Irony and religious belief: An examination and comparison of the ironic philosophies of Soren Kierkegaard and Richard Rorty

This dissertation compares the ironic philosophies of Soren Kierkegaard and Richard Rorty with special attention paid to their analyses of religious belief. Both Kierkegaard and Rorty reject foundationalist or representationalist accounts of knowledge in favor of philosophical positions that they each identify as ironic. Subsequently, they both pursue the question of the relation of ironic philosophy to a person's way of life. In his doctoral dissertation Kierkegaard argues that ironic philosophy results in a lifestyle of infinite absolute negativity and valueless Romanticism. In his later writings, however, Kierkegaard changes his evaluation of the importance of ironic philosophy to include a recognition of its positive contributions to an understanding of the nature of religious beliefs. Kierkegaard correctly comes to see that ironic philosophy does not necessarily result in an ironic, or negative, way of life. Like the early Kierkegaard, Rorty argues that ironic philosophy must result in a life marked by ironic doubts that threaten to be at odds with liberal values. In an attempt to show the compatibility of irony with liberalism Rorty invokes the strategies of separating the public from the private and of engaging in a pragmatic reduction of liberal beliefs. A similar strategy is employed in his discussion of religious beliefs. By focusing on Rorty's analysis of religion and comparing it to the approach epitomized by Ludwig Wittgenstein it is argued that Rorty commits mistakes similar to those committed by the early Kierkegaard. Rorty's strategies do not solve his problems but rather reveal that his ironic doubts are the result of a picture of the implications of his own ironic philosophy that has more in common with the Kierkegaard of the dissertation than with the later Kierkegaard. Finally, the positive importance of ironic philosophy for a religious life is explored by examining the implications of an ironic approach to philosophy for questions of religious pluralism and for questions of the relation between science and religion.