lectures on Kierkegaard\'s Concluding Unscientific Postscript

Lectures on Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript
(Hong translation, Princeton University Press)


Concluding Unscientific Postscript, pp. 129-149 lecture

There are two approaches to Christianity: the objective and the subjective.
Objectively, "a Christian is one who accepts Christianity's doctrine"
(607). But, then, "the 'what' that is believed that decides whether
someone is a Christian or not" (608). But this returns us to the Socratic.
Not Christ himself, but rather what he says is the issue.

What about the subjective approach?

This has one advantage. One has to decide whether or not Jesus is God.
There is no way of avoiding this choice through knowledge. This fact is
neither an eternal fact, since it involves God's coming into existence as
the lowly servant, nor is it a historical fact, since, historically, all
one sees is the form of the lowly servant. The fact of the incarnation is
a paradox, one involving the contradiction of the coming into existence of
the God (of the necessary being, who as necessary, cannot come to be since
it always is).

For Kierkegaard, time does not alleviate this. In the Philosophical
Fragments, he argues that the contradiction remains a contradiction, that
the choice remains the choice, no matter how many generations succeed.
This means, Kierkegaard writes: "every succeeding generation will evince
the same relation of offense as did the first, because no one comes closer
to that fact immediately" (94). Every generation faces the necessity of
making a choice.

As he says in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, "all decision … is
rooted in subjectivity," one has to take the subjective approach. (129).

We don't want to do this, as Kierkegaard notes, "the subjective individual
wants to evade some of the pain and crisis of decision, that is, wants to
make the issue somewhat objective." He wants to put it off by reading one
more book, hearing one more argument, etc. He wants the matter to be
decided of itself by the objective facts, by "what is the case."

The necessity of the subjective approach can also be put in the following
way. Kierkegaard writes: "Christianity wants to give the single individual
an eternal happiness, a good that is not distributed in bulk but only to
one, and to one [subject] at a time." (130). Each of us is promised
eternal happiness. But what does this mean? Do we have "an actual idea of
the significance of this good"? This cannot be assumed. Our receiving the
condition for belief in some sense involves having such a conception. This
involves the remaking of subjectivity.

As Kierkegaard puts this: "This development or remaking of the
subjectivity, its infinite concentration in itself under a conception of
the infinite's highest good, an eternal happiness, is the developed
possibility of the subjectivity's first possibility. Christianity,
therefore, protests against all objectivity; it wants the subject to be
infinitely concerned about himself. What it asks about is the subjectivity;
the truth of Christianity, if it is at all, is only in this" (ibid.).

The point: if I don't know what is involved in the promise, I cannot
choose. What is involved is not objective, it is subjective. It is my
subjective happiness. But do I even know what being a subject is? If I am
focused on what is objectively the case, can I ever find this out?

To assert that "the truth of Christianity, if it is at all, is only in
this"—the eternal happiness of the single subject—means that what is at
issue is myself, myself in my uniqueness.

What is this uniqueness?

As Kierkegaard notes, "It is, generally thought that to be subjective is no
art. Well, of course, every human being is something of a subject."
(ibid.). But this "somewhat" is the problem. How many of our ideas,
opinions are our own. How often do we edit our lives and present to others
(and to ourselves) only what is immediately intelligible and acceptable to
others.

We have a public self, a "they" self rather than an individual self. We
reduce ourselves to average everydayness, adopt the opinions of the
newspapers, TV, internet, etc. We become a what, not a who.

The difference shown in our bodily being: no one can eat for us, sleep for
us, die for us (each of us has our own death to die), be saved for us.

As unique, we are not definable—since all definitions involve words that
are common—not limited to one object. As unique, we are not substitutable,
your going to the bathroom does not substitute for my going to the
bathroom. Your dying does not relieve me of my mortality, your being saved
does not affect my being saved, etc.

All of this involves our unique subjectivity. None of it is objective in
the sense of being there for everyone. My undergoing my death is not a
public object. It is not one of many people undergoing their deaths. So
also my eating, my putting the food that was a public object into my mouth,
chewing it, swallowing it, making it my flesh.

What covers this up is the they self, the pressure to conform, to be like
everyone else, to be objective. In Kierkegaard's words, "the admired
wisdom turns out to be that the subject's task is to strip away more and
more of his subjectivity and become more and more objective." It takes the
subjective as "the accidental, the angular, the selfish, the eccentric,
etc" (131). Now, "Christianity does not deny, either, that such things are
to be discarded." But it does not think that this is the essence of
subjectivity. What is the essence is what is absolutely unique. This is
not eccentricity, which can always be assumed as a style form, but rather
one's incarnate being. Here, the way to be subjective is "truly to become
a subject." How do we do this?

Through our choices, through authorizing our lives. (Heidegger)
Through passion—a passion that springs from our incarnate being, a passion
that sees these choices as real, as actually concerning our existence
(Kierkegaard).

As Kierkegaard puts this: "Christianity explicitly wants to intensify
passion to its highest, but passion is subjectivity, and objectively it
does not exist at all." (131).

How few people are actually subjects under this criterion is shown by the
fact that "only a few [people] become immortal as inspired lovers, a few as
noble- heroes, etc."

To reinforce this point Kierkegaard writes, "Behold, erotic love is a
qualification of subjectivity, and yet lovers are very rare … Behold,
faith is indeed the highest passion of subjectivity. But just pay attention
to what the clergy say about how rarely it is found" (132)

The rarity of lover, heroes, saints attests the rarity of the passion that
drives us. For Kierkegaard, it attests the rarity of being subjective. We
claim to have faith, but we have no passion for our eternal happiness,
because we have no sense of being a self that would be the subject of such
happiness. We lose ourselves in the world, think of ourselves in its
objective terms.

Kierkegaard now puts this same point in terms of ethics.

On the one hand ethics, objectively speaking, is the universal. I act
ethically when I follow the universal ethical laws: I do not lie, steal,
etc. no matter what my individual circumstance. On the other hand, the
realm of ethics is that of my freedom. It concerns my choosing what is
right not for any other reason other than that it is right.

In Kierkegaard's words, "ethics and the ethical, by being the essential
stronghold of individual existence, have an irrefutable claim upon every
existing individual, an irrefutable claim of such a nature that whatever a
person achieves in the world, even the most amazing thing, is nevertheless
dubious if he himself has not been ethically clear when he chose and has
not made his choice ethically clear to himself.

What is this claim on the existing individual? It is the claim on his
freedom. If I act out of fear or for the sake of an external reward, then
something else controls my will. I only act the way I do because I am
afraid of some consequence, were the consequence eliminated, I would not
necessarily act in this way. Or I only act this way because I want
something. If I already had it, then I wouldn't act this way. Thus, the
person or persons that control what I want control my will.

Given that ethical action is voluntary action, i.e., that it is an
expression of our existence as free beings, it cannot per se, regard the
consequences—the rewards or punishments—of what it does.

Kierkegaard puts this point in terms of the "world-historical." The
reference is to Hegel and his belief that when an act is "world-
historical," that is, when it advances the realization of the idea of
freedom in the progress of humanity from one man being free, to some men
being free, to all men being free, then, whether the act is ethical or not,
it is ultimately justified by the consequences.

Here, as he says,

the absolute ethical distinction between good and evil is world-
historically-esthetically neutralized in the esthetic- metaphysical
category of "the great," "the momentous," to which the bad and the good
have equal access. (135)

What makes an action great, momentous, world-historical is, however, not
just the action. It is the times in which it is set. Thus, the times have
to be ripe for it. This is the factor of the accidental. It happened that
the times were not ripe for Sparticus' slave revolt in ancient Rome.
Nothing resulted from. The times were ripe for Napoleon and his issuance
of the universal rights of man. The accidental factor is the relation of
the act to the circumstances of the time. The same act in different times
has different results.

As Kierkegaard puts this,

In the world- historical, an essential role is played by factors of another
kind, different from the ethical-dialectical: namely, the accidental,
circumstances, that play of forces in which the reshaping totality of
historical life absorbs the individual's action in order to transform it
into something different that does not directly belong to him. (135).

Thus, it is not the inherent rightness or morality of an act that makes it
world-historical. It is rather factors external to the act.

As Kierkegaard continues: "How, then, does an individual become world-
historical? Ethically viewed, he becomes world-historical by accident."
(ibid.).

The 19th century is fascinated by history. It is deeply imbued with
Hegel's philosophy. Kierkegaard sees this as a corruption.

In his words:

.Spoiled by constant association -with world history, people want the
momentous and only that, are concerned only with the accidental, the world-
historical outcome, instead of being concerned with the essential, the
innermost, freedom, the ethical. (135)

By contrast: The ethical person would not care about the consequences:

A truly great ethical individuality would consummate his life as follows:
he would develop himself to the utmost of his capability; in the process he
perhaps would produce a great effect in the external world, but this would
not occupy him at all, because he would know that the external is not in
his power and therefore means nothing either pro or contra. (135-6).

What is in our power is willing to do the right thing, what is not are the
consequences, which depend on world history.

As Kierkegaard sums up.

"if a person cannot by his own efforts, in freedom, by willing the good,
become a world-historical figure—which is impossible precisely because it
is … dependent on something else [the consequences]—then it is unethical to
be concerned about it." (136).

If a person concerned about it, if he shouts "Posterity, history will
surely make manifest that I spoke the truth," then, according to
Kierkegaard, "his own form of existence is not adequate to his teaching,
because by excepting himself he establishes a teleology that renders
existence meaningless" (137)

He excepts himself insofar he is concerned about the consequences. This
teleology (or goal) of the consequences renders his existence meaningless.

Why? Because his existence is now, it is not future. It is our ongoing
filling the successive nows of time with our action. To be faithful to
this we must simply do the right thing because it is right, not because of
some consequences that might or might not occur.

The point of all this is, of course, our relation to God. The person
concerned with his world-historical position "does not want to understand
that there is nothing between him and God but the ethical; he does not want
to understand that he ought to be made enthusiastic by it"—that it ought to
be a matter of passion for him. (ibid.).

The point our action with regard to God has to be an action independent of
the consequences. We should not act out of fear or necessity. Only then
can it meet God on the level of equality—that is be equal to the God who
also does not act out of fear or necessity.

Kierkegaard puts this in terms of aladin's lamp. When the lamp is rubbed
the spirit appears. "freedom, that is the wonderful lamp. When a person
rubs it with ethical passion, God comes into existence for him" (138).

