Relating with the Supernatural in Living Subjectivity in Søren Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855) and Maurice Blondel (1861 – 1949)

Abstract

The question of how one must relate with God today opens the door to the dialectics regarding the necessity for the supernatural, for relationality presupposes a personalistic dimension of interaction, communication and engagement, which tends to assume a being with which such interactions and engagements must proceed. But how can we talk about God in a way that is sensitive to the modern and contemporary sense of human autonomy, that is, in a manner that is not patronizing but rather, flowing from exigencies that the human condition and human data is presenting to us? In other words, is there a possibility that the reality of human experience itself can offer us the unavoidable necessity for engaging the God-question? If yes, what is the path that such a necessary engagement with God can take to the extent that it does not appear confessional and thereby, summarily dismissed by the non-religious, even before the case is made? In Kierkegaard and Blondel, I felt one could discern real possibilities to answering the question of both the necessity for the supernatural and how relationality emerges from such a necessity. With the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard, relationality emerges in the prioritizing of the singular individual over the collectivism of Danish Lutheranism. In Kierkegaard’s reading of the state of things, a Christianity that had become identifiable with the reigning culture, with the zeitgeist, could no longer possess the transformative energies that must define and shape a relationship with Jesus Christ. In almost polemical tones, Kierkegaard writes: “When Christianity entered into the world, people were not Christians, and the difficulty was to become a Christian. Nowadays the difficulty in becoming a Christian is that one must cease to become a Christian.” (Søren Kierkegaard, Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, compiled and edited by Charles E. Moore (Walden, NY: Plough Publishing House, 2002, 211). In other words, the Christianity that was operational in Kierkegaard’s day, in his assessment, was distant from the Christianity of the New Testament. And so, ceasing to become a Christian meant that one had to eschew the cultural Christianity of Christendom and return to the New Testament Christianity, a return which was the only path capable of reinvigorating the Christian faith. In Kierkegaard’s eyes, this diagnosis meant much more that lamenting Christianity’s loss of fervor. It was indicative as well of the absence of a living relationship with God, for a faith that has lost its steam cannot bring about the intersubjectivity that ought to define religious practice, in that the individual was no longer eager to build an engaging and active relationship with the supernatural and to live out the demands of such a relationship, thanks to the help that comes from the supernatural. Kierkegaard attributes this diminishment of a living faith to Christianity’s acquiescence to a mindset of levelling that had become commonplace in society, a flattening that resulted in the forfeiture of any feel of particularity that ought to characterize the religious phenomenon. In this light, the urgency of recovering the singular individual, in his or her subjectivity, that comes to the realization of human brokenness and the human need for the forgiveness, emerges as the path to a rediscovery of the Christian élan in its beauty and transformational spirit. The subject is unable to save the self from the absence of satiety that characterizes the life of sin, estrangement and anxiety. It is the individual that must reform or be converted, becoming a Christian. It is the individual that must open the self to God, allowing the internal dispositions to be shaped. To become a Christian is to become a single individual, and no one can teach one how to become an individual. It is not something that can be communicated. It is something that can only be lived by one’s self. Christianity must therefore be lived in and through personal expressions, for, in typical Kierkegaardian fashion, human existence does not happen in the abstract. Humans live and think in the concrete situations of their lives, and not in the rational speculations and speculative systems, which, to follow the Kierkegaardian view of things, results in the vanishing of authentic individuality. But what is really wrong about generality that elicits such a consistent objection from Kierkegaard? It would appear that the answer resides in his conviction that the demands of New Testament Christianity are such that every individual as individual had to take a stand, for or against the spiritual élan that was being proposed by the New Testament. Every individual had to take up his or her daily crosses and follow Jesus [Lk 9:23]. Individuality, very much different from individualism, is therefore, central to becoming a Christian. And to the extent that generality or Hegelian collectivism shielded the individual from this responsibility of becoming a Christian by simply jumping on the bandwagon of the whole, Kierkegaard became convinced that the path towards a revived Christian spirituality and existence had to start with asserting the place of the singular individual over and even against the collective. And it is at this point that the question of the necessity and inescapability of the supernatural appears in bolder focus for Kierkegaard, in that, having ascertained the superficiality of Church, state and the communal that has swallowed up the individual, thoughts of any possible spiritual rebirth bring to sharper focus the dialectics of the relationship between the individual and God. The state of estrangement from God is the state of non-being, of the absence