Abstract

I argue here that Kierkegaardian faith is essentially, albeit paradoxically, worldly---that Kierkegaardian faith is a form of world-affirmation. A correlate of this claim is that faithlessness of any kind is ultimately a form of aesthetic resignation grounded in a deep seated world-alienation. The paradox of faith’s worldliness is found in the fact that, for Kierkegaard, faith both excludes and includes resignation in itself. I make sense of this paradox by appealing to Kierkegaard’s idea of “an annulled possibility,” and conclude that faith’s love of the world is an affirmation via a double negation.