Oliver Udy ’20… Fear and Trembling: A Solution to Political Polarisation?

Oliver Udy ’20

“One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision: let doubt prevail.” - Bertrand Russell

Political discourse in the ‘West’ has become increasingly tribal and aggressive in recent years. The growing canyon emerging between the two political parties in the U.S. has made genuine bipartisan interaction almost impossible. Perhaps a reason why this has become the default mode of operations is a feeling of security one gets with having a ‘home’ of ideological comfort. The bliss of being absolutely certain in one’s outlook on the world certainly relieves the mental torture endured by being unsure about a particular issue society faces. Nonetheless, in order to maintain a healthy democracy, citizens must have a degree of angst: A certain level of faith in our own ability to rationally grapple with complex dilemmas and fractures within society. In order to even attempt to tackle a problem which is so deeply rooted in a human being’s conception of self and his or her purpose as an individual—as well as in relation to the collective—we must see it through a philosophical lens, through the lens of Søren Kierkegaard. We must evaluate the legitimacy of his claim that one should fall between the aesthetic, with a purely egocentric focus, and the universal, conforming to societal norms and expectations of society. Ultimately, it is only through understanding and following Kierkegaard that we can comprehend a solution (if one even exists) to current political polarisation.

However, before exploring the idea more fully, it is important to point out a potential contradiction in this very argument. Kierkegaard’s “Preamble From the Heart” points out the “monstrous paradox that is the content of Abraham’s life” (Kierkegaard 62) in the sense that philosophy is not faith, nor can it give us faith by attempting to make us understand the paradox of faith that leaves Johannes “virtually annihilated.” If someone were to extend this idea to the argument that proposes a concrete solution to the problem of an unstable political landscape, it may be stated that they are compromised. They put an unhealthy amount of faith in this new system which was created by “the proudest human being, the philosopher, [who] thinks (wrongly) that he sees the eyes of the universe telescopically 29

focussed from all sides on his actions and thoughts” (Nietzsche 43). This is a valid objection. The dangerous certainty, which comes from the notion that one single philosophy can cure the ills of society, does compromise that system’s ability to ever claim the status of a knight of faith. By becoming comfortable that this new, seemingly novel, approach will ‘solve’ the ills of society, we crucially lose the sense of angst required for the approach to work in the first place. Nonetheless, if we are to evaluate this argument with some degree of angst and faith in our own rationale, then it may still retain some strength.

Kierkegaard’s conception of submission to the universal’s preventing us from true freedom can perhaps be understood in relation to societal expectation of voting patterns. This can be seen most clearly with two key driving factors behind voting behaviour. The first factor is some sense of conformity to voting in accordance with characteristics such as race, ethnicity, gender, social class or geographical location. In a way, these characteristics may instil in us a sense of a loss of choice regarding the candidates we vote for. For example, a Muslim may feel compelled to vote for whoever is running against Donald Trump, a president who famously imposed a travel ban to the U.S. which primarily affected six largely Islamic countries. While this example may seem excessively simplistic or even reductive, it is simply a fact that Trump has only a 10% approval rating amongst this demographic. In this instance, members of this group may feel they have no other choice but to reject him as a presidential candidate in 2020. However, this kind of thinking, Kierkegaard would argue, limits individual freedom. In the process of resigning ourselves to making a decision because of the apparent absence of choice, we ignore the idea that no person or thing (such as a voting pattern based on ethnicity) should be telling us our relation with the absolute, which, in this instance is our own rationality.

Furthermore, if we are asked to justify our voting decisions, we fall back into the ethical. In the same way that if “Abraham [had] simply renounced his claim to Isaac and done no more, he would have uttered an untruth,” we should not need to explain our voting choices, especially in regard to society’s expectations of our behaviour (142). While the introduction of ‘secret’ voting in the U.S. has reduced this problem substantially, there is still the issue of presumed voting intentions based on physical attributes. This problem has been made even more severe by ‘fake news,’ which encourages a warped perception of other people’s understanding of such societal norms and makes it seem necessary to protect one understanding of universal principles from another. This phenomenon has resulted in increasing polarisation and even more rigid voting patterns, thus worsening our sense of 30

Makers of the Modern Mind freedom to choose.

The second factor leading to a perceived lack of choice is resignation to a two party system promoted by a first-past-the-post electoral system. With 94.3% of the American population voting for either the Republican or the Democratic Party in 2016, the notion of casting your vote for another party seems illogical. If, for example, an individual wanted to vote for the Green Party, they would in many ways actually be helping the Republican party to get into office by splitting the Democratic vote. Here, there is an apparent lack of choice in whom somebody could vote for. If we stretch Kierkegaard’s model of aesthetic motivation at one end of the spectrum and universal dedication at the other, it becomes increasingly difficult to exist in the middle in a two party system,

The ability to exist in a constant sense of angst and faith in the absurd becomes almost untenable. Yet again, we are faced with another paradox that Kierkegaard explored in Problema II: the paradox of faith that “the inner determination of feeling, mood, etc...” is more important than exterior action (97). In other words, simply by adhering to Kierkegaard’s idea of resignation to the absolute (in this case, our own reason), we may not ‘fix’ the political problems we face. Even if we are internally torn on whom to vote for, the current system in place promotes a submission to the universal expectation that we should vote for one of two parties.

Finally, our ability to truly be in the middle between the aesthetic and universal realms is made more difficult by society’s recent glorification of this position. Individuals like Senator John McCain, or more recently Mitt Romney with his vote for impeachment, have been held up by large sections of society as the moral bastions which the rest of Washington should follow, therefore entering the ‘universal’ realm. It is therefore difficult to simplify Kierkegaard’s model to our notion of a political spectrum, where the ‘best’ place to be is supposedly in the middle. When this position becomes universally admired, our conception of choice is, again, taken away and our ‘leap of faith’ in our own rationale becomes contaminated.

To conclude, Kierkegaard offers useful lessons on the dangers of conformity to universal principles. In an increasingly divided political climate, our societal norms and expectations differ so much that we must tribally reside on one side or the other. In order to attempt to reform this hazardous discourse, we must first tackle the issue of the human being’s natural tendency towards being ‘right’ and the security that comes with that. We should embrace the feeling of angst and uncertainty instead of clinging to the tried and tested, for that is the only way that we are truly free.

Kierkegaard, Søren. Fear and Trembling. Translated with an introduction by Alastair Hannay. Penguin Classics, London, 2003. Chouhoud, Youssef. “Which Muslims Voted for Trump.” Institute for Social and Political Understanding, www.ispu.org/which-muslims-voted-for-trump/. Nietzsche, Friedrich, and Walter Kaufmann. On Truth and Lie in an ExtraMoral Sense. New York, Pinguin Classic, 2006, pp. 42-51.