 Yes, it's my great pleasure and privilege to introduce the keynote lecturers today on our conference on Epistemic Virtues and the Practice of Dialogue. And the first keynote lecturer is Minachem Fisch. He is the Joseph and Simezu professor of history and philosophy of science emeritus, the director of the Center for Religious and Interreligious Studies at Tel Aviv University and senior fellow at the Goethe University, Frankfurt's Foschungskollegum Meinwissenschaften in Bad Hamburg. His research focuses on rationality and agency, the theology of the Talmudic literature, the philosophy of Talmudic legal reasoning, and the limits of normative self-criticism. Among his many publications, the following four are particularly relevant for our seminar today. The view from within normativity and the limits of self-criticism, covenant of confrontation, a study of non-submissive religiosity in rabbinic literature, and dialogues of reason, science, politics, religion. These are the Dagmar Vespa lectures that will appear very soon, hopefully, and the enemy within political Zionism and its faithful adversaries in Yusupu. The title of his lecture today is the Epistemic and Other Virtues of Non-Socratic Dialogue. And I will immediately introduce the second speaker because we will have a dialogue between the speakers first. And after their internal dialogue, we will open up the floor for a discussion with everyone here in the auditorium at Ohus University and also the audience on Zoom. Our second keynote speaker today is Heiko Schultz. He is a professor in the department of Protestant theology at the Goethe University Frankfurt in theology, and his research focuses on problems in philosophy of religion and theology, and he has a special focus on Kierkegaard studies. Among his many publications that we could mention here, let me just mention Theoretis Glautens, which appeared in 2001, but is still a classic in the field. Religion and irrationality, historical systematic perspectives, and the paper we discussed this morning, changing one's mind, reconsidering fish's idea of framework transitions in a poorly Kierkegaard fashion. The title of his lecture today is Transition, Emotion and Reason, Kierkegaard on the rationality of becoming a Christian. Very much looking forward to your lectures, Menachem and Heiko, and now I mute myself and the floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you very much, Claudia. Okay, so in there, in their now classic Leviathan and the Apple, Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life, Simon Schaffer and Steve Shepin, and you can see that in the picture, receiving the Erasmus Award, I think, compare and contrast two very different dialogical, dialogue forms employed respectively by their two protagonists, the aging Thomas Hobbes and the young Robert Boyle. They do so as a way of contrasting the the Hobbes' authoritarian dogmatic rationalism with Boyle's emerging far more democratic empiricist experimentalism. The book aims at setting their keen methodological dispute regarding the proper scientific method in the broader context of their profound political disagreements, pitting the birth of the new experimentalism inspired by Bacon in the hands of parliamentarianist Boyle against the staunch and resolute opposition of Hobbes' avid monotic Aristotelianism. While Boyle in his skeptical chemistry, for instance, advocated a fictional conversation, and I quote Schaffer and Shepin in the form, not of a Socratic dialogue, but of a conversation as Schaffer and Shepin nicely put it, Hobbes' three scientific dialogues, on the other hand, like those of Galileo before him, stuck strictly to the Socratic format. In Hobbes' dialogue, truth does not emerge through the exchange between Hobbes and his interlocutors because it is already fully contained in Hobbes' own philosophy. Knowledge is portrayed in these dialogues as flowing from Hobbes to whoever he is talking to, who mainly play the role of passive and humbled recipient. The political contrast between the Leviathan's absolute decree in all matters political and theological, and the type of consensus aimed for in parliamentary debate, reproduces itself beautifully in the two men's decidedly different conceptions of scientific exchange. But the difference between the two dialogue forms runs far deeper than Schaffer and Shepin make out with regard to Hobbes and Boyle. The characterization of Hobbes' employment of the Socratic form of dialogue is as true of Hobbes as it is of the Platonic origin. In the Western tradition, stretching from Plato to Popper and beyond, Socratic dialogue is upheld as the paradigm of open and fruitful critique. It is worryingly one side. Socrates, like all his later stand-ins, challenges and questions, prompts, interrogates, and ridicules all of these cautious interlocutors to change their mind and embrace the one true position which of course is the one that he represents. Here and there they answer back, countering his questions with their own, but never to any real effect. He refutes and dismisses their objections in good despotatio fashion. In Socratic dialogue, the Socrates figure benefits nothing from the exchange. He learns nothing new, but of course never changes his mind. Socrates and his saurogates remain wholly uninterested and indifferent to their interlocutus position to which they attach no value. They do not deliberate nor register any sound, sign of an unfamed self-doubt or self-critique. In the paper we discussed yesterday, Spivak characterizes such a dialogue in which an other is seemingly recognized only to be obliterated, epistemic violence. Socratic dialogue is little different. Like Plato's own philosophy, it is a clever form of covenant and caste in dialogical God. Shaffer and Shaping rightly attribute such positions to homes, but seriously downplay the non-socratic alternative by what they rightly attribute to Boyle. Let me explain. In the non-socratic form of dialogue they ascribe to Boyle, the object of the exchange is to reach an agreement to forge a polite consensus that all parties of the conversation can live with. It is far less a critical engagement than an exchange of views that of themselves carry little individual weight, but if somehow consolidated will enjoy the authority of group on board. It is a discursive exercise in which no one necessarily learns anything new except then to live with one another. The agreement reached is not deemed to be closer to the truth by those who forge it, but only a reasonable compromise they can individually support. It is a form of non-socratic dialogue that in less experiential contexts might seem to steer close to what Habermas calls communicative rationality in which some personal conviction to one's labours is forsaken for the sake of group. I would like to devote the rest of my talk today to a third dialogue form just as non-socratic as the one shape and attribute to Boyle, but which quite unlike it is wholly unconcerned with settling the issue in dispute, whether by towing a more authoritative line or by hammering out an agreement or compromise. I find it prima facie preferable to its two alternatives because of how it not only acknowledges and respects profound differences of opinion, but as I shall argue sees them not as obstacles to be overcome, but as a rare, valuable and virtuous epistemic blessing. Which is not to say of course that at times we engage in dialogue with a view to reaching an agreement or compromise as in governing bodies and in the courts and in different circumstances to be over as when consulting experts, but the scope of reasoned human discourse extends far beyond expert consultations and decision-making bodies on which shaper and shaping focus. Partaking in what Wilfred Stollers and Robert Brandon dub the game of giving and asking for reasons, which without associating their names was mentioned in one of the talks yesterday. For instance, for which they consider to be the very