Dr. Bob Zunjic
CONCLUDING UNSCIENTIFIC POSTSCRIPT
Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical
Fragments is probably the most philosophically "laden"
of all Kierkegaard's writings. It marks the pinnacle of his pseudonymous
authorship which was carried out in the mode of "indirect
communication" (as opposed to the direct, non-pseudonymous
authorship of his religious works). The initial title in outlines
was "Logical Issues", but Kierkegaard eventually changed
this neutral heading to a more humorous version (see explanation
below). In accord with this change the two subtitles now read "A Mimical-Pathetical-Dialectical Compilation, An Existential Contribution".
The work was published under pseudonym (alias) Johannes Climacus
I DEFINING THE PROBLEM
The title is a composite that could be best explained in a reversed
order of its components.
Postscript (PS): An addendum to something previously written,
in this case to Philosophical Fragments (1844). As the
addendum exceeds five times its base, it is obvious that Kierkegaard
is making fun of his own urge to complement his previous "pamphlet"
(also a self-ironizing term) with a "compilation" of
prolonged after-thoughts on speculative philosophy.
Unscientific: This adjective clearly indicates that for
Kierkegaard existing is not a science or a speculative reflection
upon the vicissitudes of human life. Consequently, it is not something
that could be thought, obtained from others or transmitted to
others. It is something very simple and individual. As there are
no partnerships in faith, by the same token there are no schoolmasters
in the art of existing. No philosophical system or speculative
construction could replace first-hand experience and passion.
"In relation to existing there is for all existing persons
one schoolmaster - existence itself." (Journals, iii
Note: This statement
is directed against Hegel and abstract philosophizing in general,
but should not be understood as a repudiation of thinking and
reflection tout court. Kierkegaard is a thinker himself,
and misology was the last thing he would subscribe himself to.
As we shall see below, he only wanted to distinguish between essential
knowledge pertaining to existence and accidental knowledge pertaining
just to our learning and social roles.
Concluding: With this adjective Kierkegaard announces the
end of his activity as a literary author. This is the reason why
he signed the book with the pseudonym Climacos (The Ladder)
indicating that he has reached the final point in his literary
career. He planned to continue writing but only under his real
name and in the form of criticism or religious authorship. However
he soon found himself enmeshed in several polemics which prevented
him from terminating his literary activity and so the Postscript
became rather the turning point between his aesthetic and religious
oeuvre then the final end of indirect authorship.
|| Kierkegaard uses
the expression "mimical" to suggest that the work appropriately
imitates ("mimes") the emotions and thoughts discussed
by the author. As H. and E. Hong point out, it may also refer to
a gathering of all the earlier "mimed" (pseudonymous) works as the background
material for this "concluding" work. The "pathetical"
means simply "pathos-filled" and refers to Kierkegaard's poetical
rendering of Climacus. The "dialectical" denotes Kierkegaard
himself in the capacity of a thinker. Thus the author (Climacus)
is all at once: an imitator, a poet and a philosopher (the whole
formula could be also a reference to various stages in life and
respective transitions in thought or existence).
||What is "true" existence? In Fear and
Trembling Kierkegaard has already suggested that authentic existence
does not consist in the comfortable conformism of regular civic
life. On the contrary, its characteristics are feelings of uncertainty,
fear, trembling, distress, anxiety - all stemming from the absolute
relationship with the Absolute.
| But there are some unresolved questions about the
very idea of truth and its place in life:
(A) What is truth? (B) Where does truth lie?
(C) How an individual can be "in truth"?
The first question is a general philosophical issue, the second
is more specifically an epistemological one, the third is an existential
understands fully the nature of logical and epistemological issues
surrounding the philosophical analysis of truth. Common charges
against him to the effect that he was simply ignoring the epistemological
foundation of truth while espousing his "wild relativism"
and "subjectivism" are as superficial as unjustified.
||It seems that Kierkegaard accepts the
correspondence theory of truth ("conformity") as the adequate
answer to the first question about truth. According to this theory,
a statement is true if it corresponds to that what it refers to.
