The investigation of rationality in Søren Kierkegaard

This study aims to investigate Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard's thoughts on rationality in the context of existentialism. Individual's existence as the mail purpose of Kierkegaard's philosophy forms the base of this thesis. Kierkegaard's approaches of "truth is subjective" and paradoxical ratio was criticized in the 19th century when truth was considered in rational manner. These criticisms consist of the claims that Kierkegaard's philosophy is irrational or anti-rationality. Thus, the aim of this study is to investigate whether Kierkegaard's thought contains misology or not. This allusion is based on Kierkegaard's criticisms on Hegel and the way he uses the term faith as a paradox of the ratio. However, Kierkegaard is far from the very intention of faith. His main purpose is to show that the fanatism of rationality neglects individual's subjectivity. In this manner, Kierkegaard's object not to the ratio itself but to the sanctifying of the ratio was discussed. In the first chapter, starting from the 17th century to 19th century we summarized the process of the rationality during the history of thought. In this section, we tried to reveal the conception of rationality of these philosophers by giving the attention to the approaches of Descartes, Kant, and Hegel, whom we see as the representatives of rationalism of their time. In the second part, we discussed the existence areas of the individual in detail by exposing the important concepts of Kierkegaard's philosophy, namely, irony, anxiety, hopelessness and faith. In the third chapter, considering Kierkegaard's criticisms of rationalitt, we came to the conclusion that there is no solid basis for considering the whole of Kierkegaard's philosophy as irrational or anti-rational, and that such a distinction is essentially an artificial one.