epitome of rational exchange, such an exchange falls under neither category. We engage in the game of reasons curious of other people's reasons for acting and for holding certain beliefs and of what they make of ours. Yes, I remember now Luca mentioned this kind of exchange, viewing it as a root for tolerance, if I remember correctly. I'm going to go beyond that. We explore and acquaint ourselves with their way of thinking and make them privy to ours with a view not to be taught the one truth, nor to agree. I'm referring in general to engaging in dialogue with others with a view to mutually improving one's understanding and further enriching and developing one's position, which is the stat beyond Luca I go, not merely to paint ourselves with other people's positions and then tolerate them, but to enjoy the challenge of their positions to ours. I say Robert Boyle's blend of Francis Bacon's essentially Protestant empiricism, which envisaged open mind, meaning empty-minded, uncredited, passive observers, attempting to agree on what we're seeing. Science since becoming increasingly aware of the deep-seated theory ladenness of all scientific observing and experimentation, inspired by philosophers of science such as Carl Hopper. Scientists have now, have by now, largely accepted and internalized the idea that in all its disciplines and sub-disciplines, scientific research advances first and foremost, not by accumulating data, but by means of intense cycles of both conjecture and imaginative refutation, that owe their validity and fruitfulness to the critical exchange between practitioners. However, and many of you will probably be surprised by my next claim, despite modern science's enormous lesson growth and the enormous value it places on promoting and rewarding for critical engagement, in this regard, it has not set a very good example. To see this, we need to take a step back and return for a moment to basics. Hopper argued powerfully that while general scientific hypotheses can never be confirmed and certainly never proved their experience, they can nonetheless be effectively tested and resolutely refuted, and in so claiming he elevated criticism to the status of the master norm of scientific rationality and the key cycles of scientific problem-seeking and problem-solving to that of the very key to scientific advancement. He represents such cycles several times in his work by means of the following schema, P1 to T2 to EE and then to P2, where P1 stands for the problem found to plague the current theory T1, TT to the stage in which tentative theories are proposed and as replacements for T1 on the condition that they prove as successful wherever T1 succeeded and fair better where it failed. EE is the stage in which errors are eliminated by subjecting each of the TT most rigorous testing possible and P2 is the problem found eventually to plague the new theory chosen T2 and so forth. However, despite the pride of place that Hopper granted to the exposure and creative solving of scientific problems and their critique, he has in his schools philosophical treatment of the key concepts of his own philosophy. Criticism and problem leave very much to be desired and as a result the indispensable role of non-socratic dialogue in seeing through the full critical process both within and outside the sciences as we should see is wholly overlooked. To appreciate the profound difficulty involved in doing proper justice to Popper's identification of rationality and criticism, the role of non-socratic dialogue in resolving it, we need to briefly add his great nemesis Thomas Kuhn was alluded to yesterday into the names. In particular, two of Kuhn's famous account of scientific revolution central assumptions both of which Popper and his school insistently dismiss. The first which harks back to Kant's first critique is that all reasons scientific research necessarily requires a normative framework of scientific norms and standards to be firmly in place with reference to which practitioners condemn a theory or procedure sufficiently wanting or lacking to merit replacement. Kant referred to it as the sciences body of synthetic a priori truths which were mentioned yesterday in passing and Kuhn as its paradigm for some reason. The very aim of scientific training is for novices not merely to appoint themselves with major portions of the sciences body of knowledge but and this harks back to Lukas's main point to internalize the discipline's normative framework and to render its nature. This is what becoming a scientist means in this regard science is paradigmatic of all rational human undertakings. To act rationally is to take persistent critical stock of one's world by means of the normative commitments to which one holds it accountable and intervene whenever they are sufficiently breached. Rationality is hence framework dependent in the strong sense of the word. In science that framework comes from scientific training in religion from being brought up religiously and so on and so forth and this is what Heiko meant by the revelatory aspect of one's deepest commitment. But if Kuhn has taught us anything it is that while sciences indeed advance much of the time by rigorously improving their scientific norms and standards to test, improve and replace their theories and procedures such periods of what he famously called normal science i.e norm-governed science if you wish are in every discipline punctuated from time to time by shorter more turbulent periods of normative evil during which their very normative frameworks are substantially modified or replaced. Kuhn called such normative transitions paradigm shifts such as in the transition from the world of Aristotelian to that of Newtonian dynamics from that of Newtonian dynamics to that of general relativity, let alone quantum mechanics that was mentioned yesterday from emission, from emission to undulatory theories of life from deeming organic speciation of the chain of taxonomical grid to viewing it as the emergent dynamic upshot of natural selection and so on and so forth. However to question and amend theories and procedures in the light of the discipline's reigning normative framework is a matter categorically different from questioning and amending the framework itself for the simple reason that it is impossible for any individual or like-minded community to judge their own norms and standards of scientific practice for priority to be sufficiently problematic to merit replacement for it is by means of very normative standards that they level such judgments. The problem of course is quite general and by no means limited to scientific framework transitions although it is particular pressing with respect to science. Rationality demands that we not only live up to the norms we are committed to but that we live up that we live by norms that merit living up to but to what can one hold our very norms normatively accountable other than by to troubleshoot them for coherence and consistency which fail to track scientific aptness. How can the normative framework impeach itself? But the idea that our deepest commitments and convictions are immune to normative self-critique and therefore beyond our rational reach would seem to absurdly rule out any prospect of genuinely rational self emancipation and yet no philosopher of note has made a convincing attempt to meet the challenge. Kuhn seems to have despaired of it from the start by famously famously likening paradigm shifts to irrational gestalt switches which was mentioned yesterday. The same goes for Kahnak who viewed frameworks as conventions and for Wittgenstein and Rothi who denied the very possibility of reasoning across significantly different framework boundaries. Michael Friedman made a lame professional special case for science which he appears to have later renounced. Appealing to Otto Neuratz, a famous image of a ship overhauled, Charles Taylor, John McDowell, Rahelier joined Alistair McIntyre in arguing