformed circles: The verses seem to suggest that faith, as a gift from God, comes to the believer (phenomenologically speaking) accompanied by a certain psychological conviction – although this certainty does not essentially appear by way of arguments. For Plantinga the warranted cognitive process through which faith reaches a person seems to include this “assurance” element – assurance which, admittedly, might decrease when some skeptical counterarguments might sow doubt in the believer’s mind. 66 WCB, 263-264. 67 WCB, 264. 68 WCB, 265-266. 69 Jonathan Edwards, “A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections” (1746), in Religious Affections, ed. by John E. Smith, New Haven: Yale University Press 1959, p. 298; cf. WCB, 304. 70 WCB, 307. 71 Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory, New York: Pantheon 1992, p. 98; cf. WCB, 306.



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Of course, another argument for why faith is not a leap in the dark, one which is not discussed by Plantinga but is implicit in his model, is that faith has a pragmatic grounding: it is an answer to the problem of sin, a predicament which involves all people. The whole Extended Aquinas/Calvin model is first and foremost an answer and a solution to the problem of sin.72 Using Plantinga’s example, the jumper is rational if he jumps the crevasse, because at least this jump offers him a chance of survival, even if that chance might be very small. Otherwise he would surely be frozen the next day. In this respect, Plantinga’s position coincides with that of such philosophers as Kant, Kierkegaard, and James,73 all of whom agreed ‒ as Evans argued ‒ that Christian faith and religion at their best entail this rational-pragmatic aspect of being a real solution for people in despair.74

11.4 Objections to the Model and Plantinga’s Replies: Critical Observations Plantinga’s model was much debated. After publication, it faced many challenges, to which Plantinga made many replies. In what follows, we will focus on some of these debates. 11.4.1 Linda Zagzebski’s Objections In her review of Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief, Linda Zagzebski had some appreciative words for his model. She observed that, in this book, he renounced the “primarily negative” epistemological program of his early works (which focused only on arguing for the proper basicality of theistic belief and refuting evidentialist and classical foundationalist attacks against theism) ‒ and constructed a “more ambitious positive project” focused on a theory of warrant, which she found to be “ingeniously developed.”75

72 For a deeper discussion on the moral legitimacy of human beings having a general sense of guilt and inadequacy, and consequently of our need for atonement, see Evans, The Historical Christ and The Jesus of Faith, pp. 83-90. 73 William James, “The Will to Believe”, in William James, The Will to Believe: and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, Fareham: Socratic Publishing 2021, pp. 1-31. 74 Stephen Evans, Subjectivity and Religious Belief. A Historical Critical Study, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 1978. 75 Linda Zagzebski, “Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief and the Aquinas/Calvin Model,” Philosophical Books, vol. 43, 2002, p. 117.

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However, she had some objections to this model. One was her critique of Plantinga’s idea that “Christian belief is warranted (rational) if and only if it is true”; she considered this “rhetorically unwise.” While it is true that Plantinga found a seemingly stronger way of defending Christian faith through this movement ‒ by suggesting that “those who want to attack its rationality must attack its truth, a much harder task” ‒ Zagzebski observes that this is only seemingly a good defense, because in reality, “if the rationality of Christian belief is tied to its truth, Plantinga has given us the job of defending its rationality by defending its truth ‒ a much harder task.”76 To this objection, Plantinga replied that it might be true that “the task of defending the rationality of Christian belief really is harder than most of us thought.” Yet he rhetorically asks, “What can one do if this represents the sober truth? Should we shoot the messenger?” He also offers a less rhetorical reply to this objection: For him, only the externalist values of faith ‒ namely, external rationality and warrant ‒ are tied to the truth of Christianity. But in his view, Zagzebski’s critique seems to refer to internal rationality ‒ an internalist value which is not tied to truth, and which clearly characterizes Christian belief. Moreover, one can even defend the truth of Christianity, although only negatively, by answering the eventual objections against it; positively, however, the truth of Christianity is properly basic and cannot be proved by arguments. As we have already seen, this truth is immediately revealed to us with the help of the Holy Spirit and without arguments.77 Another of Zagzebski’s objections is that Plantinga’s model does not respect “the Rational Recognition Principle,” according to which, “if a belief is rational, its rationality is recognizable, in principle, by rational persons in other cultures.”78 However, according to Zagzebski (and Hugo Meynell’s similar observations in chapter 5), there are many beliefs in other religions (“sun worshippers, cult-followers, devotees of Greek gods”) which we should normally consider “irrational and bizarre,” but which, if their followers “are clever enough to build their own epistemic doctrines into their models in a parallel fashion [with Plantinga’s model],” should therefore be considered rational.79 Plantinga replies that he does not accept the assumption that no matter how crazy a religious idea, “someone who accepts that belief can produce an argument

76 Ibid., p. 121 (emphasis mine). 77 RZ, 132. At this point, an internalist would admit that this idea might be legitimate when one takes into account the context of the origin (of the respective belief); however, when viewed in the context of justification, this conclusion seems very doubtful for an internalist (I owe this observation to Dr. Wiertz.). 78 Zagzebski, “Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief,” p. 120 (emphasis mine). 79 Ibid., p. 122.



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exactly parallel to [his] for the conclusion that the belief is rational if true.” On the contrary, his model depends essentially on the nature, the power, the intentions, and the knowledge of the deity who is the source of the processes which, in the end, produce that belief (We have discussed his answer in more detail in subchapter 5.1.4.).80 At this point, one might raise another objection to the model: If more than one religion could be legitimized through such an epistemological model, is it rationally acceptable to believe that only one of these religions can be true? Plantinga answers this question in the affirmative, for the (trivial) reason that for him, truth by its very structure is an exclusivist notion. Thus, if one of my beliefs is really true, then any other beliefs which deny or are incompatible with it are (by definition) false.81 In many cases, truth is not shared democratically among all people; for example, only a unique, privileged generation of scientists (in the last century) understood the theory of relativity the first time ‒ all the other hypotheses on the respective domain of the universe proved to be more or less false in the end. Plantinga also argued that one cannot accuse another person of intellectual arrogance, egotism, or oppressive imperialism (due to their religious exclusivity) without implicitly accusing oneself of the same intellectual arrogance. To say that “there is something immoral in believing a certain proposition when you know that a lot of other people don’t believe it” is self-refuting: the very claim itself is another one of those self-referentially incoherent claims that shoot themselves in the foot, because in the case of the person who puts this idea forward, her very proposition (that this is the case) is one that not many people believe. She herself is doing exactly what she herself is condemning.82

In another objection, one might ask whether God is unfair in granting salvation only to the privileged few to whom he has granted access to the saving truth. Plantinga maintains that this objection is not valid, because God’s salvation is not dependent on one’s (undeserved) privileged access to revelation. God will not hold anybody accountable for what they did not know and could not have known; ignorance in itself is not a sin.83 80 RZ, 130-131. 81 WCB, 347-349, 440-443. 82 CMRT; Quote from the interview from the Closer to Truth Series “Can Many Religions all Be True?,” in [https://www.closertotruth.com/series/can-many-religions-all-be-true] (last accessed: 7 March 2019). See also Alvin Plantinga, “A Defense of Religious Exclusivism,” in The Analytic Theist. An Alvin Plantinga Reader, ed. by James Sennett, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 1998, pp. 187-210. 83 PDRE; This statement of Plantinga was taken from a video of the conference “Pluralism: Defense of Religious Exclusivism”, held at Veritas Forum on 31 December, 1996 and which is now archived at

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11.4.2 Richard Swinburne’s Objections One of Richard Swinburne’s important objections to Plantinga’s model is that, although it could “give comfort to those with strong beliefs who hold them as basic beliefs,” it “seems not have much to say to those Christian believers whose beliefs are not of Plantinga’s kind” (in this category, Swinburne includes Christians with weak belief and those who believe based on arguments), “and nothing to say to the adherents of other religions and of none.”84 In this context, Swinburne states that “a monumental issue,” which Plantinga does not discuss, is “whether Christian beliefs do have warrant (in Plantinga’s sense). He has shown that they do, if they are true; so we might hope for discussion of whether they are true.” For Swinburne, atheists as well as many theists are worried not so much over Plantinga’s discussion on warrant, but over this last problem: whether Christian theism is “probably true given the evidence” ‒ evidence “which is available to all.” Swinburne says that “it would have been good if Plantinga had considered that question.”85 Plantinga replies that, on the contrary, his model has shown that Christian theism does have warrant for a Christian, while it does not have warrant (and is not true) for adherents of other religions. For them, Christian belief does not have warrant, because to them this belief is not true – provided one accepts the way in which Plantinga relates these two concepts; as Plantinga suggested, his “witness of the Spirit” model of warrant is private, accessible only to the believer. But this does not mean that he did not discuss the problem of the truth of Christian theism: On the contrary, he has argued that, with respect to public evidence, arguments for the truth of Christianity are unsuccessful. Nevertheless, this does not mean that Christian belief may not have warrant for a believer, even if it is not probable on the basis of public evidence. To illustrate this, he offers an example: I am a suspect in a crime committed yesterday afternoon; I have means, motive, opportunity. I am known to have committed this kind of crime before, and a credible eyewitness claims to have seen me at the crime scene. Nevertheless, I clearly remember spending yesterday afternoon on a solitary hike miles from the scene of the crime. Then I know that I didn’t commit the crime, despite the fact that my committing is more probable than not with respect to public evidence.86

[https://web.archive.org/web/20171016032840/http://www.veritas.org/pluralism-defense-religiousexclusivism/] (last visited on April 30, 2023). Sadly, the link to this conference no longer works, but I can testify that the statement is accurate. 84 Richard Swinburne, “Plantinga on Warrant,” Religious Studies, vol. 37, 2001, p. 207. 85 Ibid., pp. 206-208. 86 RPE, 215-222, 220. Regarding this juridical analogy, Schulz raised an important internalist objec-



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(A situation like this is suggested in Dostoievski’s novel, The Brothers Karamazov, in Dmitri Karamazov’s trial.) Regarding Plantinga’s juridical analogy, Wiertz observed (in a personal exchange) that what we have here ‒ using Timothy Williamson’s distinction ‒ is private (or personal) evidence rather than dialectical evidence. He agrees that there is nothing disreputable about private evidence in general, but he suggests that this kind of evidence is of most use when combined with intersubjective/dialectical evidence (evidence which can be used in discussions about “my assertion that p” with persons who do not accept p). This is even more the case when there are reasons

tion: The problem is that, neither here nor in the analogous case of the religious believer can one have more than the sheer possibility that the accused is in fact innocent or the believer’s belief is true. Of course, if we could prove that the Holy Spirit is in fact at work (when someone comes to believe in Christ), we would be apologetically safe, for in that case, the Spirit would be considered efficacious not only genetically, but also epistemically: He or his presence would guarantee that the faith in question is in fact true. However, we can never be in a position to prove that he is (or has been) at work. In our opinion, Plantinga might reply to this objection that he surely agrees that one person could not prove that the Holy Spirit is at work in them, or that they are innocent of committing a crime (and that, in this last case, the maximum that could be shown is that it is not impossible that the person might be innocent). But he might also answer that, through his externalist epistemological model, he avoids this internalist project ‒ namely, the attempt to prove to someone else that the Holy Spirit is working in him (or respectively, that he did not commit the crime) ‒ because he suggests that these truths are not supported by public evidence, but only privately known by the respective persons. In this respect, he would probably say that his externalist epistemology allows a less demanding type of justification ‒ a weaker form ‒ where one is not obliged to submit evidence to the judgment of the public tribunal before being justified in one’s belief. In this way, externalist epistemology allows a risky and subjective kind of knowledge, similar to Polanyi’s “tacit knowledge” or Kierkegaard’s “faith seen as subjective knowledge.” A fragment (from WCB, 436-437) supports this suggestion: Here he states that, “there is no sure and certain method of attaining truth by starting from beliefs about which you can’t be mistaken and moving infallibly to the rest of your beliefs,” that “this is life under uncertainty, life under epistemic risk and fallibility,” where one can believe “a thousand things,” many of them things which other persons “of great acuity and seriousness,” do not believe, and where one “can be seriously, dreadfully, fatally wrong, and wrong about what it is enormously important to be right.” However, what seems to us ambiguous in this externalist answer is the fact that, on the one hand, Plantinga says that his option represents, “life under epistemic risks and fallibility,” (and that it is possible that he might be, “dreadfully, fatally wrong, and wrong about what it is enormously important”), but on the other hand, he considers his type of subjective knowledge ‒ as in the case of person who jumps over the crevasse ‒ a “sure and certain knowledge (that he will successfully jump over the crevasse).” Plantinga contrasts this sure knowledge (as we shall see in what follows) with the Pascalian wager (as suggested by Swinburne’s perspective on faith, understood as an unsure jump based on probabilistic acceptance of public evidence). For us, the lack of clarity comes with regard to the following point: Is Plantinga’s externalist view of knowledge for the believer in the end sure, or is it rather unsure? This seems to us ambiguous in his statements.

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for suspicion concerning the reliability of my private evidence (as seems to be the case with private religious evidence).87 In our opinion, Plantinga would probably agree that someone could legitimately raise suspicions regarding the reliability of private evidence, but he might again reply that there is always an assumed risk associated with an externalist epistemological stance. Moreover ‒ as we shall see in the following paragraph, he does not deny that public evidence might be useful for a believer in various circumstances, especially in discussions with persons who do not accept the believer’s views. But he would probably add that these arguments are not absolutely necessary for a believer to gain a warranted knowledge of Christian beliefs. Another of Swinburne’s objections refers to Plantinga’s evaluation of his arguments for the truth of Christianity. By using probabilistic proofs, Swinburne tries to show that the claims of Christianity are true. However, Plantinga replies that any attempt to argue for the truth of Christian claims by taking public evidence as one’s premise is doomed to fail, due to the problem of dwindling probabilities. Swinburne’s argument (in his own post-Plantingian reconstruction) can be presented in this way: given background evidence about the world (a), it is probable that there is a God (b) [… ] given that there is a God (b), it is probable that He would reveal things about Himself (c) Given that there is a God, and that He revealed things about Himself, it is probable that He would authenticate them by a miracle such as the Resurrection (d). Given the latter and some detailed historical evidence, it is probable that the Resurrection occurred (e). So it is probable that what Jesus taught about God is true. But there are enough problems raised by Historical Biblical Criticism to lead to considerable doubt about what that was. However, it is probable that, given all the above, God would provide a Church which would continue to teach what Jesus taught (f). Given all that and the biblical evidence, it is probable that Jesus did found a Church thus authenticated (g). And given all that, it is probable that the central claims which mainstream Christianity [… ] teaches today (h), are true.88

For Plantinga, the problem with this inference is that each of its steps is made probable by the previous one; in this case, to obtain the probability of the (final) conclu-

87 An interesting exchange between Plantinga and Wiertz regarding the relation between private experience and dialectical experience (but also concerning other associated problems, like the relation between the A/C Model and ideology, the Great Pumpkin Objection, the concept of intrinsic defeaters and the theme of the psychological certainty of belief) can be found in Oliver Wiertz, “Is Plantinga’s A/C Model an Example of Ideologically Tainted Philosophy?”, in Dieter Schönecker (ed.) Plantinga’s “Warranted Christian Belief.” Critical Essays with a Reply by Alvin Plantinga, Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter 2015, pp. 83-114, and in RC, 245-249. 88 Swinburne, “Plantinga on Warrant,” p. 209. For more details, see WCB, 272-277.



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sion, one needs to multiply the probabilities of all the previous intermediary steps. In this way, the probabilities dwindle. Even if one assumes a generous probability of 0.9 for each step (Plantinga is “generous” in granting almost every one of these steps a maximal probability of 0.9.),89 by multiplying all the probabilities, in the end one obtains a probability of less than 0.35 for the central Christian claims. For Plantinga, this generous but low probability is not “sufficient to support serious belief.” Rather, the sensible conclusion would be agnosticism: that “it is not terribly unlikely” that the central Christian beliefs are true.90 Swinburne has two answers to Plantinga’s objection. The first is that “the probabilities do not diminish even as rapidly as Plantinga in his more generous estimates suggests.” In Swinburne’s opinion, the historical evidence for Christianity makes a stronger contribution to the case for the existence of God, as Plantinga acknow-ledges.91 He goes on to affirm that Plantinga misconstrued his argument by supposing that all the extant evidence, including historical evidence, is present at the beginning of the argument, and then treating (h) as a conjunction of premises; in this case, “the diminution is inevitable in virtue of a theorem of the calculus that the probability of a conjunction of many conjuncts on some evidence is [… ] less than [… ] the probability of only some of those conjuncts.” However, he adds, “the force of evidence may often be better appreciated if we do not put all our evidence on the table at the beginning.” He states that his original position was, instead, as we add each conjunct to the hypothesis, we also add a new piece of evidence. In this way the probability may increase, not decrease. P (p & q | r & s) may be greater or less than P (p | r); it all depends on what are the conjuncts of the hypothesis and of the evidence.92

Moreover, Swinburne adds that Plantinga’s argument, if correct, would suggest “that any serious piece of secular history was very improbable; for his argument did not rely in any way on the theological character of the historical prop-

89 WCB, 274-278. 90 WCB, 280. 91 Swinburne, “Plantinga on Warrant,” p. 210. In this respect, it is worth observing that certain ideas related to the miracles seem to support each other: for example, it is not only the hypothesis of God’s existence that increases the plausibility of the resurrection, but also conversely the testimony of the eyewitness to Jesus’ post-resurrection apparitions which represent an argument for the existence of God. Tomoji Shogenji (in a brief article) offers what Timothy McGrew calls “a penetrating analysis” of the conditions under which the testimonies regarding a purported miracle contribute to the plausibility of God’s existence (see Tomoji Shogenji, “A Condition for Transitivity in Probabilistic Support,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, vol. 54, 2003, pp. 613-616). 92 Richard Swinburne, “Plantinga on ‘Dwindling Probabilities’,” in his Revelation. From Metaphor to Analogy, 2nd edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2007, p. 355.

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ositions.”93 Swinburne also criticizes Plantinga’s skepticism regarding the plausibility of a viable argument for the resurrection.94 In this respect, he states: “I believe there is a lot stronger detailed historical evidence for the Resurrection than Plantinga acknowledges ‒ not enough without theism but quite enough with it.”95 Swinburne’s second answer is that, even if one accepted Plantinga’s objection to the “dwindling probabilities,” the very conclusion that purportedly has such low probability is in fact shown to be true “by an argument from public evidence.” In Swinburne’s opinion, this would be sufficient for faith, because he understands faith as being “a commitment to seek a goal” (God and his love) “by following a way” (the Christian way). Furthermore, this definition requires only the belief “that there is quite a chance that the goal is there and can be attained, and that if it can be, the way in question is the one which will most probably attain it.”96 Plantinga’s reaction to these responses is mixed. In his immediate reply to Swinburne (in “Rationality and Public Evidence”), he continues to support his “dwindling probability” critique without reacting to Swinburne’s answer.97 However, in a later discussion (with William Lane Craig), in a positive evaluation of a critical article by Timothy McGrew (which reaffirms and refines Swinburne’s objections to his dwindling probability argument98), Plantinga admitted that Swinburne’s counterargument is, in his view, correct.99 Moreover, it is notable that, in a more recent work (“Where the Conflict Lies”), Plantinga has renounced his skepticism regarding

93 Ibid., p. 356. 94 In this respect, Plantinga states: “I’d guess that it is likely that the disciples believed that Jesus arose from the dead, but on sheer historical grounds [… ] it is considerably less likely that this actually did happen.” (WCB, 276) 95 Swinburne, “Plantinga on Warrant,” p. 211. 96 Swinburne concludes: “It would be better for us if our knowledge of God on Earth was a lot stronger than that, but for some Christians, alas, it isn’t; yet even for them there is enough light to show them where they should walk.” (Ibid., pp. 211-212). 97 In this respect, he writes: “My conclusion was that (because of the problem of diminishing probabilities) this argument (and other arguments like it) does not succeed in showing that Christian belief is very probable with respect to public evidence. In fact, these arguments don’t even show that Christian belief is more probable than not with respect to that evidence.” (Plantinga, “Rationality and public evidence,” p. 219) 98 Timothy McGrew, “Has Plantinga Refuted the Historical Argument?,” Philosophia Christi, vol. 6, 2004, pp. 7-26. 99 In this respect, see W. L. Craig’s testimony in the following podcast: [https://t1p.de/zebu] (last accessed: 30 April 2023). For a similar critique of Plantinga’s objection from “dwindling probabilities” and Plantinga’s reply to it in the German intellectual space, see also Gregor Nickel, “Dwindling Probability. Mathematical and Philosophical Notes in Margin,” and RC, 213-236, 260-262.



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the resurrection, admitting that arguments “like those of Richard Swinburne, N.T. Wright, William Lane Craig, Timothy McGrew and Gary Habermas” suggest that this miracle “seems to be confirmable not only by faith but also by reason.”100 In addition, it is important to observe that Plantinga does not think that arguments for the truth of Christianity are not useful. It is true that for him they are not sufficient “to warrant the firmness of belief involved in faith,” but they can be useful in at least four ways: “they can confirm and support belief reached in other ways; they may move fence-sitters closer to Christian belief; they can function as defeater-defeaters; and they can reveal interesting and important connections.”101 However, he maintains his opinion that, from the viewpoint of his project, they are not necessary (and also not sufficient) for warranted Christian belief. To Swinburne’s second response ‒ that even if one accepted Plantinga’s objection, the conclusion which has such purportedly low probability is in fact still shown to be true “by an argument from public evidence,” which is sufficient for faith ‒ Plantinga replies that this might indeed be the case. He writes that he has no intention to dispute “that the probability of Christian belief with respect to public evidence is sufficient to warrant a sort of Pascalian wager, a commitment to follow the way in question in the hope that the goal can be attained.”102 However, his intention is not to discuss such a Pascalian (or Newmanian) understanding of faith, but rather to focus on faith taken in the aforementioned Reformed sense: as (ideally) certain, warranted knowledge103 ‒ a full belief given by God as a gift (which cannot be sufficiently supported by arguments).104

100 WCRL, 179, 179n11. Maybe his change of mind is a reaction to McGrew’s observation that, by doubting that one can demonstrate “on sheer historical grounds” that the disciples believed that Jesus rose from the dead, Plantinga “betrays a curious pessimism” because, as Gary Habermas suggested, “if there is one point on which virtually all New Testament scholars of all persuasions agree, it is that the disciples believed they saw the risen Jesus.” (McGrew, op. cit., p. 18 [note 27]) And indeed, no serious scholar today seems to share Reimarus’ idea that the disciples were deceivers who stole Jesus’ body (and then invented his apparitions) or Paulus’ and Schleiermacher’s idea that Jesus did not really die (In this respect, Hugh Schonfield might be a notable exception, but his “swoon theory” reconstruction seems to be sheer phantasy.). As Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz observed, the historicity of Jesus’ post-resurrection apparitions rests (according to the text of I Cor 15:1-11) on very solid exegetical grounds (Gerd Theißen and Annette Merz, Der historische Jesus. Ein Lehrbuch, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1996, pp. 426-428). 101 RPE, 217. 102 RPE, 221. 103 WCB, 263-264. 104 Plantinga, “Rationality and Public Evidence,” p. 221. One might see an example of such a confident faith in Rom 8:15: “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children,” or in 1 Thess 1:5: “Our gospel came to you [… ] with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction (plerophoria).”

