Knowledge and Faith: The Kierkegaardian Leap

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This paper is an extended study of the Kierkegaardian Leap, a concept that is central to his theory of the stages of existence. The Leap forms the critical difference between Kierkegaard’s system and the Hegelian system of automatic transition between phases of existence. It is also a concept that directly influenced later philosophical schools of thought, such as Existentialism. For Kierkegaard, the adoption of an epistemological system necessitates a “leap”, a volitional act of acceptance which cannot be justified by reason. Kierkegaard often focuses on the Leap in the process of adopting faith in God, but the Leap is necessary to the acceptance of any epistemological framework. Kierkegaard’s work Either/Or instantiates this idea. The work presents two of Kierkegaard’s stages of life, the ethical and the aesthetic, in direct conversation with one another. It demonstrates that such stages can only be inhabited through the performance of a leap. Further, this work explicates the impossibility of an individual being compelled to adopt such an epistemological system by reason or logic. This paper examines the Leap in a number of Kierkegaard’s works, such as Fear and Trembling, Philosophical Fragments and The Sickness unto Death, but primarily focuses on Either/Or. Additionally, it will work to provide a comprehensive picture of Kierkegaard’s stages of existence and reveal the paradoxes inherent to them. These paradoxes are responsible for Kierkegaard’s claims that reason will never be enough to motivate the adoption of a new stage of existence, or a move between stages. The proposed study would also account for secondary scholarship on the Leap, and the ways in which this structure came to shape later philosophy. Finally, this paper offers the ways in which the Leap remains relevant in contemporary society. Although society is certainly more secular than in Kierkegaard’s time, the Leap remains relevant to the postmodern condition.