Prayer As God-Knowledge(Viaself)

Joshua Cockayne Prayer as God-knowledge(viaSelf)

Abstract: What is the purpose of prayer?AccordingtoKierkegaard, “prayer does not changeGod, but it changes the one who prays.” Whilst much contemporary philosophyofreligion focuses on the so-called puzzle of petitionary prayer,less is written about how prayer can changethe person who prays. In this paper,I discuss Kierkegaard’saccount of prayer in TheSickness unto Death and “An Oc- casional Discourse on the Occasion of Confession.” Prayer,asitispresented here, allows aperson to gain acertain kind of self-knowledge and thereby draw near to God. Afteroutlining Kierkegaard’saccount,Idraw some compari- sons with Harry Frankfurt’saccount of the will to demonstrate how prayer might allow for both self-knowledge as wellasGod-knowledge.

IIntroduction

Recent work on the philosophyofprayerhas focused almost entirelyonthe question of how aperson’sprayercould changethe mind of God. This is the so called “puzzle of petitionary prayer.”¹ However,not all philosophersortheo- logians agree that prayer should primarilyseek to changethe mind of God.The Danishthinker Søren Kierkegaard, for instance, writes that “prayer does not changeGod,but it changes the one who prays.”² This is aline of thought which those who engagewith the puzzle of petitionary prayer are familiar with. Danieland Frances Howard-Synder,for instance, state that,

[w]e agreethat petitioningGod can make adifferenceinus. However…most practicing theists assume thereismoretoitthan that and so it would be morecharitable to solve

Iwould like to thank David Efird and an anonymous referee fortheir helpfulfeedback on earlier drafts of thispaper.Thanksalso go to the members of the St. Benedict Society forphilosophy of religion and philosophical theology at the University of York fortheir helpful comments, as well as to the participantsofthe Annual Christian Philosophy Conferencefor their feedback.

 Daniel and Frances Howard-Snyder, “The Puzzle of Petitionary Prayer,” European Journal for Philosophy of Religion,vol. 2, 2010,pp. 43 – 68.  SKS 8, 137 / UD,22.

Joshua Cockayne,DepartmentofPhilosophy,UniversityofYork, York YO10 5DD,United Kingdom, :[email protected] https://doi.org/10.1515/kierke-2017-0005

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the puzzle without denying their assumption.Moreover,evenifpetitioning God can make a differenceinus, we cannot petition him while thinkingthat our words won’tmakeany difference to whetherhedoes what we ask.³

The Howard-Snyders acknowledge that the kind of thinking behind Kierke- gaard’sview on prayer is valuable, but irrelevant to the puzzle of petitionary prayer.Yet,infocusing onlyonthe petitionary aspect of prayer,the philosophy of Christian prayer risks becomingskewed in focus. Even if we disagree with Kierkegaard’sconclusion (that prayer onlychanges us, and not God), the question thatseems pertinent to ask is: How does prayer changethe person who prays? In this paper,Iargue that the purpose of prayer is to gain knowledge of oneself. However,this is not the kind of knowledge one can gain merelybyin- trospecting—the account of prayer Iwill focus on here aims to draw aperson closer to God through their knowledge of self. To do this,Ifocus on the short, but intriguing, account of prayer that we find in Kierkegaard’s TheSickness unto Death. Kierkegaard’spseudonymous author,Anti-Climacus, writes, “to pray is…to breathe, and possibility is for the self what oxygen is for breathing.”⁴ Whatdoes Anti-Climacus mean by this remark?Inpresentingthis passageinthe wider context of TheSickness unto Death,Iarguethat prayer as it is presented here is best understood as an activity which enables aperson to gain akind of self-knowledge.More specifically, in seeing what Anti- Climacus writes about the human self as asynthesis of necessity and possibility, we can see prayer as an activity of becomingmore aware of our existenceas creatures who expressboth necessity (weare physical, mortal creatures) and possibility(it is possible for us to somehow transcend this earthlylife and the constraints of everydayphysical existence). Afterdiscussing Kierkegaard’s account of prayer and self-knowledge in TheSickness unto Death,Idraw acom- parisonbetween Kierkegaard’sHarry Frankfurt’saccounts of the will.⁵ Drawing on Frankfurt’snotion of wholeheartedness,Idescribethe Kierkegaardian notion of despair as akind of internal conflict of the will which is irresolvable without intervention from God; despair cannotbeovercome, Anti-Climacus tells us, until the soul “rests transparentlyinGod.”⁶ To explain what generates this internal conflict,Iarguethatall human beingshaveafirst-order desire for union with

 Howard-Synder and Howard-Snyder, “The Puzzle of Petitionary Prayer,” p. 46.  SKS 11, 156 / SUD, 40.  Harry Frankfurt, TheImportance of What We Care About, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press 1988.  SKS 11, 146/SUD,30.

