Possible Explanation of Kierkegaard’s Reasoning :: Essays Papers

Possible history of Kierkegaards ReasoningAs some philosophers suggest, an individual may moreover know what he knows finished experience. What is sensed equals what is known. Because we understand things through our senses, then what we understand must also be expressed through our senses. We give that knowledge through oral communication. Language is a means of transferring our experiences to a concrete, tangible form, so the sensuous can be make known in the psyche. To describe a snake (itself a linguistic representation of my experience), I might use the word, slimy, thus, I have distinguished one skin perceptiveness from a nonher feeling. Language also informs our perceptions of an object. We hear the sound of a word, and our brains conjur an characterization of the object the word represents. This image is then transferred into our own experience. If I say, slimy, you may think of mud or yetter or a kiss, not necessarily a snake. These images are not right or wrong, but are based on your experiences. You will think of those things until, through my comparability of a snake to other objects and characteristics you do know, you can understand other thing that could possibly represent the word, slimy. What if someone wishes to discuss something outside of unspiritual or intellectual human experience? Because we cannot escape the use of sensual-psychic language to explain experience and knowledge of experience, even an experience beyond the sensual-psychic must be expressed through the common language that is received through the ear and processed through the brain. Jesus knew this full well, choosing to speak in parables rather than outlining theories and spiritual realities. We listen better to stories with objects and plots we can understand. His audience place with agriculture, shepherding, wedding feasts, and inheritances. And although he knew the people could not comprehend the fullness of meaning behind his stories, storytelli ng was the most effective way to shed any brighten on the world of the spirit. As Paul Tillich says, once we take literally the language we use to represent ultimate concerns (things of the spirit), then we have made language into an idol ____________. Kierkegaard predated Tillich with his statement that all human language well-nigh the spiritual . . . is essentially transferred or metaphorical language(199). To prevent our consciousness of language from remaining in the literal or sensuous-psychic state, and thus change state idolatrous, then we must see it as a symbol, participating in the actual, but not the actual itself __________.