Abstract

I argue that at least some of Kierkegaard’s authorship is designed to make a rational case for a religious and specifically Christian existence; he is not a total fideist. He argues that anything short of the existential stance of the “strong spiritual/moral evaluator” is despair. To overcome this we are compelled to reach for religious or transcendent sources of meaning; the authentic life is the life of constant ethical and spiritual evaluation grounded in the authority of God. But I ask how does Kierkegaard justify the stance of the strong evaluator in the first place? I argue that he crafts an existential and pragmatic case for it, but that this approach does not have the strength he suggests. Indeed. I argue that because this defense reflects his own Protestant Christian context, his case for Christian existence (as an existence of strong spiritual/moral evaluation) is seriously weakened.