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God which is often supressed, ignored, or misunderstood. It is onlywhen this desire for God is unified with ahigher-order desire for union with God thata person can be free of despair and come close to God. Thus, it follows, in order for aperson to come close to God in faith, she must become conscious of her inherent desire for God. That is, prayer makes possible akind of God- knowledge via self-knowledge.⁷

II KierkegaardonPrayer

Those familiar with Kierkegaard’swritingswill know thatthey are littered with short,and often profound, examples of prayers.⁸ Kierkegaard alsooffers some thoughts on the purpose of prayer,atplaces in his writings. In his “Occasional Discourse on the Occasion of Confession,” for instance, Kierkegaard discusses an example of aconfessional prayer.Kierkegaardwrites that

[a] hasty explanation can suppose that to prayisafutile act because aperson’sprayerdoes not,ofcourse, change the changeless;but in the long run would this be desirable, could not the changingperson easilycome to repentthat he managedtoget God changed! Thus,the true explanation is also the one and onlytobedesired: the prayerdoes not change God, but it changesthe one whoprays.⁹

AccordingtoKierkegaard, to pray is not to seek to changeGod’smind, or at least not in the context of aconfession, but rather,toprayistoseek to changeoneself. Whilst it appears that Kierkegaard seeks to disregard petitionary prayer altogeth-

 Some points of clarification: First,this paper is not an attempt to offer asolution to the problem of petitionary prayer. The claim that prayerprimarilychangesusand not God is not asatisfyingresponse to the problem of petitionary prayer,yet this does not mean that prayer as ameans of self-knowledgeiswithout philosophical interest (although this mayexplain the lack of exploration of this kind of prayerbyanalytic philosophers). Secondly, thereismuch to be said on Kierkegaard’sdiscussion of self-knowledge (for discussions of Kierkegaardand self-knowledge, see John Lippitt’s “Self-Knowledge in Kierkegaard,” in Self-Knowledge,ed. by Ursula Renz, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press 2016;orDaniel Watts’s “Kierkegaardand the Search for Self‐Knowledge,” European Journal of Philosophy, vol. 4, 2013,pp. 525–549). There is not scopefor abroad overview of what Kierkegaardwrites on self-knowledgehere. My focus will primarilybetogiveanaccount of prayerwhich drawsonaspectsofKierkegaard’s thinking, rather than to offer asystematicoverview of Kierkegaard’sthoughts on the topics of either self-knowledge or prayer.  These are compiled in ThePrayers of Kierkegaard, ed. by Perry D. Le Fevre, Chicago:The Uni- versity of Chicago Press 1956.  SKS 8, 137 / UD,22.

Brought to you by | University of St Andrews Scotland Authenticated Download Date | 3/22/18 1:36 PM 104 Joshua Cockayne er here, we need not reach such adrastic conclusion to follow Kierkegaard’s thoughts on prayer.Asthe Howard-Snyders acknowledge,itisentirely possiblefor prayer to changeboththe individual and God. The question that I am interestedinexploring here concerns what differenceprayermakes to the pray-er. What is the nature of this change? In the context of the discourse, we find this discussion of confessional prayer alongside Kierkegaard’sdiscussion of the human will. Kierkegaard describes faith as akind of single-mindedness in which an individual has the purity of heart to will onlythe good. And it is this purity of heart and single-mindedness of the will which allows aperson to draw near to God. Kierkegaard writes that “onlythe pure in heart are able to see God and consequentlykeep near to him.”¹⁰ When Kierkegaardspeaks of “nearness” to God or “distance” from God, we should read this in terms of willed distance from God. Although God never distances himself from us, the resultofdespair and sin is awilled distance from God—human beingschoose to be far from God by lacking apurity of heart to will the good. Conversely, it is aperson’slack of ability to will onlythe good, or their being in astate of sin, which means that they will not to come near to God. Sin, as it is discussed here, is akind of despair in which aperson has two wills;¹¹ although a person wills the good and wills to be close to God, she is double-minded or con- flicted in her will. Forinstance, she might pursue the good for some selfish purpose such as for some reward,¹² or fear of punishment.¹³ Or,Kierkegaard tells us, aperson can be double-minded by onlypartiallywilling the good through busyness or distraction.¹⁴ Hence, the prayer of confession seeks to changeaperson by achangeofthe will. Prayer then seeks to bring about a changefrom double-mindedness to single-mindedness in aperson. This discussion of prayer as aresponse to double-mindedness is picked up two years later by Kierkegaard in the pseudonymouslysigned TheSickness unto Death. Here, the author,Anti-Climacus, develops asimilar account of faith, sin, and despair,albeit in more philosophical terms.AccordingtoAnti-Climacus, the universal human condition is that of despair.Despair,asitisdefined in Sickness, is awilful misrelation to oneself. Either through ignorance, weakness, or defiance, aperson can be in astate of despair by failing to willtobeaself in the appropriate way. Anti-Climacus defines the self as a “synthesisofthe

