Offense. Kierkegaard’s Existential reasoning for the God-hypothesis

SKC Workshop Autumn 2026 with Tom Sprenger, Goethe University Frankfurt.

The primary intuition of my project is that the concept of offense has a much more far-reaching extension than supposed and must therefore be theorized not only Christologically (as research has put out for Training in Christianity) but – as such and due to its ontological implications – be considered at the edge of epistemology. As closely intertwined with Kierkegaard’s conception of faith, the nature of the offense seems two-folded, hence dialectical: On the one hand and anthropologically, Climacus considers the offense an “autopathic collision” that is “in the deepest ground suffering”. Set, the pathological semantics of the offense was true, I suggest that the offense in actu as (an expression of) an autopathic self-relationship can be theorized as a – paradox-neglecting – conglomerate of emotional dispositions of ‘failed faith’: as ‘lacking courage’, as ‘unhappy self-assertion’, as an ‘incapability for devotion’, etc.

On the other side and taking the offense as the “dialectical element in everything essentially Christian” into account, it must also be thought of as a key incitement, as a negatively activating emotion in order to come to terms with faith, i.e.: to be drawn into sharing in the reality of love. For this purpose, however, the autopathic self-relationship mentioned above must be deemed overcome.

In short: If there is an ontological nexus between offense and love, held together by the ‘middle-term’ of faith, love must be deemed capable to offend a (potentially misleading) self-conception. If this was true, the offense has to be reconsidered – shedding light on its healing character.