of fulfillment. With humble acceptance of God’s offer of forgiveness comes the rescue from the abyss of broken subjectivity. This rescue by God only takes place when the subjective, having come to terms with his or her internal discord, accepts to entrust the self into the hands of God, by a leap of faith. This leap implies that I give up on my ideals of what my life ought to be, embracing an unknown journey of faith, always conscious that God will be faithful to God’s providential promises to me as a believer, just as he was to Abraham as recounted in the book of Genesis. In this sense, a new life of freedom is borne. From my living relationality with God, I experience God’s forgiveness. From my living relationality with God, I experience an unknown freedom. And from forgiveness and freedom comes an unknown contentment, fulfillment and happiness. Summarily, for Kierkegaard, living relationality with God is realizable through the acceptance of my brokenness in the spirit of humility and faith. On the other hand, for Blondel, God’s forgiveness, faith, freedom and contentment, and living relationality with the Supernatural emerges in the unfolding of the phenomenon of human action. He captures the essence of his philosophical undertaking with the famous opening lines of L’Action (1893): “Yes or no, does human life make sense, and does man have a destiny?” (Maurice Blondel, L’Action (1893) Essay on a Critique of Life and a Science of Practice, trans. Oliva Blanchette (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007, vii). In other words, how do I come to act in my life as a conscientious human being, in terms of my own existence here and now? It is by way of responding to this question that Blondel settles for action as the defining reality that explains who the human being is, for to be human is to act, for the human condition is of the necessity to act. As a human being, I am an acting person, and I can only be known when I act. Accordingly, it is thanks to my actions that my humanity manifests itself and makes me accessible to others. And this is the justification for why action cannot be peripheral to philosophy, if philosophy has to study the question of what it means to be human, and the ultimate destiny of human existence. In effect, to study who the human being is, is to study human action, for one’s person becomes translucent thanks to the way one acts. For the French philosopher, human action is always seeking for fulfillment. Moving from concentric circles from family, immediate community and nation, action is understood not as a specific activity but as an unfolding reservoir of human willing, which continues to demand more. There is a wedge between the willing will and the willed will. A perfect fit never happens between the human’s ever continuous desire and human realized action. And antecedent to the attitude before the supernatural lies the whole dynamics of human choosing, upon which resides the resolution of the impasse between finitude and infinitude that is characteristic of human existence, as has emerged in the phenomenon of human action. This impasse between the willing and willed wills must be resolved, for two reasons: First, whether human life makes sense? Second, whether the human being has a destiny. These two questions make it impossible to offer a negative solution to the impasse that faces human willing and choosing. A burden is thus imposed on human beings, from which an escape is existentially impossible. Dilettantism is not an option. And if human willing is unable to resolve the impasse between an ever-yearning for more that never matches our concrete acts, then there appears in the phenomenon of human action, what Blondel calls, the one thing necessary. This one thing necessary is the supernatural. This is the Being that comes from the outside of human action to rescue the human being. At this point, philosophy has played its role in helping to navigate the uncertain seas of human action, showing the way to what is needed, if action is not to be aborted. But philosophy, though it has raised the problem, cannot offer the solution. The rescuing of human action and by extension, the human being from the existential impossibility of a crushing human-only self-understanding, is an offer that must now be articulated by religion. Herein appears a question for every human being, a question that emerges from the human quest for satiety: to be God with and through God, or to be God without and against God? Living relationality for Blondel suggests that the former is the most fitting response, for all attempts of the latter as shown in the evolution of the phenomenon of action have proven to be futile. Summarily, for both Kierkegaard and Blondel, living relationality with the supernatural is, in the final analysis, a rescuing of the human being from the temptation of human autonomy fashioned in a way that excludes God. Both Kierkegaard and Blondel clearly do not envisage that the question about the meaning of human life, fulfillment, contentment and destiny, can be resolved without or against God. And not only that, of crucial importance, is likewise the realization that every human being is invited to take a stand regarding the question of whether human life can find contentment away from the supernatural, hence, the necessity for the subjective in the philosophical landscape of religious existentialism. By demonstrating from the absence of satiety in human life (Kierkegaard) and from the impasse that emerges in the phenomenon of the unfolding of human action (Blondel) that the supernatural is necessary to the realization of human fulfillment, Kierkegaard and Blondel emerge as necessary interlocutors to contemporary men and women in their search or pursuit of happiness, hence placing us in their debt regarding the specific question of the human search for meaning and fulfillment.