 SKS 8, 138 / UD,24.  SKS 8, 144/UD,30.  SKS 8, 152/UD,41.  SKS 8, 156 / UD,44.  SKS 8, 72 / UD,64.

Brought to you by | University of St Andrews Scotland Authenticated Download Date | 3/22/18 1:36 PM Prayer as God-knowledge(viaSelf) 105 infinite and the finite, of the temporaland the eternal, of freedom and necessity, in short, asynthesis.”¹⁵ As Murray Rae describes it,this is an attempt to maintain the tension which is found in the biblical view of the self; human beingsare but dust (Gen 3:19), yet, they “have been made alittle lower thanGod” (Ps 8:5).¹⁶ Despair is afailureofthe willinrelation to the self. As it is described later in Sickness,itisthe basis of human sin. The kind of despair Anti-Climacus has in mind is summarised well by the words of the Anglican confession: “Father…we have sinned against you… through ignorance, through weakness,through our own deliberate fault.”¹⁷ Aperson can express despair because of their lack of self-awareness,through akind of weakness of will or through akind of defiance. Hence, despair is closelyrelated to aperson’sself-knowledge.Anti- Climacus writes that “[t]he more consciousness, the more self; the more consciousness, the more will; the more will, the more self. Aperson who has no will is not aself; but the more will he has, the more self-consciousness he has also.”¹⁸ Thus, despair is akind of internal conflictofaperson’swill in which she cannot or refuses to will to be aself. The discussion of the will in Sickness is related to thatinthe “Occasional Discourse.” HereKierkegaard describes the sin of double-mindedness as a kind of despair (“what else is it to despair but to have two wills!”¹⁹)Despair as awilful misrelation to oneself (e.g., to despair through alack of possibility) can be understood in terms of double-mindedness too. As Anti-Climacus repeat- edlyemphasises, what the person in despair lacks is the condition of faith in which aperson is free from despair and can relate properlytoGod. Anti- Climacus explicitlycalls the condition “the good”²⁰ in places.Ifdespair is afrag- mentationofthe will in which thereisconflict,faith is the antidote to this conflict; faith is characterized by restinginGod and willing onlythe good. One of the keywaysaperson can exist in despair is by failing to exist as a synthesisinthe mannerwhich Anti-Climacus is vital for existing as aself. Since aperson is asynthesisofnecessity and possibility,aperson can fall into despair because they lack either necessity or possibility in how they live.For instance, the despair of possibilityischaracterised by someone who livesafantastical life full of imagination, hopes and dreams but who never sees these dreams ac-

 SKS 11, 129 / SUD,13.  MurrayRae, Kierkegaardand Theology, Edinburgh:T&T Clark 2010,p.92.  Church of England, “AForm of Preparation,” in Common Worship, from: https://www. churchofengland.org/prayer-worship/worship/texts.aspx[last accessed July 2016].  SKS 11, 145/SUD,29.  SKS 8, 144/UD,30.  SKS 11, 213/SUD,101.