Or as Aristotle puts it: "to say of what is that it is, or
what is not that it is not, is true." (Metaph., 1077b
Note: All other theories of truth are rather
elucidations of certain aspects or criteria of truth than a straightforward
answer to the question: "What is truth?"
Faces of Conformity:
Kierkegaard conceives correspondence between thoughts and objects
as symmetrical and transitive both ways. Objects could be true
if they correspond to the idea, or ideas could be called true
if they correspond closely to objects.
For German Idealists being or reality must agree with reason
as expressed in thoughts. For British Empiricists thought is true
when it agrees with the real.
In both cases we have a "reduplication" of thought
and reality, the only difference being in the direction of this
Types of Conformity:
Thought conforms with Being
(2) Idealistic / Normative
Being conforms with Thought
In both cases two things are of utmost importance:
(1) to understand "what is meant by being" (reality), and
(2) not to get lost into "the indeterminate" (an
abstract being, "a phantom").
As to (1) Kierkegaard distinguishes between being in an abstract
sense and a concrete being in existential sense. The former is
at best ideal, the latter is real and actual, although it could
be degraded into something abstract. If that happens (2) the subject
becomes a "phantom" residing within the "fantastic
realm" of tautologies like those of Parmenides: one is one,
being is being or the object knowing itself. A knowing subject dissolved into an abstraction
can easily conform to an abstract being (A=A), but this identity
is empty. Appropriate comparisons here are those with "a
fantastic rendezvous in the clouds", or "an unfruitful
embrace" (like Axion's).
"The knowing spirit" is a Hegelian phrase for
individual existence involved in the cognitive process ("the
(I) Objective Reflection: It leads to the "objective
truth" allegedly unaffected by our subjectivity and without
affecting it itself. In order to accomplish this ideal of chemically
pure knowledge it "makes the subject accidental, and thereby
transforms existence into something indifferent". Its hailed
neutrality makes up its "objective validity". This type
of objective truth occurs equally in mathematics and historical
sciences. In both cases "abstract thinking" as exemplified
in "objective reflection" leads "away from the
subject" whose real status and interests become irrelevant.
However, by making the subject indifferent objective reflection
paradoxically makes the truth itself indifferent because what is in itself
is not "interesting" (for the subject)
(II) Subjective Reflection: It turns inwardly to the subject
and attempts to find the truth in the inwardness of subjectivity
or, as Kierkegaard puts it, "to realize the truth" in
"intensification of inwardness". The ultimate goal
in this approach is to reach "the subjectivity of the subject".
Conversely, in affirming "the subjectivity of the subject"
subjective reflection suppresses objectivity as a "vanishing
factor". The constant memento in subjective approach
remains that the subject is "an existing individual" who cares
for the truth and is affected by it.
Existence is "a process of becoming", never something
given and finished. (Sartre will build upon this in his philosophy
(1) The correspondence theory of truth loses ground in the realm
of human existence: the notion of identity becomes "a chimera
of abstraction" if both thought and being are constantly
changing. If the knower is an existing individual, an individual
who lives in time, this notion is inapplicable. Fichte's formula
"I am I" is such an abstraction, an example of "fantastic
realism" that does not speak anything to a "particular
individual". Speculative philosophy leads to abstract formulas
without explaining how they relate to particular individuals.
(2) The only meaningful truth for a particular individual becomes
the one that expresses temporal expectations and current approximations.
If the object of self-knowing constantly supersedes itself then
no stage in the process of becoming is final and thus no statement
could be the final truth about it. Concrete beings can never be
adequately and definitely cognized - our ideas about ourselves
are always "subject to correction and improvement".
