From the Notebooks
If it's possible to love a fictional philosophical character, I've loved one for many years. It's Sören Kierkegaard's “knight of faith," which he describes in the pioneering work of existentialism, Fear and Trembling.
Kierkegaard's knight of faith is a man who fits in everywhere, among everyone: “This man takes pleasure, takes part, in everything, and whenever one catches him occupied with something his engagement has the persistence of the worldly person whose soul is wrapped up in the such things.” He later talks about the knight of faith coming home to a special meal prepared by his wife and devouring it with an enormous appetite. But, Kierkegaard observes, if “his wife doesn't have the dish, curiously enough he is exactly the same.” Everything is enjoyable to the knight of faith.
Alas, perhaps we love that which we aren't. I have faith, but I'm not content in any situation like the knight. Far from it, and it's an ongoing source of concern.
But as I've gotten older, I've seen glimpses of the knight of faith in myself. When at Cedar Point, for instance, I found myself equally content to ride the train with the little kids or ride the Millennium Force with my older kids. But then again, maybe I'm just getting old, so the different thrills--the lame and the heightened--appeal to me equally, like a man in my hometown is equally close to Detroit and Chicago, with added virtue to be found in neither.