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11.4.3 The Barth-Pannenberg Dispute: William Craig’s Critical Observations On the topic of the justification of Christian faith, a similar discussion to that between Plantinga and Swinburne also took place in the German theological context ‒ in the seventh decade of the last century ‒ between Wolfhart Pannenberg and Karl Barth. One article outlining Pannenberg’s arguments for Christ’s resurrection ‒ written by William Lane Craig, who wrote his doctoral dissertation on Christ’s resurrection under Pannenberg’s supervision ‒ helps us better to understand Pannenberg’s position and the way in which it contradicts Barth’s (and Plantinga’s) Reformed position of faith. Craig’s assessment of the debate also helps us make a general evaluation of Plantinga’s position. First, Craig presents Pannenberg’s arguments and concludes that they build a good case for Christ’s resurrection. Pannenberg presents these in the context of his critiques of both Barth’s and Bultmann’s theological systems for their devaluation ‒ in his opinion ‒ of history’s meaning for faith.105 Due to their theological views, faith was misunderstood as a “stronghold of subjectivity in which Christianity could retreat from the attacks of science.”106 But if Christianity wants to have a claim on truth, it needs to pass the same tests as scientific hypotheses.107 Therefore, the burden of proving that God has revealed himself in Christ must fall on the historian.108 In this context, Pannenberg argues for the historicity of the resurrection of Christ (especially in his 1966 Grundzüge der Christologie) ‒ which, in his opinion, is grounded on two different traditions, both having a strong historical foundation: that of the empty tomb (as presented primarily in Mark’s Gospel), and that of the apparitions of the resurrected Christ (as primarily mentioned by Paul in 1 Cor 15).109 However, what needs to be added to these arguments in order to build a plausible case for the higher theological claim that “God revealed himself in Jesus” is a convincing argument that Jesus’ resurrection represents an argument for his divinity. This last claim is difficult to argue; however, Pannenberg suggests that

105 W. L. Craig, “Pannenbergs Beweis für die Auferstehung Jesu,” Kerygma und Dogma, vol. 34, 1988, p.79. 106 Wolfhart Pannenberg, “The Revelation of God in Jesus of Nazareth,” in Theology as History, ed. by J. M. Robinson and J. B. Cobb Jr., New York: Harper & Row 1967, 131; cf. Craig, “Pannenbergs Beweis,” pp. 79-80. 107 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Wissenschaftstheorie und Theologie, Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp 1973, pp. 329-348; cf. Craig 1988, p. 80. 108 Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Heilsgeschehen und Geschichte,” in his Grundfragen systematischer Theologie, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1967, pp. 22-23; cf. Craig, “Pannenbergs Beweis”, p. 80. 109 See Craig, “Pannenbergs Beweis”, pp. 81-84.



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one could find the necessary argument in the meaning of resurrection in its own historical context ‒ “in relationship with Jesus’ whole life, with his claims, with his work, with the preceding history of Israel and with the Jewish traditions and expectations.”110 Taking the above evidence into account, Pannenberg believes he has offered a historical argument for the truth of Christianity ‒ although he also admits that, as with any historical research, this result implies a degree of uncertainty. Nevertheless, even in this “precarious and tentative way,” a “non-private” knowledge of the Christian faith ‒ and thus a defense against theological subjectivity ‒ is made possible. Thus, one sees here a striking similarity between Pannenberg’s and Swinburne’s positions.111 In general, Craig agrees with Pannenberg’s argumentation, although he criticizes it on two particular points: Firstly, he opposes Pannenberg’s suggestion that Jesus’ body was immaterial after his resurrection,112 and secondly, he opposes Pannenberg making the meaning of the resurrection dependent on Jewish apocalyptic traditions. In the second case, he objects that, although the apocalyptic traditions may indeed define the historical meaning of the resurrection, this would not necessarily imply a definition of its religious meaning as well. What if these Jewish ideas were in fact false? What if the end of the world did not really arrive with Jesus? Against this appeal to the meaning-defining character of the Jewish traditions, he instead proposes that, from among the six elements which ‒ according to Pannenberg ‒

110 Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Krise des Schriftprinzips”, in his Grundfragen systematischer Theologie, op. cit., p. 16; cf. Craig, “Pannenbergs Beweis”, p. 84. There are some important traits which, in Pannenberg’s opinion, bring meaning to Jesus’ resurrection and suggest an argument for his divinity. I present only four, which seem to us the most important: 1) According to Jewish traditions, the resurrection of the dead came together with the end of the world; therefore, if Jesus was raised from the dead, then the end of the world had come (at least in part, proleptically). 2) For a Jew, if Jesus was resurrected, this meant that God had confirmed his work and his claims—among others, his claims to power, especially those in which he put himself in the place of God, a thing which, at least before his resurrection, sounded blasphemous. 3) The resurrection revealed that Jesus was the apocalyptic Son of Man (from Daniel 7); although in Pannenberg’s view Jesus never pretended during his lifetime that he was the Son of Man—though he pretended to fulfil some of the Son of Man’s functions—after his resurrection the differentiation between him and this personage became pointless. 4) The Jews believed that God would reveal himself at the end of the world, and the end of the world came with Jesus’ resurrection; therefore, this is an argument supporting the idea that God revealed himself in Jesus (Craig, “Pannenbergs Beweis,” p.85). 111 Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Response to the Discussion,” in Theology as History , op. cit., p. 275; cf. Craig, “Pannenbergs Beweis,” p. 86. 112 Craig, “Pannenbergs Beweis”, pp. 95-102.

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define the significance of Jesus’ resurrection, only the second should be retained:113 that this miraculous event indeed confirms Jesus’ pre-Easter activities and claims, especially his claims to divine authority, “which were considered blasphemous for Jewish ears.”114 Craig’s critique of Pannenberg’s model ‒ the objection that “he seems to base the historical argument for Christianity on the controversial fundament of a Jewish apocalyptic” ‒ seems to us legitimate. However, if that is the case, one might raise a similar critique of Craig’s own historical argument for Christianity. Craig’s work belongs to the so-called Third Quest for the historical Jesus, which criticized the ways in which the members of the New Quest for the historical Jesus (which influenced Pannenberg’s exegesis) used the criterion of dissimilarity (thus generating a seemingly unwarranted skepticism regarding the continuity between Jesus and the Church, and between Jesus and Judaism).115 Therefore, in contrast to Pannenberg, Craig is much more open to the idea that the pre-Easter Jesus identified himself with such eschatological titles as Messiah, the Son of Man, or the Son of God.116 Nevertheless, the problem is that even Craig ‒ in supporting the argument for Jesus’ pre-resurrection use of these titles ‒ used similar arguments to Pannenberg’s, also taken from Jewish apocalyptic traditions: from 4 Ezra, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Psalms of Solomon, and the Similitudes of Enoch.117 Thus, it seems that both Pannenberg and Craig appeal in their case for the truth of Christianity to “controversial” theological sources. In their apologetic endeavors, both seem to accept a non-foundationalist presupposition ‒ namely to trust that, in order to shape the theological context in which his revelation came to us, God in his providence used extracanonical sources.118 In order for their arguments to function, a believer needs to reject the suspicion that the Jewish apocalyptic traditions

113 Ibid., pp. 103-104. 114 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus – God and Man, London: SCM Press 2002, pp. 40-45, 57. 115 James Carleton Paget, “Quests for the Historical Jesus,” in The Cambridge Companion to Jesus, ed. by Markus Bockmuehl, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2001, p. 147; Theißen/Merz, Der historische Jesus, pp. 28-30. 116 William Lane Craig, “The Self-Understanding of Jesus,” in his Reasonable Faith. Christian Truth and Apologetics, 3rd edition, Wheaton: Crossway Books 2008, pp. 287-332; see also similar ideas in Martin Hengel, “Jesus, der Messias Israels” (1992), in his Studien zur Christologie, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2006 (Kleine Schriften, vol. 4), pp. 259-367; Martin Hengel, “Der Sohn Gottes” (1975), in op. cit., pp. 74-145, and Carsten Colpe, “Der Menschensohn,” in ThWNT, Bd. 8, 1969, pp. 403-481. 117 Craig, “The Self-Understanding of Jesus,” pp. 303-305, 307, 309-310, 313-314, 316. 118 Helmut Harder, Taylor Stevenson, “The Continuity of History and Faith in the Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg: Toward an Erotics of History”, in The Journal of Religion, Vol. 51, No. 1, 1971, pp. 51-52.



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might have led Christian theology astray and to trust that God used the whole historical process to lead us toward truth119 (although in a sense, one might argue that,

119 In our opinion, still a problem would remain, even if one had all the proofs that Jesus was raised from the dead, that he lived a perfect life, and that he asserted his messianity and divinity (Many theologians would at least accept that some of his statements were claims of highness – Hoheitsansprüche ‒ [Wilfried Härle, Dogmatik Vierte Auflage, Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2012, p. 346], while others, like Richard Bauckham, argue, even more strongly, that “the earliest Christology was already the highest Christology” and that already in some early NT books Jesus is directly identified with the one God of Israel [comp 1 Cor 8:5-6 with Deut 6:4 and Phil 2:6-11 with Isa 45:23] – which might suggest [for example via N.T. Wright] that these early claims of divinity could have had their origins in Jesus himself [Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans 1998, pp. 1-59, 154-253; N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God. Christian Origins and the Question of God, vol.2, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996, pp. 426, 612-662].). And this problem would be: Why should we believe that the miracle of the resurrection (together with his life and deeds) confirmed his purported claims about himself? As Plantinga observed, Jesus’ claims about himself have great ontological weight (for example, the idea that he is God, that he died for our sins, that he will judge the world, that he will raise people from death, that he will renew the world and make it perfect one day ‒ all of these extraordinary claims which seem very difficult to prove). In our view, accepting these claims is ultimately a matter of trust. Jesus’ life and resurrection might be a hint that something about him was extraordinary, but in the end, one can still remain – from a rational point of view ‒ skeptical and suspicious: What if, despite all of these arguments, Jesus ultimately deceived himself, and all of these claims are false? (It is true that in this respect C.S. Lewis ‒ in his “Mere Christianity” ‒ formulated a famous trilemma (about Jesus being either a deceiver, or a crazy person or God himself, considering the last option to be the most plausible of all three) – but see in this respect Alister McGrath’s observation that, after all, these three might not be the only available options, an idea with which in fact even Lewis agreed in the original BBC program (Alister McGrath, C.S. Lewis: Die Biografie. Prophetischer Denker. Exzentrisches Genie, Basel: Fontis 2021, pp. 269-272)). To this point, Dr. Wiertz objected – in a personal discussion – that in resurrecting Jesus, God, in a sense, sealed and approved Jesus’ work: this argument seems to us indeed valid; but here one may add that probably other religious figures from history might also have done some miracles: there are shamans, sorcerers from various primitive religions or some spiritualists who seemingly had some success in this sense – as we suggested in subchapter 8.4.8 (and even the New Testament itself suggests that at the end of history “The Beast” would do great miracles and deceive many people – see Revelation 13:12-14; 16:13-14). Would then such miracles also confirm the religious worldviews of those who presumably performed them? It is true, none of these religious personages seems to have done such great miracles as those of Jesus – and none of them seems to have had such profound moral teachings and such extraordinary lives as his. And it is also true that the type of miracles that Jesus performed were very different from the ideal type of magic perpetrated by some of his contemporaries (Blackburn, “The Miracles of Jesus”, p. 121) and that he had a peculiar authority in doing miracles (in the context of the announcement and inaugurating of the kingdom of God), in contrast to some Jewish miracle-workers of his days, who – when doing miracles ‒ used prayers and the invoked the name of God (Lidija Novakovic, “Miracles in Second Temple and early Rabbinic Judaism” in Twelftree (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Miracles, pp. 103-104). But even if in some sense Jesus’ miracles and teachings were superior to those of other religious figures, this would not automatically prove that his religious teaching was also true, but only the fact

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as these Jewish traditions shaped the context of Christian revelation, conversely, also the Christian revelation ‒ in a certain measure ‒ confirmed the rightness of this tradition). In any case, our conclusion is that both the believer and the skeptic might be justified in holding or rejecting, respectively, the arguments in favor of Christian faith. As in the case of Plantinga’s arguments for the existence of God,120 the arguments for Christianity seem plausible and rational for those who want to believe ‒ although a skeptic could also remain rational in rejecting them. However, as we know, Barth (with whom Pannenberg studied in Basel) was disappointed with Pannenberg’s apologetic endeavor. In an exchange of letters between them (on the subject of the publication of Pannenberg’s Grundzüge der Christologie), Barth wrote that, although he admired the book’s “critical acumen

that what he taught might have had more chances of being true – because God seemed to be more on his side than on the side of the other figures… But in the end, if it was possible that some “inferior” miracle workers were wrong about their teaching, why should it not also be possible that a “superior” miracle worker might be as wrong about his teaching – and this without being crazy? And one should not forget, as we shall see at the end of this work, that there are for example philosophers like John Hick who suggest (although in our opinion not very convincingly) the existence of a division between the Divine-in-itself and the Real as experienced by human beings, and believe that the Christian religion belongs ‒ along with all other ethical religions ‒ to the second category, being all of them in a sense false (or more precisely, true only for their adepts, but false for all other religioners); and that the deepest truth rather belongs to the first category, the mysterious and non-accessible (to us) realm of the Divine-in-itself). Thus ‒ with all proofs for the truth of what Jesus has said ‒ one finally needs to choose between trust and suspicion. Both options seem rational, and clearly ‒ at least the first of them (trust) – presupposes a belief in more than what can be seen. At this point one can ‒ together with Reid, C. A. Coady and Plantinga – discuss (and offer) – as argument for Jesus’ trustworthiness ‒ the epistemic legitimacy of testimony; but even in this case the situation is a bit complicated: when one takes into consideration the great ontological weight of Jesus’ claims, even his testimony is in some sense not a “normal” but rather a “very special” one, although it should be not forgotten that Jesus’ claims were not asserted in a historical and theological vacuum. Their occurrence in the specific historic-religious expectation-context of his contemporary audience increases their plausibility. Still, in the end, when one thinks of all the arguments for Christianity, a hermeneutic of trust (“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” John 20:29) seems (at least for us) to remain essential. And even more important is this hermeneutic of trust when one tries, as some theologians do, among them (at least in part) Pannenberg, to connect the belief in Jesus’ divinity rather with the event of resurrection than with Jesus’ own claims about himself. In this case, one should believe that Christ’s disciples ‒ influenced by the Holy Spirit – and the church fathers, got the doctrine about Jesus’ identity right or, as Newman would suggest, that the Church’s doctrines, like a tree developing from its acorn, are legitimate developments of their original idea, not later arbitrary denaturation (John Newman, Essay on the Development of Doctrine, London: Aeterna Press 2014). 120 TDTA, 210; PADA, 203, 205, 208; Wiertz, “Zum Begriff und zum Problem der religiösen Irrationalität in religionsphilosophischer Perspektive,” pp. 215-219, 226, 230, 235-242.



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that never fails in detail,” it unfortunately promotes a Christology “from below to above” ‒ that is, from the historical person of Jesus to the doctrine of the revelation of God in Christ. In Barth’s opinion, all we know as historical fact about Jesus’ resurrection is the existence of the “objective visions of the disciples” and “the brute fact of the empty tomb.” But to ground theology on these two facts ‒ interpreted in the context of Jewish apocalyptic traditions ‒ is to build a house on “the shifting sand of historical probabilities moving one way yesterday and another today.”121 In his article, Craig offers a similar objection to Pannenberg’s view on Christian knowledge, namely, that he does not accept the possibility that knowledge of Christianity might be available solely through the witness of the Holy Spirit. Pannenberg does not deny that faith is a gift from God and that the illumination of the Holy Spirit is necessary when the believer encounters the historical argument for Christianity; he accepts that the Holy Spirit plays an eye-opening role for a believer, but he differs from Barth and Plantinga in affirming that Christian knowledge is not possible without historical argument. Thus, he does not accept that the Holy Spirit might be a legitimate alternative to the knowledge of Christian truth independent of historical proof.122 However, for Craig, the idea that one cannot know the Christian truth without historical research has some worrying implications: ‒ It makes the truth of Christianity dependent on an “elitist priesthood of historians.” In this case, the great majority of believers must hand over their faith to a tiny community of historians. And if most historians did not believe that Jesus was raised from the dead, then believers would need to renounce their Christian faith.123 ‒ In this way, faith is subjected to reason, becoming its servant. This means a rejection of Luther’s distinction between a ruling (magisterial) and a serving (ministerial) use of reason; according to Luther, the latter must take priority in theology. On the contrary, according to Pannenberg’s model, when faith and reason conflict with each other, faith must submit to reason. But when that happens, faith is delivered up to the unpredictability and uncertainty of science. On the other hand, the testimony of the Spirit helps the believer know that the content of their

121 Barth, Letter to Pannenberg (Basel, 7 December 1964). Pannenberg would reply that, on the contrary, he considers this “historic turn” in Christology legitimate and necessary; furthermore, he seems to suggest that his Christology from below does not exclude, but rather includes a synergy with a Barthian Christology from above (Barth, Letters, 1961-1969, pp. 350-352). 122 Pannenberg, “Einsicht und Glaube,” in his Grundfragen systematischer Theologie, pp. 223-236; Paul Althaus, “Offenbarung als Geschichte und Glaube,” Theologische Literaturzeitung, Bd. 87, 1962, pp. 321-330; cf. Craig, “Pannenbergs Beweis”, p. 90. 123 Craig, “Pannenbergs Beweis”, p. 92.

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faith is true. Even if the claims of New Testament historians might contradict this testimony at times, the believer can legitimately hope that historical research may someday confirm their view.124 ‒ If the only way to know the truth of the gospel is through historical research, then for many Christians faith is an irrational act, a sheer superstition, because many of them might never in their lives meet a historian of religion, and very few investigate the historical proofs for the resurrection. Yet many of them “know the power of the Holy Spirit in their lives,” and for them Christian beliefs are alive and compelling; nothing about their stance seems to be irrational.125 All of these arguments are typical of a Reformed understanding of faith, and Plantinga would also fully endorse them.126 In our opinion, this Barthian critique of Pannenberg’s position has validity. However, as we have already seen above, Craig also agrees in principle with the legitimacy of Pannenberg’s defense of a historical argument for Christian faith; in this respect, he distances himself from Barth (and, at least in part, from Plantinga). Thus, he achieves a synthesis between the apparently irreconcilable views of Pannenberg and Barth by making a distinction between (privately) knowing the truth of Christianity ‒ which may come directly through God’s revelation, without arguments, through the instigation of the Holy Spirit (in this respect, his perspective is identical with that of Barth and Plantinga) ‒ and (publicly) showing the truth of Christianity, which means using arguments to convince others of the truth of Christianity; here, the Holy Spirit plays the role of an eye-opener. In this sense, he shares Pannenberg’s position).127 This type of distinction is also used, with slight differences, by the Catholic philosopher John Zeis.128 Nevertheless, in our opinion, Craig’s synthesis needs to be further refined. It is true that, from a philosophical point of view ‒ if Plantinga’s epistemological model is correct ‒ one might require no arguments, only the witness of the Holy Spirit, to

124 Ibid., pp. 93-94. 125 Ibid., p. 94. 126 WCB, 374: “By virtue of this process an ordinary Christian, one quite innocent of historical studies, [… ] can nevertheless come to know that these things (the great things of the gospel) are, indeed, true; furthermore, his knowledge need not trace back (by way of testimony, for example) to knowledge on the part of someone who does have this specialized training. Neither the Christian community nor the ordinary Christian is at the mercy of the expert here; they can know these truths directly.” 127 Craig, “Classical Apologetics,” pp. 28-30, 34, 45-55. 128 Zeis, “Natural Theology: Reformed?” p. 68.



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know the truth of Christianity.129 However, there are strong exegetical arguments that this might be not the whole story: In many biblical passages, particularly in Acts, the apostles’ preaching focuses on the historical arguments for the truth of Christianity, and especially on Christ’s resurrection. In his review of Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief, Stephen Wykstra pointed to this fact. He also argued that for Calvin, knowledge of the gospel had two roots: the historical arguments and the testimony of the Holy Spirit.130 Wykstra concluded that a full account of Christian warrant demands that both the historical arguments and the role of the Holy Spirit be not merely conjoined, but synergistically linked.131 Wykstra does not use the resurrection (or any of Jesus’ other miracles) to try to prove that the great things of the gospel are true. He only wants to say that, when the Holy Spirit convinces someone of the truth of the gospel, the belief in Jesus’ resurrection (which becomes plausible for a person who approaches the evidence with theistic presuppositions) is normally also present.132 In this respect, it seems that the resurrection might act as a trigger for belief in the truth of Christianity (which is ultimately a result of the instigation of the Holy Spirit). In our opinion, from an exegetical point of view, Wykstra’s perspective is more plausible than Plantinga’s,133 although one might believe ‒ as Plantinga suggests ‒ without any historical basis, in this case one’s faith seems to us somehow defective.

11.5 Conclusion Our conclusion is that both ways of approaching the truth of Christianity ‒ through historical argument and through the witness of the Holy Spirit ‒ seem legitimate. The first approach, maintained by Swinburne and (partly) by Pannenberg, seems tentative; moreover, its power is dependent on the presuppositions of those who take it into consideration (In this respect, Pannenberg’s model refers to the important illuminating role of the Holy Spirit.). However, this approach has the advantage

129 Some New Testament passages ‒ especially 1 Cor. 1-2 ‒ seem to support this view. 130 Wykstra, “‘Not Done in a Corner’,” p. 99. 131 Wykstra, “‘Not Done in a Corner’,” p. 101; cf. 103: “The Gospel proclamation does not ‘swing free’ from our ordinary ways of knowing historical events. Instead, it derives a crucial part of its warrant from the fact that the resurrection and other evidencing ‘visible works’ of God came within the perceptual access of Jesus’ followers.” 132 Wykstra, “‘Not Done in a Corner’,” p.106. 133 There is no enough space here to explain how Wykstra’s model tries to avoid dependence upon the changing opinions of the “elitist priesthood of historians,” but his article offers an interesting and complex answer to this problem.

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of enabling a rational public discussion with people of other convictions. It could, as Plantinga suggested, constitute a defeater of other defeaters and support (and even confirm) belief arrived at in other ways, and perhaps ‒ more than Plantinga would admit ‒ it could even constitute a trigger for Christian faith for some people. As Wykstra argued, for example, the argument for the resurrection has serious biblical and historical Church endorsement.134 A faith which does not take this into consideration seems somehow defective. As we have already mentioned, Wiertz (following Williamson) suggested that private evidence needs to be accompanied by dialectical, intersubjective evidence ‒ especially when talking with people who are suspicious of the reliability of private evidence. Craig and Zeis would agree with him. In a personal exchange, Schulz also emphasized the importance of historical knowledge, suggesting that it must be more than accidental ‒ it must be necessary. We must at least be historically certain that Jesus existed and that somebody proclaimed him the risen Christ. At the same time, it must be less than sufficient, because if it were, faith would be impossible.135 In any case, as Plantinga and Barth insisted, the witness of the Holy Spirit (or of God’s Word) plays the deciding role in bringing someone to faith. Without the Holy Spirit, all apologetic endeavors are in vain. Only through God’s grace, according to the New Testament, can someone really know the truth of Christianity. In this context, Plantinga’s enterprise represents a very insightful philosophical model, showing how Christian faith, from an epistemological point of view, could be rational and warranted.

134 Wykstra, “‘Not Done in a Corner’,” pp. 98-102. 135 The idea is that faith is a conviction (regarding the truth of a proposition) which goes beyond what the evidence for this truth would allow – from a classical foundationalist (Cliffordian) point of view; for W.K. Clifford, by contrast, “it is wrong, always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.” (W. K. Clifford, “The Ethics of Belief”, in W.K. Clifford, Lectures and Essays, London: Macmillan 1901, p. 183)

12 Kierkegaard and the Rationality of the Transition between the Competing Interpretations of Existence In this chapter we will try to assess Kierkegaard’s perspective on rationality: more precisely, to find an answer to the question whether Kierkegaard believes in the rationality of transition between the competing interpretations (stages) of existence or not; our assessment is that the answer to this question is affirmative.