Therefore the "I-am-I" point is non-existent as is any
||Speculative philosophy professes to provide
the complete and the final truth about human existence. This truth
is allegedly objective precisely because it is complete. To be able
to view the whole world from without speculative philosophy invents
a kind of Munchausen's ladder (lift) that leads beyond and outside individual
existence. To remain complete the world of objective thinking becomes
the world of the Parmenidean finite sphere which does not allow
coming to being or passing away: "From the abstract point of
view everything is and nothing comes into being." Being clings
to being, unmovable and unchangeable, totally fettered in the perpetual
||The truth about oneself could be "final"
and "complete" only if an existing individual were able
to get out of his own skin and assume a position outside himself.
God possesses such a complete and final knowledge of the world.
God sees reality as a system. But such a position is not possible
for humans, because the moment one transcends himself "objectively"
one loses himself as a particular individual. In their inductive
efforts humans can attain only approximations, while logical constructions
offer only idealizations. These idealizations capture the truth
only at the price of making it entirely un-informative as is the
case in analytic statements whose truth is in advance secured through
the relation of the subject and predicate term.
||The "I-am-I" is an empty mathematical
formula (A=A) which does not denote any real identity. Real identity
based on the equasion A=A is not possible simply because human existence
is a tension between the finite and the infinite. The "I-am-I"
is not a real identity because both I's are fantastic products of
abstraction. Within it a correspondence between thought and being
is quite possible, but this correspondence is one of empty forms,
a sheer tautology, a being dissolved into abstract thought or into
being and thought conceived as one and the same thing. The real
practical meaning of the "I-am-I" formula is therefore
equal to a suicide, a particular individual reduced to a corpse.
||All philosophical attempts to entice man
to transcend himself "objectively" are doomed to fail.
A concrete, particular human existence could be transcended only
in the unity of the finite and the infinite. The only situation
when a unity of the finite and the infinite is possible within human
existence occurs in the moment of passion. Only in passion I can
become "infinite" in the eternity of imaginative representations,
and still remain myself. Passion is therefore "the culmination
of existence for an existing individual". But this self-realization
of unity is only temporary and so the ensuing transcendence of human
existence occurs only momentarily.
Note 1: "Modern
philosophy holds passion in contempt." This does not hold
true for many great thinkers, including Hegel, who became renown
for his claim that nothing great happens in history without passion.
Lessing took passion as the most fundamental characteristic of
being human. In the same vein Feuerbach asserted that "only
passion is the mark of existence" and "only what is
an object of passion really is". Without acknowledging his
debt to this tradition Kierkegaard agrees that passion is the
ultimate source of personal integration. Only through passion
can a person begin to collect herself and acquire a direction
that unites otherwise dissipated life plans and inclinations.
The decision to adopt certain life-style is never just an intellectual
decision based solely on some objective cognitions. It is always
ultimately rooted in what a person cares about and deeply values,
i.e. in passions. Only through passion intellectually conceived
possibilities could be transformed into actualities. The individual
synthetizes the eternal and the temporal by reduplicating timeless
ideals and norms in time and concrete existence. In this respect
passions are much more important than intellectual insights or
ideas. It is possible to imaginatively conceive many possibilities
and to be able to think them through without ever humanly existing.
Note 2: Passion reveals interest in existence,
that is, the care for Self which is the engine of all individual strivings.
To have a passion means to care for something or someone, as opposed
to the indifference of the objective attitude. If I care about
something I do not regard it as valueless. The object of passion
is always considered by passion as worthy of the caring passion.
Thus we speak about being passionate about something in the sense
of being enthusiastic. This usage of the term stresses the active
moment of passion which is regarded as the source of free action.
Kierkegaard rejects the notion that passion is just an irrational
and involuntary emotion that takes control over us from without,
as if we are only passive object of its unpredictable and unaccountable
force (for instance, "he murdered her in a fit of passion").
