The Relationship Between God and Man
Graduation Date
Spring 1950
Document Type
Master's Thesis
Document Form
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Degree Granting Institution
Catholic University of America
Program Name
Humanities
Abstract
In the intellect's perennial quest for truth, the pendulum of philosophical thought has swung consistently from one extreme to another, and this, not because man is incapable of attaining truth, as the sceptics would have us believe, but rather because no extreme explanation of reality, precisely because it is extreme and consequently disordered, considers reality as it is, and hence any explanation fails to satisfy the natural craving of the human mind for truth. In the history of philosophy, which records for us thought of the great philosophical systems, we can often detect emerging from the prevailing temper of the time, the germs of a new development. Such was the case in the early 19th Century, when Georg Wilhem Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) dominated the German philosophical world, and with his absolute idealism, his rationalization of history, and his emphasis on collectivism, sought to solve all problems in the realm of “pure thought.” Against the imposing structure of his “system,” however, in the very stronghold of Hegelianism itself, one individual dared to cry out in defense of his individuality. That man was Soren Kierkegaard.