12.1 Hannay, MacIntyre and the Challenge to the Classical View on the Transition As we already observed (in the first chapter), most Kierkegaard scholars in the past accepted the idea that Kierkegaard’s authorship, viewed as totality, is “religious from first to last” ‒ as the philosopher himself claimed in his “On My Work as an Author” and repeated in “The Point of View for My Work as an Author.”1 Thus, if his statement is true, then one should consider the purported stages of existence (aesthetic, ethical and religious) as being ranked: the ethical superior to the aesthetical, and the religious superior to the ethical.2 However, we already saw that this classical view was challenged by a variety of commentators including Garff,3 Mackey,4 Poole5 and Schönbaumsfeld.6 Some of them questioned the idea whether his own account in this sense is correct and suggested that actually there is no underlying unity to his authorship, but only various points of view; in fact, even as author of non-pseudonymous books Kierkegaard himself should be considered nothing more than just another pseudonym.7 An endorsement of such view gives rise to consequence that one should regard Kierkegaard’s statement that the stages are ranked with suspicion. In chapter 1 we argued that this allegation against unity of authorship in Kierkegaard is not

1 Kierkegaard, “On My Work as an Author”, in SKS 13, 12 / PV, 6 (see also Kierkegaard, “The Point of View for My Work as an Author”, in SKS 16, 11 / PV, 23). 2 Evans, Kierkegaard’s Ethic of Love, pp. 51-52. 3 Joakim Garff, Søren Kierkegaard: A Biography, Princeton: Princeton University Press 2005. 4 Mackey, Points of View: Readings of Kierkegaard. 5 Poole, Kierkegaard: The Indirect Communication. 6 Schönbaumsfeld, A confusion of Spheres: Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein on Philosophy and Religion. 7 Mackey, Points of View: Readings of Kierkegaard, pp. 187-190. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111334769-012

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convincing and consequently, his statement that stages are indeed ranked should be taken as authentic. However, other commentators continue more or less to disagree with the classical view for more punctual reasons. For example, according to Hannay, there is no “simple linear progression” in what concerns the significance of the stages;8 he doubts that the purported religious commitment of Kierkegaard in Either/Or9 is real (as the Danish philosopher later claimed) ‒ and (in addition to that) he suggests that the sequel to Either/Or, namely Stages on Life’s Way, does not offer (as the classical view on ranking would require) “a development of the ethical point of view in Part Two of Either/Or, but rather a reversion to the problem out of which the ethical was offered there as a solution, but prematurely.”10 Moreover, he claims that the pseudonymous works subsequent to Either/Or… deliberately undermine the suggestion presented in Either/Or that life confronts us with a radical and exhaustive choice between an aesthetic and an ethical view of life. The ethical view is now presented as a limitation, as a kind of recourse, something one might even feel tempted to adopt in order to escape the rigors of true individuality, a comforting and self-satisfying reduction of life to what is intelligible, grasping at the relief of translatability into a common and transparent moral discourse.11

But even if Hannay might be right that the classical progression “aesthetic-ethical-religious” could sometimes be replaced by the more direct progression “aesthetic-religious”12 (while the ethical may eventually appear as nothing more than a misguided dead-end), we posit that the classical variant still has (in normal cases) priority over its alternative. Thus, on the one hand, we agree with Hannay that Quidam, the ethicist from Stages on Life’s Way, is “captive” in an “inclosed reserve,”13 and subsequently the religious stage remains blocked for him. (David Roberts defines “inclosed reserved” as that intensified type of despair specific to – or in a sense even transcending ‒ the ethical stage. In this case a person who realizes her failure to fulfill the requirement of the ethical is “completely crushed” by this fact, but ‒ instead of being “humbled” by that and consequently leaping into a religious stage ‒ she “takes pride” in her

8 Hannay, Kierkegaard: A Biography, p. 187. 9 Ibid., p. 186. 10 Ibid., p. 187 (the author’s emphasis). 11 Ibid., p. 188. 12 For example, Gouwens observes that sometimes Kierkegaard (through his pseudonyms) refers to a classical linear transition through all stages, while other times he speaks about a direct transition from the aesthetic to the religious (Gouwens, Kierkegaard as religious thinker, p. 88). 13 SKS 6, 289-290, 360, 394-397 / SLW, 311-312, 388, 426-429.



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weakness, choosing herself as guilty, but is at the same time unwilling “to be open to redemption”).14 On the other hand, even if that is Quidam’s way of relating to ethics, this attitude on ethics is rejected by another character from Stages, namely Frater Taciturnus (the personage who in the end evaluates Quidam’s position): for Taciturnus the ethical stage is not ‒ as Hannay suggests ‒ a premature solution, a dead-end, a self-satisfying escape from the rigors of true individuality, but rather, as the classical view suggests, a transitional stage between the aesthetical and the religious stages: There are three existence-spheres: the aesthetic, the ethical, the religious… The ethical sphere is only a transition sphere, and therefore its highest expression is repentance as a negative action. The aesthetic sphere is the sphere of immediacy, the ethical the sphere of requirement (and this requirement is so infinite that the individual always goes bankrupt), the religious the sphere of fulfillment… 15

Still, another philosopher who (partially) agrees with the aforementioned challenge to the classical interpretation of Kierkegaard’s authorship is Alasdair MacIntyre – the most celebrated author of the book After Virtue. In this book MacIntyre denies that we must interpret Kierkegaard’s writings in “in terms of a single unchanging vocation”16 (as the Dane himself interpreted them retrospectively). Instead he suggested that the philosopher’s intention – in his first pseudonymous book Enten-Eller (Either-Or) (1842)17 ‒ was that of presenting the reader with an ultimate choice: an argument in this respect is the fact that the writer “was not able to commend one alternative rather than another, because never appearing as himself”.18 To MacIntyre, Either-Or represents in reality “the apparition of the distinctively modern standpoint in the history of morality”, the book being the “epitaph of the Enlightenment’s systematic attempt to discover a rational justification for morality”. In it the moral debate is envisaged “in terms of a confrontation between incompatible and incommensurable moral premises,” and the moral commitment is viewed as “the expression of a criterionless choice between such premises, a type of choice for which no rational justification can be given.”19

14 Roberts, Kierkegaard’s Analysis of Radical Evil, pp. 91-92. 15 SKS 6, 439 / SLW, 476. 16 MacIntyre, “Excerpt from After Virtue”, p. xxxvii. 17 However, it is important to know that this radical interpretation is valid, in MacIntyre’s view, only for the Either/Or ‒ but not also for the other pseudonymous books, in which case he agrees in principle with the classical interpretation. 18 MacIntyre, “Excerpt from After Virtue”, p. xxxvi. 19 Ibid., p. xxxv.

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For example, the aesthetic individual values her actions not according to the way in which they exemplify moral principles – as the ethical individual does ‒, but rather according to the way in which they are immediately sensuously gratifying and/or interesting to her. Thus, each framework of interpreting existence has different systems of values. For this reason, no ethical argument could compel the aesthete to choose the ethical framework: the moral arguments have no positive value for her. And, of course, the converse is valid for the ethicist: no aesthetic argument will make him change his allegiance to moral values. In conclusion, the choice between these two existential frameworks cannot be rational. Neither of the two positions is rationally superior to the other. Only later – according to MacIntyre ‒ will Kierkegaard use the idea of radical choice to explain how a person becomes Christian, beginning with the book Philosophical Fragments (1845).20 It is interesting that MacIntyre’s evaluation of the transition between competing existential frameworks is similar to the way in which, in the history of science, many thinkers initially understood Thomas Kuhn’s description of the transition between competing paradigms (from his most celebrated “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”): for many critics of Kuhn “his insistence that the defenders of rival paradigms must inevitably fail to make contact with each other’s viewpoints” seemed “a deliberate rejection of the basic requirements of effective reason giving in the natural sciences.”21 In other words, his idea that the standards of scientific evaluation change with the transition between paradigms suggested (to many of his first readers) that the respective transition represented for him an irrational process. However, this initial evaluation of Kuhn’s perspective proved to be mistaken; as the American philosopher later clarified, his proposed account of scientific change was less radical than his critics thought. And we shall see that, in a similar way, Kierkegaard’s view on the rationality of the transition between different existential frameworks is less extreme than MacIntyre suggested.

20 Ibid., p. xxxvii. 21 Ernan McMullin, “Rationality and Paradigm Change in Science”, in Paul Horwich (ed.), Thomas Kuhn and the Nature of Science, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1993, p. 55.



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12.2 Piety’s and Marino’s Defense of the Rationality of Transition Against MacIntyre’s aforementioned position we can say in the first place, as already observed especially in chapter 1, that there are good arguments for the underlying unity of Kierkegaard’s authorship, and secondly, we will suggest in what follows that MacIntyre’s “irrationalist” view concerning the transition between the competing interpretations of existence can also be cogently challenged: we will present the objections against it formulated by Marilyn Piety and Gordon Marino.

12.2.1 Marilyn Piety Piety is of the opinion that MacIntyre’s characterization of the transition between the aesthetic and ethical stages as “irrational” is mistaken; on the contrary, she posits that the ethical interpretation of existence is seen by Kierkegaard as providing a more adequate account of the human subjective experience than the aesthetic one.22 Thus, she observes that for Kierkegaard to be an aesthete means to interpret existence in terms of “what appears to be true about it” in an “immediate sense”. An aesthete “has his consciousness” ‒ especially his consciousness of suffering ‒ understood “in the dialectic of fortune and misfortune.” The aesthete’s problem is that he normally perceives the suffering in his life as having only an “accidental significance.” Only when suffering is persistent in his life might he see a discrepancy between this persistence and his own interpretation of life (which sees suffering merely as an accident) – and will despair.23 A passage from Concluding Unscientific Postscript is relevant in this respect: Immediacy is good fortune, because in immediacy there is no contradiction; the immediate person, viewed essentially, is fortunate, and the life-view of immediacy is good fortune. If one were to ask from whence he has this life-view, this essential relation to good fortune, he might naively answer: I do not understand it myself. The contradiction comes from outside and is misfortune. If it does not come from outside, the immediate person remains ignorant of its existence. When it does come, he feels the misfortune, but he does not comprehend [fatte] the suffering. The immediate person never comes to an understanding with misfortune – that is, he does not become dialectical within himself. And if he does not escape from it, in the end it becomes evident that

22 Marilyn Piety, “Kierkegaard on Rationality”, in Faith and Philosophy, vol. 10, No. 3, July, 1993, p. 367. 23 Ibid., p. 367; See also Evans, Kierkegaard’s Ethic of Love, p. 48.

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he lacks self-composure [Fatning] – that is, he despairs because he does not comprehend it. Misfortune is like a narrow pass on the way of immediacy. Now he is in it, but essentially his lifeview must continually imagine that it will in turn end because it is something alien. If it does not end, he despairs, whereby immediacy ends, and the transition to another understanding of misfortune is made possible, that is, to comprehend suffering, an understanding that does not merely comprehend this or that misfortune but essentially comprehends suffering… Inwardness (the ethical and ethical religious individual), however, comprehends suffering as essential.24

We can derive from this quote that the aesthete ‒ using the persistence of his suffering as a criterion for choosing between a view of existence in which suffering is merely accidental and a view in which suffering is seen as essential ‒ might reject the aesthetic view in favor of the ethical one. He may adopt this new interpretation of existence not because it helps him escape suffering, but because it helps him to regard “seeing suffering as something essential to existence” – providing in this way a “more adequate” (and ‒ in a pragmatic sense ‒ a “more rational”) explanation of his subjective experience.”25 However, Piety observes that, from an objective point of view, there is no incoherence in the idea that an aesthetic individual might experience persistent suffering: it is entirely possible that an individual should continually suffer while simultaneously “persisting in believing” that his situation is “accidental” (and that “with a change of fortune” it might change in the next moment for the better).26 This situation raises the following question: In what context does the “persistence of the suffering” in the life of an aesthete becomes so great and improbable – according to his own aesthetic framework ‒ that this should trigger a transition to the ethical? The answer to this seems to be offered – in Piety’s opinion ‒ by the way in which Kierkegaard views the role of passion in the functioning of human reason. For him, says Piety ‒ quoting Heinrich Schmidinger ‒ “our subjective engagement seems always related to our passions.”27 However, that does not imply that our subjectivity is devoid of any intellectual dimension, or that passion is opposed to reason. (It is true that Kierkegaard “considers passion as being opposed to reflection” – but this is the case only when reflection pretends to be disinterested; yet the self ‒ which is the center of Kierkegaard’s attention ‒ is not an object of disinterested and dispassionate reflection: for her “all knowledge is interested”).28 Moreover, Kierkegaard

24 SKS 7, 394-395 / CUP1, 433-434 (the author’s emphasis). 25 Piety, “Kierkegaard on Rationality”, p. 367. 26 Ibid., p. 368. 27 Ibid. 28 Pap. IV B 13:18-19 / JP 1, 891; Pap. IV C 99 / JP 2, 2283.



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“often equates interest and passion”:29 for this reason Piety concludes that subjectivity, or rather the subjective engagement could be rational for him: … if knowledge is interested, then it is also passionate, or involves passion at some level. But if knowledge involves passion, then it would appear that passion is not essentially opposed to reason, but rather plays an important part in the activity of the knower as such. If this is the case, then the passionate nature of subjective engagement does not preclude the possibility that such engagement could be rational.30

In this context, Kierkegaard (or more precisely Climacus) considers that only an impassioned reason can discern a discrepancy between the aesthetic interpretation of existence – which sees suffering as something accidental – and the persistence of this suffering in one’s life. Thus, only passion will be able to trigger the transition to the ethical stage. Piety observes an interesting confirmation of her interpretation in the work of Michael Polanyi ‒ a prominent representative of what Thomas Kuhn called “the soft philosophy of science” or “the historic-oriented philosophy of science.”31 Polanyi explained why ‒ when moving from one scientific theory to another ‒ a scientist is able to transform apparently “meaningless objective” probabilities into “subjective meaningful guides for interpreting reality.”32 In order better to understand this problem, it is worthwhile at this point to make a little excursus into the history of the philosophy of science. Excursus 1: The Place of Polanyi in the Philosophy of Science Philosophy of science was for a while dominated by rationalism, that paradigm in which philosophers thought there is rationality in the scientific procedures for

29 Heinrich Schmidinger, Das Problem des Interesses und die Philosophie Sören Kierkegaards, München: Karl Alber 1983, p. 254, cf. Piety, op. cit., p. 369. 30 Piety, “Kierkegaard on Rationality”, p. 369. As David Gouwens observes, for Kierkegaard “emotion and belief are closely intertwined (...). In delimiting the areas of objectivity and subjectivity, Kierkegaard is not recommending that the realm of the objective is that of ‘reason’ and ‘mind’, with subjectivity excluding the mind and intellect. Rather, Kierkegaard is engaged in an intellectual and philosophical task of clarification of ‘subjectivity’ that describes other functions of the mind that are not embraced in ‘objectivity’.” (Gouwens, Kierkegaard as religious thinker, pp. 52-53) 31 Thomas Kuhn, “The Road since Structure”, in James Conant and J. Haugeland (eds.), The Road since Structure, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 2002, p. 91; Mircea Flonta, “Thomas Kuhn şi Reorientarea Istorică în Filosofia Ştiinţei”, in Thomas Kuhn, Structura Revoluţiilor Ştiinţifice, Bucureşti: Editura Humanitas 1990, p. 15. 32 Piety, “Kierkegaard on Rationality”, p. 369.

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choosing and verifying scientific theories, and that this rationality could be encapsulated in the idea of scientific method.33 The most prominent movements representative of rationalism in the philosophy of science were logical empiricism and critical rationalism. The logical empiricists employed inductive logic as a relevant descriptive program of the scientific method (a program inaugurated by Rudolf Carnap). This program sought to establish the truth of an inductive conclusion (drawn from empirical premises) in terms of logical probability. For the critical rationalists, whose leader was Karl Popper, such an inductive knowledge was impossible (They accepted in this respect Hume’s critic of induction.): for instance, recall the idea that no matter how many white swans might be seen by a person, she cannot prove that “all swans are white” ‒ because a black swan could always appear and prove her wrong. However, the critical rationalists started from the observation that one might know for sure ‒ when a black swan appears ‒ that the statement “all swans are white” is false. In this way, science can use this method of falsification as a prescriptive rule ‒ an impersonal test for showing which statement might represent real knowledge and which does not: according to a strict falsification theory, if a fact is found that contradicts a theory, that theory needs to be abandoned. But, as Polanyi (and Kuhn) observed, this is not what happens during real scientific research; in experimental science a theory might or might not be abandoned when such a contradicting case appears ‒ there are no precise rules. Polanyi quoted the quantum theory of light and the theory of relativity as examples of scientific hypotheses which were (for a while) apparently contradicted by experiments; in spite of this, scientists were so convinced of their truth that they assumed the evidence to the contrary would be somehow explained away in time. He observed that, had knowledge followed a rational method (some strict rules), discovery would have been impossible. For him, the dim foreknowledge of a solution which guides the scientist, the intuitive recognition of reality (the so-called “tacit dimension”) which he follows in order to obtain the right solution – is an essential dimension of science.34 In this respect he wrote that science is regarded as objectively established in spite of its passionate origins. It should be clear by this time that I dissent from that belief; and I have now come to the point at which I want to deal explicitly with passions in science. I want to show that scientific passions are no mere psychological by-products but have a logical function which contributes an indispensable element to science. They respond to an essential quality in a scientific statement… The excitement of the

33 Bird, Thomas Kuhn, p. 3. 34 Drusilla Scott, Everyman Revived: The Common Sense of Michael Polanyi, Lewes: The Book Guild Ltd 1985, p. 42.



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scientist making a discovery is an intellectual passion, telling that something is intellectually precious, and more particularly that is precious to science. And this affirmation forms part of science.35

Returning to the subject of passionate reason in Kierkegaard’s thinking, one may now understand the relevance of the following quote from Piety: (The aesthetic interpretation of existence is not contradicted by the occurrence of what is, within this framework, the improbable persistence of suffering. Such statements of probability or improbability as a given framework expresses) cannot be strictly contradicted by any event [e.g., the persistence of suffering] however improbable this event might appear in its light. The contradiction must be established by a personal act of appraisal.36

For Piety, “the metaphysical tradition has led us to believe that impassionate subjective judgment is vastly inferior… to dispassionate objective judgment.” However, a situation such as ours ‒ when choosing between two different interpretations of life (or two interpretations of scientific reality) – would lead a “purely dispassionate or objective perspective” to “no judgment at all but rather to a sort of skeptical epoche.” Viewed purely objectively, “the occurrence of a highly improbable event… will tell us nothing about the truth or falsity of the framework within which it is viewed as improbable.”37 However ‒ concludes Piety ‒ in real life we often make impassionate judgments; in fact, we even seem to be “compelled to make them” – due to our inner structure as human beings. It is true that we have no method, no rule, to guide us in this respect. But “passion,” which “permeates our understanding” in these situations, “serves as a guide to the judgments we make in such situations.”38 Still, another question might be raised in this context: How do we know that passion does not only explain our choice, but also justifies it (in the sense that it does not only pragmatically explain the choice, but also tells us why this decision brings us closer to who we are, closer to our essence)? In response to this question Piety reminds us that according to Kierkegaard to be dispassionate means to be “indifferent to existence” (For Kierkegaard subjectivity is as much truth as it is passion). This amounts in the end “to being insufficiently human” (the dispassionate, observing and distanced stance of the reflective aesthete – incarnated so well by the Seducer from Either/Or – has something “non-human,”

35 Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1958, p. 134. 36 Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, p. 24, quoted in Piety, “Kierkegaard on Rationality”, p. 368 (Piety’s emphasis; Piety’s words are in parentheses; the words outside parenthesis belong to Polanyi). 37 Piety, “Kierkegaard on Rationality”, pp. 369-370 (our emphasis). 38 Ibid., p. 370.

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unnatural in it). For this reason, the choice of the ethical over the aesthetical is not only psychologically explicable, but also justifiable: it coheres with the essence of one individual, with her humanness, her true self.39 Piety believes that this kind of reasoning is valid not only for the (Kierkegaardian) transition from the aesthetical to the ethical, but also for the transition between all other stages, including the apparent criterionless transition ‒ due to the fact that the truth of revelation comes from outside to us ‒ from the universal religiousness A to the Christian interpretation of existence (religiousness B): there is a criterion (similar to that of the suffering in the life of the aesthete) that helps an individual also in this transition ‒ namely the “consciousness of sin.”40 In this respect Kierkegaard states that: “Christianity relates solely to the consciousness of sin. To want to involve oneself with becoming a Christian for any other reason is quite literally foolishness; and that is how it must be.”41 (We saw in chapter 10 that for Climacus the consciousness of sin can be gained through an “analogy to the Socratic recollection.”)42 What is it that triggers the transition between various stages? Piety asserts that it is passion; the passion seems to be the interest in having a correct (or a proper) interpretation of one’s existence ‒ in a sense, a passion for truth, for veracity; in this respect she says that [s]uch passion arises, again, from an interested stance toward the question of which of the possible interpretations of existence is correct. The more extreme the interpretation presented to the individual, the more passionate – as opposed to dispassionate – must his or her self-examination be. That is, when an individual is presented with an interpretation of existence such as that offered by Christianity… , then the proper response is not a casual concern as to the truth of this interpretation, but rather a deep and impassioned introspection in which the individual repeatedly asks himself: “Could this be the real nature of my existence?” “Does this interpretation of my existence make the most sense – i.e., more sense than any other interpretation – of my subjective experience?”43

In other words, if one is true to his life-experience, which includes his emotions and passions, this experience will guide him ‒ through various stages of existence ‒ in the end, toward Christianity. Naturally, at this juncture we anticipate a first critique ‒ one adduced by MacIntyre ‒ against Piety’s perspective: His objection refers to the moment in which

39 Ibid., p. 371. 40 Ibid., p. 367, 372 (emphasis belongs to the author). 41 SKS 21, 163 / KJN 5, 170. 42 SKS 4, 223 / PF, 14. 43 Piety, “Kierkegaard on Rationality”, p. 373.