that normative frameworks can be thoroughly transformed by means of a form of internal integrating self-critique cobbled to an appeal to the industry. None of the four discusses scientific revolutions all. Within her alienation book, Jäger at least does speak of the need to explain how self-criticism can give rise to deeply transformative emancipatory rethink of core commitments. Nonetheless, it is my firm contention that such an approach is seriously wrong-handed that framework transitions of such magnitude cannot be achieved by internal deliberation. There is a limit to how far we can get by talking to ourselves. The question of how the normative constraints on rationality can be rationally breached despite our inability in principle to normatively question the norms that we truly hold to or ever be convinced to do so by others has for the very same reasons that motivate Jäger to find my own work of the last two decades and my firm resolve to reject her conclusions. The element glaringly missing from all the accounts I have alluded to, as well as from those of the many, such as Wittgenstein, Habermas and Branden, is that of true dialogue, by which I mean dialogue with people and cultures with whom we truly disagree. In one exceedingly brief consumer's passage in uncertainty, Wittgenstein raises the question of the possible value of speaking across the lines dividing significantly different forms of life only to dismiss it as pointless. Waltz's image of effective connected social criticism, which I mentioned before, implies a more hopeful approach in envisaging a faithful member of the community who after returning home from years abroad is able to offer a radically different interpretation of his own. But how exactly are such connected yet now differently committed critics own convictions transform the broad as the question Waltz never raises and is inevitably and inevitably nowhere answers. Committed individuals and like-minded communities rarely live in total seclusion, speaking only to themselves, yet it is widely believed that only the like-minded are sufficiently informed to offer one effective criticism. Science is paradigmatic in this regard. In science peer review, it's synonymous for internal critique. The sciences never seek serious critical engagement except from within. Bonafide like-minded fellow practitioners presenting one words to the uninformed requires doming it down to the point of rendering their critical input scientifically worthless or so the myth goes. As a result, because internal criticism cannot but appeal to the shared paradigm, internal criticism, keen as it may be, can only further strengthen it but never call it into question. Hence the line, if normative criticism from within can only strengthen the reigning framework and criticism level that it from without can never convince those as it governs, how can framework replacement ever be considered rational, i.e. undertaken for a reason and yet to think that it cannot is inconceivable. The way out of the bind, excuse me, the way out of the bind I have argued for, strange as it might sound, is that external criticism need not convince in order to set in motion a genuinely rational process of norm review and replacement. This is most apparent in science but it applies across the board. First, in one important respect when engaging interlocutors outside one's field of expertise, one is often obliged to say more rather than less as the myth would have it. For one thing practitioners abroad conversing with people outside the confines of their home community are required to explicate and explain and discuss such basic assumptions of the normative framework constitutive of their work that back home are so taken for granted as to go without saying. In this regard, when conversing with practitioners from other disciplines committed to different frameworks, potential students, petitioning funding agencies, negotiating with university management or giving expert testimony, one is obliged to articulate and exemplify the field's basic assumptions rather than to dumb them down. And as we can all attest in such situations, our own words occasionally can at times suddenly ring hollow in our own ears even to the point of incredulity. More importantly, it is in such settings discussing the basics of one field away from that one is most liable to face, not only requests for clarification but friendly criticism. It is impossible for an unpropelled body to move a constant philosophy of its own accord a committed Aristotelian might challenge a follower of Galileo. Complimentarity may be a fancy term, but how can you seriously envisage anything to be truly both a particle and wave was a question I assume that your own very nearest board mentioned yesterday would have been forced to contend frequently. This is the statue I photographed in town the day before yesterday. As noted, such criticism can never convince but to see how it can nonetheless sometimes have a destabilizing or momentarily ambivalent effect, we need to take a closer look at the dialogical dynamics of how criticism is meant to work and at how knowledge is framed. Criticism in general is a speech act that aims at proving to those criticized that something for which they are responsible is sufficiently amiss to require their attention. Criticism's ultimate aim is therefore for those criticized to endorse it as self-criticism. In this regard, self-criticism then becomes not a tiny subset of critical discourse, but goes to the heart of criticism's very best. Critics must therefore be convinced and must therefore frame their arguments on the basis of premises they believe those they criticize hold true. And the same applies to normative criticism. The problem is that in the case of normative criticism, as we have seen, there is never available a set of premises a person is liable to consider truly. That can be shown to entail for her a denunciation of her norms. What needs to be realized is the prudent normative critics know this, but they also know that for their criticism to register and to be taken rationally to them, it must be leveled as far as possible on the basis of premises those they criticize can recognize as they are. And therefore what we normally do in criticizing other people for the norms they hold and this is the crucial point is to frame our arguments sometimes somewhat untruthfully. Arguing from an imaginary perspective close to that of those we criticize but sufficiently different from it to be able to make our point. Arguing from the left critics will surreptitiously premise or attribute certain liberal and socialist norms to those criticize to make that case while those arguing from the right will tend to smuggle in just enough conservative value to make their arguments stick. However, while such untruthfulness is wholly characteristic of prudent normative criticism, it is usually less contrived and deliberate as I make it out to be. Most often the discrepancies between the positions we attribute to the people we criticize and though they actually hold, owe to our inability to imagine how different they may think. Think of the constraints Goddama places on the sort of empathetic, diachronic understanding that Collingwood urges historians to adopt towards the people they study. The real achievement of effective normative criticism can be thought of a kind of synchronic fusion of horizons in attempting to reason with somebody else. Not in order to understand that person's world as Collingwood and Goddama would have it, but in order to stand back from it and call it effectively into question. So intentionally or not, the upshot is much the same. When criticizing other people's norms, our arguments inevitably premise a large true betrayal of their normative commitments that diverges from their own self-image only with respect to the norms you are changing. Since leveled against their norms, our arguments will be dispersed though not because