Quote Bin: (Kierkegaard: 783 quotes)
August 1st Journal Entry:
Gilleleje (Papers & Journals, Hannay, pp. 32-38) (1 August 35 1 A 75)
An Open Letter; AOL, Hong
(Clarion, '69) [3]: (49); (49-50); (50).
Armed Neutrality; AN, Hong,
(Clarion, '69) [8]: (34); (34); (35); (37); (43); (66-67); (89); (100)
Attack upon Christendom; AC,
Lowrie (Princeton, '68) [10]: (121); (130); (153); (221); (251); (271);
(280-81); (282-83); (284); (282-85).
The Book on Adler; BA, Lowrie
(Everyman's Library, Knopf) [19]: (114); (116); (117); (117-18); (131-32);
(153-54); (161); (202); (221-22); (222); (223); (224); (244); (244); (245);
(246); (252); (252-53); (256)
Christian Discourses; CD,
Lowrie (Princeton paperback, '74) [27]: (preface to part I); (74); (76); (101);
(103-04); (106); (107); (108); (113); (113); (114); (139); (140-41); (141);
(142); (142); (144); (146); (147); (148); (150); (155-56); (158-59); (203);
(332); (349-50); (355).
Concept of
Anxiety; CA, Thomte (Princeton, '80) [47]: (14); (16); (17-19); (20); (21); (21-22); (35);
(36); (36-37); (37); (43); (43-44); (48); (49); (61);
(78-79); (78-79);
(79); (85); (85); (86); (86); (87); (89); (90); (91); (91); (91-92); (92-93);
(98); (113); (117); (119); (127); (128); (141-42); (142); (143); (146); (150);
(151); (155); (155); (157); (159); (161); (230)
Concept of Irony; CI, Hong
(Princeton, '89) [15]: (9); (36); (59-60); (242); (257); (261); (262); (263);
(264); (269); (272); (277); (432); (444-45); (451).
Concluding Unscientific
Postscript, CUP (Vol. I, Hong, Princeton, '92; Lowrie, Princeton, '68) [169]: (15);
(17); (17); (32); (33); (33); (34-35); (37-38); (42-43); (43); (49); (52-53);
(53); (66-67); (69); (72-73); (73); (73-74); (fn. 73-74); (74); (75); (75);
(76); (79); (80); (81-82); (84); (85); (86); (89-90); (91); (99); (103); (108);
(113); (115); (121-22); (129); (130); (138); (138-39); (141-42); (142); (143);
(145); (146-47); (153); (159-60); (160-61); (186); (189); (191-92); (192);
(193); (193-94); (196); (197); (197-98); (198-99); (199); (199); (201); (202-03);
(203); (203); (204); (204); (205); (205); (207); (207); (209); (210); (213);
(230); (243); (244); (245); (249-50); (251); (251); (252); (253); (253); (253);
(254); (254); (255); (257-58); (258); (259); (263); (266-67); (268); (268);
(269); (269-70); (278-79); (281); (303); (305); (307); (308); (314); (316); (317);
(320); (320-21); (321); (322); (325); (327); (329); (341); (342-43); (343);
(350); (350-51); (351); (352); (353); (357-58); (361); (365); (366); (387);
(388); (390); (392-93); (394); (394-95); (410); (421); (423-24); (426); (426-27);
(431); (431-32); (493); (499-500); (502): (502); (518-19); (525-26); (526);
(527); (527-28); (528); (531-32); (550); (554-55); (555); (555-56); (556); (556);
(556-57); (557); (560-61); (561-62); (571); (571-72); (572-73); (573); (578); (579);
(584); (610); (628); (629).
Diary of Søren Kierkegaard;
DSK, Rohde (Citadel Press, '90) [6]: (64); (101); (150); (159); (159); (176).
Eighteen Upbuilding
Discourses; EUD, Hong (Princeton, '90) [23]: (11-12); (17-18); (19); (27);
(86); (86); (166-67); (171); (211); (306-07); (312); (314); (336-37); (342);
(344); (400); (438); (439); (446); (452); (461); (475-76); (479).
Either/ Or; E/O, Hannay (Penguin, '92) [57]: (27);
(35-36); (43); (46); (84); (85); (86); (89); (93); (214); (214-15); (238);
(478); (482); (483); (483); (485); (490); (491); (491-92); (494); (499-500);
(509); (513); (514); (515); (515-16); (516); (516); (517); (517-18); (519);
(520); (525); (528); (528-29); (534-35); (537); (540); (540-41); (541); (541);
(542-43); (544-45); (545); (546); (546-47); (547); (549); (549); (549);
(555-56); (558-59); (561-62); (603); (605); (608-09).
Fear and Trembling; F&T,
Lowrie (Anchor Book Ed. '54); Hong (Princeton '85): [25]: (30); (30); (48); (48); (51); (53-54);
(56); (57); (58); (59); (64-5); (65); (66); (70); (78); (79); (79-80); (80);
(81); (91); (92); (106); (109); (122); (248).
For Self-Examination, FSE,
Hong (Princeton, '90) [10]: (29); (61); (75-76); (76-77); (77); (81-82); (82);
(83-84); (224); (234).
Johannes Climacus; JC, Hong
(Princeton, '87) [7]: (145); (145); (168-69); (171); (232-33); (256); (259).