He recognizes that passion possesses a moment of passivity, since
we cannot induce a passion deliberately. For instance, it is not
possible to decide to have a love or religious passion (passions are not intentionally created), but they could be developed and
cultivated. In that sense the individual is responsible for them
as his own state of mind. The individual also bears a credit for
having a creative passion, artistic, teaching, or religious. Possessing
a passion is what makes someone better than a person of the same
occupation or activity, not physical abilities or the intensity
Types of Knowledge:
(A) Essential Knowledge - the knowledge which has an inward
relation to existence. The essential relation means that there
is an essential relationship between the knowledge and the knower
which is an existing individual (the Latin root esse in "essential" is semantically linked to
the existential as it means to be, to exist). "Only ethical and ethico-religious knowledge
has an essential relationship to the existence of the knower."
- because it involves the subject. In practical life and
religion it does not make sense to speak about proving the
conformity between being and thought as embodied in objective
Note: The quality of being essentially related
should not be confused with either idealist or realist identity
between thought and being.
(B) Accidental Knowledge - the knowledge which does not
inwardly relate itself to subjective existence in the reflection of inwardness
(it comes along coincidentally). This type of knowledge is characteristic
for all objective and descriptive sciences that require an absolute
disengagement (detachment) of the knowing subject.
||Speculative philosophy diffuses this
distinction by claiming that man is basically a mediation, that is
to say, always related to something.
Mediation presupposes movement, but it is being claimed by objective
abstract thinking which brings movement to a permanent halt in
its effort to capture the totality and present it in the final
Objective knowledge may have the existent for its object, but
the knowing subject is an existing individual in the process of
||How a particular subject is related to
a knowledge of mediation as proclaimed by speculative philosophy?
Where is he in it, how he enters into it, miraculously or by virtue
of oblivion ("abracadabra" or forgetfulness")? Mediation
is a "mirage" if it is conceived abstractly. How could
it be a man? Only by disregarding the underlying relation to it
from the part of an existing individual. Before we decide whether
there is a mediation or not we need to ask a plain question "what
it means to be a human being"?
||Contrary to the process of objectification
that transforms the knowing subject into a "fantastic entity"
and the truth into a "fantastic object", passion reaffirms
subjectivity as the real core of individual existence. Subjective
reflection plunges into inwardness which in turn culminates in passion.
Passion attests that one cares for his own existence. In response
to this transformation within the subject the truth becomes a paradox
precisely by virtue of establishing a relationship to an existing
Tautology, from the Greek to auto legein = to say
the same. In linguistics, a pleonasm, a redundant phrase like
"a young boy". In logic, explicating in the predicate
term what is already contained in the subject term ("Bachelors
are unmarried males."). The truth of tautologies is established
either through the logical form of the expression (A=A) or through
the meanings of the involved concepts. Experience cannot falsify
Speculative Philosophy, literally, the philosophy that
"mirrors" the existing consequences unto their invisible
first causes; therefore it is "theoretical" and abstract;
Kierkegaard uses the expression either to denote German Idealism
or any philosophy that curtails thinking from its existential
ground and so creating "tautologies", "fantastic
beings" and "phantoms" of abstraction.
Analytic Statements, statements that are necessarily true
either by their form or by their meaning (A=A, "I am I",
or "All mothers are women" and "All obese people
Reduplication, the term used by Kierkegaard to denote
the reality "doubling" of what we think, that is to
say, it refers to the realizion or "putting into practice"
that "how one thinks one ought to live". To be able
to "be what one says" one needs both the ability of
subjective self-reflection and the strenght to carry out the insights
Mediation, (in German Vermittlung) the term used
by Hegel to oppose the view that our knowledge of phenomenal and
supernatural reality is direct (F. Jacobi). Hegel was convinced
that unrelated existence is not possible and therefore the process
of understanding reality consists in establishing links with the
pertinent factors and instances of reality (nature, society,
language). For Hegel, these connections
and mediations already exist; the question is only to become aware
of them and thus to overcome the illusion of immediacy through
an insight into the mediated immediacy. For Kierkegaard, individual
existence could be mediated only through negation of its individuality.
Subjectivity, a whole host of concepts denoting inwardness:
Ego, I, Self, consciousness, existence, spirit. For Kierkegaard
it is the place of existential truth, which is defining for an
individual. The term thus refers to the process by which an individual
existentially appropriates what he thinks.