We should not look, then, to world history to study the ethical. It is
present in history but a finite spirit cannot see it. Rather, as
Kierkegaard says, "In order to study the ethical, every human being is
assigned to himself. In that regard, he himself is more than enough for
himself; indeed, he is the only place where he can with certainty study
it." (140-141)

What the ethical asserts is "venture, … dare to renounce everything,
including also that highly ranked yet delusive association with world-
historical observation; dare to become nothing at all, to become a single
individual (148)


Concluding Unscientific Postscript, pp. 149-165

I am going to begin with some remarks on Hegel's philosophy of history—just
enough so that we can catch the references Kierkegaard makes to it.

What is history for Hegel? It is the development of the idea of freedom.
As a self-conscious being man is inherently free.
But, a long period of struggle has to occur before this freedom becomes
expressed in our political and social institutions.

The Question of Politics:
We are dependent, social animals. We cannot survive without others.
The question: how do we organize ourselves such that we can act
collectively and yet be free.

Initially, the pattern was one man is free (the leader of the collective
action)
Then, some men are free (the aristocrats, who organize society)
Then, all men are free (when we all freely agree to work together obeying
the rules that we ourselves have set down)

For Hegel, the end of history is when everything implicit in the Idea (the
idea of individual and collective Freedom) is made explicit in the society
that we find ourselves in. We find nothing in the laws and institutions of
the society that we cannot subjectively affirm.

What is the implicit content of this idea?
That of the Kantian equivalence of morality, freedom, rationality, and
universality.
For Kant, moral actions are voluntary actions. I am not moral if I do the
right thing out of fear or need (compulsion).
I am moral insofar as I do the right thing simply because it is right.
Then my will is not determined by anything other than my own conception of
what is right. It is not moved by fear or need. But such action is free.
Moral action is free action.
Thus, I do not consider the consequences—those things I am afraid of or
those things I need. I consider myself as having a perfect independence of
the circumstances in which I am placed. I assume a perfect freedom.

How do I do this?
I abstract from the consequences by universalizing my maxim for action.
I ask: What would happen if everyone (not just me in my personal situation
of desire and need) acted this way?

An example: Should I lie to get out of a difficulty? What would happen if
everyone lied? No one would believe the lie.
Thus, I see that when I universalize the maxim, it contradicts itself. As
self-contradictory, it is irrational

Thus, morality assumes freedom, and freedom, for Kant, involves
universalization and rationality (non self-contradiction).

I am moral and free insofar as I bind myself by universal laws, i.e., by
those laws that appear when I universalize my maxims for action.

Hegel's version of this sees the state as the objectification of such
freedom. The state, through its laws, is the objective presence of the
laws that appear when I universalize my will (i.e., make the maxim of my
will a universal law). In Hegel's words.

The Idea is the inner spring of action; the State is the actually,
existing, realized moral life. For it is the Unity of the universal,
essential Will, with that of the individual; and this is "Morality." The
Individual living in this unity has a moral life (38)

This means that at the end of history I am moral by following the laws of
the state, which are simply the objectified presence of the categorical
imperative.

I am also objectively (and not just subjectively) free.

Point put in terms of Hegel's position against Rousseau. (40- 41)
Rousseau: Man is free by nature, but in society, in the state, he must
limit his freedom
Assumption, some original state of nature, out of which man contracted an
exchange of an original freedom for other benefits.
Note: this is also Hobbes and Locke's position

Hegel's position: the state of nature that of injustice and violence, of
untamed natural impulses, of inhuman deeds and feelings. Subjective
freedom outside of society expresses itself in the unrestrained violence of
our natural impulses.

The freedom that can be objective (that can coexist with our mutual
dependence) only exists in and through the limitation of such impulses
Thus, society and state are the very conditions upon which freedom is
realized

Now, as already noted, the stages of history are those of the development
of this objective freedom

Hegel writes: "Universal history … shews the development of the
consciousness of Freedom on the part of Spirit, and of the consequent
realization of that Freedom. This development implies a gradation - a
series of increasingly adequate expressions or manifestations of Freedom"
(63)

Freedom objectifies itself and "assumes successive forms which it
successively transcends; and by this very process of transcending its
earlier stages, gains an affirmative, and, in fact, a richer and more
concrete shape" (ibid.).

This is the progression from one man is free, to some men are free, to all
men are free.

History is the record of this.

As Hegel notes, what advances is this process is not necessarily moral.

They who on moral grounds, and consequently with noble intention, have
resisted that which the advance of the Spiritual Idea makes necessary,
stand higher in moral worth than those whose crimes have been turned into
the means - under the direction of a superior principle - of realizing the
purposes of that principle. (67)

The latter, however, can claim the necessity of history.
Here, "The deeds of great men, who are the Individuals of the World's
History, thus appear … justified in view of that intrinsic result of which
they were not conscious (ibid.).

Retrospectively, these great men (who are "world-historical" individuals)
are moral insofar as their actions lead to the condition of morality—that
is, the state as the embodiment of the "actually existing, realized moral
life"

Napoleon, who was responsible for the deaths of millions in the twenty
years of war he unleashed, is an example of this for Hegel. He brought
down the old aristocracies, paving the way for representative
government—even if this was not his ultimate intention.

This is a doctrine that in the 20th century lead to the crimes of people
who acted with the sense that they had the force of history behind
them—were on the way to producing the state in which morality would finally
be objectively present—be it the morality of race or that of communism.

Kierkegaard's whole philosophy is a protest against this view. He does not
want the ethical confused with the historical.

As Kierkegaard notes, Hegel's position depends on his arrangement of
history, China, where only the emperor is free, at the beginning, the
parliamentary monarchies of Prussia and England at the end. Historical
scholarship, however, is continually progressing. Its "rather dubious
Hegelian ordering of the world-historical process depends upon
arbitrariness and leaps." As scholarship advances, one might show "how
China ought to be assigned another place and a new paragraph be inserted
for a recently discovered tribe in Monomotapa" (150).

Monomotapa was an African kingdom in Zimbabwe that the Portuguese conquered
in the 1580's. According to Hegel, the Africans were incapable of
organized political development. They were still at the stage of pre-
history.

The point is that "the world-historical material is endless, and
consequently the limit must in one way or another be arbitrary. Although
the world-historical is something past, as material for cognitive
observation it is incomplete; it continually comes into existence through
ever-new observation and research" (ibid.). Thus, a final view is always
arbitrary. (ibid.).

Beyond this practical difficulty, there is the subordination of the ethical
to the historical.

For Kierkegaard, "The ethical is and remains the highest task assigned to
every human being" (151). Its importance transcends the historical. Its
not a hypothesis to be justified by the course of history.

(For Hegel, it is. Different civilizations at different periods of time
have different conceptions of the ethical. The Hindu's for example erected
hospitals for animals, but none for humans. The regarded different castes
as different species and formed they moral regard for them accordingly.
The Athenians saw nothing wrong in supporting their civilization through a
vast network of slaves working in the mines, etc.). His point is that the
ethical objectively appears only when we recognize that all men are free
and construct our society and state accordingly.

For Kierkegaard by contrast, the ethical is eternal, unchanging. In his
view, "Only in the ethical is there immortality and eternal life" (154).

This is Kant's view as well, what Hegel did was historicize it, that is,
say that Kant's views apply at the end of history.

Kierkegaard's position, however, is different than Kant's. Kierkegaard
fastens on the fact that while history has to do human collectivities,
ethics has to do with the individual. The ethical is, in fact, our
transcendence of this historical.

As he states his position: "The ethical, on the other hand, is predicated
on individuality and to such a degree that each individual actually and
essentially comprehends the ethical only in himself, because it is his co-
knowledge with God. In other words, although in a certain sense the ethical
is infinitely abstract, in another sense it is infinitely concrete" (155)

It is infinitely abstract insofar as it depends on universalization. It is
infinitely concrete insofar as it is a function of the individual's own
sense of the right. In assuming a freedom that is independent of
circumstances, the subject assumes the freedom of God (as Kant notes).
Thus, his knowledge of the ethical is "his co-knowledge with God"

For Hegel, something becomes ethical when it leads to the telos (the goal)
of history. For Kierkegaard, "Whether [Hegel] is able to discern a telos
[end, goal] for the whole human race, I do not decide, but that telos is
not the ethical telos, which is for individuals, but is a metaphysical
telos." (ibid.).

What is the difference? Kierkegaard writes: "Ethically, what makes the
deed the individual's own is the intention, but this is precisely what is
not included in world history, for here it is the world-historical
intention that matters. World-historically, I see the effect; ethically, I
see the [individual's] intention" (155).

The world historical intention is the presence of objective freedom in the
form of the state. The ethical intention is the willing to do the right
thing just because it is right. Objectively, I cannot see the intentions
(I cannot see objectively into someone's head to see what he really has in
mind). All I can see are the results.

Thus regarding world history, I often see "the well-intentioned deed bring
down upon itself the same consequence as the ill-intentioned deed" (156).
Here, I "must ultimately disregard the true distinction between good and
evil, since this is only in the individual"—that is, only in his intention.


This distinction between good and evil is a function not of the ultimate
historical result of an action, but in my present acting according to my
present intention. My relation to God here is not a relation to something
that manifests itself at the end of history. It is to God as present now,
as present in my intention to do the right thing because it is right. In
Kierkegaard's words, "the ethical is for the existing, for the living, and
God is the God of the living." (ibid.).

For Hegel, history is a stage where people act, but the only spectator is
God. Only he sees the ultimate results of their actions. (158). For
Kierkegaard, "the individual also is himself a spectator." He can know
what the right thing to do is independent of the consequences. (157)

For Hegel, God is not moral in the Kantian sense since he uses individuals
as means to obtain his goal, which is the manifestation of freedom in the
objective state.

For Kierkegaard this squandering of human beings is an offence. He asks,
"how does one explain the divine squandering that uses the endless host of
individuals of one generation after the other in order to set the world-
historical development in motion?" (158).

There is no squandering, however, if "the task of becoming subjective is
indeed assigned to every person." In fact, "if … becoming subjective is
the highest task assigned to a human being, then … it first follows that
he no longer has anything to do with world history" (159). The task
concerns himself alone, not as part of world history.

What has becoming subjective to do with the ethical? It signifies 1)
taking individual responsibility for your actions, not fostering them off
on others, on history, on circumstances. It also signifies 2) knowing
yourself, knowing your motives. Are you really doing what you do because
it is the ethical thing to do or are you doing it out of need and desire,
out of any of a number of compulsions.

Kierkegaard writes of himself, introspection has convinced me "that I am a
corrupt and corruptible man" (161). He sees the tendency to evil in
himself. He adds, "The more profoundly one makes [this discovery], the
more one has to do; the more profoundly one makes it, the more ethical one
becomes; the more ethical one becomes, the less time there is for the world-
historical" (162).