Brought to you by | University of St Andrews Scotland Authenticated Download Date | 3/22/18 1:36 PM 106 Joshua Cockayne tualized. “What is missing” from such alife, Anti-Climacus tells us “is essentially the power to obey,tosubmit to one’slimitations.”²¹ Although it is vital that a person expresses possibilityinhow they live,without expressing necessity,a person is not fullyaself, and thus exists in despair,accordingtoAnti- Climacus. He writes that “[p]ossibility is like achild’sinvitation to aparty;the child is willing at once, but the question now is whether the parents will give permission—and as it is with the parents, so it is with necessity.”²² Conversely, just as aperson falls into despair through possibility alone,aperson who exists onlythrough necessityalso exists in despair.Such acondition, Anti- Climacus comparestoakind of “fatalism.”²³ To despair by lacking possibility is to submit oneself to the facts of one’ssituation—although one cannot exist by expressingonlythe possible, to exist without anypossibility is resign oneself to the inevitablyand uncontrollability of the future. Crucially, what the fatalist lacks is the possibilityoffaith. From the perspective of the fatalist, salvation is impossible and human beingsare condemned to despair.Anti- Climacus states that “[t]he believer has the ever infallible antidote for despair —possibility—because for God everything is possible at every moment.Thisis the good health of faith.”²⁴ Faith is presented as the antidote to the condition of despair—if there is God for whom all thingsare possible, fatalism is false. It is against this backdrop that we find Anti-Climacus account of prayer.He tells us that

[t]he fatalist is in despair,has lost God and thus his self, for he who does not have aGod does not have aself, either.But the fatalist has no God, or,whatamounts to the same thing, his God is necessity;since everythingispossible for God, then God is this—that everything is possible. Thereforethe fatalist’sworship of God is at most an interjection, and essentially it is amuteness,amutecapitulation: he is unable to pray. To prayisalso to breathe, and possibilityisfor the self what oxygen is for breathing. Nevertheless, possibilityalone or necessity alone can no morebethe condition for breathingofprayerthan oxygen alone or nitrogenalone can be that for breathing. Fortopraytheremust be aGod, aself—and possibility—or aself and possibilityinapregnant sense, because the beingofGod means that everythingispossible, or that everythingispossible means the beingof God…That God’swill is the possible makes me able to pray, if thereisnothingbut necessity,man is essentiallyasinarticulateasthe animals.²⁵

 SKS 11, 152 / SUD,36.  SKS 11, 152 / SUD,37.  SKS 11, 155 / SUD,40.  SKS 11, 155 / SUD,39–40.  SKS 11, 155–156 / SUD,40–41.

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The fatalist is in despair since he lacks possibility.The analogythat is used here is of breathing—possibility provides oxygen for an individual, yetaperson cannot exist by onlybreathingoxygen. The fatalist lacks the ability to pray because to pray is to relatetoaGod for whom all thingsare possible, not least is the possibility of one’sown salvation. Prayer,asitispresented here requires abasic level of self-awareness—remember,despair is acondition of a person’swill and the fatalist,through ignorance, defiance,orweakness is unable to pray since he is unable to express possibility. Not onlydoes prayer require alevel of self-knowledge but alsoitbringswith it akind of self-knowledge.The human self, in Anti-Climacus’spresentation, is not staticbut something which requires aperpetual act of the will. Thus, to exist as asynthesis of necessityand possibility requires akind of breathing—aperson must be constantlybreathinginpossibilityinAnti-Climacus’smetaphor.²⁶ The implication of this analogyisthat prayer allows aperson to become more self-aware. Prayer is aperpetual reminder that for God all thingsare possible. Furthermore, since the human self is asynthesisofnecessity and possibility, by relatingtoGod as the sourceofpossibility, one comes to be aware that she does not exist as apurelynecessary being. As with the discussion of prayer in the occasional discourse, Anti-Climacus describes prayer as something which bringsabout changeinthe individual; this is achangeinaperson’sself-awareness.Prayerbringshome this fact that Iama synthesisofthe necessary and the possible—Iexist as amortal, physical thing who is condemned to despair,yet Ibreathe in the possibility of faith, that for God all thingsare possible. Or,toput it more simply,prayerallows aperson to gain knowledge of themselves. We also find this claim about self-knowledge and prayer in “Occasional Discourse.” Kierkegaard writes:

The person confessingisnot likesomeone confiding in afriend, whomheinitiates, in advance or afterward,intosomethinghedid not know before; the Omniscient One does not find out anythingabout the person confessing, but instead the person confessing finds out somethingabout himself. Therefore, do not raise the objection against the confession that there is no benefit in confiding to an omniscient one what he alreadyknows;first answer the question whether it does not benefit aperson to find out somethingabout himself that he did not know!²⁷

We can see more clearly that the changebrought about through prayer (from double-mindedness to single-mindedness) is achangeofknowledge.Aperson

 This is one wayofinterpretingSt. Paul’scommand to “praycontinually” (cf. 1Thess 5:17).  SKS 8, 137 / UD,22.

