In order to understand the meaning of Søren Kierkegaard's famous concept of "leap of
faith" we need to first explain what he means in the general notion of
"leap" and its place in Kierkegaard's existential philosophy. Kierkegaard
offered the term "leap" to replace the Hegelian notion of mediation between two opposing
elements. Kierkegaard's concept of leap points to a state in which a person is
faced with a choice that cannot be justified rationally and he therefore has to
leap into it. The leap of faith is, therefore, a leap into faith which is
allowed by it, stemming from a Paradoxical contradiction between the ethical and the religious.
Kierkegaard's classic and most important
example of such a leap is Abraham's Leap of faith. In Fear and Trembling Kierkegaard suggests that the
ethical is incommensurable with the religious, killing your own child cannot be
mediated with obeying God. This is why Abraham had to perform a leap of faith
when he obeyed God but still maintained faith that Isaac would live.
The leap of faith is named and defined that
way by Kierkegaard since it is a leap towards faith, moving from the aesthetic sphere of life to the religious
one. It is also a leap of faith since faith, not
reason, is the only thing that can enable it. Abraham could not have found a
rational justification for his actions, it is only the leap that made him
father of faith or as Kierkegaard puts it: knight of faith.
In the concept of leap of faith Kierkegaard
rejects a great part of rationalist philosophy such as Rene Descartes and up to Hegel who believed
that God can be rationally proven and that faith can rely on sound logic. For
Kierkegaard there is no reason in faith, and that is what makes it a leap. The concept of leap of
faith is closely tied to Kierkegaard's concept of the individual and the concept of paradox or absurd.
