Friday. November IV. I965

SCARLET AND BLACK

Page Fin

 

0r .
> Bible
(Continued from Page 3)
cannot be content with solely the
'Biblical approach to the problem
of God. “If the Judeo»Christian
tradition will continue to be rela-
tive, it cannot avoid dialectical ere
‘changa in relation to this ques-
tion of the existence of God,"
Smith said.
Critical doubts about religion
must be taken seriously, Smith
thinkst “In the end, we must all
be on the side of dialecticians. it
takes a theologian of considerable
(standing to avoid dialectical ques

tions In his quest for an under-
standing of God.”

A specialist on American phil-
osophy and the philosophy of re-
ligion, Dr. Smith has written nu-
merous books, including the Spirit
or American Philosophy, Reason
and God, and a critical text and
introduction tn the works of Jun-
athan Edwards.

The Gates lectures were estab-
lished by Grinllell College in 1913
as a tribute to the late President
George A. Gatesi Each year the
program brings representatives or
modern thought on philosophy
and religion to the campus.

 

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Smith lectures 0n Kierkegaard,
Analyzes Existential Perspective

By IAN BAHL

Defining the existential ap-
proach to the problem of God,
Dr. John Edwin Smith says
the first task of the modern theo—
logian is to force a reexamina-
tion or positivist metaphysics.

Smith, chairman of the philoso-
phy department at Yale Univer~
sity, was the 1965 Gates Lecturer,
and spoke in Herrick Chapel Mon-
day night in the second of three
lectures on “The Problem of GM.”

“We have to plunge in with all
the risk involved.” he said, ”and
force a reexamination of some of
the truncated theories of reality
in which the problem of God nev-
er gets off the ground, and in
which the problem of God is al-
ready settled in a negative way."

Smith dealt specifically with the
Kierkegaardian approach to reale
ity, which begins With a presup-
position oi God's reality and sees
the meaning of existence In the
individual human purpose. This
purpose must be realized “through
knowledge of one's own being."
According to Smith, this is “the
shock oi being there without be-
ing in an the decision.”

Recognizing Kierkegaard's fond-
ness for driving the individual to
an awareness of the universals
present in his own particular case,
and to an awareness that man
may be speaking about himself
when applying universals to other

 

men, Smith said, “Most Individu—
als tend to move In the direction
of the universal vague rather
than to their own particular eye.”
In order to progress to a subjec»
tive state in which the individual
eye focuses on the universals,
people must be driven to (arm
their answers by drawing them
from their own questions.

Thus, according to Smith, be-
coming existential means recog—
nizing ”man's nature as a respon-
sible moral being who must act
and choose, and who can’t avoid
the responsibility or this free
dom.”

Smith cited Kierkegaard‘s dia-
lectic of life styles—a way of con-
ducting oneself on the basis of one
major principle There are three
basic life styl the esthetic, the
immediate satisiaction oi the pres.
ent; the ethical. a call of duty or
personal commandment; and the
religious, based on raith and trust,

“God appears on the scene as
a solution to the problems or the
first two life styles,” Smith Said.
The purely esthetic or ethical life
is inadequate, he believes, be-
cause “an attempt to live a life
of satisfaction of the present mo—
ment impels treatment at other
beings as objects, until the man
himself becomes an object who
can't please himself at all, and
an ethical call of duty is too
enormous a responsibility for man

 

to bear." Man Is propelled into
a religious lite style because oi
his awareness that he can’t live
the others

Smith saw the reality of God In
Kierkegaard’s approach as “not the
same as the problem of exis-
tence Dr non-existence of a ﬁnite
object. The reality of God is bound
up with the extent to which the
individual recognizes a change
within himself and his deliverance
from the esthetic and ethical life
styles.” If existence is to be re
served tor sense objects, and God
is not a sensible object, then
"God does not ‘exist’; he Is eter-
nal." Smith addedﬂ‘GeiHs real,
and exists in the individual, insu-
far as God furnishes a ground for
his subjective being."

The difficulties of Kierkegaard’s
View come because “confining the
problem to man’s existence runs
the risk of losing its relationship
to the rest of the world and the
Community of individuals," stated
Smith. Also, he said, “It is an ac-
cepted view that when I think
about something, it must be made
into an objectt There is nothlng
inherent in thinking itself that
makes what is being thought about
an object. We need to have not
only the truth of participation, but
also the truth of distance. Man

EXISTENTIALISM—
(Continued on Page I)

 

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