Brought to you by | University of St Andrews Scotland Authenticated Download Date | 3/22/18 1:36 PM 108 Joshua Cockayne comes to know something through the act of praying.AccordingtoKierkegaard, the practice of prayer drawsaperson before God to reflect on their sin; if the fatalist weremore self-conscious,hewould realise thatheisnot merelya necessary,physical being,but rather,herelates to aGod for whom all things are possible. Not onlythis,but alsothe fatalist cannot draw near to God because of his sin. Therevelation of God through prayer bringshome the fact that aperson is in despair and in despair aperson cannot relatetoGod in faith. ForKierkegaard, self-knowledge is an essential part of our comingto know God. In ajournal entry,heputs it as follows:

Paganism required: Know yourself. Christianitydeclares: No, that is provisional, know yourself and then look at yourself in the Mirror of the Word in order to know yourself properly. No true self-knowledge without God-knowledge or [without standing] before God. To stand beforethe Mirror means to stand before God. ²⁸

Prayer as self-knowledge is onlyhalf of the picture,for Kierkegaard. True self- knowledge must not onlyrelate to the self, but must also relatetoGod. As Anti-Climacus writes, “[t]he human self is such aderived, established relation that relates itself to itself and in relatingitself to itself relates itself to another.”²⁹ To will onlythe good, aperson must come to will to be in union with God. And thus, aperson can onlysingle-mindedlywill the good when they are able to “rest transparentlyinGod.”³⁰

III Wholeheartedness

Kierkegaard’smodel of prayer as ameans of comingtoknow God (via self)is promisingasamodel of prayer.Inthe remainder of this paper,Iwill develop this account of prayer by drawing on Harry Frankfurt’sanalysis of the will to try and further shed light on how prayer can bring about self-knowledge and

 SKS 24,425,NB24:159 / JP 4, 3902.  SKS 11, 129 / SUD,13–14.  SKS 11, 146/SUD,30. The idea that knowledge of self is importantfor knowledge of God has some precedenceinthe spiritual/theological literature: “[F]irst flows self-knowledge and from this source arises knowledgeofGod” (John of the Cross, DarkNight of the Soul,trans. by Mirabai Starrm,New York: Riverhead Books, 2002,pp. 78 – 79.) See also John Calvin: “Nearly all the wisdom which we possess,that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts:the knowledgeofGod and of ourselves. But,while joined by manybonds,which one precedes and brings forth the other is not easy to discern.” (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, abridgedversion, London/Louisville: Westminster John KnoxPress,p.1.)

Brought to you by | University of St Andrews Scotland Authenticated Download Date | 3/22/18 1:36 PM Prayer as God-knowledge (via Self) 109 whythis might in turn allow for an increased knowledge of God.Similarly to Anti-Climacus, Frankfurt states that the human will has an essential role to playinour understanding of personhood.³¹ He writes,

[i]t is my view the one essential differencebetween persons and other creaturesistobe found in the structureofaperson’swill. Human beings arenot alone in havingdesires and motivations, or in makingchoices. They sharethese things with the membersof certain other species,some of whom appear to engage in deliberation and to make decisions based upon prior thought. It seems to be peculiarly characteristicofhumans, however,that they are able to form what Ishall call “secondorder desires.”³²

ForFrankfurt,towill is to be able to form second-order desires.³³ The difference between first-order and second-order desires,asFrankfurt defines it,isthat first- order desires are desires “to do or not to do one thing or another,”³⁴ whereas second-order desires are desires which are directed towards first-order desires. Asecond-order desire is adesire to desire something.Anexample will help to make this clearer.Imayhavethe first-order desire to gorge myself on chocolateevery night and Imight also have the first order desire not to get too fat.Imight also have certain second-order desires:the desire not to desire chocolatesooften, or adesire to have agreater desire to not gettoo fat,for example. Now,the will, in Frankfurt’sterminologyissimply “an effective desire—one that moves(or will or would move)aperson all the wayto action.”³⁵ Willing differs from intending, for instance, in that “even though someone mayhaveasettled intention to do X, he maynonetheless do something else instead of doing Xbecause,despite his intention, his desire to do Xproves to be weaker or less effective than some conflictingdesire.”³⁶ Thus, Imay fail to will to desire less chocolateifmysecond-order desire to desire less chocolatefails to be effective.That is, if Iwant my desire for self- control to trump my desire for delicious chocolate, and Ieat the delicious