they deem those arguments premises to be false or their logic to be invalid, but because its conclusions are deemed by preposterous. And because the arguments premises are not refuted, their portrayal of its addresses normative identity may linger on and register uncoupled to the argument itself. The subtle but crucial difference then between being subjected to ordinary and being subjected to normative criticism is that because the normative profile we are presented with in the latter case though incongruous with our own is not one we will have actively refuted. And so for a brief moment at least, we may find ourselves entertaining both incompatible portrayals of unnormative identity side by side. And since the points of disagreement between two pictures will pertain to the very norms being criticized, their incongruity just as in the case of a disturbing playback device may well have the effect of destabilizing those of our commitments and rendering us ambivalent toward them. And the norms to which we become ambivalent lose their moral status and can and will be subjected as a matter of course to the normative critical scrutiny of our remaining commitments. In this way, I submit exposure to deep reaching and trusted knowledge of criticism leveled at us from without is capable of creating in a leeway necessary for truly transformative normative self criticism, but the level of inner discordance and self alienation it demands requires a potentially ambivalent echo chamber of trusted external normative criticism that far transcends the possible boundaries of even the keenest self reflection. The metaphor of a playback device is important listening to a recording of our voice or watching ourselves on close circuit TV. We are briefly given the opportunity to observe ourselves from a vantage point that is otherwise unavailable to us. The difference between the recording and our self image as many of us can be significant and highly disturbing. More importantly, such devices offer an invaluable self critical asset exposing ourselves to the normative peak of others, I believe can have a comparable effect. It is thus I submit that full fledged, fully fledged normative reflective self criticism can become a real possibility, but only in response to earnest and trusted normative criticism leveled at us by people committed differently. Only thus can a person become sufficiently ambivalent to question the norms contested by his critics. Our critics logic may be powerless to convince, but their implied normative profiling can have a profoundly ambivalent effect capable of rendering us at times both able and willing to reconsider the norms they question. To realize that we are only able to realize the full potential of our rationality by engaging people and cultures committed differently from ourselves in keen critical, non-sophatic dialogue is to realize why playing the game of giving and asking for reasons should indeed be considered the epitome of human rationality, a game in which each party offers the other the one crucial component without which neither side can ever be considered fully rational, namely the challenge of a genuinely different opinion, what greater epistemic value can true dialogue have. In view of the lecture you read in preparation for this talk, there are two further points you might want to take up in discussion, discussion A, that the only intellectual tradition of which I am aware that explicitly endorses basic premises and epistemic virtue of such a non-socratic dialogue as its master formative norm is the rabbinic literature of late antiquity. Science on the other hand still conduct itself under the conceit that the only effective form of criticism is internal criticism, the term of certainly, and B, that I believe is a proper appreciation of the epistemic virtues of non-sophatic dialogue can serve a crucial political purpose in providing an invaluable resource to pluralism, mainly for valuing cultural, religious, and ethic diversity, for seeing otherness not merely as something to be liberally tolerated, Luca, but as a true blessing, the problem of reintroducing fraternity back into the mix alongside the balancing act of equality and liberty that we call justice. The problem of forging a culturally and ethnically diverse body politic into a solid national collective is one with which most post-Ralsian political philosophy is now grappling, properly appreciating the epistemic virtues of non-sophatic dialogue across cultural and ethnic boundaries enables transforming the non-liberal toleration into a fully fledged pluralism, but that would be a topic for another day. Thank you ever so much. Thank you so much, Minachem, and now we will listen to Haiko's lecture before we will have a dialogue between the two lecturers. Yeah, thanks again for having me. Thanks for giving me the opportunity of a response. It's not a response, actually. I was afraid since I had to change the title a bit. This was the original title as announced. This is the actual title, the truly Christian of the truth of Christianity, Kierkegaard on the possibility and rationality of faith. I was afraid that it wouldn't have anything to do with what Minachem just said, but the two titles, the two key words appearing here namely the possibility and rationality of faith is just like or in some respect corresponds to what Minachem said about the possibility and the rationality of a framework transition. So, but it's about Kierkegaard, what I'm talking about primarily at least, and it's a Kierkegaard critique also to a certain extent. The manuscript is a bit long, so I skipped over a couple of paragraphs. The first one being a case in point. So, my paper consists of four parts. Introduction B, the truly Kierkegaardian part one and the possibility of becoming a Christian. Part C, the truly Kierkegaardian part two on the rationality of becoming a Christian. And part D is the truly Kierkegaardian true and or truly Christian, a partly critical assessment. What I start with is something a couple of methodological remarks about theology as opposed to philosophy of religion. I'm teaching both philosophy of religion and theology at Frankfurt University and I'm often asked now, what's the relation between those two? My standard answer is this one and I'm in the introduction right now. My standard answer is this one. I try to make a case for the thesis that there's a pyramidal relation between church history and systematic theology and philosophy of religion. My question, my primary question here also is systematic theology. And I think the one and only question that a theologian at any rate, a Christian theologian has to answer is the question, what is the truly Christian? What is the truly Christian? So in a sense it's a kind of a process of self understanding. We want to know, we do not want to know whether Christianity is true and or rational. We simply want to know what is the truly Christian? That is a theological question. The other question as to whether Christianity is true, presupposes an answer to the first question, but it's another question and it's another answer then. It's philosophy of religion, at least to my understanding. Now since as a systematic theologian, I want to answer the question, what is the truly Christian? I have to know certain things about claims or I have to know the claims to true Christianity or to the truly Christian. In other words, I have to be a church historian to a certain extent. Parameter, the reason is easy, hopefully easy to see. Philosophy of religion makes the most presuppositions. It's not the most important discipline here, but it makes more premises and more presuppositions than systematic theology. In order to be a successful philosopher of religion, I need to know something about systematic theology or about studies of religion. That would be another version because in my understanding, studies of religion also has a systematic and a historical aspect. Here I