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the passion-informed reasoning enables a person to move from the aesthetic to the ethical (by “breaking down the apparent coherence” of her interpretation of existence); in the next section we shall see the depth of this critique. In a second critique he also decries the insufficient specificity regarding the way in which an individual’s response to the breakdown of his framework of existence “comes to be reason-informed”;44 and indeed, this seems to be a real problem for Piety’s model. However, MacIntyre also suggests that Gordon Marino’s account of the transition between the two interpretations of existence – which will be presented in what follows ‒ might be a remedy to this problem.45

12.2.2 Gordon Marino’s Account of the Transition Marino defends ‒ contra MacIntyre’s challenge in After Virtue – the idea that the choice to live in ethical terms (the transition from an aesthetical to an ethical stage) could be defended on rational grounds. He argues that in fact Kierkegaard offers reasons for advancing from the first to the second stage of life’s way.46 “There is more continuity between the ethical and the aesthetical than MacIntyre encourages us to imagine”47 – says Marino. A very good summary of Marino’s argument is made by MacIntyre himself: As in Piety’s account, (for Marino) passion provides reason with its incentive. Both Judge Wilhelm and Kierkegaard assume that despair is everyone’s negative Prime Mover. The impact of despair is upon individuals for whom coherence in their lives is a condition without which they will be unable to love and for whom being able to love is a condition without which they will be unable to be happy. Desires for coherence, for love and for happiness are universal, and it is only through the choice of the ethical that those desires can be satisfied. True, every desire will appear differently according to the categories through which it is conceived, but both the judge and Kierkegaard suppose that there is enough continuity to reason the aesthete out of one conception and toward another.48

44 Alasdair MacIntyre, “Once More on Kierkegaard”, in J. Davenport and A. Rudd (eds.), Kierkegaard After MacIntyre: Essays on Freedom, Narrative and Virtue, p. 346. 45 Ibid., p. 346. 46 Gordon Marino, “The Place of Reason in Kierkegaard’s Ethics”, in J. Davenport and A. Rudd (eds.), Kierkegaard After MacIntyre: Essays on Freedom, Narrative and Virtue, p. 113. 47 Ibid., p. 118. 48 MacIntyre, “Once More on Kierkegaard”, p. 346. In the same sense, Evans argues that “(Judge William) attempts to give reasons why the ethical life is superior to the aesthetic life, and those reasons are not, contra MacIntyre, reasons that presuppose that the individual to whom they are directed has already made a ‘radical choice’ for the ethical. Rather, William argues that the ethical life is supe-

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From this passage it seems that Marino understands Kierkegaard’s rationality of the transition (between stages) in terms of a model of rationality named “theory choice.” When some of Kuhn’s critics said that his perspective on change in the history of science is irrational (as we saw at the end of the section 1.a.), he answered that his model uses such a type of reasoning (“theory choice”). Kuhn thinks scientists do not use a rigid method in adopting a new theory, that there are still some universal values shared by all researchers, which ultimately guides them in choosing one theory over another (such as: precision, consistency, amount of extension, simplicity and fecundity). However, these values are applied by different scientists in various ways. The ways in which they apply them depend on the paradigm to which they belong.49 Suppose at the end of this process only one scientific community (one of the parties) wins the contest; the presence of these universal values in the process will guarantee the rationality of their choice. In a similar fashion Marino posits that Kierkegaard sets up the desires for coherence, love and happiness to function as values in the choice of one stage of life over another. However, as in the case of Kuhn’s model of scientific revolutions, these values are weighed in different ways ‒ depending on the stage in which an individual lives: “every desire will appear differently according to the categories through which it is conceived”.50 Yet, as expected, others will not accept this interpretation; as we shall show in the next section ‒ MacIntyre disagrees with Marino’s perspective.

rior to the aesthetic life even on aesthetic grounds. In a long essay on marriage, he defends lifelong monogamous commitment on the grounds that it is a better realization of the needs and wants of romantic life than the casual love affair.” (Evans, Kierkegaard’s Ethic of Love, p. 55-56) 49 Thomas Kuhn, “Obiectivitate, evaluare şi alegerea teoriei (Objectivity, evaluation and theory choice)”, în Tensiunea esenţială (Essential Tension), Editura Ştiinţifică şi Enciclopedică, Bucureşti 1982, p. 361. 50 Marino, “The Place of Reason in Kierkegaard’s Ethics”, p. 118. However, this analogy with Kuhn’s model of theory choice is not perfect, because it seems to be a certain asymmetry between the transition from a stage to another. Thus, in order to move from the aesthetic to the ethical stage, one needs to have passion. But the converse, the move back from the ethical to the aesthetic, if possible, seems not to share the same pattern: here the lack of a passion rather than its presence seems to trigger the transition toward the aesthetic stage – an idea deplored by MacIntyre, who believes that a transition from the ethical to the aesthetic could also be a passionate move (see in this respect Alasdair MacIntyre, Tratat de morală: Dupa virtute (After Virtue), Bucuresti: Editura Humanitas 1998, p. 66). However, this asymmetry in Kierkegaard’s model should not be surprising, since for him (contrary to MacIntyre’s view), the stages themselves seem to be asymmetrical, being ranked – each of the superior ones being an advance over the inferior (toward truth and reality).

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12.3 MacIntyre’s Answer to Piety’s and Marino’s Defences of the Rationality of the Transition(s) As we have seen, MacIntyre showed a certain appreciation for Marino’s perspective. He agreed – although only partially ‒ that Marino’s (and consequently Kuhn’s) model could be applied to Kierkegaard’s transition between life’s stages (We say “partially” because, as we shall see, he denies that all passions ‒ which should function as standards of evaluation in the transition between stages ‒ are common to them.). As Piety suggested, there are some passions which are essential to this transition; without them, the move from one stage to another will be impossible. But MacIntyre denies that these essential passions are continuous between the stages. For this reason ‒ despite some minor continuity – he sees the transition as remaining essentially discontinuous and irrational. Thus, to Piety’s and Marino’s statement that a reasoning that is passion-informed will enable an individual (the aesthete “A”) to move from the aesthetic to the ethical, his response will be that: A’s either-or choice between the ethical and the aesthetic would precede and not follow upon A’s reasoning, although it would remain true, as Piety and Marino are right to insist, that passion would have provided reason with its incentive.51

That is because, in MacIntyre’s opinion, in order to be convinced by the Judge’s arguments, A would have to ask with real seriousness (… ) such questions as “What, if anything, might rescue me from despair?”, “In what might genuine happiness consist?”, “What are the conditions that could secure my own happiness?” and “What kind of person must I be to love and be loved?”

“But in order to do that,” says MacIntyre, “A would have to have already left the aesthetic stage behind; (… ) he would already have chosen himself as an ethical subject.”52 But does indeed the choice between the ethical and the aesthetic precede A’s reasoning, – as MacIntyre believes? Would these questions (and the passions charging them) already presuppose an ethical background? And if, after reading B’s discourse (B is the ethical personage in “Either/Or.”) A would seriously pose these questions, would he in fact ‒ by doing this ‒ already have left the aesthetic stage?

51 MacIntyre, “Once More on Kierkegaard”, p. 346. 52 Ibid., p. 346.

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We will try to answer these questions at the end of this paper; before this final evaluation, we will present other important contributions to this debate: the virtue epistemology and the externalist model of the transition between stages proposed by Evans.

12.4 Evans’ Externalist Model Evans’ position is important for us, because, although he was not directly involved in the debate with MacIntyre ‒ and he agrees in principle with Piety and Marino’s views (see his appreciative comments on their positions at the end of the book Kierkegaard After MacIntyre) ‒ he proposed at least two new arguments for the rationality of transition and the superiority of the later stages over the previous ones: One of them refers to virtue epistemology, another to the externalist epistemology.

12.4.1 “Virtue” Epistemology Virtue epistemology suggests that, in order to have adequate knowledge, one needs to pay attention to the knower ‒ in particular to the moral qualities a good knower possesses. According to this perspective, people who are unethical cannot have a deep understanding of the ethical truth.53 In fact, in order to grasp the essential truth ‒ the truth about living in general ‒, says Evans: progress in answering our intellectual questions goes hand in hand with progress in becoming better people… The idea that knowing the truth requires the knower to strive to become a better person was common in the ancient world. Even Aristotle says that it is pointless for someone who has been brought up poorly, and thus has a bad character, to study ethics. Kierkegaard accepts the ancient principle that “only like knows like”, and this implies that one must be good in order to know good… Subjectivity is not only essential if we are to put our beliefs into practice, but plays an essential role in the acquiring of those beliefs.54

Only thus can be understood, according to Evans, the transition toward the religious stage and the ability of a person to comprehend religious truths; to experience these realities might be impossible without the previous acquisition of such

53 An example of virtue epistemology can be found, according to Evans, in Robert C. Roberts and W. Jay Wood, Intellectual Virtue: An Essay in Regulative Epistemology, New York: Oxford University Press 2007, cf. Evans, Kierkegaard: An Introduction, p. 164. 54 Evans, Kierkegaard: An Introduction, p. 65.

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a moral quality as humility. Evans’ view is that, for example, there might exist an objective truth (of a moral type) which an aesthete cannot grasp (or, in any case, he cannot grasp it in a profound and comprehensive way) – and this is the case not because the aesthete has no good arguments for getting it (as MacIntyre suggests in After Virtue), but because he does not possess the moral qualities necessary for grasping it. This view is related to the externalist epistemology which will be presented in one of the following sections.

12.4.2 Anticipations of the Externalist Model In a sense, Evans’ externalist model is anticipated by Piety when she asks herself: “How do we know that a ‘triggering’ passion not only explains our choice psychologically, but also justifies it?” ‒ and answers that it justifies it because the choice of the ethical over the aesthetical coheres with the essence of one individual, with her true self. Explained this way, it seemingly takes us beyond the pure pragmatic dimension of the transition between stages (a dimension that sees passions only as psycho-explanatory elements of the transition – an attitude which, in essence, is an internalist one, because it strictly relates to those arguments to whose premises one has internal access): at this junction we also encounter here the problem of the truth of the stages (the truth being essentially an externalist epistemological concept).55 It is also relevant here to point out that ‒ in arguing for the rationality of the transition between stages ‒ Piety used an analogy invoking Polanyi’s model of the transition in the history of science rather than an analogy imported from Kuhn’s model, although, as we have already seen, both Kuhn’s and Polanyi’s views have many things in common. For example, both see the transition between scientific macro-theories as being a rational process. We suspect that a main reason for Piety’s choice of Polanyi might be the different way in which Polanyi – in contrast to Kuhn ‒ understood the ontological status of the scientific objects (the non-observable entities of the scientific theories). Excursus 2: Polany, Kuhn and the Realist Debate Kuhn saw his paradigms as pragmatic tools enabling scientists to solve scientific puzzle-problems. He accepted, for example, that Newton’s mechanics is better than that of Aristotle, and that Einstein’s mechanics is better than that of Newton ‒ a

55 As Greco suggested, truth is by definition a feature external to, outside – in the ultimate sense – of our epistemic access (see Greco, “Justification is not Internal”, pp. 257-269).

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tool for solving puzzle-problems. In spite of this, he could see in the progression of these macro-theories (associated to the paradigms) no trace of ontological progress, no improvement in the theories’ approximation of reality.56 Moreover, he consistently maintained this pragmatic attitude in his later works as well – when he developed a kind of evolutionary social constructivism (designated “postDarwinian Kantianism”).57 However, at this point Polanyi sees things otherwise: he believes there is a reality to be discovered and that there is a possible progressive discovery of this

56 Kuhn, Structura Revoluţiilor Ştiinţifice, p. 287. However, can we really say that the Copernican revolution led in the end to no better approximation of reality? Does anyone doubt today that in the end Galilei and the Copernicans have won the debate? Of course, one can adduce in favor of Kuhn’s point his famous argument from “The Structure” that ‒ in a sense ‒ Einstein’s ontology seems closer to that of Aristotle than that of Newton. But even if one may grant him this point, it is not evident that this idea is also valid for the respective transition (from Newton and Einstein) in a more general sense (nor for scientific theories in general). In a personal discussion with Ernan McMullin ‒ one of the best interpreters and critics of Kuhn’s philosophy of science ‒ he told us that, “The claim that Kuhn makes about the lack of ontological progress between Aristotle, Newton, and Einstein is not very convincing (I doubt whether many scientists would agree with it). But whatever validity it might have is restricted to mechanics, a very peculiar science. It is clearly ridiculous when applied to such structural sciences as organic chemistry or molecular biology, where the steady and uninterrupted progress in the specification of ever finer details of structure is evident. One of Kuhn’s failings is to take mechanics as the paradigm science, instead of as the anomalous one!” (Regarding mechanics, McMullin agrees that, for example, in the case of quantum mechanics, at the present known border of the microuniverse ‒ where the same scientific theory allows space for more divergent ontological interpretations ‒ the situation is more complicated.) 57 Kuhn, “The Road since Structure”, p.104. In this respect Kuhn suggested that, beyond our lexical categories, which are a dynamic analogue of the Kantian categorial system, there is something ineffable and indescribable – similar to the Kantian thing-in-itself. Again, in a personal discussion with Ernan McMullin, he told us that, “Kuhn needs the Ding-an-sich to prevent his view from falling into straightforward idealism, which would never mesh with his account of theory change based on anomalies and the like, which imply that what lies out there is not totally subject to mind-construction.” However, in his last work, motivated in a certain measure by some epistemological concerns regarding the concepts of truth and reality, Kuhn suggests that we can renounce in totality the thing-in-itself. In this way his epistemological model gets, as Alexander Bird observed, closer to Hegel than to Kant (Thomas Kuhn, “The Trouble with the Historical Philosophy of Science”, in J. Conant and J. Haugeland (eds.), The Road since Structure, pp. 105-120; Bird, Thomas Kuhn, pp. 129-130). In this respect Devitt, a well-known critic of the constructivist epistemology, observed that “the Kantian noumenal world adds only an invisible fig leaf to the naked constructivist idealism. If this leaf falls, then we remain with a modified constructivism – which seems to be the preferred position by Putnam and even by Kuhn (in certain late writings). But in this case no explanation can be given to the constraint which characterizes the theorizing; we can think and create whatever we want. But this position is little plausible – to use a delicate term.” (Devitt, “Incommensurability and the Priority of Metaphysics”, p. 147).

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reality. The tacit dimension of our knowledge guides us toward truth (not toward nowhere, as Kuhn suggested).58 In an interesting passage Polanyi synthesizes two important convictions which make him (in some respects) similar to Kierkegaard: the gradual progress toward discovering the truth about reality and the passionate, non-methodical and personal appraisal of this discovery: I declare myself committed to the belief in an external reality gradually accessible to knowing, and I regard all true understanding as an intimation of such a reality, which, being real, may yet reveal itself to our deepened understanding in an indefinite range of unexpected manifestations. I accept the obligation to search for the truth through my own intimations of reality, knowing that there is and can be no strict rule by which my conclusions can be justified.59

Polanyi accepted that being a particular person, belonging to a particular culture and working as a member of a particular scientific community might limit one’s vision; but he also believed that, even if mediated through these limitations, vision is still possible.60 At the end of his celebrated The Structure of the Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn asks himself: “why the new paradigm functions better than the old one.” – and seems to leave this interrogation without an answer. Yet a realist ‒ like Polanyi – could suggest to him that this progress (toward more pragmatic success) might be explained by the paradigms’ (or ‒ more accurate ‒ the macro-theories’ associated to paradigms) closer grip on reality.61

58 Scott, Everyman Revived: The Common Sense of Michael Polanyi, pp. 76-77. 59 Michael Polanyi, Knowing and Being, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1969, p. 133, cf. Scott, Everyman Revived, p. 65. 60 Scott, Everyman Revived, p. 73; See also Wolterstorff, “Are Concept-Users World-Makers?”, pp. 235, 248. 61 However, there are philosophers like Bas van Fraassen who suggest that an evolutionary kind of mechanism could offer an antirealist challenge to this realist argument. For van Fraassen, each scientific theory is born in a “tooth and claw” competition with other theories. Only the theories that have success survive. Thus, the competition, not their progressive agreement with the external reality, explains their progressive success (van Fraassen, The Scientific Image, p.39). However, as we saw in subchapter 8.4.4., this argument was rejected by Leplin due to the fact that it still cannot explain, from a non-realist perspective, on which particular qualities these theories’ success is based. Leplin uses here an analogy with the situation of Wimbledon’s finalists: “Why are these tennis players so good? Due to the rigorous kind of selection requested to all the participants in the tournament? No!” This selection cannot explain why such particular individuals like Sampras or Agassi are such good players: for such an explanation one needs also to take into account the particularities that make these individuals so successfull: their genetical talent and their perseverent training (Leplin, A Novel Defense of Scientific Realism, cf. Kukla and Walmsley, “A Theory’s Predictive Success does not Warrant Belief in the Unobservable Entities it Postulates”, p. 135). For an argument against the meta-pessimistic induction of Kuhn (Kuhn suggests that the lack of continuity between such meta-theories as

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12.4.3 Classical Foundationalism versus Kierkegaard’s Epistemology As we already have seen (especially in chapter 2) classical foundationalism as an epistemological model has dominated western philosophy for a significant amount of time. According to it, genuine knowledge needs to be based on some foundational truths which are known with certainty. The Cartesian Meditations are relevant in this respect. According to Descartes: reason already persuades me that I ought no less carefully to withhold my assent from matters which are not entirely certain and indubitable than from those which appear to me manifestly to be false.62

Another claim of classical foundationalism is that the only way to gain certainty is through becoming entirely objective ‒ by avoiding any emotion and subjective attitude in general (which are seen as sources of bias and distortion). Again, in this respect Descartes writes: Today, then, since very opportunely for the plan I have in view, I have delivered my mind from every care (and am happily agitated by no passions) and… I shall at last seriously and freely address myself to the general upheaval of all my former opinions.63

Evans observes that from the standpoint of view of classical foundationalism, the argument between the aesthete and the ethicist is undecidable: neither side is able to move the other in the debate toward an agreement. And if this is the case, then perhaps only a radical choice can resolve the situation. Therefore, Evans sees MacIntyre’s position from After Virtue as sharing these classical foundationalist premises ‒ and Kierkegaard’s view as opposing them. As concerns Kierkegaard’s perspective, for human beings to have a knowledge which is absolutely certain would mean to have “the System” – which Hegel claimed to possess. But in Kierkegaard’s view, it is impossible for a human person

Newton mechanics and Einstein mechanics should make us skeptics regarding their realist ontology in particular and – as he further argues – regarding the realist ontology of any scientific meta-theory in general.) see Stathis Psillos, “Scientific Realism and the «Pessimistic Induction»”, in Philosophy of Science, vol. 63, 1996, pp. 306-314, Valentin Teodorescu, “Metainductia pesimista: argumente pro si contra” in Revista de filosofie, Nr. 1-2, Ed. Academiei, Bucuresti (“Pessimistic Meta-Induction: Arguments Pro and Contra” in Journal of Philosophy, Academy Publishing House, Bucharest), 2010, and Stathis Psillos, Scientific Realism: How Science Tracks Truth, London and New York: Routledge 1999. 62 René Descartes, Meditations, in The Philosophical Works of Descartes, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1911, p. 145. 63 Ibid., p. 144.

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to have a system of existence.64 Only God possesses such a System ‒ and we are not God.65 Uncertainty is part of our human condition. Still, despite this uncertainty, most of us find ways to resolve our uncertainties. If for the classical foundationalist human emotions are distorting filters, Kierkegaard, on the contrary, sees our subjectivity as essential for our existence. The path to truth requires us to embrace our subjectivity. Thus, says Evans, “the evil of cruelty cannot be recognized apart from our emotional repugnance to cruelty, just as the goodness of love cannot be perceived apart from our emotional embrace of its splendor.”66 This does not mean that every emotion is a guide to truth: we must allow our subjectivity to be formed in a right way – according to the true human life, the ideal self we should strive to become (as defined by the Creator’s intentions). In any case, Kierkegaard (viewed through Evans’ interpretation) does not assume that the failure of classical foundationalism should lead us to the collapse of the concept of truth, as some postmodernists do (As we have seen in chapter 2, postmodernists share with classical foundationalists the premise that, “If there is an objective truth, then there must be a method which guarantees us access to that truth” ‒ and conclude from this that if no such method exists, we should entirely reject the notion of objective truth). Kierkegaard still accepts the ideal of objective truth, because he believes that reality is indeed a system for God, and therefore there is still a way in which things truly are.67 For this reason, even though we have no method for grasping truth, we still can achieve it. He believes that humans can discover what they need to know in order to live truly ‒ because God has designed them with this possibility – and thinks that this divinely designed way for gaining knowledge passes through their subjectivity.68

64 SKS 7, 105 / CUP1, 109. 65 SKS 7, 114 / CUP1, 118. 66 Evans, An Introduction, p. 57. 67 Ibid., p. 66. 68 Again, see the relevant quote (already given in chapter 4 and chapter 10) from Christian Discourses: “Truly, no more than God allows a species of fish to come into existence in a particular lake unless the plant that is its nourishment is also growing there, no more will God allow the truly concerned person to be ignorant of what he is to believe. That is, the need brings its nourishment along with it; what is sought is in the seeking that seeks it; faith is in the concern over not having faith; love is in the self-concern over not loving… The need brings with it the nutriment along with it, not by itself… but by virtue of a divine determination that joins the two, the need and the nourishment.” (SKS 10, 251 / CD, 244-245)

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We have now reached a point in our understanding of how Evans’ interpretation of Kierkegaard opposes the kind of classical foundationalist view proposed by MacIntyre, which enables us to discuss Evans’ externalist perspective.

12.4.4 Kierkegaard and the Externalist Epistemology As has already been explained, according to the internalist a person can determine if she has knowledge “only by examining the contents of her mind.” Knowledge depends only “on what is internal to our consciousness.” (Classical foundationalism is in this respect a type of internalism. When a classical foundationalist has access to the right kind of evidence, he has knowledge). By taking this route, the internalist hopes to convince the skeptic of his mistake, and believes he is able to distinguish rational from irrational beliefs. In this respect internalism is a type of “ambitious epistemology.”69 The opposite camp, the externalist epistemologists are skeptical about this internalist program. They think that human knowledge also depends on other factors than those present in our own minds (We might be “brains in the vat” stimulated by evil scientists, or victims of the deceiving machinations of the Cartesian demon.). If this is the case, then we shall never be able discover the truth about reality. For this reason – writes Evans ‒ these epistemologists believe that knowledge is a matter of being rightly related to the external reality we think we know. If our faculties are reliable, if they are functioning properly, in the right kind of environment, then perhaps we can have knowledge and reasonable beliefs, but we have no guarantees that we can determine whether these conditions hold.70

Thus, at the heart of externalism is the claim that knowledge is a matter of being “rightly related to the external world,” and that whether or not this is the case is not something about which we can be sure. Our capacity to connect ourselves rightly to that external reality might partly depend on the features we own as human beings. For example, when we believe rightly, “this is made possible by trusting the processes that enable us to track outward reality.”71 This idea can be exemplified by the way in which Kierkegaard tries to show, in Evans’ words,

69 See in this respect Stephen Evans, The Historical Christ and the Jesus of Faith, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1996, pp. 202-230; Evans, Kierkegaard: An Introduction, p. 164. 70 Evans, Kierkegaard: An Introduction, p. 165. 71 Ibid., pp. 165-166.