 Iappreciatethat “selfhood” in Anti-Climacus’saccountand “personhood” in Frankfurt’s discussionmight not be equivalent,but,aswewill see, thereissufficient similarity in what these twoaccounts are interested in describingthat the application of Frankfurt’saccount of the will is still ahelpful comparison to make.  Frankfurt, TheImportance of What We Care About, p. 12.  Notethe similarity herewith what Anti-Climacus has to say: “[t]he possibility of this sickness [despair] is man’ssuperiority over the animal” (SKS 11, 131 / SUD,15). Or,inother words,the capacity to will, or moreprecisely, afailure to will, distinguishes human beings from other animals.  Frankfurt, TheImportance of What We Care About, p. 12.  Ibid., p. 14.  Ibid., p. 14.

Brought to you by | University of St Andrews Scotland Authenticated Download Date | 3/22/18 1:36 PM 110 Joshua Cockayne chocolate, Ihavefailed to will effectively.This kind of second-order desire, in which aperson wantsadesire to be his will, is what Frankfurt calls a “second order volition.”³⁷ Just as we found in Kierkegaard’swritings, Frankfurtargues that the human will can be distorted or in conflict in various ways.OnFrankfurt’saccount,a person has ahierarchyofdesires;some of our desires playamorecrucial role than others, and some of our less important desires are subordinatetomore importantdesires.Mydesire to be amorallygood person, for instance,trumps my desires for having as much fun as possible. Thus, when my desire for having fun conflicts with my desire for moral goodness,Idesire to have the second-order volition to will the right action, and not the most fun action. Because of the possibility of having hierarchyand structure in our desires,it is possibletolack what Frankfurtcalls “wholeheartedness” (Kierkegaard’s term “double-mindedness” looks just as appropriate here) whenour internal desires conflict in some way.³⁸ In such acase, Frankfurt remarks,

[i]t is not amatter of volitional strength but of whether the highest-order preferencescon- cerning some volitional issue are wholehearted. It has to do with the possibility that thereis no unequivocal answer to the question of what the person reallywants,eventhough his desiresdoform acomplex and extensive hierarchical structure. Theremight be no unequivocal answer,because the person is ambivalent with respect to the object he comes closest to reallywanting: In other words, because with respect to that object,heisdrawn not only towarditbut away from it too. Or there might be no unequivocal answerbecause the person’spreferencesconcerningwhathewants arenot fullyintegrated, so that there is some inconsistency or conflict (perhaps not yetmanifest) among them.³⁹

Wholeheartedness is astructural property of one’swill in which aperson has a freedom of will because their desires are integrated in the appropriate way. That

 Ibid., p. 16.  Rudd makes this comparison between single-mindedness and wholeheartedness. He notes that contrary to Frankfurt’ssubjective understanding of wholeheartedness, for Kierkegaard, “onlythe Good can be willed wholeheartedly” (AntonyRudd, “Kierkegaard’sPlatonism and the Reasons of Love,” in Love, Reason and Will: Kierkegaard after Frankfurt, ed. by Antony Rudd and John Davenport,New York and London: Bloomsbury 2015,p254).  Frankfurt, TheImportance of What We Care About, p. 165. This kind of conflict of the will can also occurbecause of akind of ignorancetowards one’sdesires, according to Frankfurt: “It is possible for ahuman beingtobeattimes,and perhapsevenalways,indifferent towards his own motives—to takenoevaluative attitude towardthe desires that incline him to act.If thereisaconflict between those desires, he does not carewhich of them proves to be more effective.Inother words, the individual does not participateinthe conflict.Therefore,the outcome of the conflict can be neither avictory for him nor adefeat.” (Frankfurt, The Importance of What We Care About, p. 164.)