II THE QUESTION OF
Two Ways of Asking About Truth:
What is the truth about X?
|(1) Truth is reflected upon objectively as an object rendered
|(2) The subject relates himself to what is true as an object.
|(3) The subject is in the truth if the content taken as object ("what")
Subjectively: How do I
relate to the truth about X?
|(1) Truth is reflected upon subjectively as a relation to subjectivity
|(2) The subject relates himself to the relation.
|(3) The subject is in the truth if the relation ("how")
||There are at least four different uses of the word
"relation" in Kierkegaard's discussion of truth.
||R1 = P:X (a proposition relating to the things or events)
R2 = S:P (a subject term relating to a predicate term)
R3 = S:R2 (a knowing subject relating to a true proposition as truth)
R4 = S:R3 (an existing subject relating to his relation regarding the
||Only the 4th is existentially true.
||Kierkegaard makes a sharp distinction between two kinds
(I) Objective and (II) Subjective.
||Is the "what" (object),
"what is said", "what is stated" with regard
to an indifferent object.
|I am objectively in truth when I know what the things
are, pronounce it and agree with it. (In fact I am detached from
||Is the "how" of the relation
toward the truth ( the "what").
|I am in truth if I relate myself toward what I understand
as true by actualizing this truth in my actions. (Commitment to
truth is preserved even if the subject relates himself to untruth.)
|| existence = essence = substance
||In the first case the knowing subject relates himself
to the propositional truth in the sense of recognizing the connection
of the subject and the predicate term as true. Truth is a feature
of propositions, something objective. Propositions are true when
they correspond to a state of affairs (facts). The subject relates
himself to it as knowing it, stating it or admitting it.
||In the second case, the knowing subject relates himself
to his relation toward truth. For Kierkegaard, truth does not lie
in the system of true propositions but in a lived existential relation.
Human existence possesses content and could be matched with the
idea or reality much more than a sheer proposition. Existence provides
the only adequate form for the realization of the truth that essentially
||Essential truth is opposed to accidental (knowledge)
which does not bear on existence essentially. Existence is the double
movement in which the individual conceives of ideas and then reduplicates
those ideas in reality. When the truth is existentially realized
(lived, actualized in time) the individual is in the truth.
||Kierkegaard's subjective truth is not equal to subjectivism
or relativism. Kierkegaard does not preach wild irrationalism or
arbitrariness in the sense of "anything goes" or "what
I think is true for me, and what you think is true for you."
Subjective truth is not an inference, a summation from the realm
of objective truth. It is the answer to the question: How should
I believe that what is true?
||Subjective thinking = appropriative thinking.
Something objectively uncertain could be subjectively assured by
III WHERE THE TRUTH
Knowledge of God
||Direction of Relation
||What is reflected upon is the statement
that this is the true God.
||I am in truth if my knowledge is
about the object (O) which is the true God (R1).
||What is reflected upon is that the
individual relates itself to an object (O) which is God.
||I am in truth if I relate myself
to the object in such a way that this relation is "in truth
a God relation" (R2).
|Now, on which side is the truth (of God)?
||Truth is always a characteristic of true propositions,
therefore the truth about God lies in true beliefs about God. We
ask when our knowledge of God is true? For this we need to know
what is God? And we need to relate to "the true God"(0).
This is at best what I believe about God.
||God is infinite and eternal. God is not an object
like a rock to be defined the way we determine the nature of other
things. We can have only approximations about God. But the process
of approximations is endless, and thus the truth we are looking
for is not achievable in all eternity.
The "objective person" seems not be worried about this
difficulty. He sets on the long road of approximations as if he
possesses all the time of the world. But:
(a) he can die tomorrow before the immense task has been even started
and so he could miss both the opportunity and the objective that
justifies the whole undertaking.