The identity of oneself with God (in the assumption of the independence of
the ethical action from desire and need) is not something to be assumed.
It is a matter of a lifetime of examination of one's motivations. If one
mistakes it, one also mistakes God. As Kierkegaard writes,

"Intellectually, I must have an altogether clear conception of God, of
myself, and of my relationship with him … —lest I confuse God with
something else so that I do not pray to God, and lest I confuse myself with
something else so that I do not pray" (ibid.).

The point is, one must know oneself and God to assume this relation. This
involves examining one motives, seeing ever more clearly into the content
of one freedom so as to be faithful to the transcendence inherent in it.

This requires a lifetime. It is the task of a life time. As Kierkegaard
explains this: "Suppose a person is given the task of entertaining himself
for one day and by noon is already finished with the entertainment—then his
speed would indeed be of no merit. So it is also when life is the task. To
be finished with life before life is finished with one is not to finish the
task at all." (164).

Concluding Unscientific Postscript, pp. 165-188 lecture

In this reading, Kierkegaard gives some examples of tasks that take a
lifetime. All of these are part of the task of "becoming subjective." To
become subjective is to become an individual. Why does one want to become
an individual? Kierkegaard has a number of answers, they all revolve
around authorizing your life, that is realizing that its shape is up to
you.

It comes into existence through your action. Coming into existence is
opposed to necessarily existing. What necessarily exists always is. It
does not come to be. What comes to be comes to be through our freedom.
Given the equal possibilities "it is," "it is not"), only freedom can
decide whether "it" will come to be or not. (The material world does not
have such alternate possibilities, everything is always determined in it
beforehand through the laws of causality).

Thus, your life, as existing, comes to be through your free choices. It is
not something given, or determined, beforehand.

Given that the ethical is the voluntary, ethics also demands this
recognition of your freedom as an existing individual. You have to take
ethical responsibility for your choices, not foster them off on what people
generally say, the common opinions, etc.

This comes to the fact that you have to take individual responsibility.
You have to acknowledge that general concepts, such as man in general, do
not act. Individuals act. General concepts are not free, individuals are.
To realize this, to apply it to your life takes a lifetime.

In a certain sense, we are like Plato's prisoners in a cave. We conceive
of ourselves in general terms, we take our essence as that of "man in
general," forgetting that what we are actually something that results from
our choices. Thus, we never really choose for ourselves. We let others
choose for us, adopting their opinions. The self we shape is an abstract
self. In other words, the abstract essence "man" is actually the result of
the social control of our choices.

But this means that individuals never encounter each other. They never
even encounter their own experience. Existence, as the flow of the
actually occurring, passes them by. They become thoughtless. How can such
an nonindividual encounter God. As Kierkegaard writes, isn't there a
danger in my praying to God "lest I confuse God with something else so that
I do not pray to God, and lest I confuse myself with something else so that
I do not pray" (162)

How do we get out of this situation. What sort of experiences through us
back on our individuality? Make us confront such individuality as a
responsibility—i.e., as something that is not given, but whose coming into
existence must result from our free choices?

The first of these is death. Kierkegaard writes in this regard: "I know
what people ordinarily know: that if I swallow a dose of sulfuric acid I
will die … I know what the clergy usually say; I know the stock themes
dealt with at funerals" etc., etc." (165-66). Does, however, he know what
it means to die? Can we learn this from others? Or do we each have to
experience itself. In other words, just as no one can eat for us, so no
one else can die for us. It is a task appointed to each individual.

When will this task come? I don't know . As Kierkegaard observes,
"Suppose death were insidious enough to come tomorrow! Just this
uncertainty, if it is to be understood and held firm by an existing person
and consequently be thought into everything precisely because it is
uncertainty" (166). As Heidegger quotes the proverb when talking about
this uncertainty: "As soon as one is born, one is old enough to die."
Since death concerns me as an individual, the thought of this uncertainty
throws me back on my individuality:

As Kierkegaard puts this: "If death is always uncertain, if I am mortal,
then this means that this uncertainty cannot possibly be understood in
general if I am not also such a human being in general. But this I am not."
I am rather an individual human being who does not know when he will die,
but does know that death concerns him as an individual, that it, in fact,
individualizes him down to his very core. Here, "the uncertainty becomes
more and more dialectically penetrating in relation to my personality."
(167). My possessions will survive me, my friends and relatives will, the
world in terms of which I define myself will. But I will not. Thus, death
separates me from these. It throws me back on myself.

This self is not a general self, but an individual self. For others I may
be considered abstractly, but as the thought of my death convinces me, for
myself I am not something abstract, but a concrete living individual. As
Kierkegaard continues:

"my dying is by no means something in general; for others, my dying is some
such thing. Nor am I for myself some such thing in general; perhaps for
others I am some such thing in general. But if the task is to become
subjective, then every subject becomes for himself exactly the opposite of
some such thing in general." (167)

To be some such thing in general is to be an abstract concept, an essence.
The opposite of this is to be an existence. Essence can be defined. It is
what something is. It is its common notion. Existence, as distinct from
essence, is indefinable. It is the individual that, according to
Aristotle, is qua individual indefinable.

Given that death touches our existence, our individuality, can it be
defined? Can we think of it? In what sense do we anticipate it? As
Kierkegaard puts this question:

"I would have to ask whether it is at all possible to have an idea of
death, whether death can be anticipated and anticipando [by being
anticipated] be experienced in an idea, or whether it is only when it
actually is. And since its actual being is a non- being, [I would have to
ask] whether it therefore is only when it is not, in other words, whether
the ideality can ideally vanquish death by thinking it" (168)

In fact, I cannot have a conception of death, I cannot anticipate it by
conceiving of it in advance. Like coming into existence, this exiting
existence is inconceivable. The reason for this is that existence per se
is inconceivable.

There is, in fact, a special difficulty here. With regard to death, what I
am asked to think about is the "I am not," that is, my nothingness. But
there is nothing here to think. I cannot say, "I am dead" since there is
no "I" left after death to report the experience.

As Kierkegaard puts this difficulty.

"the living person cannot approach death at all, since he, experimenting,
cannot come close enough without … becoming a victim of his own experiment,
…he … learns nothing from the experience, since he cannot pull himself back
out of the experience and have the benefit of it later but remains stuck in
the experience" (168). In other words, he remains dead. The I that was
supposed to report the experience has vanished.

How then do we anticipate death?

Kierkegaard claims such anticipation is part of our becoming subjective:

He writes "if the task is to become subjective, then for the individual
subject to think death is not at all some such thing in general but is an
act, because the development of subjectivity consists precisely in this,
that he, acting, works through himself in his thinking about his own
existence, consequently that he actually thinks what is thought by
actualizing it" (169)

Thinking death, then, is an act. It is the act of becoming subjective.
This involves thinking about one's own existence and one thinks what is
thought by actualizing it.

What does this mean actualizing one's existence? What is its connection
with death?

The connection is the existence that one actualizes.
One does not exists as a thing. A thing cannot die. You can. Things have
essences, you do not. Concretely this means that you actualize your
existence through your actions, you give it a shape as your existence. You
authorize it. Death is the end of this actualization. To realize this is
to work though oneself in thinking about one's own existence. It is not to
work through another, through society, through abstract ideas, etc. It is
to think the thought of death in thinking the thought of how you actualize
your life through your choices, actions, etc.

One way to think about the connection between the two is the fact that one
contains the nothingness of death as an inherent part of one's ability to
chose. I can choose to be something, because I am inherently nothing. If
I were something, I would have a definite essence—like a thing has. I
would be a "what" rather than a "who." A "who" is what it chooses. I
choose to be a Professor of philosophy. But this who is maintained by my
continuing to choose to be this. It is not something given. I am not a
philosophy professor in the way that something is a turnip. My continuing
to be such is a result of my free action. The ground of this freedom is my
not being a thing, my no-thingness. This nothingness points to my
mortality, to my death that I always carry with me as part of my freedom.

Needless to say, if I do not understand death or mortality, I cannot
understand immortality. Here, once again, Kierkegaard begins by noting
that he knows "what people ordinarily know." He knows the concept that is
passed around. He knows that "some have found immortality in Hegel; others
have not."

He hasn't because "all systematic thinking is sub specie aeterni [under the
aspect of eternity] and to that extent immortality is there as eternity.
But this immortality is not at all the one inquired about, since the
question is about the immortality of a mortal, and that question is not
answered by showing that the eternal is immortal, because … the immortality
of the eternal is a tautology and a misuse of Words." (171).

What one wants to think about in thinking the immortal is the eternity of
the mortal, not that of the immortal. The eternity of the mortal is not
that of race or of humankind in general (172). It is that of the subject
that is subject to death.

Just as my death is my own, so is my immortality. As Kierkegaard puts
this, "the consciousness of my immortality belongs simply and solely to me.
The very moment I am conscious of my immortality, I am completely
subjective, and I cannot become immortal in partnership" with others (173).


How is one to think of immortality in its radical individuality ? One
cannot think of death in its radical individuality conceptually. Can one
think of the absence of death conceptually? Kierkegaard does not think so.
He writes: "essentially the question of immortality is not a learned
question; it is a question belonging to inwardness, which the subject by
becoming subjective must ask himself." (173).

Here, Kierkegaard writes: "Objectively the question cannot be answered at
all … Not until one rightly wills to become subjective can the question
rightly arise— how, then, could it be answered objectively? Socially the
question cannot be answered at all, because socially it cannot be
enunciated, since only the subject who wills to become subjective can grasp
the question and rightly ask" it. (ibid.).
What exactly is this question? It is what does mean to become immortal.
(174). That is, "How does immortality transform his life; in what sense
must he have the consciousness of immortality present in him at all times"
in the same way that the consciousness of death is present (175).
As mortal, he is finite, as immortal he is infinite, "but where is the
place that is the unity of the infinite and the finite, where he, who is
simultaneously infinite and finite, can speak simultaneously of his
infinitude and his finitude" (ibid.).

As Kierkegaard also phrases this question: "How does he, existing, hold on
to his consciousness of immortality, lest the metaphysical conception of
immortality go and confuse the ethical conception to the point of its
becoming an illusion, because ethically everything culminates in
immortality" (ibid.).

The metaphysical question is posed on the level of the infinite, the
eternal. But this leaves out the finite and the mortal.

But it is the finite and mortal being that assumes in his ethical action
the nonfinite and immortal standpoint—the standpoint of unconditioned
freedom that does not consider consequences and adopts a universal
standpoint. This is "the ethical conception" in which "everything
culminates in immortality"

Thus, the place of the unity of the infinite and the finite is in the
ethical. Here, as Kierkegaard writes, "To ask about his immortality is
indeed also an act for the existing subject who asks the question" 176).
It is to ask "how he, existing, is to conduct himself in expressing his
immortality" (177).