Brought to you by | University of St Andrews Scotland Authenticated Download Date | 3/22/18 1:36 PM Prayer as God-knowledge (via Self) 111 is, thereisnothing internallyabout aperson’sdesires or volitions which is pre- venting them from willing in acertain way. This analysis can easilybeextended to think about the conflict of will we find in Kierkegaard’sanalysis of double-mindedness and despair.Understood in these terms,Kierkegaard’snotion of despair is acondition of lacking wholeheartedness,ofnot beingabletowill effectively.Inparticular,despair is the condition of failing to will onlythe good because of the conflictofone’swill due to alack of wholeheartedness or internal fragmentation. However, whereas Frankfurt’snotion of wholeheartedness is astructural property of the will, for Kierkegaard, there is something more objective about single-mindedness.⁴⁰ Kierkegaard’saccount of single-mindedness,incontrasttoFrankfurt’s, depends not onlyonthe structure of aperson’swill, but alsoonwhether or not thatperson wills the good. And unlike Frankfurt,Kierkegaard has aclear idea of how aperson’swillneedstobeintegrated in order to be wholehearted. As bothKierkegaard and Anti-Climacus describeit, human beingsare unable to be content until they “rest transparentlyinGod”⁴¹ or “will onlythe good.”⁴² As AnthonyRudd describes, for Kierkegaard,

[o]n the…Kierkegaardian view…Ineed to appeal to standards outside of me—to the True and the Good—and if Ifind Iamaverse to them, then this is not somethingtobe accepted, but to be struggledagainst.Ifthereisagenuinelyauthoritative standard, then choices made with reference to that standardare not arbitrary.This can Ithink, help us to see the force of Kierkegaard’sclaim that it is onlythroughbeingorientated to God that the self is able to hold together the elementsoftranscendenceand immanence in creative tension, and that the loss of that orientation necessarilyresults in the internal conflict,orself-mutilation that Kierkegaardcalls ‘despair’ or ‘sin’.Atany rate, we can see whyitseem plausible to claim that the self needs an orientation to the Good to prevent it from despairing in this sense.⁴³

 Frankfurt’saccountofwholeheartedness is susceptible to the followingkind of counter examples: “Eveisastrong,independent youngwoman. She longsfor an education and career of her own. Unfortunately, she has been born into astrict,religious community.Inthat community,women areexpected to be meek and compliant,toaccept male authority,to remain uneducated, and maintain asubservient societal role. Everejects those values and insists that she be respectedasfullyequal to anyone else. But after years of failure, condemna- tion, and psychological and physical abuse, she breaks down. She starts to accept the subser- vient role. She becomes awillingconvert.” (BruceN.Waller, Against MoralResponsibility, Cambridge,Mass.: MIT Press 2011, p. 61.)  SKS 11, 146/SUD,30.  SKS 8, 138 / UD,24.  Rudd, “Kierkegaard’sPlatonism and the Reasons of Love,” pp. 258–59.

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In order to make sense of this account in Frankfurtian terms,then,wemustclaim that human beingshaveaninherent first-order desire for the good which will always conflict with one’sother desires until one becomes wholehearted. If one can onlybecontent by resting transparentlyinGod, then one wayof making sense of this is that restingtransparentlyinGod satisfies acertain desire, even if one wasunaware of this desire. It is onlywhen one is able to have an effective second-order volition to will the good that aperson’sdesires become structured in such away that there is no conflict.

IV Prayer as God-knowledge(viaSelf)

The implication of the Kierkegaardian/Frankfurtian account of the will Ihave been consideringisthat it is onlybysubmitting to the will of God thata person be trulyfree and wholehearted.The ultimategood for human beings, as we have seen, Anti-Climacus repeatedlyemphasise, is to “rest transparently in God.”⁴⁴ If it is true thathuman beingspossess an inherent desire for God which must be integrated around ahigher-order desire for goodness, then the more self-aware one becomes,the more one realisesthatthe onlyway of unifying one’sdesires and will is by comingcloser to God. This account of wholeheartednesscan help us to see how Christian faith and sin are related to the will in more precise terms. The resultofhuman sin is that human beingslack the resources to come into union with God,since their desires are not aimedatthe good. They fail to will to be aself since they lack the higher- order desire which can fullyintegrate theirwill. ForAnti-Climacus, faith is agift from God which provides the antidote to despair.Wecan understand this in Frankfurtian terms:faith is the reception of the higher-order desire to will the good, around which all of aperson’sdesires can be integrated. The life of faith, then, is alife of reintegration of aperson’sdesires and will so that, eventually, they maybewholehearted in their desire for the good.⁴⁵ The practice of prayer can be seen as acrucial part of this process of reintegration. Forthe person who has receivedthe gift of faith and the higher-order desire for the good, the purpose of prayer is to become more self-aware, to discover where one’sdesires are not unified around the good, and whereone is not single- minded.

