Possible Explanation of Kierkegaard’s Reasoning :: Essays Papers

Possible Explanation of Kierkegaard’s Reasoning As some philosophers suggest, an individual may only know what he knows through 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 represent that knowledge through language. Language is a means of transferring our experiences to a concrete, literal form, so the sensuous can be made known in the psyche. To describe a snake (itself a linguistic representation of my experience), I might use the word, â€Å"slimy,† thus, I have distinguished one feeling from another feeling. Language also informs our perceptions of an object. We hear the sound of a word, and our brains conjur an image of the object the word represents. This image is then transferred into our own experience. If I say, â€Å"slimy,† you may think of mud or butter 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 comparison of a snake to other objects and characteristics you do know, you can understand another thing that could possibly represent the word, â€Å"slimy.† What if someone wishes to discuss something outside of sensual 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 identified with agriculture, shepherding, wedding feasts, and inheritances. And although he knew the people could not comprehend the fullness of meaning behind his stories, storytelling was the most effective way to shed any light on the world of the spirit. As Paul Tillich says, once we take literally the language we use to represent â€Å"ultimate concerns† (things of the spirit), then we have made language into an idol ____________. Kierkegaard predated Tillich with his statement that â€Å"all human language about the spiritual . . . is essentially transferred or metaphorical language†(199). To prevent our understanding of language from remaining in the literal or sensuous-psychic state, and thus becoming idolatrous, then we must see it as a symbol, participating in the actual, but not the actual itself __________.