just stick to the theological side. So philosophy of religion presupposes systematic theology and systematic theology presupposes a historical discipline. That's the main point of the first paragraph of the introduction and I need this distinction between a theological and a philosophical approach later and that's the reason why I bring it up here. So we could say from two or three basic claims, systematic theology presupposes and entails church history, but not vice versa. Philosophy of religion presupposes and entails systematic theology, but not vice versa from which follows philosophy of religion presupposes both systematic theology and Christianity, their church history. Sorry. Now I must confess that I ruthlessly stole the distinction just mentioned from Kierkegaard. So he makes that distinction himself. My only excuse is that I'm in good company here since the letter himself seems to have snatched it away from yet another great Dain, Gontwe, who in 1826 published a treatise entitled Om den Sonne Christendom or Christendom in Santa. In any case, Kierkegaard's pseudonymous spokesman Klimakus declares the question of what Christianity is must not be confused with the question about the truth of Christianity. Ironically enough, although I borrowed the distinction from Kierkegaard, I cannot help but turn it against him in the following at least to the to some extent and at the very end of my paper. My idea is to utilize the distinction as a tool for an interpretation of Kierkegaard himself. So he brings it up. I use it in order to interpret him. And this is roughly 10th amount to facing two basic requirements, one hermeneutical and one epistemic. According to the former, I will have to account for the truly Kierkegaardian. According to the letter, I will have to assess Kierkegaard's truth and or rationality. Moreover, since I make this double move from a philosophical and a theological vantage point, I will first, namely as a theologian, treat him just like any other candidate from church history who claimed to teach and to express something truly Christian, namely by asking, is Kierkegaard's claim to Christian authenticity justified, theologically speaking? The second philosophical question is logically independent of the first. In other words, even if I eventually had to answer the letter negatively, that is, his ideas do not express something truly Christian. It might still be the case that the very same ideas can pass for true or rational, though not as genuinely Christian, of course. Now the topic that we are dealing with in the present context is Kierkegaard's views on the possibility and rationality of becoming a Christian. Naturally enough, the hermeneutical task will then consist in doing interpretive justice to both views. A task once accomplished will be followed and supplemented by a double, namely philosophical and theological check. And here it is perhaps not superfluous to call attention to the fact that both aspects can and must be tackled from both perspectives. As a theologian I'm capable of raising and answering each of the two principal and thematically pertinent questions. First, how is it possible to become a Christian? And secondly, can it be rational to become a Christian and if so, how and under which conditions? Accordingly, I'm also capable of making analogous judgments about Kierkegaard's views on the matters at hand, correctly implying, of course, that he actually expressed an opinion in these matters. Things are a bit different when it comes to tackling the epistemical issue. For on the one hand, I'm obliged here and thus also entitled to simply rely upon the previous theological diagnosis that was my thesis, philosophy of religion depends on theology. Yet at the same time, I must keep in mind that my philosophical duties are logically independent of those theological findings. But even if it turned out, as I said, that Kierkegaard's views are theologically inadequate or irrelevant, they might still be true or rational and vice versa. These views might be found wanting philosophically, yet still remain theologically intact and authoritative. That being said, it is time now to state unequivocally what I actually think in regard to the questions just raised. First, Kierkegaard and his pseudonymous authors provide a theologically adequate analysis of the possibility and genesis of Christian faith, provided we judge this account from a genuinely Protestant perspective. They also assess the rationality of faith. Again, they also correctly assess the rationality of faith again, if and as long as we mean by correctly, theologically adequate. Number three, from a philosophical, in particular epistemical vantage point, his account is found wanting, though namely as far as the rationality of faith or belief is concerned. And four, although Kierkegaard considers himself a religious author and not a theologian, he and his pseudonyms frequently express ideas which at least allude to theological doctrines and as such, they sometimes facilitate a better grasp of the truly Christian. And moreover, number five, although he hardly ever uses the term philosophy of religion, much less in application to his own thought, the term can legitimately be used for categorizing what he and his pseudonyms actually do, at least occasionally. So number paragraph two, the truly Kierkegaardian part one on the possibility of becoming a Christian. We seek to understand the principle and gather some rudiments of Kierkegaard's theology also or more specifically his views about how a Christian theologian should talk about how to become a Christian. For indeed, in my opinion, these two issues are closely related in Kierkegaard. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, the former can be reduced to the letter. In a certain sense, Christian dogmatics does not and cannot, in his opinion, simply teach what to believe. So in my opinion, these two issues, namely Kierkegaard's theology and how to become a Christian are closely interrelated. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, the former can be reduced to the letter. In a certain sense, Christian dogmatics does not and cannot, in his opinion, simply teach what to believe, the dogma of Fidesz Que, as it was traditionally called, but rather how to believe or how to come to believe. In other words, how to become a Christian. Of course, in order to be able to do so, a set of confessional propositions handed down from generation to generation is required. Propositions purportedly expressing the truly Christian. But this set is critically to be mustered and then spelled out in and as a strict correlation between subjectivity and objectivity. Fidesz Que and Fidesz Que. Such a correlation can be established and also preserved by faith alone, and is therefore far from being a privilege of a professional theologian, as opposed to Christian lay persons. Rather, it is to be considered an undeligatable task for every single individual who seeks to appropriate those propositions for the purpose of becoming a Christian. According to Kierkegaard, the correlation in question resembles and in fact repeats the natural or psychophysical relationship between hunger and nourishment on a spiritual level, namely by pairing sin consciousness and atonement. Thus Kierkegaard writes in an important journal entry from 1846, and I quote him, what Luther says is excellent, the one thing needful and the one explanation that the whole of that doctrine on the atonement and basically the entirety of Christianity may be traced back to the struggle of an anguished conscience. The anguished conscience understands Christianity, understands the truly Christian. In a manner vaguely reminiscent of Schleyermacher's Glaubenslehre, Kierkegaard seems to argue as follows, all and yet also only those propositions with call and actually allow for being appropriated by its recipient as an effective weapon in his or her own struggle of an anguished conscience