(b) he cannot take God at his convenience along the way (why then
be bothered?) because God could be taken only at all risk, not as
a comfortable gadget. To regard God as one commitment among other
means not to regard God as God.
||On neither side separately. Truth should be both something
in itself and for us. Truth must be rocognized and appropriated,
but it is not something subjective. Therefore, truth resides only
in mediation, as the unity of identity and difference (Hegel).
||Kierkegaard concedes that this answer is superbly
formulated, but he objects that it is not possible for an individual
to be in a state of mediation. It is just another embellishing delusion
for a deluded "I am I".
(a) To be in mediation as a subject means to be finished. But existence
is open, becoming, not something final - only as dead could it be
(b) An existing person cannot be in two places at the same time
and that is precisely what the formula about the unity requires.
It is a physical and logical impossibility to be both the subject
and the object.
||Kierkegaard allows that an individual
comes close to the unity of the subject and object (to be near is
not the same as to be identical though), but contends that this
proximity is possible only momentarily, in passion. Passion unites
the individual with the object of passion as in metaphysical strivings
or in playing. In that sense passion is a union of the temporal
with the eternal. But Kierkegaard reminds that passion itself is
the highest pitch of subjectivity.
Note: To exist truly for Kierkegaard means
to imbue existence with consciousness. When reflection penetrates
existence (the ultimate achievement we can hope for) then passion
starts to be generated.
||What to do given the impossibility of
being at once the subject and the object, which means given the
impossibility of seeking at the same time both the objective truth
("the approximate truth") and following "an infinite
concern" for his own relationship with the truth?
||How can the individual come to exist truly,
to be in the truth?
How can the truth be realized in existence?
||What kind of life is true? Am I in truth? Am I true?
||Even if I possess a true belief about God I am still
not "in truth", I am still not the true myself. Only when
I relate myself to something, whatever that may be, which determines
the way I am (how I believe) I could be in a true (God) relation,
I could be myself (S). In other words, God is not an idea, a proposition,
an objective truth, but how one involves themselves with Him. "God
is a subject" (not an object) - hence he exists only for subjectivity
||The existing person who chooses the subjective way
understands the problem: it would take a lot of time to find God
objectively, perhaps unlimited time to establish the true S-O relation.
But he needs God immediately, and at all costs. If he does not get
God he is wasting his time. Therefore God becomes a postulate for
him: I need God, I believe in God. Thus he obtains God by virtue
of the infinite passion of inwardness (not by virtue of collecting
data or "objective deliberation" about God).
|Seeking the true God objectively
||Needing God with infinite passion
|Pursuing the approximate truth of the God-idea
||Feeling an infinite concern for his own
relationship to God in truth
|Going to the house of the true God
||Living in an idolatrous community
|Having the true conception of God
||Looking upon the image of an idol
|Praying in a false spirit
||Praying with the passion of the infinitive
|Investigating immortality objectively
||Embracing immortality with an infinite passion
|Being on the path of approximations
||Struggling with uncertainty
||The answer to the question "where
there is more truth" is obvious for everyone who is not "botched
by scholarship" - it is on the side of a person who is infinitely
concerned that he in truth relates himself to God. The answer is
easy since existence is not thinking but acting. Someone who prays
untruly although with the true idea of God is less in truth than
someone who prays with all the passion of infinity although he is
looking at an idol. The latter prays in truth to God although he
is worshiping an idol, the former prays in untruth to the true God
and is therefore worshiping an idol.
The Life-Prevalence of Existential Truth
||Quality of Worship/Relation
|True Religion (Christendom)
||Less Truth (Idol)
|False (Idolatrous) Religion
||More Truth (True God)
Thinking existentially does not suffer discrepancies
|Sitting at a desk (thinking) and
||writing about what one has never done.
|Writing about universal doubt
||and be credulous as any sensuous man.
||Lack of Enthusiasm
||Stakes own life
IV TRUTH IS SUBJECTIVITY
||Philosophers and theologians provide proofs of immortality,
but they do not set their lives accordingly. So they in fact provide
a counter-demonstration of what they purport to prove - their acts
are the most convincing refutation of immortality. Kierkegaard compares
them with wedded matrons who have been subjected to many expressions
of (erotic) love but never enjoyed love itself (as passion). Socrates
is in that respect like a girl who stakes everything on the weak
hope that (s)he is beloved (by immortality).
||Socrates stakes his life on the condition that the
soul is immortal, but he does not possess any certainty about it.
