The Presuppositions of Meaning-Bestowing (Sinngebung) in the Life-World: Existence Versus Theory

Abstract

Disregarding Pascal who confronts the logic of reason exhausting in a mathematical way all human rationality with the logic of the heart trying to give answers to the riddle of life, a little bit more must be said about Kierkegaard and Jaspers. Both thinkers emphasize the impossibility and absurdity of objectivizing subjectivity, which becomes existence by definition as an individual condition à fond, never becoming an object of theoretical and systematic knowledge. Kierkegaard as a dialectician argues — by means of serious irony as he changes his names, guises, and standpoints — that existence is an ever striving synthesis borne out of the finite and infinite, to become a triadic relation that relates to itself, wherein existence is practically realized transcending immanent reflection on the conscious self, not “being the relation, but the fact that the relation relates to itself,” viz.: (x R_r y) R_s (x R_r y) where x = reality, y = ideality, R_r = reflection, R_s = self (Verhältnis). On science he says: “Alles Verderben wird zuletzt von den Naturwissenschaften kommen.” (“Every corruption will come from science finally”)¹He wants to have absolute evidence which shoots out in religion only when we have been prepared by dialectic or by disruption of life. Science is unreflected and unspiritual, having no relevance for a religious life, and being without interesting tensions.