Nietzsche's answer is to live your life such that you could will it to
return eternally and not regret it, that is, to live such that you can say
"again" to every act of yours.

Kierkegaard's answer is to authorize your life such that it embodies the
ethical.

The same point is made in terms of thanking God. Should I thank God for
some good he has given me which I have asked for. But since I do not know
the consequences, I always have to thank him apologetically. Why. Because
ethically, I should not consider consequences.

The same can be said with regard to marriage. It too involves the immortal
and the mortal, the finite and the infinite. Here, however, the relation
is between the erotic and the ethical. This is even a more complex
situation.

Concluding Unscientific Postscript, pp. 189-209

In this reading, Kierkegaard develops his conception of truth as
inwardness. It is a conception that is meant to apply to the truth of
faith, faith being the result of a subjective decision.

The basic conception here is that when one's decisions are determined by
knowledge, there is no voluntary element in them. One actually does not
decide that 2+2=4. One is compelled by the evidence to accept it. As the
early Pope, Gregory the Great (590-604), remarked, if faith is equivalent
to knowledge, it has no special merit. It involves no act of the will.
This act of the will is subjective. Its truth is the truth of subjectivity
for Kierkegaard.

In this reading, Kierkegaard presents an extreme version of this classical
Christian position—extreme insofar as traditionally Christianity asserted
that the content of faith was not contrary to reason. For Kierkegaard,
however, it is "absurd." The eternal (or necessary) that is human (and,
hence, contingent) expresses in the person of Christ a contradiction. The
coming into existence that is the incarnation cannot therefore be grasped
by reason. It is accessible only to faith.

Kierkegaard begins by noting that truth can be "defined empirically as the
agreement of thinking with being or … idealistically as the agreement of
being with thinking" (189). In the first, thought conforms itself with the
object, in the second, the object conforms itself to thought.

A further distinction is that between empirical (actual, factual) being and
ideal being (the being, say, of a triangle).

Now if we limit ourselves to empirical being, then as Kierkegaard says,
"everything is placed in the process of becoming [Vorden], because the
empirical object is not finished, and the existing knowing spirit is itself
in the process of becoming" (ibid.).

At this point, we can only speak of truth as an "approximation" (ibid.).
In the process of becoming, we can only get closer and closer to it. We
can only approximate the identity between the knower and the known.

If, however, we speak of ideal being (and this has to include the being of
the knower), then "nothing stands in the way of abstractly defining truth
as something finished" (190). We can speak of an exact identity between
knower and known, not simply a gradual getting closer.

The historical reference here is to Plato's Phaedo. Socrates asserts,
"just as they (the ideas or forms) exist, so our soul must exist " (Phaedo,
Grube trans p. 115). The ideas exist as unchanging self-identities. The
soul itself must have an unchanging aspect to come into identity with the
ideas.

Thus, Socrates says that when the soul investigates [the ideas or the forms
of things], "it passes into the realm of what is pure, ever existing,
immortal and unchanging, and being akin to this it stays with it" (Phaedo,
Grube trans., p. 118).
The realm of "the pure, ever existing, immortal and unchanging" is that of
the self-identical ideas
The soul, in knowing the ideas, becomes like them.
There is, Plato believes, a certain identity of knower and known.
When I know something, I become it. I am, at the moment of knowing, simply
the insight that I am presently having. Thus, as the knower of, say,
2+2=4, I am just like everyone else who knows that relation. At that
point, I am timeless, have an ideal being just like the relation, 2+2=4,
that I am knowing.

Referring to the "formula," truth is "the agreement between thinking and
being," Kierkegaard remarks that here "the formula is a tautology; that is,
thinking and being signify one and the same" (190). What we face here is,
in an "abstract sense a redoubling" when we distinguish thinking and what
is thought in this identity.

The case is different, however, when we enter into the realm of actual,
empirical being. As Kierkegaard adds, "As soon as the being of truth
becomes empirically concrete, truth itself is in the process of becoming"
(ibid.). This cannot be otherwise given that we are actually existing
knowers (not ideal, abstract ones) and the actual knower, "itself existing,
is in the process of becoming." (ibid.).

Given this fact, the knower and the known never come into a complete
unchanging identity. Here, "existence itself, existence itself in the
questioner, who does indeed exist, holds the two factors apart" (192).

How do we deal with this situation? For objective thought, the answer is
to ignore the existing subject. In Kierkegaard's words, "To objective
reflection, truth becomes something objective, an object, and the point is
to disregard the subject." "Subjective reflection" takes the opposite
tack. For it, "truth becomes appropriation, inwardness, subjectivity, and
the point is to immerse oneself, existing, in subjectivity." (ibid.).

For Kierkegaard, only the second has a possibility of understanding our
relation to God. This is "because God is a subject and hence [is] only for
subjectivity in inwardness" (200).

To understand this answer, we have to understand the contract Kierkegaard
draws between objective and subjective thought.

According to Kierkegaard "The way of objective reflection turns the
subjective individual into something accidental and thereby turns existence
into an indifferent, vanishing something … [it leads to abstract thinking,
to mathematics, to historical knowledge of various kinds, and always leads
away from the subjective individual, whose existence or nonexistence
becomes, … infinitely indifferent" (193). At its maximum, "this way will
lead to a contradiction" (ibid.). It will speak of knowing without
knowers.

Modern science as an example of this. Everything is explained except the
existing scientist.

What about subjective reflection or thought?

As Kierkegaard writes, "Here it is not forgotten, even for a single moment,
that the subject is existing, and that existing is a becoming" This means
"that truth as the identity of thought and being is therefore a chimera of
abstraction." This is "because the knower is an existing person, and thus
truth cannot be an identity for him as long as he exists." (196).

It cannot because, as becoming, he cannot have an unchanging relation to
the unchanging that the theory of truth as an identity demands.

In the subjective view, then, we have a very different view of "essential
knowing"
As Kierkegaard defines it, "the knowledge is related to the knower, who is
essentially an existing person [Existerende], and that all essential
knowing is therefore essentially related to existence and to existing. (197-
8).

The claim here is that "all ethical and all ethical-religious knowing is
essentially a relating to the existing of the knower." (198) Both concern
the existing individual as the person who freely chooses—chooses to act or
chooses to believe. In fact, these two areas, ethics and religion, give us
the whole field of the essential knowing that relates to existence. In
Kierkegaard's words, "only ethical and ethical-religious knowing is
essential knowing." None other qualifies.

What is the nature of such knowing. According to Kierkegaard, it concerns
not the content of the known but "how" of the knowing. The "how" is what
makes the individual, subjectively regarded, be in the truth. In
Kierkegaard's words, "If only the how of this relation is in truth, the
individual is in truth, even if he in this way were to relate himself to
untruth." (199). In a certain sense, the content of knowing is this how.

This, for example, has always been recognizes in ethics. Aristotle, for
examples, asserts that for an act to be ethical, the act has to be freely
done, done for the right reason and spring from a fixed character.
Moreover, it has to be done "towards the right objects, towards the right
people for the right reason and in the right manner"

Kant is less extreme, he only says that what makes the act ethical is that
it be done for the right reason and without regard to consequences and
rewards.

Only Mill disagrees. He sees acts are ethical if their objective
consequences are ethical. How do we know if such consequences are ethical?
If they lead to the greatest possible happiness. How can we know this?
He does not answer except to say that we have the benefit of experience.

At any rate, apart from Mill, the content of the ethical act involves the
how. For Kierkegaard, the content of the religious act, which is what he
focuses on, is its how.

Thus, speaking of knowledge of God, he writes, "Objectively, what is
reflected upon is that this is the true God; subjectively, that the
individual relates himself to a something in such a way that his relation
is in truth a God-relation" (ibid.). In the second case, the way we relate
to God is the content of the God relation.

The question is: "on which side is the truth?" (ibid.). Isn't it on both
sides? Kierkegaard refuses this traditional answer "because God is a
subject and hence [is] only for subjectivity in inwardness" (200).

The claim here is that the content of our relation to God is like that to
people—its focus is on how we relate to them, our manner or way of
speaking, acting, etc.

With regard to God, this involves the "infinite passion of need." This is
all decisive. As Kierkegaard puts this:

"If someone who lives in the midst of Christianity enters, with knowledge
of the true idea of God, the house of God, the house of the true God, and
prays, but prays in untruth, and if someone lives in an idolatrous land but
prays with all the passion of infinity, although his eyes are resting upon
the image of an idol—where, then, is there more truth? The one prays in
truth to God although he is worshiping an idol; the other prays in untruth
to the true God and is therefore in truth worshiping an idol" (201).

This is the opposite of the objective view of the situation. Objectively,
the focus is on what is being prayed to, the "true God" or the "idol."
Subjectively, however, it is on the how, on praying in "untruth" or "truth"
that is with the infinite passion.

As Kierkegaard states the general principle:

"Objectively the emphasis is on what is said; subjectively the emphasis is
on how it is said. This distinction … is specifically expressed when we say
that in the mouth of this or that person something that is truth can become
untruth." (202). Think of George W. Bush's pronouncements on being a
"compassionate conservative" or on the value of freedom as an American
idea. Think of how the actions of religious hypocrites have devalued the
notion of faith for most people. In their mouths religious truths become
untruths.

As Kierkegaard notes, this how "is not to be understood as manner,
modulation of voice, oral delivery, etc., but it is to be understood as the
relation of the existing person, in his very existence, to what is said"
(203)

This is because what is said concerns the person, the person cannot be
excluded when the subject is the ethical or the religious. We expect the
person's words to reflect his conduct in these fields. In fact, the
content of what is said concerns such conduct. Specifically it concerns
the person's decisions. Does he choose to act the way he describes? Does
he choose to believe?

Kierkegaard writes: "Only in subjectivity is there decision, whereas
wanting to become objective is untruth. The passion of the infinite, not
its content, is the deciding factor, for its content is precisely itself.
In this way the subjective "how" and subjectivity are the truth" (203)

Here, the how of manifestation is the content of the manifestation. The
"how" here is decision, decision informed by the "passion of the infinite."
I grasp the infinite not through knowing it, but by passionately affirming
it. I do this each moment of my existing.

Kierkegaard writes in this regard: "the existing person is in the temporal
realm, and the subjective "how" is transformed into a striving that is
motivated and repeatedly refreshed by the decisive passion of the
infinite." The infinite is always ahead of me, always exceeding me. My
affirmation at one moment, my "infinite" decision is never finished. It is
renewed in a striving. (ibid.).