He puts the question of immortality in a "problematic manner":
If there is an immortality. Thus he is cognitively a doubter
or an ignorant. But nobody was more in truth (in paganism) than
Socrates while in his ignorance. Ignorance is the adequate expression
of the relationship between the eternal truth and the existing individual.
The eternal truth which is not paradoxical in itself becomes paradoxical
by being related to an existing person. This relation must remain
a paradox as long as the individual exists. But in risking his entire
life he provides a more effective proof of immortality than anything
one can derive from philosophical assertions about the nature of
the soul. The certainty of immortality is rooted in subjectivity
and the quality of existential appropriation (reduplication).
||In contrast to logic and epistemology, which are interested
only in the thought content and the content of our utterances, existentialism
focuses on the relationship sustained by the existing individual.
"The objective accent falls on WHAT is said, the subjective
accent on HOW it is said."
||Kierkegaard is convinced that the "how"
is more fundamental than the "what". When the "how"
is scrupulously rendered, the "what" should follow. That
the quality of our existential stature is crucial for the assessment
of our veracity attests the principle which places integrity over
orthodoxy. In the light of this principle it is easy to understand
the saying that what is "in itself true" may become untrue
in the mouth of such and such person. This personal moment of truthfulness
is an essential part of what Kierkegaard calls the "how"
of utterances or the "mode of the relationship". The "how"
refers to the passion of inwardness, i.e. subjectivity (Kierkegaard's
"all the passion of infinity" is what we call "inner
integrity"). This is why it matters who speaks, almost as much
as what the person is saying, and much more than the demeanor of
the speaker, his expression or the modulation of his voice.
||In ancient times only a few knew the truth by virtue
of their individual readiness to take the risk of infinite engagement.
In modern times everyone knows the truth, simply because it is being
transmitted and proclaimed as something objectively available.
But the inwardnes of the truth appropriation stands in the inverse
relationship to the extent of its dissemination within Christendom.
||The infinite passion of subjectivity that sincerely
puts everything at risk possesses "more truth" than the
entire System of Philosophy which lacks enthusiasm and personal
commitment. The adjective "more" (truth) indicates in
fact that Kierkegaard does not renounce the objective truth entirely
and does not treat it as worthless. But it has its limits, especially
if separated from our subjectivity. Living truthfully is man's primary
task in life. Having right beliefs follows from this as a matter
||The ideal of objective truth is in itself deceptive.
Objective truth is not achievable and if achieved it remains objectively
uncertain despite its assertoric formulations. In that respect the
objective uncertainty of subjective truth is no argument against
The truth about God is not gained through detached theoretical inquiry,
but through the proces of existing. To believe in objectivity as
such, based on what the others say, is like laughing at a joke because
someone said it was funny.
These defects of objective truth do not mean that it is irrelevant
what a person believes. Kierkegaard wants to say only that proper
objective beliefs are existentially worthless without the involvement
of our subjectivity. In themselves they could lead to insanity
even when presented as a disinterested commitment to pure truth
and objectivity. A detached assistant professor is not less crazy
than a passionate character who is out of touch with reality -
in fact he is more pitiable (the president of the Plato society
who does not believe in Plato's doctrines). The pervasive extension
of scientific objectivity to the whole of life is ridiculuous
and insane (causes a lack of emotional and human interest).
Only when appropriated by a single individual, that is to say,
when they penetrate the life-world, true propositions become existentially
relevant. Truth can only exist in and through individual apprehension
of it. On the other hand, proper subjectivity is not worthless
even when it is not backed by proper beliefs. Why? Because it
is possible for a person to be better than his beliefs. A preson
with confused or even wrong moral ideas can act morally. Bertrand
Russell disclaimed any cognitive distinction between good and
bad and proclaimed it to be just a matter of emotions or taste.
