Kierkegaard on subjective truth: Is God an ethical fiction?
✍ Scribed by C. Stephen Evans
- Publisher
- Springer Netherlands
- Year
- 1976
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 638 KB
- Volume
- 7
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0020-7047
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
in his article "Self-Responsibility in Existentialism and Buddhism" has argued that "Buddhism and existentialism.., are primarily interested to awaken in man a moral sense of ultimate concern toward the business of living. 1 Teo cites Sartre and Kierkegaard as existentialists who illustrate this parallel with Buddhism. The comparison between this modern Western intellectual and literary movement and the ancient Eastern religion is a suggestive one, and stated thus broadly, I suppose no one could deny that "existentialists," or more specifically, Sartre and Kierkegaard, are concerned with awakening moral seriousness. If this were all there was to existentialism, however, probably the majority of philosophers, including Kant and Plato, would have to be classified as existentialists.
Teo, however, develops the notion of an "ethical fiction," which he attributes to Vaihinger, to make his point more substantive. "An ethical fiction is an ideational construct which is exceedingly fruitful to assume in dealing with the moral experience of man." 2 Teo claims that Buddhist doctrines such as karma and re-birth are best understood as ethical fictions in this sense of the term. "Thus interpreted, karma ceases to be a speculative metaphysical doctrine; it becomes a practical guide to living." 3 Teo then argues that Sartre's notion of an individual "deciding for the whole of mankind" and Kierkegaard's notion of "existing as an individual before God" and "an eternal happiness" are also ethical fictions, implying by this that the objective truth of these notions is not important. Thus for Sartre, one is not to ask: "Am I really deciding for all mankind?" The Sartrean belief is a postulate which one assumes for its value in awakening within oneself a commitment to responsible living.