The infinite here is a saying that always exceeds the said of a given
content.

The notion of truth here is, as Kierkegaard writes: "an objective
uncertainty, held fast through appropriation with the most passionate
inwardness" (ibid.). I cannot know the infinite objectively, I can hold
fast to it in my striving.

This definition, Kierkegaard admits, is that of faith: "Without risk, no
faith. Faith is the contradiction between the infinite passion of
inwardness and the objective uncertainty" (204). In other words, because I
am unable to apprehend God objectively, "I must have faith." (204).

Socrates had a version of this in that he lived his life in order to be
worthy of an afterlife, an afterlife he could not affirm with any certainty
actually existed. But there is more to this than Socratic ignorance and
passion. It involves the paradox of the eternal and the temporal, the
necessary and the contingent.

Kierkegaard writes in this regard, "The paradox emerges when the eternal
truth and existing are placed together, but each time existing is
accentuated, the paradox becomes clearer and clearer." This is because
"the existing person is accentuated in such a way that existence has made
an essential change in him." It prevents him from having the condition to
grasp the eternal. To not have the condition is to be in sin. This means
that "by coming into existence, he becomes a sinner." He can only overcome
this by the passion of faith. (208)

Concluding Unscientific Postscript, pp. 209-229 lecture

Let me begin by answering the questions you sent it.

The first is that paradox is not "to a certain degree relative." The
paradox is absolute. The speculative thinker thinks it is, but he is
wrong. Who is the "speculative thinker"? He is the follower of Hegel.
Hegel believed that all conceptions of God before the end of history are
relative to their historical periods. They reflect the state of self-
consciousness at the time. If our self consciousness is Roman, if we take
freedom as doing what you want and hence private property as the place
where you can do what you want, then we will conceive God as the ultimate
proprietor of the universe. If we see ourselves as part of nature, then
God will be nature, etc.
The paradox, however, is precisely contrived not to fit into this schema.

Another question concerns rationality. Man is a rational animal. It is
our defining characteristic. If we suspend this to reach God, is the case
that we are talking about a human relation. Kierkegaard's answer is that
first we must use reason to see that God become man (that is, the
incarnation) is beyond reason. Note that God, as the eternal, is not
beyond reason. Neither is man. What is contradictory is the incarnation.

Finally, there is the question of why the forgiveness of sin is a paradox.
I will cover this in my lecture. For the moment, let me just say that it
is a paradox because, as Kierkegaard writes, "it is retroactive power to
annul the past" (224). To forgive is to treat the act as if it never
happened, but this is to assume a power over the past that is strictly
speaking contradictory since the past is what cannot be changed or undone.


Kierkegaard begins by comparing the faith of Socrates with that of the
Christian. He writes, "When Socrates believed that God is, he held fast
the objective uncertainty with the entire passion of inwardness, and faith
is precisely in this contradiction, in this risk" He believed in spite of
his lack of certainty. He assumed a subjective certainty in the face of
his objective uncertainty about God's existence. The Christian, however,
is objectively certain that the God become man is absurd, "and this
absurdity, held fast in the passion of inwardness, is faith." (210).

Thus, the difference is the content of the belief. As Kierkegaard puts
it, "The absurd is that the eternal truth has come into existence in time,
that God has come into existence, has been born, has grown up, etc., has
come into existence exactly as an individual human being, indistinguishable
from any other human being." "Faith … refers to this coming into
existence" (210).
The pagans mistake God's presence in Christ as paganism, one where the gods
(as part of the world) often manifest themselves.
The Jews mistake it as idolatry (since God, as other than the world, cannot
be presented within it).
Only the Christians embrace this contradiction.

Kierkegaard now begins a long objection to the claim that Christianity is
true to a certain degree. Given the passion that is supposed to animate
Christianity, this is like saying that erotic love is passionate to a
certain degree or enthusiasm is itself to a certain degree.
(228-9).

The idea of being true to a certain degree is that embraced by a person
"wants to assure himself with the aid of objective deliberation and
approximation" The problem is that "for the absurd is precisely the object
of faith" (211). There is no approximation to the absurd.

If you approach it historically, you will confuse coming into existence
with a historical fact and then seek historical certainty. But this
ignores the absurdity of the eternal truth coming into existence in time
(ibid.). All the historical witnesses you find for your historical fact do
not help here. They don't make the absurd less absurd.

At issue here is "what it means to be situated in existence the way the
existing person is" (213).
At issue is our "throwness" as Heidegger would say. Existence situates us,
gives us a historical context, a past out of which we have our
possibilities, and, hence, the future that comes from actualizing them. We
did not choose this, through our incarnation, our embodiment, we are thrown
into this situation, which is contingent and could have been otherwise. As
Sartre expresses this fact,

"Birth, the past, contingency, the necessity of a point of view, the
factual condition for all possible action of the world--such is the body,
such it is for me. ... From this point of view we must recognize both
that it is altogether contingent and absurd that I am a cripple, the son of
a civil servant or of a laborer, irritable and lazy, and that it is
nevertheless necessary that I be that or else something else, French or
German or English, etc. ..." (BN, pp. 431-2).

To recognize this and yet say that the eternal (and necessary) is to come
into existence, has incarnated itself, is to face the paradox.

Christianity, according to Kierkegaard, "does not at all want to be
understood." This is why it proclaims the paradox.

Objective faith is "a sum of tenets." But Christianity "is nothing of the
kind. .. it wants to be only for existing persons and essentially for
persons existing in inwardness, in the inwardness of faith, which cannot be
expressed more definitely than this: it is the absurd, adhered to firmly
with the passion of the infinite."

To grasp the paradox is to grasp "the absolute difference by which a human
being differs from God." This difference is "that a human being is an
individual existing being … God, however, is the infinite one, who is
eternal." (217).

One can use one's reason to grasp both, but one cannot grasp their unity in
the incarnation. One cannot "explain it" by relating it to something else
outside of this relation.

One cannot do this for God, since, as Kierkegaard says, "God is a supreme
conception that cannot be explained by anything else but is explainable
only by immersing oneself in the conception itself." What we have to deal
with here is a first principle. This holds all the more when we speak of
this God incarnating himself in an existing person. Thus, the first
principle is a paradox and essentially irresolvable since there is nothing
higher to explain it. (220).

In making this point, Kierkegaard is someone unfair in his critique of
Aufheben—a German world that signifies to lift up and has the double sense
of lift up to remove (annul) and lift up to preserve. Hegel uses this term
for the fact that in the dialectic of history, things are both annulled and
preserved. What you have is a thesis, an antithesis (its denial) and then
a synthesis that preserves both even as its transcends them. Thus, modern
parliamentary democracy preserves ancient democracy, which had no permanent
leaders, monarchy which had a hereditary leader, in its form that has an
executive and a legislative branch.

Kierkegaard willfully misunderstands this, but his point is clear. There
is no logical synthesis of the divine and human. For Hegel, there was. We
recognize ourselves as both lawgiver of a universal law (as God) and as
subject to these laws that we impose on ourselves (as man). In other
words, the whole of history is a progressive incarnation of God in mankind.


Kierkegaard will have none of this. As an example of what he means, he
turns to forgiveness. Forgiveness for Hegel is seeing an action as leading
to the end of history. For Kierkegaard, it is retrograde. He writes:

Let us take the paradox of the forgiveness of sins. Socratically, the
forgiveness of sins is a paradox, inasmuch as the eternal truth relates
itself to an existing person … because the existing person is a sinner, a
qualification by which existence is accentuated a second time, because it
wants to be an eternal decision in time with retroactive power to annul the
past, and because it is bound up with God's having existed in time. (224)

The paradox involves annulling the past, which is annulling our not having
the condition (as existing time bound individuals.


The individual existing human being has to feel himself a sinner (not
objectively, which is nonsense, but subjectively, and this is the deepest
pain). (224)

The nonsense here is thinking of existing as a sin. It is only such
insofar as it expresses our lack of the condition.

Concluding Unscientific Postscript, pp. 300-318, lecture

In this reading, Kierkegaard continues his account of existence. In a
certain sense, it is an account of its hiddenness. It is an account of how
existence cannot be grasped by "abstract thinking." Insofar as existence
involves the ethical, this is also an account of the hiddenness, the
concealment, of the ethical. Insofar as existence involves ourselves, it
is also an account of our self-concealment.

Many of the themes that Kierkegaard touches on will reappear 80 years later
in Heidegger's existential analytic in his Being and Time.

Kierkegaard begins by noting that abstract thinking "disregards the
concrete, the temporal, the becoming of existence." It does so since it
thinks things sub specie aeterni, that is, it views things from an
eternal, non-temporal perspective. It thinks static relations.

Thus, the abstract idea of chair is not in space or time. It is simply a
conception of something to sit down in. It is an ideal, rather than a real
chair. Similarly, motion, when thought abstractly, is simply the static
relation of distance divided by time.

Abstract thinking thus cannot grasp our existing. It also cannot grasp
"the difficult situation of the existing person because of his being
composed of the eternal and the temporal situated in existence" (300).

What exactly is the eternal element of existing person? Kierkegaard gives
his answer to this on p. 306, when he rhetorically asks: "For an existing
person, is not eternity not eternity but the future , whereas eternity is
eternity only for the Eternal, who is not in a process of becoming?" The
answer to this question is "yes."

For the Eternal (for that which is out of time) eternity consists in
timeless relations. For us, who are in time, eternity consists in the
future before us. The difficulty is that confronted with a future that is
up to us, we have to act, we have to decide. We face the "either or" of a
definite decision.

Kierkegaard puts it this way:

"where the eternal relates itself as the future to the person in a process
of becoming—there the absolute disjunction belongs. In other words, when I
join eternity and becoming, I do not gain rest but the future. Certainly
this is why Christianity has proclaimed the eternal as the future, because
it was proclaimed to existing persons, and this is why it also assumes an
absolute aut/aut [either or]." (307)

The point, here, is more than the fact that what I decide determines what
will be and indefinitely determines the future. As a Christian, my
decision in time affects my eternal future. My eternal happiness depends
on my temporal choice. Eternity meets time in the moment of decision.
From the perspective of the moment, what is not at issue is not eternity as
a timeless relation, something that always was, is, and will be, but rather
an eternity ahead of me, i.e., one that, like the future affected by my
more limited decisions, will be determined by my choice.

Kierkegaard expresses this point in terms of the motion of our existence:

He writes: "Just as the statement that everything is true means that
nothing is true, in the same way the statement that everything is in motion
means that there is no motion. The motionless belongs to motion as
motion's goal both in the sense of telos [end, goal] and metron [measure,
criterion]" (312)

The logic of this statement is that motion is motion towards something, a
goal. Without the later remaining motionless, we have no way to measure or
even be aware of motion.