belong in a Christian dogmatics. And here the understanding as an integral element of that struggle takes on a special meaning, as Kierkegaard explains in the remaining part of the entry. An animal understands when you place a stone and a loaf of bread before it and the animal is hungry. The animal understands that one of them is to be eaten and the other is not. Thus does the anguished conscience understand Christianity for of course an atonement is only necessary in the sense of an anguished conscience. If it were within a person's power to live without needing to eat, how could he understand the necessity of eating, something the hungry person understands so easily and so it is spiritually. It is obvious here that for Kierkegaard the understanding of an animal which driven by hunger detects something edible is treated as a natural and in fact imperfect as will turn out shortly analogy to a spiritual understanding of a human being who by virtue of sin consciousness manages to locate something spiritually nourishing that is atonement and to distinguish it from the non-edible that is the heterodoxical theologically speaking. Accordingly the letter the heterodoxical might be explained somewhat metaphorically as a theological doctrine lacking in any nutritional value christianly speaking. It is well known yet still worth mentioning in this context that a living being will not only die of starvation if it is craving for food and cannot find any but also if food is available yet it does not or cannot feel any hunger. It is precisely this letter condition which can be called a spiritual or physical disease a disease which from Kierkegaard's perspective functions as the actual cause for the dogmatical heterodoxy among his contemporaries. He beautifully expands upon the nutritional metaphor in another journal entry which he invokes a way he invokes the linguistic proximity between the danish equivalents for nourishment and nearness. Ah it's such a beautiful thing in our language that nourishment narrowing is related to being near now the greater the need the nearer the nourishment the nourishment is in the need and if it isn't actually the need itself it is what it is nearest to. If a girl another analogy here if a girl really is in love then seeing him that is her beloved again is near at hand, near for storm. If she's not completely in love then she might not see him again for a long time. Kierkegaard's formulation of the girl in love analogy in his final sentence is telling and takes us one step further. We would have expected something like this if and as long as the girl does not expect the impending return of her beloved she's not really in love with him. By switching the conclusion Kierkegaard gives his reading an additional namely ontological twist. What he at least implicitly seems to suggest is this due to her failure lovingly to expect the return of her lover the girl actually prevents the letter from returning or more precisely she prevents him from returning as the beloved. Even if he actually comes back to her and wants to come back to her as her lover he will forever be hindered from being recognized and welcomed as such due to the girl's failure to lovingly having expected him. Furthermore in the very same journal entry Kierkegaard provides an illuminating example of how this view spelled out positively instead of negatively like in the girl's case might lead to surprising and both exegetically and theologically challenging consequences. My response to the problem that Christ's second coming is prophecy that's Parousie Verzögerung in German yeah he doesn't come back. Christ's second coming is prophesied as impending, nair for storm and yet still hasn't happened is to draw attention to the fact that it is a subjectively true utterance and supractic sound replete. That is it is so agonizing to be a true Christian that it couldn't be entered if one didn't expect Christ's second coming to happen at any time now. Agony and suffering engender a necessary illusion and any illusion I mean that's a strong claim here and necessary illusion it's necessary. One can therefore say the obverse that anyone who doesn't talk like this but who expects Christ's second coming sometime in the future is no true Christian. What we have here is a perfect and yet provocative example of what Wurlach Wurlmann and his disciples that realize eschatology. By believing in Christ we do not only expect his return as impending according to Kierkegaard rather and ontologically speaking our expectation is the very medium of his return. His second coming is actualized in our present faithful expectation and anticipation of it as impending. By speaking of faith necessary illusion in this context Kierkegaard's entry is also highly pertinent for rationality issue but I have to postpone details for later. Meanwhile one further complication has to be reckoned with before we can hope to arrive at a fully flashed picture of Kierkegaard's approach to theology or more precisely his thoughts about the possibility of becoming a Christian. The complication in question pertains to the Christian notion of sin and the consequences of theologically taking it seriously. In order to see why let us briefly return to the journal entry quoted earlier it ends as follows. If it were within a person's power to live without needing to eat how could he understand the necessity of eating something the hungry person understands so easily. And so it is spiritually a human being can acquire the indifference that makes the atonement superfluous. Indeed the natural person in Natulium menischet isn't precisely this state but how could someone in this state be able to understand the atonement. Thus Luther is being very consistent when he teaches that it is through a revelation that a human being must learn how deeply he lies in sin that the anguish conscience is not something that comes in the course of nature like being hungry so here's a real difference between the physical and the spiritual dimension. Kierkegaard seems to suggest first that every natural person is christianly conceived prone or susceptible to dying from starvation namely as a sinner. Not because nourishment atonement is or would not be available but rather because there isn't prevails in him a certain indifference a fundamental lack of desire for discovering and utilizing what is readily available. Second sin car indifference which in effect makes the atonement superfluous has been acquired accordingly human beings must be held accountable for losing or having lost the very spiritual hunger which is to be considered a necessary perhaps also sufficient condition for its own satisfaction to be possible. Third and finally all human beings in as much as they exist under the spell of these two conditions are in need of being taught about their predicament through divine revelation. Such a revelation will teach them two things in particular first that the revelation itself was and is constantly necessary for every individual when it comes to disclosing the depth of their predicament and second that in order for this claim to appear meaningful the christian notion of sin has to be brought to bear a notion according to which among other things no sinner is or can be transparent to him or herself as such. In other words Peter can only be a sinner at the expense of being able to be or become aware of his own sinfulness he either is or is conscious of being a sinner. And now a very couple of quotations to prove that this reading is at least hermeneutically adequate. I'll just quote one of them. What I just said is confirmed by among other many other places by one paragraph in the unscientific post group where Klimakus says the individual appears to be unable from a christian perspective to gain the consciousness of sin all by himself which is the case with guilt consciousness because in guilt consciousness the subject self-identity is preserved and guilt consciousness is a change of