Investigating the Educational Denotations of Kierkegaard’s Religious Ideas Based on Master Mutahhari’s Thought

In Kierkegaard’s thought, religious education is a process whose foundation is the internality of the faith and whose ultimate goal is presence before God, which is achieved through an extraordinary event called “leap of faith”. Besides, Kierkegaard emphasizes on the individual’s awareness along with his freedom in choosing his own beliefs away from any compulsion and imposition.
The findings of research show that although leap of faith and internality of faith (and its not being imposed from the outward) is agreed upon by both thinkers, and both stress that the faith is stable if it is achieved through the individual’s freedom in choosing his doctrinal teachings, Martyr Mutahhari maintains that leap of faith is not possible for everybody and is experienced by certain persons who have been favored by God, and that extending it to all human beings turns the ‘faith’ into a general, ambiguous and somewhat inaccessible concept.
In Kierkegaard’s thought, faith is more similar to emotional faith than intuitive faith, and this is while the position of doubt – temporary doubt, not the perpetual one – in Master Mutahhari’s thought is of special importance. Regarding the relationship with others and faith, Master Mutahhari is in opposite position to Kierkegaard, and does not regard others separate from faith, believing that feeling responsibility for the people is somehow the same as feeling responsibility for God, and going towards God is based on the relationship with other human beings.