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To understand more clearly the meaning of the Qualitative leap, or leap of faith, we should recognise that perhaps each of us has made such a leap somewhere in life, or knows people who have lived in this way. Such examples are deeply personal and difficult to describe, because not every renunciation of a desire is a leap of faith. If the renunciation or sacrifice is made in fulfilment of a duty we understand ourselves to have, or a duty placed upon us, then in Kierkegaard's terms we remain a Knight of infinite resignation; such an act is not the leap of faith.

Consider a father who gives up personal pleasures and works late into the night because he understands himself to have a duty towards his family, or a religious person who helps a poor neighbour because religious belief has imposed that duty. This does not mean such actions lack value. In Kierkegaard's view, living within the Ethical Sphere has a higher value than living within the sphere of pleasures, the Aesthetic sphere. But describing the leap of faith is something different from giving up life's pleasures for moral duty.

Kierkegaard describes the leap of faith as a Qualitative leap because the leap transforms the quality of who we are. It is like the transformation from H2 and O into water: not merely a combination but a change in the nature of the elements as a new thing emerges.

Imagine, for example, that you work in an organisation. Advancement in that organisation matters greatly to you, and you also depend upon the salary for your livelihood. One of your colleagues is subjected to an obvious injustice, and you know that because the colleague refused to perform an unethical act, false accusations have been constructed and dismissal is imminent. If you decide publicly to defend the person being wronged, what stands between your personal desires—financial security and professional advancement—and what you believe you must do is not simply the relinquishing of a desire. By standing up, you cast yourself into an unknown darkness in which anything may happen, perhaps far beyond losing the thing you wanted. If the power you confront is large and corrupt, your livelihood and even your family may be placed at risk. Such renunciation entails a qualitative leap in your Being and might be called a Leap of faith.

Or imagine you are a psychiatry trainee. You chose the specialty with love and have devoted several years of your life to it, but reach a point where you realise that the system you are about to join works according to values that are not yours. Treating patients with high doses of antipsychotic drugs, the absence of a psychotherapy system and social support, and other features are not aligned with what you had imagined. Leaving specialist training means not only abandoning the investment of previous years but also creating a serious professional and social crisis in your life. Such an act entails a leap into unknown darkness.

You might instead decide to remain and fight to change the system, which could itself entail a leap. As these examples suggest, it is not the external action that determines whether a “leap of faith” has occurred, but the fulfilment of two principles that, in Kierkegaard's language, elevate the person into a Knight of faith:
1) relinquishing pleasure and even responsibility or duty in the service of a higher value;
2) leaping into the unknown through a decision grounded in faith in a higher, personal truth for which one is willing to live and even to give up life.

We Iranians may understand inwardly the difference between the Knight of infinite resignation and the Knight of faith through contrasts in our intellectual and spiritual history: the faith of Muhammad al-Ghazali and Husayn Hallaj; the faith of Nasir al-Din Tusi and Nasir Khusraw; the faith of figures such as Nizam al-Mulk and Salah al-Din Ayyubi, and the passionate, loving faith of Suhrawardi. Faith of this kind, woven from passion and love, is not of the order of belief, and its place is not simply in the head. Perhaps this is why those who choose the leap into such faith ascend without a head.

Aydin Areta