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how the development of a certain kind of subjectivity, called “the consciousness of sin”, enables us to track the reality of God. He does not think that philosophy can give us any guarantees that we are indeed tracking that reality properly. However, if classical foundationalism is a failure perhaps this will be true of any answer to fundamental human questions.72

12.5 Concluding Evaluation of the Debate At the end of this chapter, we can raise, for the sake of clarity, two questions: 1. Is the transition from a stage of life’s existence to another, in Kierkegaard philosophy, rational? 2. Is the chosen stage superior to the previous one? Answer to Question 1 The first question ‒ concerning the rationality of transition ‒ seems to depend especially on the individual’s internal point of view in the process of choosing. The kind of rationality involved here tends rather to be internalist than externalist. We have yet to respond to MacIntyre’s charge regarding the irrationality of transition. The previous task necessitated firstly answering the question whether the choice between the ethical and the aesthetic indeed precedes A’s reasoning, – as MacIntyre believes. Recall that MacIntyre regarded questions such as: “What, if anything, might rescue me from despair?”, “In what might genuine happiness consist?”, “What are the conditions that could secure my own happiness?” and “What kind of person must I be to love and be loved?” could have been seriously asked only if the aesthete were already an ethicist. The first question that might be asked regarding these interrogations is: Do they really belong in the ethical stage? Could not an aesthete have sincerely asked them as well? It seems, as Marino suggested, that these are universal human questions: they could have very well belonged to the aesthetic stage; and if this is the case, then MacIntyre’s argument that the choice between the ethical and the aesthetic precedes A’s reasoning fails. As a result, MacIntyre’s position is wrong, and the transition is indeed rational. But suppose that these questions do indeed presuppose an ethical ethos ‒ that they reflect ethical passions. An argument in favor of this view could be found in Piety’s article, where she said – referring to this kind of triggering passion – that we have an essential interest in choosing a proper interpretation of existence. This kind of interest will help the aesthete ‒ when suffering persists in his life ‒ to choose the ethical (in which case suffering is seen as essential).73 In this case, the passion ‒ in the case of

72 Ibid., p. 166. 73 SKS 7, 394-395 / CUP1, 433-434.

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the aesthete ‒ refers to his interest for having a true interpretation of life; in other words, it is a passion for veracity. But could an aesthete possess this passion? Is this not rather a passion of an ethical nature? Recall Evans wrote about the evil of cruelty, which cannot be recognized apart from our emotional repugnance to cruelty, and about the goodness of love which “cannot be perceived apart from our emotional embrace of its splendor.” Again, we have here a type of ethical passion which triggers the recognition of an ethical reality. Yet the question remains: Could an aesthete have such a passion? Does not this passion belong rather exclusively to an ethical person? And if passion belongs exclusively to an ethical person, the obvious implication would be that MacIntyre is indeed correct to posit that the choice between the ethical and the aesthetic precedes A’s. But we tend to believe the opposite. An aesthete can have ethical “passions” as well: he certainly has some ethical cares and leanings. For example, A clearly finds the ethical life attractive in some ways at some moments. And the Seducer has some ethical reservations regarding a plan to seduce Cordelia (by getting engaged to her and then manipulating her to break the engagement). In this respect he writes: The banefulness of an engagement is always the ethical in it. The ethical is just as boring in scholarship as in life. What a difference! Under the aesthetic sky, everything is buoyant, beautiful, transient; when ethics arrives on the scene, everything becomes harsh, angular, infinitely langweiligt (boring).74

In this context the seducer takes pride of the fact that his skills (as seducer) do not require of him to make some false promises, and thus to violate the ethical: I have always had a certain respect for the ethical. I have never made a promise of marriage to any girl, not even non-chalantly; insofar as it might seem that I am doing it here, it is merely a simulated move. I shall very likely manage things in such a way that it is she herself who breaks the engagement. My chivalrous pride has contempt for making promises.75

Of course, in the end here the Seducer deceives himself, because later in his diary he does promise marriage to Marie only in order to have sex with her. However, the situation clearly reflects the fact that the aesthete knows something about the ethical; the only problem is that he is “unwilling to commit himself.” Climacus affirms: The ethical is not only a knowing; it is also a doing that is related to a knowing, and a doing of such a nature that the repetition of it can at times and in more ways than one become more difficult than the first doing.76

74 SKS 2, 356 / EO1, 367 (the author’s emphasis). 75 SKS 2, 356 / EO1, 367. 76 SKS 7, 149 / CUP1, 160-161

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The true task, comments Gouwens, “is translating the ethical into a life.”77 In conclusion, some ethical passions (or better ethical cares) are present in the aesthetic stage, and they can eventually trigger the leap toward the ethical stage. That does not mean that a commitment to the ethical is “caused,” or completely explicable by passions. Kierkegaard states clearly that free choices are leaps, and they are not made inevitable by anything – although they are not arbitrary either.78 And it remains true that when someone leaps, when she jumps from reflection to double reflection (in what concerns her ethical leanings), she begins to see the world ‒ as the virtue epistemologist would say ‒ with other eyes. In conclusion, we posit, contrary to MacIntyre, that the leap toward the next stage (whether ethical or religious) represents a rational transition.79

77 Gouwens, Kierkegaard as religious thinker, p. 36. 78 We are indebted for this point to Dr. Schulz. It is worth mentioning here that at least prima facie Schulz does not seem to agree with our perspective on the rationality of transitions in Kierkegaard: he denies that the transition between frameworks is rational; for him – from an epistemical point of view ‒ the concept rational “pertains to beliefs or volitions within a given framework only; instead, genuine framework transitions should be categorized as trans- or prerational.” (Heiko Schulz, “Changing one’s mind: Reconsidering Fisch’s idea of framework transitions in (partly) Kierkegaardian fashion”, Open Philosophy, No. 3, 2020, p. 766-767) However, one can observe that neither does he accept MacIntyre’s view that the transition is irrational: the concept “irrational”, similar to the concept “rational”, is for him valid only within a framework and it cannot be applied to the phenomenon of framework transitions. Moreover, we are not sure that Schulz would necessarily reject our assessement that the transitions are rational if he took into consideration the Kuhnian way in which Marino defined this rationality (in terms of “theory choice”); Schulz would probably admit that there are some universal rational values shared by all participants to the transition (by people from both sides of it – for example the ethicist “is capable of incorporating, actualizing and preserving the (at least certain) interests” of the aesthete – Ibid., p. 762), with the caveat that these values are applied by them in different ways, depending on the framework to which they belong. We take in this (last) “application depending on framework” sense Schulz’s (and MacIntyre’s) opinion that “the principles which depict the ethical way of life are to be adopted… for a choice that lies beyond reason, just because it is the choice of what is to count for us as a reason.” (Ibid., p. 766) And we would fully agree with Schulz’s “genetical suggestion” that “framework shifts belong to the class of events or ‘emergent phenomena’ – phenomena, in other words, the instantiation of which entails an irreducible element of contingency, unspecifiability and incomprehensibility with regard to their conceptual conditions and causal antecedents.” (Ibid.) And this is the case because we admit, with Kuhn and Polanyi, that ultimately the alternative frameworks (or paradigms) are incommensurable – that there is no “scientific method” which helps the participants to ultimately decide which of two frameworks is better than the other. 79 Our conclusions in this respect agree with Evans’ view, who writes that “What I think is actually present in Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous work is a movement away from Enlightenment conceptions of ‘reason’ as ‘that which would convince any rational being’, or ‘that which is impervious to doubt’. Kierkegaard recognizes that in moral and religious matters (as with most philosophical issues) one cannot come up with rational arguments that meet such criteria. Rather, he believes that our ability

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Answer to Question 2 As regards the problem of the superiority of one stage over another, it can be viewed as an externalist nature type, because it refers to the advancement in the direction of more truth during the transition from one stage of existence to another ‒ the notion of truth is by definition related to an externalist epistemology. The question regarding one stage’s superiority over the other was answered in this chapter positively: we have provided arguments – imported from Piety’s essay as well as from Evans’ externalist model – in favor of the view that the ethical is superior to the aesthetical, and the Christian superior to the non-Christian. In this respect, to live in an inferior stage means to live in disaccord with the truth (as defined by God). From God’s point of view ‒ if such a divine point of view exists, as Kierkegaard believes ‒ then A, the aesthete, “is frustrating God’s purposes, therefore living foolishly.”80 Moreover, an increase in truth should also mean an increase in happiness – because eternal happiness is – according to Kierkegaard – our path and goal. It does not follow from this that the superior life’s stages imply less suffering than the inferior ones. The life of a Christian apostle seems to be in many respects a life of suffering – although a suffering without (or in any case with less) despair. The difference between the Christian and the individuals that belong to other existential stages is (if one would substitute Kierkegaard’s “anguished conscience” with Charles Taylor’s more secular concept “need of meaning”81) that his life is fuller of meaning than theirs. The progress of stages in life’s existence means a progress in meaning.

to grasp moral and religious truths depends in part on the condition of ourselves. People with healthy moral and religious concerns are able to see truths that people who lack such concerns cannot see. He is concerned therefore not simply to ‘didactically’ present and argue the truth, but to help people become transformed so that they are capable of seeing the truth. Truth is linked to inwardness and subjectivity.” (Evans, Kierkegaard’s Ethic of Love, pp. 58-59). 80 This is a quote from Evans ‒ from our personal correspondence with him. It is also worth observing that even Johannes Climacus suggests that the aesthetic and the ethical positions are not equally valid (and that the second is clearly superior to the first.): “A reader who needs the trustworthiness of a severe lecture, or an unfortunate outcome (for example, madness, suicide, poverty, etc.) in order to see that a standpoint is in error still sees nothing and is merely deluding himself;… Take a character like Johannes the Seducer. The person who needs to have him become insane or shoot himself in order to see that his standpoint is perdition does not actually see it but deludes himself into thinking that he does. … The person who comprehends it comprehends it as soon as the Seducer opens his mouth; in every word he hears the ruination and the judgment upon him.” (SKS 7, 270-271 / CUP1, 296-297) 81 Charles Taylor, “Inescapable Frameworks”, in Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1989, pp. 3-24, cf. Piety, “Kierkegaard on Rationality”, pp. 365, 375.

13 Comparison between Plantinga’s and Kierkegaard’s Views on the Knowledge of Christianity A comparison between Kierkegaard’s ideas about the knowledge of Christianity and those of Plantinga’s evinces a number of striking similarities: both Kierkegaard and Plantinga, share the view that Christian faith is a gift from God; its ground is the transforming encounter with Christ. The condition, which – according to Climacus ‒ is another name for faith, must be received from God: He is the Teacher who “cannot be known immediately, but only if he himself gave the condition.”1 The content of faith is also very similar: for Plantinga it is the gospel, the solution instituted by God for defeating sin ‒ namely, “the life, atoning suffering and death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the incarnate second person of the trinity”;2 meanwhile for Kierkegaard the objective content of Christian faith is the Incarnation, the idea that God, motivated by love, became man in order to heal humanity from untruth and sin. Evidently, one might see why both thinkers were accused of fideism – of promoting an irrational understanding of Christian faith (and here one can see also a difference in their way of relating to this subject: sometimes Kierkegaard seems to suggest that faith is not reasonable, that it goes against understanding, while for Plantinga there is nothing contrary to reason in it. However, as Evans observed, this disagreement might be nothing more than a semantic dispute: Kierkegaard might hold this view because he seems to be in a tacit agreement with a classical foundationalist understanding of rationality, for which “a belief is reasonable only when it is proven as true ‒ either deductively or probabilistically ‒ from properly basic propositions.” But, of course, as already shown, Plantinga’s “warrant” model rejects this concept of rationality.3 According to this model Christian faith is reasonable even if it is not based on public, intersubjective evidence: his “warrant” model allows this possibility. In any case, one can observe here that both authors agree on the fact that our ability to grasp religious truth is not dependent on evidence. And here one might see an important way in which Plantinga’s externalist epistemology might contribute to a better understanding and appreciation of Kierkegaard’s view on faith. (One can observe here – again – a parallel with Plantinga’s analogous contribution to Kierkegaard’s perspective on the belief in God’s existence):

1 SKS 4, 269-270 / PF, 68-69. 2 WCB, 243. 3 Evans, “Externalist Epistemology, Subjectivity, and Christian knowledge: Plantinga and Kierkegaard”, p. 201. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111334769-013

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his concept of warrant could better explain, from an epistemological point of view, the way in which the Kierkegaardian “how” of inwardness could bring with it the “what” of Christian truth – the process through which “the need brings with it the nutriment… not by itself… but by virtue (of God’s providence).”4 However, some critics could object that what was said above might be a too facile attempt of finding similarities between Plantinga’s defence of the rationality of Christian faith and the (purported) Kierkegaardian agreement with such a rationality: as we have already seen (in our Introduction), Plantinga’s works are mainly addressed to the intelligentsia among the enemies of Christianity, while Kierkegaard’s works rather to the intelligentsia among the defenders of Christianity; on the one hand the Danish philosopher is worried about apologetics, since for him the main problem of his contemporary readers is not grounded in knowledge but in a lack of subjectivity or inwardness, while the American Reformed philosopher writes to an academic world that largely thinks Christianity intellectually indefensible. In this context, both philosophers seem to have contrary perspectives on the problem of rationality – which cannot in the end be reconciled. Thus, if Plantinga believes that Christianity can be shown to its enemies to be a rational religion, Kierkegaard – on the contrary – would affirm that the faith in Christianity can indeed be considered rational, but only by those who consider that the idea of sin is rational; but only a sinner can agree that the idea of sin is rational – which means that only the Christians would consider the Christian faith as being rational.5 Thus, the non-Christians would never accept that Christianity could be a rational religion.6 To this serious objection one could (eventually) retort that maybe the offended non-Christians still know something about the Christian belief: does not Climacus say that in matters of sin/untruth, God relates to the sinner (in the “Moment”) “Socratically”?7 So, could it not be true that even the offended person who rejects the Christian message might know in this case (at least for a while) some things about sin – but does not want to accept this knowledge for herself? And maybe – more importantly – might further be the problem of the relationship between the sin of the religion B and the guilt of the religion A... Would there not exist between the dichotomy of religion A (“humbleness of accepting guilt and seeking deliverance from it” versus “inclosed reserve – which defiantly does not seek deliverance

4 SKS 10, 251 / CD, 244-245. 5 SKS 21, 163 / KJN 5, 170. 6 We owe this point to Dr. Schulz. 7 SKS 4, 222-223 / PF, 14; see more in this respect in subchapter 10.4.1.

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from guilt, although it recognises it”) and the dichotomy of religion B (“faith” versus “offence”) a certain analogy?8 Moreover, the aforementioned difference between both authors on the matter of the rationality of faith should not obscure an important point on which they agree – namely that there is no real neutral ground when referring to this idea. Plantinga does not try to show that Christianity is true, but only that if it is true, then the believers are reasonable. (He therefore does not really establish that they are reasonable, but only that they are reasonable if their views are substantively true). Kierkegaard also tries to show that something like this is the case. He normally argues for “hypotheticals” – as Johannes de Silentio in Fear and Trembling, who says: “Either there is teleological suspension of the ethical, or Abraham is lost.” He does not argue for either disjunct but only for the conditional. Similarly in Philosophical Fragments, Climacus argues that if there is any alternative to the Socratic/Platonic view of religious truth, it will look like Christianity: a view that says that knowing the truth depends on the faith which is created in the disciple by the incarnate God. Again, this is a conditional claim. Thus, the subjective offended reason of the atheist does not represent the voice of “the pure, objective reason” in itself: if the atheist considers Christian faith irrational, this does not mean that it is really “irrational in itself.” In this way, both authors in the end defend what one might call “a perspectival view of reason”: what one sees as reasonable depends on the viewpoint from which one sees things. And there is no “view from nowhere,” no way to be totally objective and neutral or to see the world “under the aspect of eternity” – as Spinoza maintained.9 Another important similarity between both thinkers can be seen in the way in which they relate to the historical arguments for the truth of Christian belief: Kierkegaard famously argued that the historical knowledge of Christianity is almost irrelevant for faith – that a person from a later generation, in order to convert, needs to hear nothing more from Christ’s contemporaries than the fact that “God appeared” in a certain year “in the humble form of a servant, lived and taught among us, and then died.”10 This idea has for Kierkegaard egalitarian soteriological implications: If the first generation of Christians had (regarding their belief) an

8 In the case of Plantinga, he does not make any kind of Kierkegaardian distinction between guilt and sin: if for the Danish philosopher the sin/untruth is quite peculiar, being strictly defined in opposition to the Christian faith (religion B), for the American thinker sin is a more universal concept, which could be coupled also (contrary to Kierkegaard) with the guilty actions of the religion A. Probably Plantinga is here closer to the general biblical account on the matter, which sees the term sin related not only to the Christian story, but also with many other stories (from the Old Testament – for example). 9 Evans, Passionate Reason, pp. 178-179. 10 SKS 4, 300 / PF, 104.

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advantage over later generations – due to having more historical data – then we should have less of a chance at finding salvation than they had. Plantinga agrees – and suggests that, if Christian faith was based on historical investigation, then very few people would gain this faith, and with great effort11 (However, he does not deny that under certain circumstances some historical arguments might be helpful for the believer – when, for example, faith is weakened through various defeaters.). The reader might sense an interesting Climacian attitude ensuing regarding the arguments for Christian belief: Although Climacus is skeptical regarding any historical evidence, he still seems to use some “non-foundationalist” type of arguments when creating, in Philosophical Fragments, his two famous thought projects about the God as Teacher and Saviour and the God as Lover12 – because he recognizes that the inspiration for these projects does not belong to him (He has imported them from Christianity.) and furthermore suggests that no human being could have invented such profound ideas about divinity.13 It is important also to highlight his attempt almost to “recreate” the content of revelation – in the tradition of Athanasius and Anselm – by quasi-deducing it from two premises: that of the non-possession of the truth by the learner (from which he deduces the divinity of the teacher) – and that of “love” as God’s motivation for saving humanity (from which he concludes God’s Incarnation). One can sense a certain apologetical intention underlying this project (the idea that the Christian revelation has a certain inner rationality: it could be logically derivable from some basic premises.) – and find here yet another difference from Plantinga (A similar project does not seem to be present in the American philosopher’s authorship). An important similarity between the two thinkers can also be seen with regard to the “leap toward faith” theme. Some critics might be tempted to see this leap as irrational – but this does not seem to be the case: as we have seen, Plantinga sees faith as rational, because his model of warrant (in a sense) guarantees the possibility of faith’s rationality even without (doxastic) evidence. The phenomenology of faith does not suggest a leap without hope (there is inner assurance – or certainty – involved in it) – and more-

11 WCB, 270; as we have seen in chapter 11, he seems (for example) to have renounced to his skeptical critique against Swinburne’s historical case for the truth of Christianity, admitting that his “dwindling probabilities” objection against Swinburne’s argument was wrong. 12 Stephen Evans, “Apologetic Arguments in Philosophical Fragments”, in Evans, Kierkegaard on Faith and the Self, pp. 133-150. 13 SKS 4, 230, 241-242 / PF, 22, 36.

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over (even if no strong hope were present) a leap is still (at least) a pragmatical solution for a person in despair (who otherwise has no chance of survival). On the other hand, in Kierkegaard one can also find the same aspect of certainty met in Plantinga’s model of faith, because in more places Climacus and AntiClimacus write about “the certitude of faith – Troens Vished.”14 And correspondingly, Kierkegaard does not appraise leaps as blind leaps (no matter whether they are from the aesthetic toward the ethical, or from the ethical to religiousness A, or from religiousness A to religiousness B). He seeks to describe to us, in all cases, what we are jumping toward.15 It is true that they are “risky steps,”16 but he also reminds us that a kind of epistemic risk is more or less present in almost all secular knowledge – especially regarding the knowledge of matters of ultimate concern.17 Moreover, these leaps are always guided by a pragmatic kind of rationality: one motivated by despair to take any of these risky steps;18 in what concerns matters of existence, human reason is dialectical: when we move from stage A of existence to stage B, we take this step – as Westphal argued – “not due to a rational argument or insight that B follows necessarily from A, but because we are in despair over A.”19 In this respect Kierkegaard agrees with the anti-foundational postmodern view that “there is no method which guarantees us the access to the objective truth”; but that does not imply that for him no such objective truth exists. Thus, as we have argued in chapter 12, although he believes that there is no way to demonstrate to an aesthete that the ethical life is superior to the aesthetic one, or to an ethicist that the religious A life is superior to the ethical one, nevertheless he opines that this is indeed the case. And here Plantinga is in total agreement with him: The American philosopher also accepts that life, especially in what concerns its ultimate concerns, involves epistemic risk – that there is no method which guarantees the access to objective

14 SKS 7, 59 / CUP1, 55; SKS 7, 393n / CUP1, 432n; SKS 7, 413 / CUP1, 455; SKS 7, 445 / CUP1, 491; SKS 7, 459 / CUP1, 506; SKS 12, 41 / PC, 27; SKS 12, 243 / PC, 250. 15 Westphal, Becoming a Self, p. 78. 16 SKS 7, 187, 192 / CUP1, 204, 210. 17 Westphal, Becoming a Self, p. 79; a similar position is shared by a quasi-contemporary of Kierkegaard, Friedrich Jacobi (Hannay, Kierkegaard: A Biography, p. 291). 18 SKS 7, 192 / CUP1, 210; Westphal, Becoming a Self, p. 80; see also the similar position of another quasi-contemporary of Kierkegaard, J.G. Hamann, for whom the lived experience is the place from which one can start asking the significant questions of life (Hannay, Kierkegaard: A Biography, p. 291). Hannay observes that between Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard there are also certain similarities – regarding the idea that Christianity is a risky step taken by a person in despair: for example, for Wittgenstein the Christian faith is “a refuge taken by a person in an ultimate torment.” (Ibid., p. 331) 19 Westphal, Becoming a Self, p. 80.

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truth. He writes that “there is no sure and certain method of attaining truth by starting from beliefs about which you can’t be mistaken and moving infallibly to the rest of your beliefs,” that “this is life under uncertainty, under epistemic risk and fallibility,” where one can believe “a thousand things,” many of them things which other persons “of great acuity and seriousness” do not believe – and where one “can be seriously, dreadfully, fatally wrong – and wrong about what it is enormously important to be right.”20 However, he believes that such a truth exists, and that, hopefully – through God’s grace – one might reach it by taking the risky step of faith.21 From a theological stance, it is undoubtedly fascinating to find Kierkegaard’s own perspective on life’s stages: the idea that if a person wants to live an authentic life, to be true to herself (as Anti-Climacus would say in The Sickness unto Death), somehow life itself will lead her toward Christianity. In this respect, again (as in the previous comparison between the two author’s models regarding the belief in God), we might welcome Kierkegaard’s specific contribution to the understanding of the rationality of transition from one stage of existence to another – by appealing to the idea that this transition is mediated through inwardness. In this way Kierkegaard brings more insight to the somehow “drier” conversion-model proposed by Plantinga. Here, we posit that the so-called “irrational” interpretation of Kierkegaard’s transition (proposed by MacIntyre) – which is considered by the American philosopher “a radical, arbitrary and criterionless choice”22 – is mistaken. The mistake appears due to the fact that such an act is not dispassionate (as a classical foundationalist epistemological understanding would suggest). On the contrary, as Piety

20 WCB, 436-437. 21 At this point one can raise the objection that Plantinga introduces here a dichotomy which seems (illegitimately) to exclude other options from the start (Probably such an alternative option would be Swinburne’s philosophy of religion.). Thus, in a private dialogue, Dr. Wiertz affirmed that “Plantinga’s comments and way of arguing reminds us of a method which Basil Mitchell has called theological pingpong. You accept only two extreme positions in the game and reason that, as A is evidently false, B must be right. There is not only the possibility of a rationality qua deductive reasoning from indubitable beliefs, but also a kind of (fallible) informal reasoning (a kind of abductive reasoning) – starting with different (more or less probable) beliefs and asking how best to do justice to this (fallible) evidence. That there is no viable way of deductive reasoning from indubitable beliefs does not show that there is no possibility of rational (albeit fallible) reasoning on the basis of (propositional) evidence.” This critique seems to us legitimate, although, as we discussed in chapter 11, Plantinga does not seem utterly to dismiss Swinburne’s position; he rather accepts it as a more or less viable alternative to his perspective – an alternative which, however, has other goals than his own project. Maybe he refers only to these two options because he sees in them two mainstream ways of dealing with the problem. 22 MacIntyre, “Excerpt from After Virtue”, p. xxxv.