Now existence is becoming. It involves motion. And as Kierkegaard says,
"the difficulty for the existing person is to give existence the continuity
without which everything just disappears." (312). We need some way to
measure the motion of our existence. We need a goal, for the goal gives us
the "continuity that holds the motion together."

What is this goal? Kierkegaard answers, "For an existing person, the goal
of motion is decision and repetition." One makes one's decision and renews
it moment by moment, keeping faith with it. (ibid.). This is the way we
give continuity to our lives. Nietzsche will put this by saying our self-
identity over time is made through the promises we make that we keep.

The decision (the promise) that is kept faith with (that involves
"repetition" in Kierkegaard's sense) is part of our existence. It
introduces the changeless, the eternal, that is necessary for it. This
changeless, eternal element is not out of time. It is ahead of us. It is
the goal, the promise, we have made to ourselves.

As in time, the eternal for us is the future. It is there for us through
decision and repetition.

This schema will be taken up by Heidegger in describing human existence.
It will lead him to assert that we have our being in time through our being
ahead of ourselves, that is, in our pro-jects, our projecting ourselves
forward in the resolute pursuit of our goals. Without this, we have no
existence, understood as being in time.

Now for Kierkegaard, the ultimate object of this decision and repetition is
God-become-man. If I decide for this and repeatedly renew this decision,
then an eternal future opens up for me. The promise I make exceeds all
time. My existence, then, has a new continuity, one that stretches on
endlessly ahead of me.

How is the future present to me? What is its felt presence? Hegel says
that the goals I seek to realize are present to me now as desire. Thus,
the breakfast that I am making is present to me now as I make it as desire.
The same holds for graduating from university, going home, etc. The
presence of the future (the future I am choosing to actualize) in the now
is felt as desire for it.

Kierkegaard picks this up by saying that the "concrete eternity" that
stands as the goal "in the existing person is the maximum of passion. That
is, all idealizing passion is an anticipation of the eternal in existence
in order for an existing person to exist" (312-313).

The felt presence of the eternal here is an infinite passion or desire.
Now, its presence is not a certitude of the goal. The continuity
established is only hypothetical, we cannot know that we will actually have
an endless continuity of existence. In Kierkegaard's words, "For an
existing person, however, passion's anticipation of the eternal is still
not an absolute continuity but the possibility of an approximation to the
only true continuity there can be for an existing person." (313).

We live in this possibility in faith. We seek a goal that we can never be
certain of. Thus, we have a hypothetical, not an absolute continuity in
our lives. As Kierkegaard constantly repeats, "no risk, no faith."

It is interesting in this context to note that Kierkegaard came up with the
notion of repetition in the work, "Repetition" which speaks about it in
terms of the relation a person would have to have to his beloved if he were
to marry her. Rather than recollecting the happy moments of their
courtship, which is a perfectly secure exercise, the relation would involve
continually reaffirming and repeating the decision to marry throughout the
marriage.

In the book, the protagonist decides he is incapable of this. It is
Kierkegaard's failure of his human relation to Regina that gives the non-
theological meaning to his statement, "no risk, no faith."

Abstract thought has no conception of this, since it abstracts from time
and place and hence from human decision.

As Kierkegaard notes, abstract thought is disinterested. It takes the view
from nowhere. But "the existing person is infinitely interested in
existing" (302). As Kierkegaard also puts this, "For the existing person,
existing is for him his highest interest, and his interestedness in
existing is his actuality." (312).

Heidegger would later rework this view to assert "Dasein" (human existence)
"is care"—It is defined by caring about its own existence. Why does it
care about it? Because its being (its existence) is at issue for it. It
depends on its decisions. A stone does not ask, what will I be when I grow
up. Neither does an animal. But a human does.

The point is that as existing, we need a goal to establish the continuity
of our existence, that is, our identity through time. This goal is
something we have to set for ourselves, thus, our being, our identity over
time, is something we have to determine through our choices of what we want
to do and be.
In Kierkegaard's language, our actuality – our actual existence as this
person rather than some other – is our interestedness in existing, that is,
our care for it that expresses itself in our setting goals, our making
promises to ourselves and holding to them. Without this we have no
identity through time, no actuality as some definite thing.

Abstract thought, as disinterested, cannot grasp this. The thinker who
defines himself through such thought—e.g., defining himself as a rational
animal, as homo economicus, etc.—defines himself out of existence. Such
definition, in Kierkegaard's words, "shows that the thinker has never
existed qua human being, that among other things he has not acted in the
eminent sense." (304) To act, we must be interested in our existence. We
must make a choice of a future. Here, "to act in the eminent sense belongs
essentially to existing qua human being" (ibid.). We cannot exist any
other way. We must choose. We must face the either or of decision.

Hegel cancels this out in canceling out the principle of contradiction.
The dialectic of thesis, antithesis, synthesis overcomes every
contradiction. All unities of existence unite contradictory elements in a
synthesis. Thus, the solar system unites gravitational force that pulls
the planets to the sun and the centrifugal force that makes them fly off.
Being establishes itself through ever more elaborate syntheses that unite
opposites. The reason for this is that the world expresses in diversity
the richness and unity of its underlying principle (the Idea).

Kierkegaard remarks, "Hegel is perfectly and absolutely right in
maintaining that, looked at eternally, sub specie aeterni, there is no
aut/aut [either or] in the language of abstraction" But, he adds, "Hegel
is just as much in the wrong when he, forgetting the abstraction," attempts
"to cancel the double aut" in existence. "It is impossible to do this in
existence, because then he cancels existence also. If I take existence away
(if I abstract), there is no aut/aut" (305)

Existence involves the either or of choice, because our existing depends on
our choosing. It involves positing a definite goal (and hence not positing
other contradictory goals) as something to actualize.

The point can be put in terms of the finitude of our existence. As
existing in space and time, I occupy a definite position in both. I cannot
be in two places at the same time. I cannot choose two different futures.
Existing then means having to choose and facing the either or of choice,
either I go to New Glasgow or I go to Port Hawksbury, etc. The point is
that finitude is part of the sense of actually existing, and, hence, real
choice, choice where to choose to do one thing is not to choose to another,
is also part of actually existing.

A similar point holds with regard to freedom. Since we are finite, we have
finite knowledge. Therefore, we cannot act on perfect knowledge, therefore
our will is never entirely determined by what we know when it comes to
making choices. (We don't choose for 2+2=4, we simply know abstract
relations).

Thus, existing involves finitude involves the reality of choices and the
reality of the freedom that engages in choice. Such freedom can never be
reduced to knowledge.

All these points are implicit in the questions Kierkegaard asks about the
abstract thinker: "Does he exist? And if he exists, is he not then in a
process of becoming? And if he is in a process of becoming, is he not then
related to the future? Does he never relate himself to the future in such a
way that he acts? And if he never acts, [is he not] … an idiot?" (306).

Certainly, he is an ethical idiot. If someone needs your help, the
response is not thought, but action. As Kierkegaard asks, "might not these
fabulous pure thinkers be a sign that a calamity is in store for
humankind—for example, the loss of the ethical and the religious?
Therefore, be cautious with an abstract thinker who not only wants to
remain in abstraction's pure being but wants this to be the highest for a
human being, and wants such thinking, which results in the ignoring of the
ethical and a misunderstanding of the religious, to be the highest human
thinking." (307).

The calamity is a loss of the sense of ethical responsibility. This is a
responsibility to an existing individual that calls for a decision to help
him and the action of helping him.

What we have here is a certain anti-Kantian element in Kierkegaard's
ethics. Kant abstracts from all personal interests in order to find out
what our duty is. Kierkegaard asks about the move from this knowledge to
the actual act. In his words, "we are asking ethically and are maintaining
the claim of the ethical upon the existing person, which cannot be that he
is supposed to abstract from existence, but that he is supposed to exist,
which is also the existing person's highest interest." (315). Thus,
beyond knowing the ethical through abstraction, I must choose to act on
this knowledge and this involves my existing and my choice of the future.

One final point: Kierkegaard correctly identifies Descartes as the origin
of the type of philosophical thinking he is protesting against. Descartes
asserts, I think therefore I am. Kierkegaard remarks,
"To demonstrate his existence on the grounds that he is thinking is a
strange contradiction, because to the degree that he thinks abstractly he
abstracts to the same degree precisely from his existing." (316) For
Descartes, "the abstraction itself does indeed become a strange
demonstration of his existence, since his existence would simply cease if
he were completely successful" (317).

If Descartes were serious, he would note that the thinks everything "in
relation to himself, [as] infinitely interested in existing" (317). The
existence that I cannot doubt, in other words, is not some theoretical
presupposition, i.e., that of the ego as a thinking substance or subject of
thought. It is myself as concerned about my existence, as actualizing it
through my choices. Such existence is necessarily in the world. Hence,
beginning with this, Descartes would never have thought it necessary to
prove that the world exists after he has shown that he himself exists.


Concluding Unscientific Postscript, pp. 318-335, lecture

Today's reading is probably the most difficult of those we have had. It
concern the relation of possibility to actuality. For thought and
esthetics possibility is superior to actuality, according to Kierkegaard.
For ethics, the reverse holds.

Why is this?

Before we can answer, we must consider another of Kierkegaard's claims.
This is that abstraction or "thought" can think actuality only as
possibility. As Kierkegaard puts this: "Only by annulling actuality can
abstraction grasp it, but to annul it is precisely to change it into
possibility. Within abstraction, everything that is said about actuality in
the language of abstraction is said within possibility." (314-5).

Several things are behind this statement. The first is Aristotle's
assertion that we cannot define and, hence, know the particular since all
the terms of our definition necessarily are general and hence apply to more
than one thing. Thus, the definition by which we express our knowledge is
always of a class of individuals. It does not capture the particular
individual as a particular individual.

What is that we know when we know a class of individuals? We know what is
common to them. We grasp their concept, which is a one in many. In
grasping this concept, what do we apprehend. Since the late middle ages,
the answer has been that we grasp a possibility. The concept expresses the
possibility of a range of individuals existing with certain defined common
characteristics. Thus, I can know the concept of something—for example,
the concept of a phoenix or a non-terrestrial life form--but I can be
ignorant of whether anything falls under the concept. If the concept is
not self-contradictory, it expresses the possibility that there are
existing individuals that have the features its specifies. But it does
not, per se, assert that there such individuals.

