Is Existentialism Religious or Secular?
The two intellectual founders of existentialism are Nietzsche, who pronounced “the death of God,” and Kierkegaard, who advocated the “leap of faith.” From one, we get anti-religious existentialism; from the other we get religious existentialism. The former gives us the sentiment that because life is meaningless we must make up our own meaning. The latter gives us the sentiment that religious life is just as meaningless as secular life unless we bring the full intensity and passion of our lived experience into it. Both are anti-bourgeois, anti-decadent, anti-complacent—but one sees organized religion as a source of the problem, while the other sees it as a way out, provided we know how to decipher it.
Both Nietzsche and Kierkegaard sought to elevate the status of the subjective experience of the individual above the objective and dispassionate status of philosophical truth running from Plato to Hegel.
The anti-religious critique of Kierkegaard is that his existentialism is a bait-and-switch. Pull the carpet of meaning away only to offer God as the antidote—if the existentialist is free to choose his or her path, then God must be subordinated to that choice, not some guarantor waiting in the wings.
The religious critique of the anti-religious existentialists is twofold: 1) We can’t know with certainty that God doesn’t exist. Atheism remains just as metaphysical, just as dogmatic, just as dispassionate, as scholastic theism. The correct existential posture is not absolute knowledge that life is meaningless, but doubt about life’s meaning, the corollary of which is faith. 2) Religion was never supposed to be about conformism and complacency. That it has become degraded is not a reason to throw it out, but a reason to reform or revolutionize it, in keeping with the spirit of the Biblical prophets. Existentialism indeed puts the individual’s choice above all else, but this is perfectly compatible with a reality in which doing so is a form of piety rather than self-worship.
The debate between religious and anti-religious existentialists highlights a core ambiguity in the thought of many great thinkers, whose thought has inspired both forms of reception. Heidegger—for example—is an inspiration to many religious thinkers and many anti-religious (or post-religious) thinkers.
What do you make of the fact that existentialism can lead in both directions? Which direction do you prefer? Do you think the alternative is a “bad” reading of existentialism or simply your road not taken?
Meanwhile, enjoy this new poem of mine, in Tablet:
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