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argues – according to Kierkegaard – inwardness (passion) can “permeate” in these cases the understanding of the person who makes the choice, serving as guide to the judgments she makes.23 An analogue to this interpretation can be found in Polanyi’s philosophy of science, for whom the passion of the researchers is considered an essential dimension of science, guiding their choice between two competing macro-theories – despite the fact that the transition between these theories is not guided by any scientific method; without this passion – Polanyi suggests – any discovery would be impossible.24 Moreover, the transitions toward the ethical, followed by the religious stage, represent for Kierkegaard movements toward (more) truth: according to him, our ability to relate rightly to the external reality might partly depend on the inner qualities we possess as human beings. As we have already seen (in chapter 12), virtue epistemology confirms this point; but this view also enables us to understand the externalist epistemological idea that knowledge is a matter of being rightly related to the external world. Thus, this kind of subjectivity (which Kierkegaard calls inwardness) enables us to track the ethical truth and the reality of God. Finally, this point evinces yet another analogy of his perspective with Polanyi’s model of scientific progress – in which the increase in the pragmatic success of the macro-theories over time could be explained by their closer grasp of reality.25

23 Piety, “Kierkegaard on Rationality”, pp. 369-370. 24 Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, p. 134; Scott, Everyman Revived, p. 42; however, at this point one needs to take into consideration the fact that Polanyi’s observation is valid only in case of those (admittedly many) felicitous situations when the choice made by the scientists in the context of origin/discovery coincided with the choice made – in some cases later – in the context of justification (of the respective scientific option). In other words, the chosen option must prove itself valid in time. Kuhn’s concept of “tacit knowledge” (which was developed by him due to Polanyi’s influence) raises the same problem. (One may add here, however, that in general in the contemporary philosophy of science the distinction between these two contexts is more or less fuzzy; the views in which this dichotomy is very strong affirmed – like those of logical empiricists on the one side, or those of strong program adherents on the other side of the “philosophy of science” spectrum are considered by many critics quite extreme. 25 Polanyi, Knowing and Being, p. 133.

Conclusions

In Lewis’ famous phantasy novel for children The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe a little girl, Lucy Pevensie, recounts to her siblings how she visited (after entering a wardrobe in Professor Digory Kirke’s house) the magical world of Narnia. She is very sure about the reality of her experience, but none of her brothers believe her. In time, after she hears the objections of her siblings meant to challenge the plausibility of her story – among which the observation that the experience is non-reproducible (when her brothers look at the back of the wardrobe, it shows no magic world) – , even she begins having qualms about the experienced events: after all, maybe Narnia was only a dream.1 However, after Lucy visits Narnia a second time, she becomes sure that everything she saw was real – and this in spite of her siblings’ suspicion that, if she is not lying, then the only alternative is that (even worse than that) she may have lost her mind.2 This last suspicion prompts them to ask for Kirke’s opinion on the matter. To their great surprise, Kirke (who himself once visited Narnia), sides with Lucy in this respect. He perplexes them by asking, “How do you know that her story is not true?”; after all, there are good arguments that she is neither lying (She has always been truthful until then.) nor is she mad (Anyone who can see her is easily convinced by this fact.). His conclusion is that, if she is neither mad nor a liar, then “unless any further evidence turns up, we must assume that she is telling the truth.”3 In other words, for Kirke such an experience can be real –even if it is non reproducible.4 Yet, even after this dialogue with the professor, the two siblings (Peter and Susan) still do not believe Lucy’s story (They accept it as true only after they themselves have entered Narnia.); but since that moment they at least stop teasing her on this matter.

1 C.S. Lewis, Der König von Narnia, in C.S. Lewis, Die Chroniken von Narnia, Carl Ueberreuter GmbH: Wien 2005, p. 83. 2 Ibid., p. 89. 3 Ibid., p. 89-90; of course, as we already wrote in note 119, p. 225, the real situation can be a bit more complicated: Is it not possible that a person were neither liar, nor mad, but might – despite this fact – come to us with a purported religious revelation which is in fact false? Surely so: The multiplicity of religions in our world suggests that this is indeed the case. But if presumably this message might not be the product of a very creative mind who takes as real what she phantasizes – which in the end is also a form of psychical disorder (and eventually miracles might also accompany the message), then probably the revelation comes indeed from another world. And if even in this case the message is false, then the intention to deceive belongs not to the messenger, but to the supernatural entities who communicate with him. However, the supernatural source can also (in a less malign case) be trustworthy. 4 Ibid., p. 90. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111334769-014

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Lewis’ allegory is a suitable illustration for the conclusions of our study on the possibility of a justified Christian faith without (providing) reasons for it. In the same way that none of the Pevensie’s siblings believed that Narnia’s realm existed until they entered it themselves (despite all rational arguments brought in favor of its existence), similarly both Kierkegaard and Plantinga posit that no arguments can ultimately be adequate to convince someone about the truth of Christian belief: only the private witness (gained in the transforming encounter with Christ) or – as Climacus would say – the condition given by the Teacher, can bring faith and conviction to a person. The same idea might be stated regarding the conviction about God’s existence (which in fact constitutes the necessary- and preliminary – background belief for the Christian faith): arguments cannot convince someone of it (even if Plantinga renounced in his late authorship his skepticism about such arguments, he still admits that ultimately our theistic or antitheistic presuppositions decide how convincing or unconvincing these arguments could be for us.); quite the contrary, for Plantinga, the religious experience that one might have is the more fundamental element that conduces to belief in God; an experience exemplified in contemplating, for instance, the beauty of a flower or of a landscape, or of the starry heaven, or when feeling gratitude for something good that happened to us or guilt for a bad thing we have done, etc – an experience which might trigger in us this theistic belief. Again, the criterion for the proper basicality of this belief is private, not intersubjectively or universally accepted. Similarly, even if for Kierkegaard belief in God seems certain and universal, somehow “built into our consciousness,” he still grants that it is essentially connected only with the ethical and religious lifestages (especially with the experience of “ethical infinity,” in which the authority of the ethical becomes for an individual compellent and imperative – and eventually with the experience of despair.). But even if the two thinkers posit this conviction as emerging only by way of a private experience, both of them – as Kirke does in his dialogue with Susan and Peter – would argue for the rational legitimacy of such an experience; in this sense, the allegation of fideism brought against them does not hold. Thus, Plantinga refers to the proper basicality of the belief in God in the same way in which he speaks, for example, about the proper basicality of our basic perceptual and memory beliefs (These beliefs, although illegitimate from a classical foundationalist perspective, are still justified, because they are grounded in the perceptive respectively memory experience; similarly, the belief in God, as mentioned above, is based on certain religious experiences).5

5 RBG, 80-81.

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It is interesting that John Hick – who in many respects has different views to those of Plantinga – seems to agree fully with the American philosopher’s defence of the rationality of faith. In this respect Hick writes that Those who participate in one of the main historic streams of religious experience, accepting the body of beliefs in which it is reflected and proceeding to live on that basis, are not open to any charge of irrationality. They are, in Plantinga’s phrases, not violating any epistemic duties, or forming a defective intellectual structure, but are entirely within their epistemic rights.6

However, an important reproach brought by Hick to Plantinga refers precisely to the aforementioned defence of the proper basicality of the religious beliefs (through the formal analogy with the proper basicality of the perceptual beliefs); in this respect Hick points toward an objection against this analogy suggested by William Alston. For Alston there are three major differences between these two kinds of beliefs: Firstly, “religious experience is not universal among human beings, whereas sense experience is. Everyone is equipped with, and no one could live without, beliefs about our physical environment. However, not everyone has, or apparently needs to have, beliefs concerning the Divine.” Secondly, “all normal adult human beings, whatever their culture, use basically the same conceptual scheme in objectifying their sense experience, whereas religious people are divided into groups that conceive of the Divine in very different ways.” And thirdly, “particular beliefs based upon sense perception can be checked by observation… But in the case of religious experience there are no generally accepted checking procedures.”7 Since Alston is himself a Reformed epistemologist, one would naturally expect some sort of solution; what is his solution to this problem? His suggestion is that the object of religious experience “may well differ from the… object of sense experience… in ways that naturally and legitimately generate precisely these differences.” An important consequence of this fact is that “if we are not compelled to be conscious of God… it is not surprising that at any given time some are while some are not aware of God.”8 Although Plantinga might agree with the validity of these critiques against his own model of conceptualizing theistic belief, it is doubtful that he would also agree with its consequence; it would entail a weakened form of belief in God – a belief

6 John Hick, Philosophy of Religion (fourth edition), Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1990, p. 80. 7 Hick, Philosophy of Religion, p. 78; William Alston, “Religious Experience as Ground of Religious Belief”, in J. Runzo and C. Ihara (eds.) Religious Experience and Religious Belief, Benham, MD.: University Press of America 1987, p. 44 (our emphasis). 8 Hick, Philosophy of Religion, p. 79; Alston, “Religious Experience as Ground of Religious Belief”, p. 47 (our emphasis).

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lacking certainty, as it is proportioned to the grade of “visibility” or “accessibility” of its object –, since the thrust of his view is instantiated by annexing the concept of faith with that of conviction (at least for the case of an ideal faith, which, according to Hebrews 11:1 is “confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see” [NIV translation]). This may be the reason why he added (in his late authorship) to the concept of the proper basicality (of faith) the notion of warrant as well – in which case faith is produced by a cognitive faculty or mechanism (called “sensus divinitatis”) that functions “as an input-output device” which encodes (triggering) circumstances as input, “and issues as output theistic beliefs.”9 This externalist model – in which the proper functionality of the respective cognitive mechanism plays an essential role – seems better to accommodate Plantinga’s idea of a “faith accompanied by conviction.” As we have seen, he also argues (a view that invited allegations of ad hominem against atheists) for an alternative explanation – vis-à-vis the aforementioned Alstonian and Hickian one: that the lack of faith (and eventually lack of faith’s certainty) in someone’s life might be explained by the presence of sin (in her life). Moreover, the externalist warrant-model seems also suitable for conceptualising the Christian faith – by defining it as a “cognitive process” in which the Holy Spirit induces in us the “belief in the central message of the Scripture” (see in this respect chapter 11) – because in this case the analogy of faith with basic perceptual beliefs seems even weaker than that of the theistic belief with them. Thus, we can see that Plantinga is able to argue in favor of the rationality of both theistic and Christian faith by suggesting that they are the product of a mechanism (or process) implanted (or produced) in us by God. Of course, he does not prove that such a mechanism and process exist; but this fact does not disturb him, because he makes use here of the clever – even if for some people quite strange – idea, that if God exists, then one should expect that such a mechanism and process should also exist (In other words, if Christianity is de facto true, then it should also be de jure warranted). Moreover, the Christian faith is rational because it is also a pragmatical answer to resolving the problem of despair (caused by sin). And here one can see Plantinga’s similarity to Kierkegaard – for whom Christian faith is similarly able to heal humans of despair. Additionally, the Danish philosopher offers a detailed map of the (possible) road walked by our soul in its fight against despair and in its search for authenticity (in other words, for being – as Anti-Climacus would say in The Sickness unto Death – really itself, which can happen “only by a relation to God, who establishes

9 WCB, 174-175.

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the self”10); when a person agrees to follow the way dictated by her subjectivity (or inwardness), in the end she will become a moral person (passing – more or less – through the ethical stage), she will arrive at belief in God (Religion A) and finally to knowing the Christian truth (Religion B – the knowing of Christ himself). In other words, life itself (without needing any philosophical or historical arguments) will bring someone – if she wants to be true to herself – to the Christian faith. This is a controversial point that has (posthumously) caused a chasm in theological discourse. For instance, Barth (who in many respects appropriated Kierkegaard’s thinking) parted ways with Kierkegaard for this very reason: Barth insisted that the Dane’s “preoccupation with how one becomes a Christian,” was “too self-absorbed”; therefore, he rejected Kierkegaard’s “anthropocentric starting point,” in which “the reflective individual self… finds unique, unsubstitutable truth in the process of seeking self-knowledge.”11 But not all theologians share this Barthian critique; on the contrary, this might be a place in which Brunner seems utterly to agree with Kierkegaard: he famously wrote about a “point of contact” for the saving grace that exists in every human being, which refers – at least in what concerns a formal sense of the imago Dei in humans – to the human capacity of being receptive to words (including the divine Word) and to the human responsibility.12 (Only in a material sense of the imago Dei, which has to do with the human capacity to enter into a relationship to God, would Brunner agree with Barth that such a capacity does not exist, that the imago Dei is lost and that only God’s grace can restore it.)13 In the same way, even if for Kierkegaard subjectivity is truth only for such lower life stages as the ethical and the Religion A – but for the highest stage (the Christian) Religion B it is untruth ‒, it still remains valid (as we have seen in chapter 10) that subjectivity remains a necessary condition for the apprehension of the truth of Christianity. Thus, the Socratic inborn truth associated with subjectivity (which is obtained by a person through a kind of maieutic recollection) seems to be a Brunnerian “point of contact” for the divine grace in us. In this sense, human beings appear to possess, in Brunner’s terms, “a passive capacity to be reached by reve-

10 Silvia Walsh, “Kierkegaard’s Theology”, in John Lippitt and George Pattison (eds.), The Oxford Handbook to Kierkegaard, p. 302. 11 Dorrien, Kantian Reason and Hegelian Spirit, pp. 468, 470; Karl Barth, The Epistle to Romans (trans. Edwyn Hoskyns), Oxford: Oxford University Press 1975, pp. 98-99, 105. 12 Emil Brunner, “Nature and Grace”, in Natural Theology: Comprising “Nature and Grace” by Professor Dr. Emil Brunner and the reply “No” by Dr. Karl Barth, Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers 2002, p. 31. 13 Ibid., p. 31.

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lation”14 (although, of course, between the human responsibility associated by him with the formal sense on imago Dei, which only passively suggests a contact which brings the humans into a relationship with the ethical, and the inwardness associated by Kierkegaard with the ethical and religious A stages – in which case the ethical ideals actively become part of the life of the ethicist – there still remains a long distance).15 Here it is worth observing that not only the ethical and religious A stages seem to suggest such a point of contact, but in a sense even the sin – which is revealed to humans exclusively by God (in the stage B) – seems to constitute such a point of contact: as we have seen (in chapter 10), for Climacus (in what concerns “the possibility of the learner to know that he is in untruth”) even the divine teacher can become a Socratic teacher – an occasion for the learner to know the untruth within. Evidently, with this second type of pragmatical rationality – where inwardness, morality, sin and despair play a decisive role in someone’s path toward faith – our analogy with Kirke’s arguments for the rationality of the belief in the existence of Narnia’s realm exhibits its limits. Kirke makes no appeals in his plea to the children to such “subjective” elements as ethical values, guilt, sin or despair. Despair or sin have nothing to do in this context with Susan or Peter – the children whom he tries to convince of Lucy’s good mental health. Some critics might argue that Kierkegaard, who famously argued for the absurdity of the Incarnation, has nothing to do with any argument for the rationality of Christian faith; yet even if in some places he used this word to characterize Incarnation, there are no serious motives (as we argued in chapter 10) to believe that he affirms a purported logical contradiction of this doctrine. Indeed, even if Kierkegaard regards the perspective of infinity touching the finite (in Incarnation) as rationally non-thinkable, this represents no plea for the irrationality of faith – but rather a humble recognition of the fact that, in touching the mystery of Incarnation, human reason has reached its limits. Again, this could be just another argument for avoiding a fideistic reading of Kierkegaard’s view of faith; on the contrary, his view represents an instance of conceptualizing belief in accordance with an Anselmian “faith seeking understanding” principle.

14 Dorrien, Kantian Reason and Hegelian Spirit, p. 483. 15 However, it is interesting to observe that in his early writings Brunner promoted a natural theology inspired by Kierkegaard’s and Heidegger’s writings – which focused on “a negative point of contact for the revelation,” centered on the idea of despair. This Brunnerian position – very similar to the above Kierkegaardian view – found more appreciation from Barth than his perspective from the later writings (Karl Barth, “No!: Answer to Emil Brunner”, in Natural Theology: Comprising “Nature and Grace” by Professor Dr. Emil Brunner and the reply “No!” by Dr. Karl Barth, pp. 114-115)

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And lastly, another analogy from Lewis’ novel merits attention: When Lucy’s siblings bring forth arguments that what she saw was not (and could not) in fact be real, she begins to doubt her own experience, to ask herself if she in fact had dreamed the entire scenario. Analogously one might suggest that Plantinga admits that, under the pressure of some good rational counterarguments and objections, the warrant of one’s faith might decrease (In any case, a person’s subjective conviction that what she believes was true might decline under the force of certain defeaters.). Therefore, Plantinga admits that it is rationally acceptable that one Christian should use arguments in order to increase the warrant of her belief again (this being another argument for the rationality of faith). However, it is to be expected that some critics might contest the conclusions we have reached so far. One might say in this sense that the idea of an advance in truth in Kierkegaard’s writings – which (as we suggested in chapter 12) would presumably accompany the progress in life’s stages, culminating in the Christian truth – is not convincing; after all, the kind of “classical God model” presupposed by the above interpretation does not fit the Kierkegaardian account. For example, there are some arguments for an antirealist view of God in CUP (but also in other Kierkegaardian writings), according to which God is not “an objective reality existing independently of human consciousness” but is rather “constituted by our subjectivity.”16 A famous quote might be relevant in this sense: “But freedom, that is the wonderous lamp; when a person rubs it with ethical passion, God then comes into existence for him.”17 In another place Climacus adds that “God … is not something outward that quarrels with me when I do wrong but the infinite itself that does not need scolding words, but whose vengeance is terrible – the vengeance that God does not exist for me at all, even though I pray.”18 And still in another place: “God himself is this: how one involves himself with Him.”19 However, such passages can be interpreted in a realistic way, in the sense that when one acts responsibly, one “might become aware of God’s reality.”20 On the other hand, Kierkegaard’s works contain passages that view God in a more realistic and traditional way, as the Creator of the world: “Nature is the work of God, but only the work is directly present, not God,”21 and, “Can one human

16 Evans, “Realism and Antirealism”, p. 31. 17 SKS 7, 129 / CUP1, 138. 18 SKS 7, 151 / CUP1, 162-163. 19 “Gott selbst ist dies: wie man sich mit Ihm beschäftigt” (NB 17:70 / Pap. X 2A 644 / JP 2, 1405). 20 Evans, “Realism and Antirealism”, p. 32. 21 SKS 7, 221 / CUP1, 243.

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being implant love in another human being’s heart? No, this is a suprahuman relationship… It is God, the Creator, who must implant love in each human being, he who himself is Love.”22 But here, again, one might reply, from an antirealist perspective, that such passages are ironical, that they need not be taken literally – and that such texts do not really contain any religious doctrines.23 However, as we have argued in chapter 1 (especially when referring to the way in which Kierkegaard objected to Kantian skepticism regarding the knowledge of the thing-in itself), there are good motives to believe that he believes in the existence of a real world (independent of us and our ways of thinking) and in an objective truth associated with its knowledge (which might be reached by us through faith). Moreover, in the famous passage from CUP in which Climacus compares the pagan who, having inwardness, “prays in truth to God although he is worshipping an idol” with the so-called Christian who “prays in untruth to the true God,”24 he clearly does not deny that there is an objective religious truth (even if, subjectively, the pagan is closer to the truth than the Christian). Kierkegaard’s specific interest in – and maybe even preference for – the subjective (ethical and religious) truth is never associated by him with a rejection of the related objective truth. Given these considerations, we are inclined to believe that a realist view on God is closer to his perspective than an antirealist one. Another apparent critique against the present interpretation of Kierkegaard’s view on God might come – although it is not very clear in what measure – from Ingolf Dalferth: Thus, even if the German philosopher of religion admits (with Steve Harris) that the Dane might believe in a God who is “transcendent, omnipotent, omniscient and immutable, Creator and Provider” – and in the doctrines of Incarnation and Trinity, he opposes the idea that he was also a supporter of a “classical theism,” a “17th century philosophical theism with its anthropomorphic conception of God as a perfect transcendent person who is omnipotent, omniscient and all good and who helps to explain the existence and order of the universe better than any rival explanation.”25 (At this point it is somewhat unclear to us how much of Harris’ conception of God is included – or not – in the above classical theist conception.) Instead of this “classical 17th century image,” Dalferth proposes an interpretation of Kierkegaard according to which God is for him “the infinite or eternal actuality of creative and transforming love: a love that is self-communicating and the source

22 SKS 9, 219 / WL, 216. 23 Evans, “Realism and Antirealism”, p. 33. 24 SKS 7, 184 / CUP1, 201. 25 Ingolf Dalferth, “The Middle Term: Kierkegaard and the Contemporary Debate about Explanatory Theism”, in Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook 20 (1), 2015, pp. 69-70.

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of all life and love in heaven and on earth.”26 The German philosopher observes that (for the Dane) God is “the unconditioned,” “the absolute,” “the infinite and the eternal” – which are “not empirical concepts based or abstracted from experience but intellectual ideas meant to recapture the theological quo maius cogitari nequit (than which none greater can be conceived)… of the divine reality.”27 He insists at this point that Kierkegaard has on this matter a similar view to that of Kant, who rejected “any rational god-conception of the understanding (Verstand)” – as it is the case with the (older or actual) reconstructions of those who seek to prove God’s existence by way of arguments – and instead proposed “the existential import of a fundamental practical God-idea of reason (Vernunft).” In this sense God is “an idea of reason,” a “necessary fiction of mind” without which “we cannot experience or understand anything.”28 Moreover, he criticizes the philosophical theists who, in an “anthropomorphic” way, see in God somebody who performs “divine actions” – and “construe sentences like ‘God loves his people,’ according to the subject-predicate grammar of our languages in analogy to ‘Parents love their kids.’” By contrast, for the critical philosophers of religion (and Dalferth intends to include Kierkegaard in this list), the idea of God does not function as a descriptive concept that can be applied to empirical or allegedly trans-empirical phenomena, but as an orientating idea that directs human life towards the creative force…without which no life…would be possible..29

What can be said about these statements? No doubt Dalferth is right when he refers to God as being (according to the Dane) “the eternal actuality of creative and transforming love, the source of all life and love,” “the actuality of that without which there would be nothing possible or actual”30 or, as Sylvia Walsh would say, “the infinite ground of all possibility.”31 Yet this doesn’t seem to explain in what measure Kierkegaard rejects the idea that God is “a perfect transcendent person”: after all, how can God be a “creative and transforming love” without attributing such a sentiment (or attitude) to someone similar to a person? Could a non-personal thing (or being) be able to love (especially with a kind of “agape” love)? If God is “not really personal,” then could it be the case that he might be more than that – a kind of apophatic hyper-person; as

26 Ibid., p. 69. 27 Ibid., p. 70. 28 Ibid., p. 75. 29 Ibid., pp. 75-76 (our emphasis). 30 Ibid., pp. 69, 83. 31 Silvia Walsh, “Kierkegaard’s Theology”, p. 297.

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Plantinga stated in an interview (where Hilary Putnam was also present) – if God is not personal, he is surely not less, but rather more than a person.32 On the other hand, even if there are more commonalities between Kierkegaard and Kant, it is not so clear how much the former emulated the latter. As we saw in chapter 1, Climacus seems to agree that, from the perspective of a strict knowledge of empirical reality, there seems to be a kind of Kantian distinction between appearance and reality – which implies that it is formally impossible to get behind appearances in order to find out what reality-in-itself is like (only the reality of the existing individual having in this sense a different status). But from another perspective – that of a weaker knowledge of the empirical realm – Kierkegaard believes that the skepticism regarding the knowledge of reality-in-itself might be overcome (through faith). Moreover, even from a Kantian perspective, reason posits only in its theoretical use the idea of God as an orienting concept – a “necessary fiction” of mind “without which we cannot understand anything,” but otherwise devoid of any descriptive content; in its practical use, reason is able not just to postulate God’s existence33 (in order to allow the possibility of a correlation between the concept of morality and the idea of happiness), but also – says Kant – from our human perspective “we must think the divine nature by assuming it to have the full perfection required for the execution of his will (e.g. as the will of an immutable, omniscient, all-powerful, etc. being).”34 Moreover, in the same context Kant deduces that God is “almighty creator… holy lawgiver… benevolent ruler… moral guardian” and “just judge.”35

32 GP; See in this respect the following Boston Radio program Alvin Plantinga & Hilary Putnam, Philosophy Series. The God Problem, at [http://archives.wbur.org/theconnection/2000/07/12/philosophyseries-part-five-the-god-problem.html] (last visited on April 30, 2023); and there seem to be arguments that even the analogy between parents and God in what concerns their love for children (respective people) is (contrary to Dalferth) present in Kierkegaard writings: For example, in Works of Love he wrote: “Yet if you see a baby sleeping on its mother’s breast-and you see the mother’s love, see that she has, so to speak, waited for and now makes use of the moment while the baby is sleeping really to rejoice in it because she hardly dares let the baby notice how inexpressibly she loves it – then this is an upbuilding sight… Just to see the baby sleeping is a friendly, benevolent, soothing sight, but it is not upbuilding. If you still want to call it upbuilding, it is because you see love present, it is because you see God’s love encompass the baby.” (WL, 214). 33 The postulates demanded by our practical reason (freedom, the eternity of the soul and the existence of God) are for Kant strong subjective convictions ‒ convictions which are, however, less sure than the demonstrative truths of pure mathematics. 34 Immanuel Kant, “Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason”, in Allen Wood and George di Giovanni (eds), Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason ‒ And Other Writings, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 141 (our emphasis). 35 Ibid., pp. 141-142.