 SKS 11, 146/SUD,30.  EleonoreStump also draws on Frankfurt’sanalysis of higher-order desirestoexplain her Thomisticview of the ordo salutis;cf. EleonoreStump, Wandering Darkness,Oxford: OxfordUni- versity Press 2010.

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How is it possiblefor prayer to bring aperson out of despair and eventually closer to God?John Lippitt, in his discussion of Kierkegaard’saccount of self- knowledge,describes aperson’sself-knowledge in first person, third person and second personal terms.Hewritesthat self-knowledge seeks “to understand sin as an objective property in which all humanityisimplicated, but to relateto this on afirst-person, subjective level as something that applies to me. Standing ‘before God’ (second-person) is what bringsthis home.”⁴⁶ As Lippittreads Kier- kegaard’sdiscussion of self-knowledge,true self-knowledge requiresustocome close to God and it is in this encounter with God thataperson comes to realise the extent of their sin and their distance from God. To continue the application of Frankfurt’sterminology—by experiencing God in prayer,aperson comes to realise that they have adeep-seated desire for union with God and that this conflicts with their other desires.Furthermore, this conflict (or despair)isthe very thing which prevents this person from enjoying acloseness in relationship to God. Onlythrough apurity of the will can aperson come to know God, but in experiencing God,aperson comes to realise that their will is too fragmented to wholeheartedlywill to be in union. It is this realisation thatmydesire and my will prevent me from the one thing that can bring wholeheartedness, that I can begin the process of reintegration. Thekey differencebetween the kind of self-knowledge made possibleinprayer, and all other kindsofintrospection or self-knowledge,then, is thatprayerbegins before God and the content of self-knowledge relates to aperson’swilland desires. As Eleonore Stump argues, in order for persons to be close to one another, there has to be amutual self-revelation in which both person’sshare their thoughts and feelingfreely.⁴⁷ However,ifaperson is fragmented because of a lack of wholeheartedness,then this precludes the possibility of personal closeness:

Aperson alienated from himself cannot have someone else close to him. Jerome cannot reveal his mind to Paula if Jerome has hidden agood part of his mind from himself. And, if Jeromedesiresnot to have the desireshehas with regardtoPaula, then to that extent he does not desirecloseness with Paula either.For that matter,ifJeromeis divided within himself as regards anyofhis desires, Paula will be distant from some part of Jerome,nomatter which of his conflictingdesires she allies herself with. So, for Paula to be close to Jerome, it is necessary that Jerome be integrated in himself.⁴⁸

 John Lippitt, “Self-knowledge in Kierkegaard,” p. 16.  Stump, WanderinginDarkness,p.120.  Stump, WanderinginDarkness, p. 125.

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Stump’saccount of personal closeness can be extended to think about closeness with God. Anti-Climacus writes thatChristianityteaches that aperson is “invited to live on the most intimate terms with God”;⁴⁹ we can see despair as akind of fragmentation that prevents this kind of intimacy from occurring. In short,those living in astate of despair,ordouble-mindedness, are not able to be close to God because there are parts of themselveswhich are hidden even to theirown consciousness. Thus, when Anti-Climacus describes prayer as abreathingof necessity and possibility,wecan see this as akind of re-orientation of the self in which aperson comes to recognise theirown fragmentation (either they lean too heavilytowards necessity or too heavilytowards possibility). The crucial feature of this account of prayer,isthat this realisation occurs when one is before God. Forthe fatalist,comingbefore God bringswith it the realisation that everythingispossiblefor God,and thus, it is her own despair which prevents her from drawingneartoGod as asynthesisofnecessity and possibility. Self-awareness is essentialfor the possibilityofbeing near to God. As we have seen, the practice of prayer makes possible akind of self- knowledge through the experience of being before God. In turn, this self- knowledge allows aperson to realigntheir will in the appropriate way, and thus, to draw close to God.

 SKS 11, 199 / SUD,85.

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