Frege, a 19th century philosopher of mathematics, put this point by noting
that a definition does not involve the assertion, in a positing sense, of a
single object that has the properties defined by the concept. The concept
that is asserted does not have the properties, and the existence of the
corresponding objects is not asserted. In Frege's words: "Whether such
objects exist is not immediately known by means of their definitions . . .
Neither has the concept defined got this property, nor is a definition a
guarantee that the concept is realized" ("Preface," "Selections from the
Grundgesetze, Vol. 1," Trans. from the Phil. Writings of G. Frege, ed.
cit., p. 145). Suppose, for example, we take the concept of black cloth.
The concept itself is not black. It is not made of cloth. It does not
have the properties that an existing individual must have to fall under it.
Thus, to define a concept is not to create anything having the properties
specifies by the concept—this holds, even in mathematics. It is only to
assert the possibility of things having such properties.

Thus, if we accept that abstract thought deals with concepts and concepts
only specify possibilities, then we accept that abstract thought deals with
possibilities. If we also say that we know things by defining them, that
is, by specifying their concepts, then Kierkegaard's assertion follows:
"All knowledge about actuality is possibility." (316). This implies that
knowledge cannot grasp existence.

Now, Aristotle asserts that we can grasp particulars by direct sense
perception. Seeing someone before us, we can assert that he is. (This,
however, does not mean that we can "know" this individual in the sense of
defining him).

Kierkegaard, however, asserts: "The only actuality concerning which an
existing person has more than knowledge about is his own actuality, that he
exists, and this actuality is his absolute interest." (ibid.).

The existing individual thinks the world in terms of this actuality. As
Kierkegaard puts this, "he things everything … in relation to himself,
infinitely interested in existing" (317).

Thus, he thinks things in terms of his projects, that is, in terms of what
he is to do (and hence be). Water, here, is not H2O. It is something to
drink, something necessary for my existence. A house is something to
shelter in, wind is wind to fill my sails as I cross the lake, etc. All
these projects are involved in my being across time, i.e., my actuality as
a motion of existence that is interested in preserving itself as a
continuity across time.

This relation that I have to my existence is unique. It does not occur,
according to Kierkegaard, in the esthetical (for example, in poetry) or the
theoretical. Thus, as Kierkegaard cites Aristotle, "poetry [has] what
could and ought to have occurred, i.e., poetry has possibility at its
disposal." (318) The same holds for theoretical thought. "But," as
Kierkegaard writes, "as soon as I begin to want to make my thinking
teleological in relation to something else, interest enters the game."
(319). My thought now becomes goal directed. It involves itself in
projects. Behind every "what should I do" is a "what shall I be." As
issue is my existence.

The what shall I be is also an ethical question. As Kierkegaard continues,
"As soon as it is there, the ethical is present and exempts me from further
trouble with demonstrating my existence." (ibid.). I am face with the
ethical question of how I should shape my life.

Thus, the ethical has the opposite stance from the theoretical point of
view. For Kierkegaard, "From the ethical point of view, actuality is
superior to possibility. The ethical specifically wants to annihilate the
disinterestedness of possibility by making existing the infinite interest."
(320). The interest here is how should I authorize, take responsibility
for my life. The focus of the ethical here is on myself.

In this sense, it is like the ancient Greek notions of ethics. For Plato,
the focus of ethics was on the health of one's soul, for Aristotle, it was
on one's good functioning, i.e., on the harmonious actualization of all
one's potentialities. The other came in only in the necessity of friends
for this good functioning.

What about the other person? Kierkegaard writes:

With regard to every actuality outside myself, it holds true that I can
grasp it only in thinking. If I were actually to grasp it, I would have to
be able to make myself into the other person, the one acting, to make the
actuality alien to me into my own personal actuality, which is an
impossibility (312)

The point put phenomenologically: to really know the other our
consciousnesses would have to merge.

The point put existentially: one cannot know a movement of existence. One
can only engage in it. To grasp it by engaging in it would be to have its
actuality.

Now, if we accept this position, we come to a conclusion that is strikingly
at variance with Levinas' position or, in fact, with our modern views on
ethics, which hold that ethics concerns our relations to others.

Kierkegaard writes: "ethically there is no direct relation between subject
and subject. When I have understood another subject, his actuality is for
me a possibility, and this thought-actuality is related to me qua
possibility just as my own thinking of something I still have not done is
related to the doing of it" (321)

Thus, to think another human being a human being is to think of her as
having projects. My relation to the goals of my projects is to a
possibility that I am called to actualize. I think of other's in the same
way. They are possibilities of individuals having goals that they try to
actualize. This is Heidegger's position. When I try to think of another,
I think of him as Mit-sein. As a co-subject. My ethical relation to him
is not to help him by engaging in his projects for him, but only to
encourage him to actualize and take responsibility for his own life.

The bottom line here is that "I can grasp the other person's actuality only
by thinking it, consequently by translating it into possibility" (323).
Subjectivity is inwardness, but I cannot access another person's
inwardness. This means, Kierkegaard continues, "For existing ethically, it
is an advantageous preliminary study to learn that the individual human
being stands alone."(323)

Heidegger makes the same point. We all die alone, we all authorize our
lives alone. We have to be resolute, i.e., realize this individual
responsibility, not see ourselves as victims, as subject to uncontrolable
social forces, etc., etc. To hear the "call of consciousness" is to hear
the demands of such self-responsibility.

In a similar vein, Kierkegaard asserts, "ethically the individual is simply
and solely interested infinitely in his own actuality" (324).

What then is our relation to the other person? Kierkegaard writes, "If he
is going to or, rather, if he nevertheless wants to relate himself to this
actuality as actuality, he does not relate himself to it in thought but
paradoxically." Here, we "come up against an obdurate esse, held fast in
passionate inwardness" (322-23).

We grasp the ungraspable. How? Through faith. Faith, here, is not
ethics. It has nothing to do with universalization as Kant's ethics does.
It also has nothing to do with self authorization as Kierkegaard's
conception of ethics has (this, note, is different from the one presented
in the Philosophical Fragments, which is much more Kantian).

Kierkegaard, rather writes, Faith's analogy to the ethical is the infinite
interestedness by which the believer is absolutely different from an
esthete and a thinker, but in turn is different from an ethicist by being
infinitely interested in the actuality of another (324).

Now, in a certain sense, this is like Levinas, who also stresses our
relation to the other is not that of knowledge. It has to do with the
other's existence.

And Kierkegaard does write, "The object of faith is the actuality of
another person; its relation is an infinite interestedness. The object of
faith is not a doctrine … . The object of faith is not a teacher who has a
doctrine, for when a teacher has a doctrine, then the doctrine is eo ipso
more important than the teacher … the object of faith, is the actuality of
the teacher, that the teacher actually exists" (326).

This is Levinas' starting point. Ethics for him comes from a responding to
this existence. For Kierkegaard, however, faith is not ethics. In fact,
its object is not the other person, but the god. It concerns the god's
existence. Its question is, did the god exist (i.e., be in time). He
adds,

Please note that … in connection with a human being it is thoughtless to
lay so infinitely much weight upon whether he has existed or not.
Therefore, if the object of faith is a human being, the whole thing is a
prank by a foolish person who has not even grasped the esthetic and the
intellectual. The object of faith is therefore the god's actuality in the
sense of existence. (326).

From Levinas' point of view, Kierkegaard falls into error in thinking
1) we can actualize our existence by ourselves. In fact, we are always
already with our others. Without them, we have no projects. We learn
them from our others and such projects involve them as coworkers, etc.


2) We can be for ourselves apart from others. The other provides the
inner distance by which we can distance ourselves from ourselves and
hence critically regard ourselves. In other words, without the other,
we have no objective sense of ourselves
3) The ethical in Kierkegaard's and Heidegger's sense self-authorization
depends on our having this critical distance to our selves and hence
on the others that promote this by calling us into question. At the
basis of our ethical awareness is thus our responding to the other as
the other calls one into question
4) The relation to the other exceeds knowledge. Kierkegaard is right, we
cannot know the other as other. But he ignores the fact that our
encounter with the other is an encounter with the movement existence.


5) This movement of existence is experienced in talking with the other.
Doing so, we see the other as adding to the said, of saying something
new. This is the phenomena of a saying that always exceeds the said.
6) The ethical in this context involves waiting on the other who comes
with another interpretation. It involves self-restraint vis a vis the
other. Not absorbing him into one's own system of interpretation, but
rather letting him call this into question.
7) Levinas thinks our relation to God has this quality.

Kierkegaard does not. He sees the paradox, but does not see its active
working through the other.


Concluding Unscientific Postscript, pp. 335-360, lecture

The subject of this final reading is the notion of action and its relation
to our selfhood.

As always, Kierkegaard sets up his own position against Hegel's.

This is something a number of philosopher's do, use another philosopher as
a foil to present their ideas.

Kierkegaard begins by implicitly referencing Descartes when he remarks,
"When thinking turns toward itself in order to think about itself, there
emerges, as we know, a skepticism." (335). Thus, Descartes' radical doubt
that limits him to his ideas (the contents of his own consciousness) leaves
him with the skeptical problem of whether or not external reality is the
source of such ideas or whether they come from himself alone (as dreams
do).

Kierkegaard then references Hegel's solution of Descartes's problem:
namely, "Self-reflection keeps on so long until it cancels itself; thinking
presses through victoriously and once again gains reality; the identity of
thinking and being is won in pure thinking." (ibid.).

The reference here is to Hegel's logic. Let me take a moment to give its
essential notion, since this sets the context for Kierkegaard's own views.

The Science of Logic begins with "being, pure being, without any further
determination"; as "pure indeterminateness and emptiness, there is nothing
to be intuited in it…. nothing to be thought in it."

This means: "Being, the indeterminate immediate, is in fact nothing, and
neither more nor less than nothing." Thus, the thought of being turns into
the thought of nothing.

In showing how the thought of being turned into that of nothing, Hegel's
point is that everything one-sided, when thought through, turns into its
opposite. This is because everything one-sided is a specification of the
absolute idea that contains both the one-sided thesis and its opposite
within in it.

The Science of Logic unfolds this absolute idea through the process of a
thesis, which is then shown to turn into its antithesis or opposite, and
then through the synthesis of these two.

So the synthesis of being and nothing is becoming. The "truth" of their
relation is that being and nothing are distinct, but they are inseparable
in such a way that each passes into the other. Their truth is, therefore,
"becoming, a movement in which both are distinguished, but by a difference
which has equally immediately resolved itself."
The result, "becoming" is, itself, a one-sided concept. It also turns into
its opposite, when thought through. The antithesis of becoming is the
permanent. The synthesis of becoming and the permanent is something in
motion, something changing. The logic continues this way for 800 pages.