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Thus, if one takes reason in its practical sense, the descriptive content of the concept of God seems to come back fully to us. Therefore, the above considerations lead us to believe that, despite Dalferth’s critiques, even “classical theism” – with its “anthropomorphic conception of God as a perfect transcendent person who is omnipotent, omniscient and all good” – might in the end be closer to Kierkegaard’s view than Dalferth thought (although, of course, we admit that the classical theist defense of the arguments for God’s existence is fully rejected by Kierkegaard). This interpretation of this issue seems to be shared by other Kierkegaard scholars such as David Gouwens or Sylvia Walsh. Thus, for Gouwens “an interesting aspect of Kierkegaard’s thought is that, unlike Weil but like Bonhoeffer, he continues to have a great commitment to orthodox Christian teaching.”36 And in Walsh’s opinion, although all human language about God is for Kierkegaard “essentially metaphorical” – and all we can say about God is based on “woefully inadequate” human criteria (between humans and God being an “infinite, absolute qualitative difference, due in part to the temporal, finite status of a human being vis-à-vis God’s eternality and infinity but primarily because of human sin”), God is still for him an eternal “transcendental subject,” who has “all traditional attributes” and a “triune nature” (although his “substantive qualification” is love, “which constitutes the very essence of the divine”).37 On the other hand, the problems raised by various critics in connection to Plantinga’s philosophical views have less to do with the way one interprets his thinking, and more with the relevance of his philosophy in the context of various contemporary debates in the philosophy of religion – especially in what pertains to the theme of religious pluralism. For example, Dewi Zephaniah Phillips appreciates the Reformed apologists’ attack against classical foundationalism – because he agrees that the latter is not able to make sense of the language of faith, which is neither tentative nor hypothetical: “[B]elievers do not pray to a god that probably exists.” He agrees with Plantinga that the foundationalist was not able to produce a valid criterion of proper basicality – a fact that allows the Reformed epistemologist to place belief in God among the propositions that are properly basic.38 However, while there is some common-

36 Gouwens, Kierkegaard as religious thinker, p. 51. 37 Walsh, “Kierkegaard’s Theology”, pp. 295-296 (Walsh observes in the same context Kierkegaard’s deep aversion to pantheism.); also Schulz – although he sees serious problems with Kierkegaard’s attempts to conceptualize the doctrine of divine omnipotence – nevertheless, he admits that the Dane philosopher affirms this doctrine (Heiko Schulz, “O2 can do? Kierkegaard and the Debate on Divine Omnipotence,” in Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook 20 (1), 2015, pp. 91-128). 38 D. Z. Phillips, Faith after Foundationalism, London: Routledge 1988, pp. xiii, 25.

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ality there, the reproach he levels against Plantinga’s position is that it just replaces a form of foundationalism with another form of foundationalism – the belief in God being just another belief among others situated on the basis of a foundational noetic system; by contrast to Plantinga (and following in this respect Wittgenstein), Phillips believes that we do not need a foundation for our practices in order to show how fundamental what we take for granted in them is; it is enough for us just to focus on what it is basic in them, in other words, on “what cannot be otherwise in the ways we think.”39 For Wittgenstein the so-called “basic propositions” are in fact only propositions held fast “by the reality which surrounds them” within various practices; their warrant is rather coherentist than foundationalist – therefore they are not foundational. Moreover, another objection raised by Phillips against both classical foundationalist and Reformed epistemologists is that they “regard epistemic practices as though they were descriptions of a reality which lies beyond them,” when in fact “Wittgenstein… insists that distinctions between the real and unreal get their sense within epistemic practices.”40 One unpleasant consequence of such a view is that, on the one hand, instead of viewing for example the conflict between unbelief and belief as a simple conflict between different grammars, post-Enlightenment distorts the situation by seeing religious belief as “ideologies, instances of bad faith,” while on the other hand Reformed epistemology distorts it by seeing the unbelievers “in the grip of various forms of self-deception.” Thus, Phillips’ conclusion is that both sides of the debate “expose totalitarian epistemic claims.”41 How would one reply to Philips’ critique? Wolterstorff – the Yale University Reformed epistemologist – observes that Phillips’ antirealist construal of religious language, and especially of the concept of God (a term which he thinks does not refer to any entity) is not convincingly articulated. Thus, regarding Phillips’ opinion that the theological doctrines describe no object or phenomenon independent of them,42 Wolterstorff objects that, in affirming such an idea, he “surely” does not participate in a “religious language game,” because “the religious person would adamantly insist that God is prior to and independent of all our human language games.” The Yale epistemologist observes that in fact Phillips is playing here a “philosophical language game.” But – he asks rhetorically (and ironically) ‒, “what then is the right mode of speech on this issue of whether God exists prior to and

39 Ibid., p. 36. 40 Ibid., p. xiv. 41 Ibid., pp. xiv, 101-102. 42 Ibid., p. 202.

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independent of our human ‘language games’ – the religious, or the Wittgensteinian philosophic?”43 Add to the list of philosophers who seem to agree (in another context) that Wittgenstein’s late writings have antirealist implications – implications which do not appear to be convincingly construed – author A. C. Grayling; he opines that in the Austrian thinker’s later philosophy “the suggestion sometimes appears to be that the world is dependent upon the form of life of which language is part; at very least, there is no question of the correct use of language being decided by something independent of language.”44 Moreover, “in Wittgenstein’s view, language and thought are in some sense internally self-determining and self-constituting, and… therefore reality is not, as he had thought of it in the Tractatus, independent of language and thought.”45 However, the major problem with such a view – one shared by both Wittgenstein and Phillips – is this: Although “the fact that the world appears to exist independently of us can indeed be explained by anti-realist theories, even by those strong versions which have it that thought or experience is the determiner of what exists,” this observation does not weaken or remove the validity of the fact that “the details of such a theory are extremely important, since on them turns the theory’s very acceptability.” But in this case, “if Wittgenstein is committed to the view that reality is not independent of language and thought, he has – but does not fulfill – a responsibility to say something more about why our experience and beliefs are so trenchantly realist in character.”46 Another – and more direct – way in which religious pluralism seems to constitute a challenge for Plantinga’s religious epistemology is visible in his debate with Hick’s philosophy of religion. We already saw Alston and Hick’s critique of Plantinga’s analogy between the proper basicality of belief in God and the proper basicality of sense perception. Let us start from the point made by Alston’s observation that “all normal adult human beings, whatever their culture, use basically the same con-

43 Nicholas Wolterstorff, Review “Faith after Foundationalism. By D.Z. Phillips”, The Philosophical Review, Vol. 101, No. 2, (April 1992), p. 455. 44 A. C. Grayling, Wittgenstein, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1996, p. 102. In this respect Rorty affirms that Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations is an anti-essentialist book which “urges us to fight free of the old Greek distinctions between the apparent and the real (…).” (Richard Rorty, “Anticlericalism and Atheism”, in Gianni Vattimo and Richard Rorty, The Future of Religion (ed. by Santiago Zabala), New York: Columbia University Press 2005, p. 30). 45 Grayling, Wittgenstein, p. 104; however – as Dr. Wiertz points out – there is also in philosophical circles a realist tradition of interpretation even of Wittgenstein’s late philosophy. But here we do not intend to answer the exegetical question if Phillips’ (or Grayling’s) interpretation of him in this respect is right. 46 Ibid., p. 104.

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ceptual scheme in objectifying their sense experience,” whereas “religious people are divided into groups that conceive of the Divine in very different ways.” Hick suggests that, “while sense experience is roughly uniform throughout the human race…, religiosity may be a culturally variable human creation.” However, “these differences thus do not, in themselves, constitute a reason for denying that religious experience may be a cognitive response to a transcendent divine reality.”47 In order to answer the question “How can a unique transcendent divine reality give rise to so many and diverse cognitive religious responses?”, Hick proposes a Kantian distinction between “the Real or Ultimate or Divine-an-sich” (the noumenal world) and “the Real as conceptualized and experienced by human beings” (the phenomenal world). Possible instances of such a distinction can be found in the history of religion: Meister Eckhart’s dichotomy between “Godhead (Deitas)” and “God (Deus),” the Kabbalist differentiation between “En Soph” (“the absolute divine reality beyond all human description”) and “the God of the Bible,” the contrast between “nirguna Brahman” (Brahman without attributes) and “saguna Brahman” (Brahman with attributes) or Paul Tillich’s division between “the God of theism” and “the God above the God of theism.”48 “Thus,” says Hick, “it is a possible, and indeed an attractive, hypothesis – as an alternative to total skepticism – that the great religious traditions of the world represent different human perceptions of and responses to the same infinite divine Reality.”49 Where can Plantinga’s view be plotted in this Hickian proposal for explaining the plurality of religions? As we saw in chapter 8, he criticized both interpretations of Kantian epistemology: the two-world picture, according to which there are two realms of objects: the realm of the phenomena and the realm of noumena, and the one-world picture, according to which there is only one world and only one kind of objects, but there are two ways of thinking about this world (Here the phenomena-noumena distinction is not between two kinds of objects, but rather between how the objects are in themselves and how they appear to us). The two-world picture is rejected by Plantinga because he views it as being entirely incoherent.50 On the other hand, he regards the one-world picture (a picture preferred by most contemporary Kantian interpreters) as being more coherent: according to his reconstruction of Kant and Hick, one can apply (in this second case) to the Real some concepts – namely the formal ones (like being self-identical, having properties, or being such as 7+5=12) and negative ones (being non-finite, not

47 Hick, Philosophy of Religion, pp. 78, 80. 48 Ibid., pp. 117-118. 49 Ibid., p. 119. 50 HBA, 48.

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depending on other beings, having no wisdom or having no love); and if the Real has any positive properties, these are properties about which we have no concept.51 Plantinga’s conclusion is that the Real is a being “that has no positive properties of which we have a conception, except for ‘being involved in human experience’ and any properties that entails.” Moreover, “this being is also unlimited in that it has to the maximal degree properties of which we have no conception.”52 But if this were true, then there seems to be no reason why such a being would be preferentially connected to the phenomena of religion (or to any effort of “transformation of human existence from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness”) and not rather with such phenomena as “war, prostitution, family violence, bigotry or racism.” In other words, “any department of human life is” – in this case – “as revelatory of the Real as any other.”53 However, for practical reasons Hick is of the opinion that any true religion should “turn us away from a life of selfishness to a life of service.” Given this caveat, Hick concludes that all moral religions are “equally valuable and equally true”. It would be a sign of “intellectual arrogance or spiritual imperialism” to exalt a religion with its beliefs over another.54 Yet framing the solution this way neither dissolves nor resolves the problem, but instead it invites the unwanted consequence that, if the personae (or impersonae) of a religion – with their ascribed properties – are real, then other (im)personae of other religions are not real (or lack the properties ascribed to them). The way in which Hick proposes to solve this problem is to say that “each of the (im)personae” are empirically real, but “not transcendentally real (not really real).” In other words, “the beliefs in each tradition are mostly false.”55 In response, Plantinga thinks that such a posture is self-defeating: If we take this position, then we can’t say, for example, that Christianity is right and Buddhism wrong; as Christians, we don’t disagree with the Buddhists; and we take this stance in an effort to avoid self-exultation and imperialism. But we do something from the point of view of intellectual imperialism and self-exaltation that is much worse: we now declare that everyone is mistaken here, everyone except for ourselves and a few other enlightened souls. 56

51 WCB, 47-50, 54. 52 WCB, 55. 53 WCB, 56, 59. 54 WCB, 60. 55 WCB, 61. 56 WCB, 62.

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This stance looks to Plantinga like “patronizing condescension.” In order to be consistent, Hick – if he wants “to avoid self-aggrandizement” – should hold that “his views about religion… have no more claim to truth than any view here.” However, Hick does not take this skeptical attitude toward his own view – and the American philosopher thinks that this postulation is (in the end) right. But, he adds that “we cannot do so in religious belief either. In religious belief as elsewhere, we must take our chances, recognizing that we could be wrong… There are no guarantees… (If we can be wrong, however, we can also be right).”57 Returning to the question from the Introduction of this work – namely whether or not theistic belief (and more specifically Christian belief) is rational – we hope to have shown by now that the answer to it could be in a sense no and in another sense yes. If, on the one hand, one takes a classical foundationalist stance to this problem and believes that a belief is rational only when proven to be so in a deductive or abductive way – from sure and uncontroversial premises – then the answer

57 WCB, 62-63. However, one might here object that the so-called inconsistency discovered by Plantinga in Hicks’ reasoning is debatable, because the British philosopher could here make a distinction between the meta-level of the theoretical-religious-philosophical reflection (in which case an exclusivism in the conflict between the theories is unavoidable) and the level of lived religion (in which case a pluralistic attitude is appropriate). If one rejects religious claims of superiority, one does not need also to reject philosophical claims of superiority (I owe this critical point to Dr. Wiertz.). This objection seems indeed plausible (although it is not clear if Plantinga could not contemplate here the possibility of some people taking Hick’s noumenal religion and transforming it into their private “lived religion”). However, the validity of the objection depends on the viability of Hick’s philosophical reconstruction. Prima facie it seems bizarre to us that a religion about whose divinity we can say nothing – except the fact that she is totally different from anything in our world (but otherwise involved in it) – should be more real (in a sense more plausible) that a religion in which we can say (more or less metaphorically) something about her. Secondly, the proposition is still not convincing to us that – once we accepted the existence of such a noumenal type of divinity – we should need to give priority to the moral religions over the immoral (or amoral) ones. If one might suggest here that this divinity demands morality because she is (probably) moral, then one has already included a significant part of the “real noumenal” religion in the lived moral religions. But this idea is in fact similar to the way in which Kierkegaard sees Religion A as being somehow imbedded in Religion B or the way in which the apostle Paul sees the theistic natural revelation (in Rom. 1-2) as being somehow included in the Christian religion. The great difference is that both Paul and Kierkegaard see such a “noumenal” ethical religion as being a rather incomplete, inferior form of religiosity, one which “yearns” somehow after the lived revealed religion (which alone is able to offer a solution to the guilt caused by the ethical failures of the “noumenal” stage). And thirdly, why needs there to be such a categorical dichotomy between how the divinity is for us and how she is in herself? What if the divinity chose to reveal to us (in a more or less direct way, by the mediation of a more or less metaphorical language) what she in herself is? In the end our human concepts might rather be windows towards God’s being than curtains which block our access to him (even if these windows may ultimately reveal only an infinitesimal part of the divine mystery).

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is clearly “no.” Even if one might be able to find arguments which support the truth of Christian belief, these in any case are not enough to provide the certainty demanded by the phenomenology of a real and authentic faith. However, our study has shown that such an approach is not necessary, because from an epistemological perspective the classical foundationalist position is indefensible. If, on the other hand, like Plantinga, one chooses an externalist approach to this matter, the answer can be “yes”: if theism and Christian faith are true, then it is plausible to expect the existence of a mechanism or process through which God can convince us of the truth of theism, or moreover Christianity, in such a way that this conviction is warranted, representing real knowledge. This does not mean that the arguments cannot be useful in convincing somebody of the truth of theism or of Christianity. Certain persons with a more intellectual/cerebral profile – like Lew Wallace58 or Lewis59 – could demand reasons in order to believe. In fact, there is a level on which the theistic and Christian ideas could – like any other religious and philosophical views – be supported by arguments starting from premises which are quasi-neutral, open to public scrutiny (This is the way in which a person – in Craig’s words – could show to another one the truth of Christianity.). Moreover, various skeptical objections to faith may – even more imperiously – demand a well-articulated rebuttal from the believer; otherwise his faith might lose its warrant.

58 Lew Wallace, the author of the novel Ben-Hur, was a Civil War general who – after a provocative and challenging discussion with the agnostic Robert Ingersoll – began to investigate the truth of the doctrines of Christianity (Lew Wallace, An Autobiography, New York: Harper & Brothers 1902, vi). At the end of this investigation, he said that he had reached “a conviction amounting to absolute belief in God and the divinity of Christ” (Lew Wallace, The First Christmas: From “Ben-Hur”, New York: Harper & Brothers 1902, p. ix). See also Robert Morsberger and Katharine Morsberger, Lew Wallace: Militant Romantic, New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company 1980. 59 In contrast to Kierkegaard’s view that apologetics is not a good way of seeking God, because it represents a temptation “objectively” to circumvent the ethical-religious tasks of subjectivity, to avoid a real involvement with God (under whose “nose” otherwise all of us are located), Lewis’ autobiography seems to tell another story: the arguments (like those from the Nostalgia/Joy [Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 16, 17, 18, 72, 73, 78, 165-170, 179, 219, 220-222, 230, 238], from miracles [the reality of the supernatural “revealed” by way of Lewis’ (and Lewis’ friends’) involvement with the occult (Ibid., pp. 59-60, 173-176, 202, 203, 206)], from the historicity of Jesus’ story [especially the “fulfilment” of “the mythos of the dying and resurrecting god” in the person of Jesus (Ibid., pp. 223-224, 236-237)] or from the confrontation with the ethical imperative and the awareness of the failure to live in accordance with it [Ibid., pp. 225-227]) were no moral obstacles to Lewis’ faith. On the contrary, they brought him the conviction that the Christian religion is true – a conviction against which he initially fought with all his might, because he did not like the idea of religious submission (which, as he understood, was demanded by God from any believer [Ibid., pp. 227-229]).

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 Conclusions

But on another level, there is, a mysterious sense in which – as the Christian narrative suggests – without the involvement of the Spirit of God, all intellectual attempts to convince someone of the truth of Christianity are in vain (One can know that God exists and Christianity is true only through God’s revelation.). Conversely, when the Spirit is present, even without evidence – after the hearing of the gospel (or after the direct revelatory intervention of God), as Barth would argue60 – a person could start believing (see in this respect – for example – Paul Claudel’s61 and André Frossard’s62 conversions). In finalizing this inquiry, our conclusion is that Kierkegaard’s and Plantinga’s attempts to explain why such a biblical definition as “Faith is a confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see,” or such a gospel verse as “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed,” are not only religiously relevant but also philosophically justified for a contemporary believer. Although both thinkers come from very different cultural and philosophical backgrounds, one can find – when comparing their writings – not only a deep commonality of ideas, but also a remarkable way in which their theological and philosophical understandings illuminate and augment each other. Whereas Plantinga’s inquiry contributes to the rational plausibility of a “Justified Faith without Reasons”

60 By contrast to Brunner, who believes that a discussion with the skeptics “pointing towards such evidence of the existence of God as we have” is possible – or at least could help removing some intellectual “obstacles out of the way of proclamation” of the Christian message (Brunner, “Nature and Grace”, pp. 58-59), Barth states that he never uses arguments in such contexts. Rather he deals with unbelievers “quietly (remembering that Christ has died and risen also for them), as if their rejection of ‘Christianity’ was not to be taken seriously.” Only then, he believes, could they understand the evangelist, because they realise that he, “as an evangelical theologian,” stands on the biblical ground of the doctrine of “justification by faith alone.” Moreover, he adds, “my sermons reach and ‘interest’ my audience most when I least rely on anything to ‘correspond’ to the Word of God already ‘being there’, when I least rely on the ‘possibility’ of proclaiming this Word, when I least rely on my ability to ‘reach’ people by my rhetoric, when on the contrary I allow my language to be formed and shaped and adapted as much as possible by what the text seems to be saying.” (Barth, “No!: Answer to Emil Brunner”, p. 127 – Barth’s emphasis). 61 “Ich glaubte mit einer so mächtigen inneren Zustimmung, mein ganzes Sein wurde geradezu gewaltsam emporgerissen, ich glaubte mit einer so starken Überzeugung, mit solch unbeschreiblicher Gewissheit, dass keinerlei Platz auch nur für den leisesten Zweifel offenblieb…Ich hatte plötzlich das durchbohrende Gefühl der Unschuld, der ewigen Kindschaft Gottes, einer unaussprechlichen Offenbarung.” (Paul Claudel, Der Strom, Ausgewählte Prosa, Frankfurt am Main: Ullstein Bücher Nr. 45, 1955, pp. 172 ff, cf. Stefan Vatter, Exploration Gott: Was unsere Gesellschaft jetzt braucht, Freiburg/ Basel/Wien: Herder 2020, pp. 266-267) 62 Andre Frossard, Gott existiert. Ich bin ihm begegnet, Augsburg: Weltbild 2013, pp. 112-142. In several passages in the book Frossard and other personages affirm that “grace” is the only explanation for their conversion.

Conclusions 

 283

project, Kierkegaard’s venture balances such a logical-analytic effort with a deep ethical and existential inquiry. In our work we exhibited how this purported Kierkegaardian-Plantingian synthesis can be defended (or criticized) in the context of a dialogue with other contemporary religion-philosophical projects, like those of Richard Swinburne, John Hick or Alasdair MacIntyre. However, the intention was not to establish which of these projects is the best, but rather to show that – in itself – the present synthesis is cogent, coherent and relevant for the mind and soul of a contemporary seeker in search of orientation and wholeness in an increasingly confusing and bewildering world.

Bibliography In the present work two ways of referring to an author/source are used: 1. to Søren Kierkegaard und Alvin Plantinga via abbreviation and page number, 2. to all other authors by referring to full or abbreviated title plus added page number.

