Quote:
Originally posted by orphen
as much as Kierkegaard points out the absurdity of religion, in creating authentic characters, he also points out the difficulty of being a "true" knight of faith. he admits that he himself could never achieve that. thus leads to the point of Halx's. I believe religion and faith are two very different things at times. In my opinion/perception of the authentic knight of faith, i do not believe most modern christians have the capacity or even understand the passion required to be a "authentic christian". To be a christian who follows rules and goes to church i believe can be defined as the "ethical" not "religious". to be the "religious" , as i interpretted from Kierkegaard, is a quite difficult path. You have to be like Abraham and kill your own son regardless of moral opinion. you defy moral, laws and ultimately logic for your god. this is demonstrated through Kierkegaard points out the path to being the knight of faith requires one to first become the knight of infinite resolution for one needs to give up all hope of ever recieveing the "award" in the secular sense. Just a parallelism i'd like to point out, Nietzsche in his "the will to power" also points out the important stages one must go through to become a ubermanchen much like Kierkegaard's. One might point out that Nietzche is an athiest existantialist while Kierkegaard counts as a theologian. but ultimately, i believe the two resonate in their struggle against Nihilism. going through the stage of the donkey, to the lion, to the baby much like from the asthic, ethical, to the religious. This struggle is with oneself and ultimately the hardest struggle an intellectual will face.  personally, i was quite a platonist for the longest time. i loved literature like Echer Godel and Bach. things that dealt with order. But my humantities teacher just HAD to shut me down with existantialism..  now i have to struggle everyday in my decision to not fall into a nihilistic cycle *sigh.. that's alot of trouble* . In conclusion my head hurts
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Of course faith and religion are different. The truth of the matter is that religion shapes faith (but the converse that faith shapes religion is not true). Having read Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, I know what you're saying, but I think that you're missing a few things. The idea of the teleological suspension of the ethical demonstrated in Abraham is merely the absolute demonstration of absurd faith. These parabols and metaphors serve as literary devices more than a guidebook - this is very important in understanding what they mean for humanity and individuals. He is suggesting an ultimate relinquishment of his intellectual integrity to an external force that he doesn't have intellectual access to. Regardless of the extreme case of Abraham, that is a lot to ask even in the most miniature of circumstances.
The struggle with nihilism is present in nearly all literature, going back to Plato's Cave and Beowulf. There has always been a trouble of finding meaning in life, as we are born "without essense" (using the term that Sartre uses) and then meaning construction happens as we age.
You mention that you're young, and that you have to struggle not to fall into a nihilistic cycle. I think that is a crucial experience that thinking, feeling humans should go through at some point in their life. There comes a point when cutting a swath through the rhetoric of all philosophy, and everything else that is mediated to us, needs to be torn down from metaphors into their essential qualities as a necessary step into breaking out of the cycle.
Ironically, the trouble with a systems approach to international issues, national issues, and at times state issues, is that they abstract the issues faced by individuals into generalities. The problem with philosophies based on these abstract concepts that develop systems of interpretation is nearly the same. Both can be helpful in understanding a relationship between the self and something larger - society or existence - but to solidify that understanding, a degree of "de-abstraction" needs to take place. It is no accident that Nietzsche could not find enough to write about how he hated Christianity, but had many good things to say about Buddhism. He understood that for psychological reasons and reasons of intellectual consistency, we need to simplify our lives so as not to get lost in the abstraction of life.
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note - This is a much more difficult challenge now in the post-modern era because of the rise of simulacra. We are constantly bombarded with images that do not reflect the real nature of existence, and yet they shape existence. The distance between reality and reality is growing - the paradox of mediated existence: hyperreality)
So, the answer to the failures of a systems approach to politics is localization, the same answer applies to philosophical dilemmas generated within the self. Camus does this by asking the question of suicide (he takes the problem directly to the self). If he can find a reason not to kill himself, then he knows that his life has value. Understanding suicide as an attempted escape from the problem of absurdity, he saw it as an inauthentic escape. Thus, you aren't truly escaping. He finds that he is able to live in the face of absurdity through his defiance and rebellion towards absurdity. I'd suggest reading his "Myth of Sisyphus" for a further understanding of what I mean.
The desire to fall into systems of order falls into the same trap regardless of the system choson. External systems of meaning, even when internalized, are flawed due to their external nature. You have to simply start with the self, and all of your understandings about the inherent lack of meaning in everything can be negated by your defiance towards the situation. This may not be ideal, romantic, sexy, and it may be very problematic... but I have yet to see a more authentic way of approaching existence. As time passes it gets easier to live in spite of everything as you take charge and
create more for yourself from existence, and move away from allowing externalities create your life for you.
I guess that is long, and possibly confusing, but I think it is helpful in at least understanding my perspective and it may be helpful to others who read this.