Its goal is to show how being is to be thought, thought such that there is
an identity of thinking and being such that thought leaves nothing out in
its account of being.

As for skepticism, it too enters into the dialectic as a one-sided idea
that turns into its opposite. The skeptic is certain that nothing can be
known for certain. The skeptic must exclude his own thesis from his
skeptical thesis that nothing can be asserted with certainty. He must be
certain of this. If not, he also has to be skeptical of his skepticism.
But to do so is to undermine it.

This procedure is anathema to Kierkegaard. While Hegel believes his logic
can resolve all contradictions, Kierkegaard believes that they are resolved
in action and decision.

We resolve contradictions not by thought, not by showing that in the long
run every thesis will generate its opposite, but by action and decision.
It is such a long run that Kierkegaard calls a "spurious infinity."

In Kierkegaard's words, "If what is thought were actuality, then what is
thought out as perfectly as possible, when I as yet have not acted, would
be the action. In this way there would be no action whatever, but the
intellectual swallows the ethical." (338).

In fact, thought is not actuality. Actuality is the result of action, not
thought. Going from Antigonish to New Glasgow and to Port Hawksbery at the
same time is contradictory. I resolve the contradiction by choosing and
actually going to one or the other.

The distinction between thinking and action is given "by assigning
possibility, disinterestedness, and objectivity to thinking, and action to
subjectivity." Thinking observes facts, action by an individual subject
creates them. (339).

What, then, is the relation of thought to action? Certainly, I think when
I choose to go to Port Hawksbery. The thought is simply that of a
possibility (the possibility of going in this direction). But if the
choice is real, then "it is a possibility in which the interest of
actuality and action is already reflected. Therefore, disinterestedness and
objectivity are about to be disturbed, because actuality and responsibility
want to have a firm grip on them." (ibid.). The thought, then, is of
possibility. Its relation to actuality occurs because the thought of the
possibility involves an interest in transforming the possibility into an
actuality.

Kierkegaard adds: "The actuality is not the external action but an
interiority in which the individual annuls possibility and identifies
himself with what is thought in order to exist in it. This is action."
(339). What this means is that the possibility is part of the motion of my
existence. It is the future which I am realizing in my being in time.
Thus, I exist in the possibility as part of a future that I am acting to
realize.

This "existing in the possibility," that is, identifying with it by taking
it as your own future, is what gives your movement of existence its
identity over time. You are over time the one realizing this future.

As Kierkegaard continually emphasizes, such action is more than thinking,
more than simply entertaining a possibility. He writes:

"To have thought something good that one wants to do, is that to have done
it? Not at all" (339).

"To have faith in God—does that mean to think about how glorious it must be
to have faith … ? Not at all. Even to wish [to have faith] … is not to have
faith, is not to act." (340).

What is the difference between thinking of an action and the actual action?
As Kierkegaard notes, "between the thought-action and the actual action,
between possibility and actuality, there … is no difference at all in
content." (ibid.). As Kant puts this, there are the same number of
pennies in one hundred actual dollars and one hundred possible dollars.
Existence is not a difference in content. It is not a predicate. To say x
is does not tell you anything about its content, i.e., about what x is.

So what is the difference that actuality adds to the thought of an action?
Kierkegaard continues: "Actuality is interestedness by existing in it"
(340).

The difference is the movement of existence. The difference between the
thought of an action, i.e., of "something good that one wants to do," and
actually doing it is the inclusion of this good in one's movement of
existence. One is interested in the good in the sense that one makes it
part of one's own existence, an existence that, as Kierkegaard reminds us,
we are infinitely interested in. The possibility, which in itself, exists
out of time, becomes part of our future. The abstractly considered good
deed becomes, as something we are going to do, part of our existence as the
person who is doing it.

Kierkegaard writes: "To give thinking supremacy over everything else is
gnosticism" (it is to make knowing the highest). He adds, "to make the
subjective individual's ethical actuality the only actuality could seem to
be acosmism." (341). "Acosmism" is the reduction of the world to its
subjective appearance. Why would Kierkegaard suggest this?

Because, through our actions we determine how the world appears to us.
Things show that side of themselves that is useful for our projects. When
we act, we do not just create new facts, i.e., bring new things into
existence. We also view things as material for our projects. The world we
presently experience shows itself as it does do us by virtue of our
multiple projects. Every element in the room we are now sitting in has the
form it has because of the uses we put the material it is made out of. The
same holds for the landscape outside of us. It is not just that our
accomplished projects shape the subjective appearance of the world, the
projects we are currently engaged in also do this. What is not useful for
our projects is ignored by us. We focus on what helps or hinders us from
achieving our goals.

The movement of our existence thus shapes the subjective appearing of the
world. What this means is that it is prior to the observing that thought
emphasizes. What thought observes is shaped by the movement of our
existence.

If we accept this, then we have to say with Kierkegaard, "Subjectivity is
truth; subjectivity is actuality" (343). Truth, the agreement of thought
with its appearing object is shaped by what determines this appearance, but
this is subjectivity. Subjective does this by being actuality in the sense
of actualization, that is, by actually determining actuality through its
actions.

This, of course, holds only in the two spheres that Kierkegaard is
interested in: ethics and faith.

Kierkegaard brings up Aristotle's definition of motion as an example of
this. He writes:

"The transition from possibility to actuality is, as Aristotle rightly
teaches, kinesis, a movement. This cannot be said in the language of
abstraction at all or understood therein, because abstraction can give
movement neither time nor space, which presuppose it or which it
presupposes. There is a halt, a leap." (342)

The difficulty in describing motion is that it involves according to
Aristotle, three terms: two of which are contraries (the start and end of
motion, e.g., unmusical, musical) and the underlying subject moving between
the two (Socrates). All three are unchanging. Socrates does not become
other than himself in the change. The beginning and the end also do not
change.

Aristotle attempts to solve this problem by speaking of change in terms of
potentiality and actuality. Change is the actualization of potentiality
qua potentiality. Thus, Socrates has the potential to be musical. The
process of actualization of this is motion. The problem is that a process
is itself motion, so we are defining motion by motion.

Kierkegaard's solution is to assert that "existence gives movement in time"
(342). In fact, it is such movement. Thus, we do not begin with abstract
thought and try to derive such existence. We begin with the latter.

The example he gives is the ethical dictum, "the good has its reward in
itself." This means that
" it is not only the most proper but also the most sagacious [prudent]
thing to will the good."

Now, the ethics that believes in consequences (the sagacious eudaemonist),
accepts this abstract principle. But this is different from acting on it.
As Kierkegaard writes, "But when the transition is supposed to become
actual, all sagacity expires in scruples." This is because "Actual time
separates the good and the reward for him so much, so eternally, that
sagacity cannot join them again, and the eudaemonist declines with thanks."
(342-3)

What is the problem? Practically, it is that the reward one aims at is
only accomplished in the movement of existence. But such movement means
that time intervenes between the good action and the intended reward. In
that time, lots of things can happen. The relation between the good action
and the reward is no longer the logical one of abstract thought. It gets
involved in the causality of the world. This can screw up the progress to
the intended result. Thus, knowing what the proper thing to do is (the
good act in itself) is not difficult. Knowing whether it will bring a good
result (a greater amount of happiness) is, however, very difficult if not
impossible.

What is left out then is the movement of existence. It is the subject who
exists in such movement. This forgetting of the subject characterizes
modernity according to Kierkegaard.

It treats subjects as historically determined. In this, it treats us like
animals. As Kierkegaard notes:

"In the animal world, the particular animal is related directly as specimen
to species, participates as a matter of course in the development of the
species, if one wants to talk about such a thing. When a breed of sheep,
for example, is improved, improved sheep are born because the specimen
merely expresses the species." (345).

But this does not apply to human beings. Here, the "development of spirit
is self-activity; the spiritually developed individual takes his spiritual
development along with him in death. If a succeeding individual is to
attain it, it must occur through his self-activity; therefore he must skip
nothing." (345). Thus, the fact that I am a Christian does not make my
child a Christian. If he is to come to this, it must be part of the
movement of his existence. The same point holds for ethics. The fact that
one generation is ethical does not mean that the next will be. Hegel held
that because Germany realized the idea of freedom in its objective
institutions, it was impossible that it would fall back into tyranny.
History was over. But this was not the case in the 20th century.

What he forgot, according to Kierkegaard, is that "Ethics focuses upon the
individual, and ethically understood it is every individual's task to
become a whole human being, just as it is the presupposition of ethics that
everyone is born in the state of being able to become that" (346).

The moral that Kierkegaard draws from all this is that "The subjective
thinker's task is to understand himself in existence." (351).

This means that "In all his thinking, then, he has to include the thought
that he himself is an existing person." (ibid.).
This is the opposite procedure from abstract thinking. In including oneself
in one's thinking, one is including a particular human being, moving from
the abstract to the concrete. As a result, one no longer enjoys the bird's
eye view—the view looking down on humanity in general. As Kierkegaard puts
this,
while "abstract thinking turns from concrete human beings to humankind in
general; the subjective thinker understands the abstract concept to be the
concrete human being, to be this individual existing human being (352).

The subjective thinker, as Kierkegaard also puts this, is interested in
"becoming an individual existing human being instead of being a part of the
race and saying 'we,' 'our age,' 'the nineteenth century.'" (355).

What does it mean to become an individual, existing human being?

Kierkegaard writes: "The subjective thinker's form, the form of his
communication, is his style. His form must be just as manifold as are the
opposites that he holds together" (357)

He holds such opposites together as the motion of existence, a motion by
definition involving opposites. The content of his communication is his
style. It is how he holds these opposites together.

As Kierkegaard puts this: "To have been young, then to have grown older,
and then finally to die is a mediocre existence, for the animal also has
that merit. But to unite the elements of life in contemporaneity, that is
precisely the task." Thus, "when the adult cuts away all communication
with childhood and is a fragmentary adult," this is "a mediocre existence."
All the oppositions of the motion of existence must be held together, all
the stages of life must be part of one's contemporaneity. (348)

(Nietzsche: the eternal return).

To end with a general point, to say that the content of the thinkers
communication is his style is to affirm that not the what, but the how of
his life is the content of his manifestation as an existing individual.

What this means, concretely, is that this how is his inclusion of himself
in his relation to the world. Thus, in relating to another person, I
realize that my own being is at stake—that is, how I am as a person, is
what is at issue. The same holds for my relation to God. I do not relate
to him as abstract idea, but rather as something that interests me, that is
involved in the existence that I am infinitely interested in.

This is how I show myself ethically and religiously, that is, as an
existing subject.

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