the subject within the subject itself. The consciousness of sin however is a change of the subject himself which shows that outside the individual there must be the power that makes clear to him that he has become a person other than he was by coming into existence that he has become a sinner and this power is the golden time. I'm not going to detail in interpreting it it's just important to just note I think the reading is correct either you have a can generate a sin consciousness or you're a sinner. I'll just skip the rest about the ontological paradox, a christological paradox and so on. Now the final consequence directly pertains to our initial question how to account for Kierkegaard's theology or more precisely for his view of how to become a christian and here another paradox looms large in light of the foregoing analysis for Kierkegaard to become a christian ranks indeed as the highest goal task or ideal but it can only appear as such on pains of having to consider its realization humanly impossible and vice versa to the extent that becoming a christian is considered possible it can no longer be the task of becoming a christian which has to be envisaged as the highest human goal. The task is constituted precisely by the impossibility of its fulfillment claiming the latter's possibility renders the former obsolete. Again the decisive factor for establishing this paradox is sin. Choosing to be a sinner can be considered possible only if it is superfluous it does not prove necessary until and thanks to the fact that it must be deemed impossible or rephrased in epistemic terms if the sinner were capable of perceiving himself as a sinner his perception would be false it can only be true if it is impossible. Third part the truly Kierkegaardian part 2 of the rationality of becoming a christian can it be rational according to Kierkegaard to believe in christianity or in christ himself for readers well versed in the dain's authorship the question would sound odd to say the least hasn't the master indefatigably inculcated that the impossibility of rationally defending christianity is not only an undubitable fact but also a good thing since every attempt at doing apologetics is but a perhaps inadvertent attempt at betraying the very faith that is supposed to be defended the answer is yes thus for instance anti-climacist riots it is certain and true that the first one to come up with the idea of defending christianity in christen them is the is de facto a judas number two he too betrays with a kiss except that his treason is the treason of stupidity to defend something is always to disparage it as for christianity well he who defends it has never believed if he believes then the enthusiasm of faith is not a defense no it is attack and victory a believer is a victor well yes this is at least to me not the whole story not even in kierkegaard himself for one thing an author an authorship may supply apologetic weapons that the author himself isn't even aware of and in my opinion this is precisely the case with kierkegaard moreover and perhaps even more strikingly the letter himself at least occasionally speaks of and argues for the possibility of proving the truth of christianity if only in a specifically subjective manner both points can be substantiated by invoking pertinent sources just in thus in the journal entry from 1848 kierkegaard writes the following how could it occur to a human being to want to be a christian when it is so hard because the consciousness of sin nowhere grants him rest its pain makes him strong enough to bear everything else if only he can find reconciliation therefore christianity must be presented as it is being so difficult so that it may become properly apparent that christianity relates solely to the consciousness of sin to want to involve oneself with becoming a christian for any other reason is quite literary foolishness and that is how it must be this quote quotation fully captures and in fact confirms my first claim kierkegaard's authorship provides perhaps involuntarily but in any case actual apologetic weapons my second thesis namely that kierkegaard himself explicitly endorses the idea of proving the truth of christianity is corroborated by the following journal entry from 1849 which also nicely dovetails with a previous quotation there's only one proof for the truth of christianity and it's quite rightly the passionate truth that results when the anxiety of sin and the troubled conscious a conscience compel a person to cross the thin line that separates despairing madness and christianity there lies christianity true enough quotation number one seems to make a genetically or descriptive point only according to the author no one will actually be able to put up with the torture of becoming a christian safe for being convinced that he him or herself is a sinner this notwithstanding entry number two by explicitly invoking the term proof adds a normative more precisely an epistemic point and against this backdrop also number one appears in a somewhat new light on the one hand the sinners troubled conscience in fact only the latter is capable of detecting and identifying the truly christian on the other hand the sinner is according to kierkegaard equipped with what appears to be a very good reason for believing in the truly christian to be true also namely sin both as a universal reality and as a qualification of his own existence if wanting to involve oneself with becoming a christian for any other reason must be deemed foolishness doorscap then the conclusion seems entirely justified that there exists precisely one non foolish reason for such a move namely sin and faith is rational according to kierkegaard in so far as and to the extent that talk about sin is rational but is it as so often in kierkegaard the answer is yes and no hence dialectical in the preceding paragraph it turned out that kierkegaard's theology builds upon a genuinely pros Protestant idea the idea namely that a sinner as such cannot recognize himself as a sinner from which follows that the only non foolish reason for adopting the stance of faith namely sin must appear foolish precisely to all those who are meant to adopt it christian speaking faith is indeed rational yet reasonable yet reasonable in a sense which requires on the part of the subject making that judgment a radical shift in perspective he or she must become a believer and as a believer must be willing wholeheartedly to accept that the very reason for being or having become a believer namely sin must appear foolish to the non believer and rightly so conversely all those objective or sin independent reasons which critics of religion usually insist upon as a prerequisite for finding christianity rationally acceptable must be deemed foolish from the perspective of the believer hence christianity is reasonable in the properly christian sense only if the christian himself is willing to give give up any claim to reasonableness in the improper or non christian sense by contrast clinging to this letter claim will invariably result in forfeiting its right so there are claims which can be can be forfeited precisely by being claimed paradoxically as it may seem we might as well put it this way peter can rationally believe in christianity only if he's not ignorant about the possible irrationality of his belief if he positively speaking believes despite and visa v the disquieting possibility that the rationality of faith is not to be had except in the guise of the letters irrationality skip another paragraph and directly move over to the last paragraph oh yeah i can skip that over it is perhaps not useless so our last question is is the truly kirkegaardian true and irrational that's a partly critical assessment is perhaps not useless at this point to remind you of the three four tasks i set for myself first i want us to do hermeneutical justice to what kirkegaard and his pseudonyms actually have to say about the rationality and