                           20020109.00

       TFOTT and/or TFATT (The forest or (and) the trees)

     The account of the controversy over orthodoxy which erupted
in the Jewish community in Copenhagen in the first part of the
nineteenth century, is a poignant reminder that the zeal of
religious dogmatism (I use the term dogmatism as antonym to
"pluralism") is directed preeminently against members of ones own
religious community. The acerbic dispute among Copenhagen Jews
over doctrional issues has some similarity to Kierkegaard's own
attack upon the ecclesiastical establishment near the end of his
life. Kierkegaard's polemics against Bishop Martensen are an
exhibition of religious pluralism denied, if ever there was one.
The analogy between Kierkegaard's attacks on his Bishop and
Luther's attacks on his Pope is too obvious to be ignored, and
those participants in this list who take seriously the command:
"Follow me", will not take offence at being reminded that
Kierkegaard and Luther, each in his own way, were imitating the
Christ who drove the money changers from the temple. A religious
pluralist would have purchased a dove or two, if only for the
sake of religious harmony.

     In contemplating Kierkegaard's purported lack of religious
pluralism in the context of his terminal ecclesiastical dispute,
I remind myself that it is a mistake to attribute to Kierkegaard
consistency or constancy in his life, in his thought, and even,
ultimately, in the religious experience reflected in his
writings.  Thus it is relatively meaningless to say that
Kierkegaard was or was not a religious pluralist. Better to say
that in some contexts he appears as one, in other contexts he
appears as the other; and although he entitled his early book:
"Either-Or", to my mind his writings become much more
intelligible if one translates either-or into both-and.

     If one chooses to take seriously  Kierkegaard's assertion,
for example in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, that
subjectivity is the truth, one has no difficulty in demonstrating
that Kierkegaard is a religious pluralist. One need only review
the concluding sentences of Either-Or, in which Kierkegaard gives
a functional definition of subjectivity:

     Sp/org Dig, og hold ved at sp/orge, indtil Du finder Svaret;
thi man kan have erkjendt en Ting mange Gange, anerkjendt den,
man kan have villet en Ting mange Gange, fors/ogt den, og dog,
f/orst den dybe indre Bevaegelse, f/orst Hjertets ubeskrivelige
R/orelse, f/orst den forvisser Dig om, at hvad Du har erkjendt,
tilh/orer Dig, at ingen Magt kan tage det fra Dig; thi kun den
Sandhed, der opbygger, er Sandhed for Dig.

     Ask thyself, and continue to ask, until you find the answer;
for one may have recognized a thing many times, have acknowledged
it, one may have willed a thing many times, tried it, and yet,
first the deep inward emotion, first the heart's indescribable
feeling, first they will assure you that what you have
recognized, belongs to you, and no power can take it from you;
for only the truth, which edifies, is truth for you.

     How could I possibly challenge your religious persuasion if
the test of truth is your own deep inward emotion?  Nonetheless,
this definition of truth as the touchstone of religious
pluralism, guaranteeing as it does the privacy and integrity of
individual religious experience, poses problems for us whose
intellectual life is consummated in political correctness. While
it is eminently correct politically to countenance subjectivity
in the arena of religious autonomy, it is politically incorrect
to countenance subjectivity in science and in education for
science.  No kid who relies on that truth which reflects his/her
heart's indescribable feeling is going to graduate from high
school, not to speak of getting into law school or even into
college.  There is really nothing we can do about the
contradiction between the requirement of subjectivity on the one
hand and its proscription on the other; nothing, unless sending
e-mail messages to the Kierkegaard list is doing something.

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