Søren Kierkegaard’s “Man in Search of God” as a Cultural and Anthropological Type

Introduction. This article attempts to present Søren Kierkegaard’s “man in search of God” as  a  cultural  and  anthropological  type  of  a  person  that  shapes  their  self-cognition independently in the dimension of their existence.

Methodology and sources. The following sources are referred to in this article: “Fear and Trembling”  and  “The  Gospel  of  Sufferings”  by  Søren  Kierkegaard; works  of  ante-revolutionary and  modern  Russian  authors  L.I.  Shestov,  N.A.  Berdyaev,  B.E.  Bykhovsky, P.P. Gidenko, S.S. Khoruzhy, E.N. Levicheva, V.A. Podoroga, V.D. Gubin, L.A. Klyukina; texts by researchers foreign to Russia, such as U. Hubben, T.V. Schitsova. To research and describe the  experience  of  a  person’s  self-actualization  in  Kierkegaard’s  “movement  of  faith”,  the ideas of M.K. Mamardashvili’s phenomenological approach have been employed.

Results and discussion. This article demonstrates that it is not faith but search for faith that is the aim of Kierkegaard’s philosophy and meaning of his existence. This is because only in the “movement of faith” is a person able to actualize their inner self in their outer self, or face their own self that searches for God. For Kierkegaard, the example of this is Jesus Christ. With the help of Christ as symbol, a person is capable of comprehending the soul’s immortality as the metaphysical dimension of a human being.

In the context of Mamardashvili’s phenomenological approach, the author of this articles shows  that  understanding  Christ  as  the  symbol  of  a  person’s  self-actualization  and  selffulfillment can be interpreted as the experience of distinguishing between the symbols of time  and  infinity  in  consciousness.  This  very  reality  of  distinguishing  between  time  and infinity and having to choose between them is referred to in this article as “dynamic infinity”, which is equivalent to Kierkegaard’s notions of “movement of faith” and “moment”.

Conclusion.  The  author  concludes  that  in  post-modern  world,  when  a  typical  person  is experiencing acutely the loss of fundamental autonomous individuality while the erosion of personal origin in culture is leading to dehumanization and disintegration of society, Søren Kierkegaard’s  “man  in  search  of  God”  can  become  a  reference  point  for  developing  an individual thinking and integral personality.

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