But still he was a great humanist in his life and an activist
for peace and human dignity.
||Either take the comfortable route of objectivity or
the uncertain route of subjectivity. Where the "the way swings
off" cannot be determined in advance and for every individual.
It must be decided by the individual himself.
Objectivity lacks existential decisiveness. Only in subjectivity
there is the decisiveness that realizes the untruth of the accepted
obsession with objectivity. This is what makes up the "decisive
passion of the infinite".
In this manner subjectivity and the subjective "how"
constitute the truth. The definition of truth must reflect this
antithesis to objectivity which is now being suspended.
Truth is an objective uncertainty held fast in an appropriation
process of the most passionate inwardness.
||This definition indicates the resilience
of the inwardness, which is not intimidated by objective uncertainty.
It stays within the the paradoxical position of linking objective
uncertainty with subjective certainty.
There are many signs of divine omnipotence and wisdom in the
worls. The order and regularity of the universe (teleology) nourish
the hope of finding a God.
On the other hand, the sufferings of the innocent and many imprefections
in the design gve rise to doubts, and speak against the idea.
The outcome is "an objective uncertainty". The more
so it makes sense to compensate for it with "the entire passion
of the infinite".
An objective uncertainty + the greatness of inwardness = faith.
||There is an analogy between this definition
of truth and the nature of faith. Faith is "precisely the contradiction
between the infinite passion of the individual's inwardness and
the objective uncertainty". Without risk no faith. Socratic
ignorance is an analogue to the category of the absurd. The absurd
contains even less objective certainty than ignorance. as the ignorance
of inwardness overcomes the repulsion of not knowing with certainty
so the inwardness of faith overcomes the repulsion of the absurd.
||It makes sense to believe precisely because
I cannot grasp God objectively. If I can apprehend God objectively
I do not believe. I do not then need God. But because I cannot do
this, I must have faith. Otherwise I lose the relation toward eternity.
The Fork of Existential Choice:
To be in Truth
|State of Knowledge (A)
||Type of Existence (B)
Philosophy of Reason
|This is a very special concept of truth: truth as
subjectivity or subjectivity as truth. But it does not mean that
every truth claim is based only on the fervor with wich something
is being asserted, that if I believe something truly it becomes
automatically true and that it does not matter what i believe as
long as I am adamant about it. Subjectivity is not a matter of sheer
taste or our volatile inclinations.
In the religiosity A (the religiousness of immamence) truth was
conceived as residing within man. Subjectivity is ideally the
truth but actually existed as untruth in paganism. This is why
Climacus says that the "higher" expression for "subjectivity
is the truth" begins by regarding subjectivity as untruth.
||Truth is not individual's eternal possession
that ensues once we examine ourselves thoroughly. It is something
that may or may not be acquired in time (moment). It is not a product
of relating toward ommanent moral and religious consciousness, but
toward god outside the individual. Existence could be constructed
only around eternal values. The person who has not acquired the
capacity for caring deeply for his existence can never recognize
||The Christian principle that subjectivity
is untruth, when combined with the claim that subjectivity is the
truth, provides a "higher view". It is higher because
it secures a deeper subjectivity.
Note: Evans thinks that all this is a reference
to John 14:6: "I am the way, the truth, and the life."
Jesus is the truth by being life (existence).
||The peculiarity of Christianity is that
the founder himself is the truth, while in all other religions the
founder merely proclaims the truth or witnesses to it.
||In Christianity God enters the world from
without and so creates a paradox by fusing the infinite and the
finite, the eternal and the temporal.
|Objectivity's Repulsion against Uncertainty.
||Subjectivity's Resilience in sustaining Ignorance.
|Objectivity's Repulsion against Incomprehension.
||Subjectivity's Resilience in sustaining the