possibility of being or becoming a christian second i aimed at normatively adjudicating these views both from a theological and a philosophical vantage point so i i try to comply with my hermeneutical duties in the preceding paragraphs as far as normativity and here first of all the theological adequacy is concerned my position is ambivalent on the one hand and regarding the possibility of making the transition to faith kirkegaard's account seems to me to be basically correct at least from a protestant perspective in terms of the available evidence compare for instance luther's famous explanation of the third article of the apostolic creed in a smaller catechism of 1529 i believe that i cannot by my own reason or strength believe in jesus christ my lord or come to him but the holy ghost has called me through the gospel enlightened me by his gifts and sanctified and preserved me in true faith luther's pneumatological approach perfectly matters with kirkegaard's revelation theological view in my opinion if and as long as the sinner qua sinner is prevented from converting or from making a radical frame worship to a life of faith all by himself and if as there or if there seems no third option available then the transition to faith must or can at least most plausibly be explained theologically speaking by describing it to the efficacy of the holy spirit i'm a lot more hesitant about the theological apples of kirkegaard's views concerning the rationality of becoming a christian for here the spectrum of historically and theoretically possible options ranging from an extreme skepticism to different versions of a fairly robust optimism which seems to dominate large parts of the roman catholic tradition for example thomas equinas is immense so i don't want to restore to situate kirkegaard here and do not want to adjudicate whether his account seems to me to be more adequate than others simply it suffices at this point to say it can't be decided on theological grounds alone so i'm moving over to the philosophical perspective now as far as the epistemologically epistemology and ethics of belief are concerned we tend to assume that in order for a belief to be justified it must also be true that's one of the normal views likewise every true belief appears to be justified both assumptions are rash however on the one hand true beliefs may be irrational consider the man who due to bizarre mental defect can only generate one single belief and in fact in fact does so permanently or whose is the largest city in jubilant sure enough the belief is true but let's face it rarely rational why because rationality is situation dependent and context sensitive and their account with situations imaginable where it would be seen where it would seem completely beside the point to generate the belief in question so here's one instance of a true belief which is nevertheless irrational on the other hand false beliefs may be irrational consider a man hiking alone in the canadian rockies out of the corner of his eye he suddenly perceives what he takes to be a grizzly bear he stands frozen in order not to attract the animal's attention upon looking more closely he then realizes that what seemed to be a bear at first sight was in fact nothing but a fir tree the shape of which remotely resembled a bear the bear now even though his belief I'm confronted with a deadly predator was obviously wrong it was nevertheless fully rational do again to the particular situational circumstances in which it was generated so we have to really clearly demarcate and clearly distinguish between truth and rationality when it comes to discussing matters philosophy in philosophy now my crucial apologetic point is that we can describe the situation of a christian believer as comparable to that of the lonesome hiker namely on a spiritual level and at least in one respect we need not go so far as to maintain that it always and necessarily resembles the letter situation the sheer possibility and occasional givenness suffices for our present purposes both the hiker and the christian form and the christian form their respective beliefs in response to what they perceive as an acute emergency or life-threatening danger I must stand frozen otherwise I will be killed by a deadly predator I must ask for god's forgiveness otherwise I will go to hell on account of my sins in the first case part of the beliefs turn out to be false in hindsight in the second the sheer possibility that this might eventually happen looms large and is part and parcel of the believer's spiritual suffering challenging his belief in a merciful god in both cases the respective beliefs can and must be considered rational even if they have turned or will turn possibly turn out as erroneous in retrospect the only precondition to be filled to be fulfilled in order for those beliefs to be justified is their subjective necessity to borrow from kirkegaard in other words god's mercy need not be proven or be approvable in fact the corresponding belief does not even need to be true in order to be rationally justified all it takes is that from the perspective of the believer himself a refuge to god's mercy appears as the only option left for at least possibly to defeat what is perceived as an otherwise invincible enemy sin or more precisely hell as the ultimate destiny to be expected by and for the sinner hence occasionally even an illusion will do as long as it is a necessary illusion to use kirkegaard's term again need knows no commands this venerable proverb can also be rephrased as a respectable philosophical principle rooted in the pragmatist tradition and the epistemical standards for juggling the beliefs of a person in serious need are very liberal indeed to my opinion now if we replace the term subjectively necessary belief by inevitable belief which as i must add is perhaps problematic but if we do that if we replace the term subjectively necessary belief by inevitable belief we can carry on where a certain philosophical thesis left off a thesis that seems to me to be equally correct and important namely that no inevitable belief is irrational if a belief is inevitable then it is rational per se due to the fact that irrationality presupposes accountability whereas in inevitability excludes accountability the argument would then run as follows and i'm almost done a belief can only be rational can only be irrational if it's subject violated an epistemic duty in generating it no inevitable belief can be generated by violating an epistemic duty therefore no inevitable belief is irrational some of those beliefs which are generated as a response to an acute emergency are inevitable therefore some of those beliefs which are generated as a response to an acute emergency are rational a belief in god's mercy can be generated can be generated as a response to an acute emergency therefore belief in God's mercy can be rational. I conclude very briefly as we saw earlier and that's the critical part is just one comment as we saw earlier Kierkegaard urged that a true believer could never be interested in doing apologetics whereas all those who tried their hand at it unwittingly bore witness to the fact that they did not truly believe. If this is meant, as I do suspect it is, to be an argument against apologetics it surely fails for it does not reduplicate the context sensitivity factor which lends plausibility to itself in a self-referential perspective. Indeed, the believer must be described as a person who in Wittgensteinian terms feels infinite need but what about the subject of that description? I mean we are sitting here in an academic context discussing epistemic issues. We are not in a situation of the believer, we are not in a situation of acute emergency and that gives us the necessity and also it's mandatory for us but it also entitles us to speak in a different way and perhaps also then to address issues which are philosophically interesting. So far, thanks a lot for your attention.