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Dialogues@RU is published
annually
by the
Writing Program at
Rutgers, The State
University of New Jersey
Volume Two
Spring 2003
Thought, Belief, and Instinct
- Page 3
by Albert Min
In order to understand this desire, the causes of truth mentioned earlier need to be given consideration for a full account of truth. Here, concepts from the second account of truth may be of assistance. This second account is given by James Giles in "From Inwardness to Emptiness: Kierkegaard and Yog a c a ra Buddhism," in which he tries to make sense of Kierkegaard's philosophical account of faith by using what is called "the three-natures theory of teaching" from the Yog a c a ra school of Buddhism (323). For the purposes of this paper I will focus only on Giles' description of Kierkegaard's view. He gives this interpretation of Kierkegaard's concept "inwardness": "Since inwardness is focusing on the process of one's own existence, then inwardness is concerned with the nature of one's relations to objects rather than with the objects themselves" (312). Kierkegaard is interested in this fundamental property of our experiencing, in which we cannot avoid our particular existences and relations to objects. For Kierkegaard, then, pure objectivity is an illusion because even objectivity requires some reference to subjectivity (it is important to note here that subjectivity is a different notion than the isolated subject in the subject/object distinction). Accordingly, it is important in any analysis to remain aware of subjectivity. This notion of inwardness, then, means that there is something to be gleaned from what the nature of the desire consists in. Inwardness is a concern for "one's relations to objects," and the desire is the relation that connects the epistemologists to the foundations. The desire is, in fact, of more primacy than the foundations or frameworks because the motivations for the foundations or frameworks lie in the desire. The desire has a causal and creative role in the search and discovery of the foundations and frameworks themselves. I will return to this causal role later, and also show that these desires prove to be problematic in the analysis of Wittgenstein's views. For now, we must return to the details of the two accounts of truth.
In contrast to this view, Kierkegaard's view is "that truth is subjectivity" (313). Giles describes Kierkegaard's view in this way:
[T]he question of the truth of one's beliefs will not be determined by the existence of the object of one's belief, but rather by the way in which one believes it, that is, by the relation one bears to the object of one's belief. Consequently, "as long as this relationship is in truth, the individual is in truth even if he should be thus related to what is not true." (312)
Here, Kierkegaard is focusing on the origin of the value of truth; that is, the value of the object of truth as defined by the meaning it is given from the "way" in which one is related to the object of truth. The believer of the truth has a role in the formation of the truth, and the object is deemphasized, given a secondary role. For Kierkegaard, these concepts are employed in an analysis of Christianity and faith, but they are informative in a general way as well. By saying that the "relationship is in truth" Kierkegaard is able to account for the desire. That is, the subject is related to truth by way of desire. Kierkegaard emphasizes precisely what Rabinow avoids. The values involved in the formation of truth and the experiencing of truth are at the highest point of contention in both religious arguments and epistemological arguments. The "way" in which each of the opponents of the argument is related to the objects of truth argued about defines the meanings and subsequent values of the objects of truth. Rabinow avoids this contentious issue in order to proceed to the objective value of function in social, political, and historical contexts, but the objective value can have little meaning without the value-givers, and this same problem of the formation and values of truth occurs in these contexts. After analyzing the effects of truth, the causes still remain, and this returns us to the causal problem mentioned earlier. The subject's role as a causal agent in the formation of truth is important in defining the very scope of the effects of truth. Because Kierkegaard does not describe how or why the subject as a causal agent is involved in the formation of truth, what are needed here are some insights offered by Wittgenstein's views on religion.