1 Primary Sources: 1.1 Kierkegaard: 1.1.1 Danish: Kierkegaard, Søren (1968-1978). Søren Kierkegaards Papirer, vols. I to XI-3 (ed. by Peter Andreas Heiberg, Victor Kuhr and Einer Torsting). Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag 1909-48; second, expanded ed., vols. I to XI-3 (by Niels Thulstrap), vols. XIV to XVI index (by Niels Jørgen Cappelørn). Copenhagen: Gyldendal. Kierkegaard, Søren (1997-2013). Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter, vols. 1-28, K1-K28 (ed. by Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Joakim Garff, Jette Knudsen, Johnny Kondrup, Alastair McKinnon and Finn Hauberg Mortensen). Copenhagen: Gads Forlag. 1.1.2 English: Kierkegaard, Søren (1995). Christian Discourses and The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress, (ed. and transl. by Howard and Edna Hong). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kierkegaard, Søren (1992). Concluding Unscientific Postscript to ‚Philosophical Fragments’ (ed. and transl. by Howard and Edna Hong). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kierkegaard, Søren (1992). Concluding Unscientific Postscript to ‚Philosophical Fragments’ (ed. and transl. by Howard and Edna Hong). Princeton: Princeton University Press 1992. Kierkegaard, Søren (1990). Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses (ed. and transl. by Howard and Edna Hong). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kierkegaard, Søren (1987). Either/Or 1 (ed. and transl. by Howard and Edna Hong). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kierkegaard, Søren (1987). Either/Or 2 (ed. and transl. by Howard and Edna Hong). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kierkegaard, Søren (1983). Fear and Trembling (ed. and transl. by Howard and Edna Hong). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kierkegaard, Søren (1990). For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourself (ed. and transl. by Howard and Edna Hong). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kierkegaard, Søren (2007ff). Kierkegaard’ s Journals and Notebooks, vols. 1-11 (ed. by Niels-Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist). Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Kierkegaard, Søren (1985). Philosophical Fragments (ed. and transl. by Howard and Edna Hong). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kierkegaard, Søren (1967-1978). Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers (ed. and transl. by Howard and Edna Hong assisted by Gregor Malantschuk), vol. 1-6, vol. 7 Index and Collation. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111334769-015

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Kierkegaard, Søren (1988). Stages on Life’s Way: Studies by Various Persons (ed. and transl. by Howard Hong and Edna Hong). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kierkegaard, Søren (1980). The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin (ed. and transl. by Reidar Thomte). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kierkegaard, Søren (1998). The Point of View (ed. and transl. by Howard and Edna Hong). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kierkegaard, Søren (1980). The Sickness unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening (ed. and transl. by Howard and Edna Hong), Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kierkegaard, Søren (1995). Works of Love (ed. and transl. by Howard and Edna Hong). Princeton: Princeton University Press.

1.2 Plantinga: 1.2.1 Books: Plantinga, Alvin (1974). God, Freedom and Evil. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Plantinga, Alvin (1975). God and Other Minds. New York: Cornell University Press. Plantinga, Alvin (1979). The Nature of Necessity. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Plantinga, Alvin (2000). Warranted Christian Belief. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Plantinga, Alvin (1993). Warrant: The Current Debate. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Plantinga, Alvin (2011). Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion and Naturalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Plantinga, Alvin (1993). Warrant and Proper Function. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1.2.2 Articles: Plantinga, Alvin (1998). “A Defense of Religious Exclusivism.” In James Sennett (ed.), The Analytic Theist. An Alvin Plantinga Reader. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, pp.187-210. Plantinga, Alvin (1982). “How to Be an Anti-Realist.” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, Vol. 56, No. 1, 47-70. Plantinga, Alvin (2007). “Preface to the Appendix ‘Two Dozen or so Theistic Arguments’.” In DeanePeter Baker (ed.), Alvin Plantinga. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 203-209. Plantinga, Alvin (2001). “Rationality and Public Evidence: A Reply to Richard Swinburne.” Religious Studies, Vol. 37, No. 2, 215-222. Plantinga, Alvin (1983). “Reason and Belief in God.” In Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff (eds.), Faith and Rationality. Notre Dame, IN: The University of Notre Dame Press, pp. 16-93. Plantinga, Alvin (2000). “Religious Belief as Properly Basic.” In Brian Davies (ed.), Philosophy of Religion. A Guide and Anthology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 42-94. Plantinga, Alvin (2015). “Replies to my Commentators.” In Dieter Schönecker (ed.), Plantinga’s “Warranted Christian Belief.” Critical Essays with a Reply by Alvin Plantinga. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, pp. 237-262. Plantinga, Alvin (2002). “Reply. Ad Zagzebski.” Philosophical Books, Vol. 43, No. 2, 124-135. Plantinga, Alvin (1996). “Respondeo.” In Jonathan Kvanvig (ed.), Warrant in Contemporary Epistemology: Essays in Honor of Plantinga’s Theory of Knowledge. Savage: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 307-378.

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Index

A absolute paradox 189 ad hominem 23, 107, 108, 265 Adams, R. 79, 81, 82, 160, 288 Adorno, T. 202, 288 Alkier, S. 165, 288 Alston, W. XX, 20, 26, 41, 54, 55, 94, 142, 146, 264, 274, 288 ambitious epistemology 250 Anderson, T. 14, 15, 18, 22, 24, 284 anguished conscience 254 Anselm 121, 142, 146, 147, 148, 258, 293 Anselmian 92, 121, 124, 146, 267 Anthropic Principle 154, 156, 157, 293 antirealist 22, 23, 62, 63, 247, 268, 269, 273 aposteriori 11, 12, 99 approximation 7, 18, 19, 22, 25, 47, 48, 58, 59, 246 apriori 11, 12, 38, 99, 164 Aquinas 10, 86, 87, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 151, 152, 170, 199, 200, 203, 204, 213, 288, 291 argument from Evil 24, 150 Aristotle 14, 69, 136, 185, 244, 245, 246 Athanasius 185, 258 Augustine 201, 204 Augustinian 92, 151, 170 B Barrett, J. 90, 288 Barrett, L. 181, 183, 186, 284 Barth, K. 10, 69, 89, 91, 92, 104, 194, 201, 204, 211, 222, 226, 227, 228, 230, 266, 267, 279, 288, 289 Bauckham, R. 225, 289 Bergson, H. 165 Blackburn, B. 165, 225, 289 Bonhoeffer, D. 272 BonJour, L. 123, 289 Bouwsma, O.K. XIX, 19 Bowie, F. 164, 168, 289 Brunner, E. 203, 266, 267, 279, 289 Bultmann, R. 163, 165, 166, 222 C Calvin, J. XVIII, 10, 17, 18, 19, 89, 90, 91, 104, 130, 199, 200, 203, 204, 211, 213, 229, 288 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111334769-016

Cartesian 14, 15, 36, 37, 44, 55, 81, 128, 130, 208, 248 certitude of faith 259 Chesterton, G.K. 201 Chisholm, R. 34, 36, 44, 95, 289 Churchland, P. 48 Cicero 91, 97, 289, 294 Classical Apologetics 92, 228, 290 classical foundationalism 35, 36, 63 classical foundationalist XXII, 17, 20, 19, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 43, 86, 87, 174, 205, 213, 230, 248, 249, 250, 255, 263, 277, 278 Claudel, P. 279 Clifford, W.K. 230, 289 cognitive environment 45, 47, 48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 97, 197, 209 cognitive faculty 22, 103, 204, 265 cognitive mini-environments 52 cognitive process 25, 96, 97, 195, 199, 210, 212, 265 coherentism 32, 33, 34, 35 Collingwood, R.G. 128, 289 Collins, R. 148, 157, 289 Common Sense 19, 20, 21, 29, 36, 60, 61, 62, 238, 247, 292, 293, 295 Conee, E. XX, 21, 41 Copleston, F.C. 139, 152, 290 Craig, W.L. 92, 152, 153, 221, 222, 223, 224, 227, 228, 290, 293 criterionless transition 240 critical rationalism 238 D Dalferth, I. 74, 269, 270, 271, 272, 284, 295 Davies, B. XVI, XVII, 13, 16, 17, 121, 140, 283, 290 Davies, P. 154, 157 Dawkins, R. 159, 160, 161, 290 de Rougemont, D. 78 defeater 22, 98, 100, 101, 102, 107, 161, 200, 221, 230 Dennett, D. 47 Derrida, J 15 despair 22, 23, 26, 74, 75, 76, 80, 81, 82, 106, 107, 192, 193, 197, 213, 232, 235, 241, 243, 251, 254, 259, 263, 265, 267

300 

 Index

Deuser, H. 67, 284 Devitt, M. 23, 63, 123, 135, 136, 246, 290 dialectic 113, 122, 182, 235 divine commandments 71 Dorrien, G. 28, 29, 60, 201, 211, 266, 290 Dostoievski, F.M. 217 double reflection 253 doxastic 26, 33, 34, 207, 258 E Earman, J. 163 Eddington, A. 138, 290 Edwards, J. XVIII, 18, 203, 206, 212 Einstein, A. 136, 138, 160, 245, 246, 248 Ellis, G. 156, 157, 290 encounter with Christ 26, 194, 195, 255, 263 Enlightenment 35, 76, 201, 233, 253, 273 epistemic risk 64, 192, 217, 259, 260 epoche 21, 58, 239 essence of one individual 240, 245 Evans, S. XVIII, XIX, 5, 8, 10, 17, 18, 19, 26, 31, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 29, 58, 59, 62, 63, 71, 72, 73, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 83, 106, 107, 108, 111, 112, 113, 115, 116, 117, 118, 123, 126, 127, 129, 180, 181, 182, 183, 185, 186, 187, 188, 193, 194, 195, 203, 213, 231, 235, 241, 242, 244, 245, 248, 249, 250, 252, 253, 254, 255, 257, 258, 268, 269, 284, 285, 286, 290 evidentialism 20, 41, 43, 44, 54, 85, 86, 87, 103 externalism 31, 53, 54, 80, 250 externalist 16, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 31, 32, 51, 53, 54, 81, 82, 93, 103, 106, 115, 179, 195, 204, 208, 212, 214, 217, 218, 244, 245, 250, 251, 254, 255, 261, 265, 278 externalist epistemology 16, 27, 53, 81, 115, 179, 195, 217, 245, 254 F faith seeking understanding 267 Feldman XX, 20, 41, 49, 51, 52, 286, 290 Fichte, J.G. 7, 11, 284 fideist 67 Flying Spaghetti Monster 94, 96, 148 foundationalism 20, 23, 29, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 40, 54, 55, 60, 63, 86, 87, 88, 89, 148, 174, 194, 248, 249, 250, 251, 272, 294

Frame, J. 128, 290 Frater Taciturnus 80 Frege, G. 117, 123, 290, 291 Freud, S. 46, 99, 102, 166, 167, 209, 212, 290, 292 Freudian 80 Frossard, A. 279 G Gadamer, H. 114, 291 Gallagher, R. 168, 291 Garff, J. 11, 4, 231, 281, 284 Geach, P. 121, 139, 140, 141, 291 Gettier, E. XVI, 7, 16, 21, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53, 286, 287, 290, 291 Gödel, K. 148, 291 Gouwens, D. XV, 15, 184, 185, 188, 189, 197, 232, 237, 253, 272, 285 Grayling, A.C. 274, 291 Great Pumpkin 8, 94, 95, 96, 218 great things of the gospel 203, 204, 206, 207, 210, 211, 212, 228, 229 Greco, J. 50, 51, 81, 99, 245, 286, 291 Grondin, J. 11, 12, 114, 291 H Habermas, J. 77, 78, 221, 291 Hamann, J.G. 20, 15, 28, 29, 59, 60, 192, 259 Hannay, A. 10, 11, 18, 6, 72, 113, 192, 193, 231, 232, 233, 259, 281, 284, 285 Härle, W. 225, 291 Hawking, S. 137, 138, 154, 156, 291, 293, 295 Hegel, G.W.H. 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 22, 23, 26, 27, 59, 165, 182, 246, 248, 291 Hegelian 9, 14, 15, 18, 23, 24, 28, 29, 57, 58, 60, 72, 182, 191, 201, 211, 266, 290 Heidegger, M. 267 Hick, J. 121, 147, 148, 226, 263, 264, 274, 275, 276, 277, 280, 292, 293 historical arguments 27, 229, 257, 266 Holy Spirit 17, 25, 86, 96, 97, 196, 199, 200, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 210, 211, 214, 217, 221, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 265 Hoyningen-Huene, P. 119, 136, 289, 290, 292, 294 Hume, D. 7, 15, 21, 23, 27, 47, 48, 63, 118, 143, 144, 163, 164, 238, 291, 292 Husserl, E. 63, 150, 151

Index  I imago Dei 266 immanent 21, 8, 11, 21, 24, 69, 75, 105, 170 Immediate sensation 20 immortality 68, 69, 75, 105, 190, 191 impassioned reason 237 incommensurability 195 incommensurable 233, 253 indifferent to existence 239 infinite passion 190 inner assurance 211, 212, 258 internal rationality 206, 207, 214 internalism 31, 44, 54, 205, 250 internalist 25, 44, 50, 53, 80, 81, 82, 93, 115, 179, 204, 205, 206, 207, 214, 216, 217, 245, 250, 251 inwardness 23, 27, 72, 73, 75, 79, 82, 83, 105, 106, 107, 108, 180, 181, 183, 189, 190, 191, 194, 198, 254, 256, 260, 261, 265, 266, 267, 269 irrational 16, 25, 26, 27, 67, 86, 100, 104, 106, 128, 163, 192, 195, 208, 211, 214, 228, 234, 235, 242, 243, 250, 253, 255, 257, 258, 260 J Jacobi, F. 20, 15, 16, 17, 27, 28, 29, 59, 60, 192, 259, 285 James, W. 12, 13, 98, 128, 138, 141, 159, 165, 202, 209, 211, 213, 215, 224, 237, 282, 283, 286, 287, 288, 289, 292, 294, 295, 296 Jung, C.G. 166, 167, 168, 290, 292 justified belief 36, 49, 86 justified knowledge 179 K Kant, I. 24, 11, 14, 23, 24, 29, 62, 76, 77, 78, 117, 118, 121, 122, 125, 134, 135, 136, 142, 143, 165, 173, 192, 201, 203, 213, 246, 270, 271, 275, 291, 292 Kantian 21, 11, 14, 19, 22, 23, 24, 28, 29, 60, 62, 71, 74, 76, 118, 121, 123, 134, 135, 136, 137, 146, 174, 201, 211, 246, 266, 269, 271, 275, 290, 291 Keener, C. 165, 292 Kierkegaard, P. 6, 112 knowledge 5, 16, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 28, 29, 31, 35, 36, 39, 40, 42, 45, 46,

 301

47, 48, 49, 52, 54, 57, 58, 59, 60, 62, 63, 67, 68, 69, 70, 75, 76, 80, 81, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 92, 96, 103, 105, 107, 108, 111, 129, 133, 138, 149, 153, 179, 180, 192, 194, 196, 199, 200, 202, 203, 204, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 215, 217, 218, 220, 223, 227, 228, 229, 230, 236, 237, 238, 244, 247, 248, 249, 250, 255, 256, 257, 259, 261, 266, 269, 271, 278 knowledge of God 21, 67, 69, 75, 83, 85, 105, 107, 108, 111, 202, 203, 204, 220 Koch, K. 168, 292 Kuehn, M. 29, 60, 292 Kuhn, T. 119, 156, 234, 237, 238, 242, 243, 245, 246, 247, 253, 261, 289, 292, 293 Kuhnian 116, 136, 253 Kuyper, A. XVIII, 17, 18, 64 L Lang, A. 164, 289, 293 language game 273 leap of faith 67, 190, 192 Lee, P. 93, 103, 156, 181, 183, 186, 284, 287 Leibniz, G.W. 7, 21, 23, 122, 141, 284, 293 Lemaître, G. 138, 293 Leplin, J. 159, 247, 293 Leslie, J. 154, 155, 157, 289, 293 Lewis, C.S. 9, 90, 150, 162, 165, 203, 225, 261, 262, 267, 278, 293 Locke, J. 13, 21, 23, 35, 36, 87 logical empiricism 238 logico-empiricist 23 Luther, M. 17, 92, 125, 196, 204, 227, 289, 293 Lutheran 17, 18, 125, 168, 196 M MacIntyre, A. XXVI, 10, 26, 76, 231, 233, 234, 235, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 250, 251, 252, 253, 260, 280, 285, 293 Mackey, L. 31, 4, 22, 62, 112, 113, 231, 285 Malcolm, N. 121, 142, 293 Manson, N. 137, 155, 293, 295 Marcel, G. 165, 295 Marino, G. XXVI, 10, 18, 26, 235, 241, 242, 243, 251, 253, 284, 285 Marx, K. 99, 102 maximal greatness 124, 146, 147 McGrath, A. 156, 225, 293

302 

 Index

McGrew, T. 155, 219, 220, 221, 287, 293 McMullin, E. 234, 246, 293 Merz, A. 221, 224, 295 metaphysical knowledge 21, 69, 105 Method 114, 291 Meynell, H. 96, 214, 287 Millican, P. 121, 146, 147, 293 Møller, P. 8, 9, 10 Moore, G.E. XIX, XXI, 19, 21, 15, 40, 61, 62, 63 Moral argument 24, 150 Mynster, J.P. XVIII N Nagel, T. 159, 169, 170, 287, 294 natural theology 23, 24, 86, 90, 101, 102, 111, 116, 127, 133, 137, 138, 144, 145, 146, 173, 174, 267 Newman, J. 15, 103, 205, 226, 294 Nielsen, K. 141, 294 Nietzsche, F. 15, 78, 182, 206 O objective epistemology 20, 29 objective knowledge 21, 63 offence 257 ontological progress 246 Ontology 8, 9 Oppy, G. 128, 133, 137, 138, 146, 149, 287 Origen 165 original sin 22, 107, 200, 201, 202 P Pannenberg, W. 10, 194, 222, 223, 224, 226, 227, 228, 229, 291, 294 Pascal, B. 15, 64, 164 passion 25, 26, 13, 19, 20, 26, 27, 73, 74, 75, 111, 170, 179, 181, 182, 187, 189, 190, 191, 236, 237, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 245, 251, 252, 261, 268 passion for truth 240 Penrose, R. 156 Perkins, R. 6, 7, 12, 13, 18, 19, 181, 183, 186, 284, 285 Phillips, D.Z. 272, 273, 274, 294, 296 Piety, M. XIX, XXVI, 10, 19, 26, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 19, 20, 22, 57, 59, 62, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 73, 74, 105, 128, 235, 236, 237, 239, 240, 241, 243, 244, 245, 251, 254, 260, 261, 285

Plato 14, 31, 151, 294 Platonic 68, 151, 152, 153, 257 point of contact 187, 203, 266, 267 Pojman, L. 26, 146, 294 Polanyi, M. XXVI, 26, 217, 237, 238, 239, 245, 246, 247, 253, 261, 294, 295 Polkinghorne, J. 157 Poole, R. 31, 231 postmodern 31, 6, 55, 63, 78, 192, 259 postmodernism 54, 55 postmodernist 37 presupposition 23, 24, 6, 73, 114, 116, 126, 128, 131, 132, 133, 149, 175, 187, 224 private witness 263 properly basic 22, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 57, 58, 60, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 92, 93, 94, 95, 98, 100, 101, 102, 105, 199, 205, 210, 214, 255, 272 Putnam, H. 13, 23, 63, 270, 283, 294 Q Quidam 232, 233 Quine, W.V. 7, 123, 291 Quinn, P. 8, 36, 37, 79, 81, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 160, 203, 287, 294 R Rasmussen, A. 15, 16, 17, 27, 28, 285 rationality of transition 26, 27, 231, 244, 251, 260 realism 7, 23, 29, 63, 136, 152, 159 recollection 21, 22, 68, 69, 80, 82, 105, 184, 240, 266 Rees, M. 154 reflective aesthete 239 Reformed epistemology 273, 301 Reid, T. XVIII, XX, XXI, 18, 20, 21, 13, 15, 21, 29, 34, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 205, 226, 294, 296 Reidian 7, 29, 34, 38, 39, 40, 41, 54, 58, 60, 87 reliabilism 44, 54 reliabilist 47, 208 reliability 21, 48, 60, 61, 63, 218, 230 religiousness A 183, 192, 240, 259 religiousness B 183, 189, 193, 240, 259 resolution 14, 15, 24 Roberts, D. 69, 191, 232, 233, 285 Roberts, R. 20, 76, 77, 78, 79, 106, 113, 244, 285 Rorty, R. 15, 40, 55, 62, 78, 274, 294, 295

Index  Rowe, W. 31, 146, 147, 148, 294 Russell, B. 9, 40, 49, 93, 151 S Schaefer, H. 138, 295 Schelling, F.W. 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 27, 60, 165, 285, 291 Schleiermacher, F. 111, 221, 295 Schönbaumsfeld, G. XVI, 16, 4, 231, 285 Schopenhauer, A. 165, 201, 202, 295 Schulz, H. 5, 8, 74, 75, 76, 79, 106, 115, 116, 129, 130, 149, 163, 198, 216, 230, 253, 256, 272, 286, 287, 295, 296 scientific method 238, 253, 261 Searle, J. 23, 63, 295 Seducer 239, 252, 254 Seneca 91, 97, 294 sense perception 13, 14, 20, 21, 24, 29, 38, 58, 59, 60, 264, 274 sensus divinitatis XXII, 22, 23, 82, 85, 90, 92, 93, 96, 97, 98, 102, 103, 104, 107, 130, 131, 132, 174, 199, 200, 202, 203, 204, 265 Shestov, L. 6 Shogenji, T. 219, 295 Sittlichkeit 72 skepticism 20, 21, 23, 24, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 29, 40, 58, 59, 61, 96, 97, 116, 140, 143, 161, 164, 220, 224, 263, 269, 271, 275 Socrates 31, 68, 75, 111, 127, 181, 184, 185, 190, 191, 203 Socratic 21, 68, 105, 183, 186, 187, 190, 191, 192, 213, 240, 257, 266, 267, 292 Socratic recollection XXI, 240 Son of the Great Pumpkin 96 Spinoza, B. 22, 28, 120, 121, 122, 163, 257 stage of existence 26, 27, 71, 254, 260 subdetermination 119 subjective engagement 236, 237 subjective knowledge 69, 179, 217 Subjectivity 9, 19, 80, 81, 106, 180, 181, 183, 195, 213, 244, 255, 284, 286, 290 Swinburne, R. 10, 13, 26, 47, 120, 141, 148, 156, 157, 158, 203, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 229, 258, 260, 279, 282, 287, 295

 303

T tacit dimension 247 taking for granted 21, 60, 61 Taylor, C. 160, 164, 202, 224, 254, 291, 295 Teleological Argument 8, 9, 124, 137, 157, 293, 295 Theißen, G. 221, 224, 295 Theistic Arguments 12, 13, 24, 101, 133, 141, 148, 149, 150, 174, 282, 283 theory choice 26, 242, 253 Thorsten, A. 51, 53, 287 thought projects 258 Tillich, P. 275 V van Dongen, H. 165, 295 van Fraassen, B. 119, 159, 247, 296 van Inwagen, P. 13, 121, 283, 287, 296 Vattimo, G. 274, 294 virtue epistemology 244, 261 W Walsh, S. 83, 265, 270, 272, 286 warrant 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 22, 31, 33, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 58, 80, 81, 82, 85, 87, 93, 94, 96, 97, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 106, 133, 149, 197, 199, 201, 204, 205, 207, 208, 209, 210, 212, 213, 214, 216, 221, 229, 255, 256, 258, 265, 268, 273, 278 warranted knowledge 179 Wesche, T. 112, 286 Westphal, M. XIX, 19, 25, 8, 9, 11, 14, 16, 17, 18, 73, 75, 83, 112, 113, 114, 135, 181, 182, 190, 191, 192, 193, 259, 286 Wiertz, O. 5, 26, 38, 61, 149, 200, 214, 217, 218, 225, 226, 230, 260, 274, 277, 288, 296 Wigner, E. 159, 296 Wittgenstein, L. XIX, XXI, 16, 19, 21, 4, 5, 61, 88, 93, 170, 192, 197, 231, 259, 272, 273, 274, 285, 291, 296 Wolter, M. 60, 165, 296 Wolterstorff, N. 13, 15, 38, 60, 61, 62, 96, 116, 130, 134, 135, 247, 273, 283, 287, 288, 296 Wright, N.T. 170, 197, 221, 225, 296 Wykstra, S. 199, 229, 230, 296

304 

 Index

Z Zagzebski, L. 10, 13, 37, 86, 93, 96, 99, 101, 213, 214, 283, 286, 287, 288 Zeis, J. 86, 87, 88, 92, 93, 94, 228, 230, 288 Zumstein-Preiswerk, S. 167, 296