Journals; J, Dru (Harper,
'59) [21]: (98); (118); (122); (125); (132); (135); (140); (142); (142); (146);
(169); (172-73); (174); (174-75); (175); (177-78); (181-82); (201); (210);
(243); (248-49).
Judge for Yourself; JY, Hong
(Princeton, '90) [13]: (99-100); (104); (104); (105); (105); (106); (107);
(118); (119); (128); (188); (205); (209).
Papers (various sources); P
[12]: (JP II 20); (JP IV 6698); (Papers, I 295, Dec. 1, 1836); (P&J
3:908); (V B 40); (Papers IX A414); (JP I 371);
((JP VI 6523 (pap. X²
A 163) n.d., 1849); (Dru entry); (Dru entry); (JP I 110); (JP III 416)
Papers and Journals; P&J;
A Selection, Hannay; [41]: (32); (34-35); (71); (71); (90-91); (91); (97);
(100); (128); (132); (132-33); (136); (152); (154); (161); (173); (177); (178);
(212); (252-53); (262); (264); (322-23); (323); (348-49); (366); (366); (372);
(460); (460); (463-64); (464); (483-84); (489); (510); (532); (574); (585); (600); (603); (626).
Philosophical Fragments; PF;
Swenson/Hong (Princeton, '67) [25]: (title page); (115-16); (16); (17); (19);
(22); (22-23); (23); (23); (24); (23-24); (24-25); (25-26); (27); (46); (49);
(52-53); (55-56); (57); (72-3); (77-78); (79); (86-87); (139); ---PF; Hong
(Princeton, '87): (182); (188).
Point of View; PV; Hong
(Princeton, '98) [39]; (7); (7); (7); (10); (11); (15); (20); (25); (25-26);
(31); (34); (35); (43); (45); (53-54); (54); (54-55); (55); (55-56); (56);
(69-70); (72); (73); (74); (76-77); (77); (84-86); (93); (93-94); (97); (97);
(203); (205); (212-13); (221); (227); (253); (255); (290-93).
Practice in Christianity PC;
Hong (Princeton, '91) [17]: (63); (82); (123); (133); (133-34); (134); (134);
(136); (141); (152-53); (159);
(159-160); (205-06); (213);
(222); (225); (238-40).
Present Age PA and Of the
Difference Between a Genius and an Apostle (G/A); Dru (Harper, '62) [7]: (42);
(43); (43-44); (68); (76); (89); (90-91).
Purity of Heart; PH, Steere
(Harper, '56) [52]: (27); (31); (33); (36); (38); (41-42); (42); (42); (44);
(47); (47-48); (51); (53-4); (55); (57); (61); (65-66); (66); (68); 74-75);
(106-07); (113); (116-17); (136); (148-49); (166); (168); (169); (170); (170);
(173); (173-74); (176); (177-78); (181); (183-84); (184); (184-85); (186);
(186); (187); (188-89); (193); (194-95); (195); (197); (202); (215); (215-16);
(216); (217); (217-18).
Repetition; Rep, Hong
(Princeton, '83) [15]: (132); (149); (186); (200); (214); (220-21); (221);
(221-22); (229); (301-02); (307); (320); (324); (326); (327).
Sickness unto Death; SUD,
Hong (Princeton, '83) [56]: (6); (13); (14); (14-15); (15-16); (16); (17);
(17-18); (20); (25-26); (29); (31); (34-35); (35); (37); (38); (42); (44-45); (46);
(50-51); (52-53); (54-55); (61-62); (65); (67-68); (67); (68); (71-72); (73);
(74); (79); (80); (82); (89-90); (90); (90-91); (93); (96); (96); (97); (101); (105); (105-06); (107); (108);
(109); (109); (109); (110); (117-18); (120); (131); (143-44); (147); (154);
(156).
Stages; S, Hong (Princeton,
'91) [15]: (9); (9); (12); (12-13); (13); (14); (19); (412); (412-13); (476);
(476-77); (477); (481-82); (483); (486).
The Single Individual; SI,
Hong, Point of View, Supplement (Princeton, '98) [4]: (106); (115); (118); (121)
Works of Love; WL, Hong
(Harper & Row Torchbooks, '64) [37]: (23); (23-24); (34); (35); (39); (41);
(46-47); (47); (47); (51); (52-53); (54); (55); (58); (63); (65); (67); (68);
(92-93); (112-13); (137); (140); (159); (161); (177); (188); (189); (199-200);
(223); (233-34); (261); (331); (331-32); (333); (339); (343); (344).
Gilleleje, 1 August, 1835:
"The way I have tried to show it in the
preceding pages is how these matters actually appeared to me. But when I try
now to come to an understanding with myself about my life, things look
different. Just as a child takes time to learn to distinguish itself from
objects and for quite a while so little distinguishes itself from its
surroundings that, keeping the stress on the passive side, it says things like,
'me hit the horse', so too the same phenomenon repeats itself in a higher
spiritual sphere. Therefore I thought that I might gain more peace of mind by
taking up a new line of study, directing my energies towards some other goal. I
might even have managed for a while in that way to banish a certain
restlessness, though no doubt it would have returned with greater effect like a
fever after the relief of a cool drink. What I really need is to be clear about
what I am to do, not what I must know, except in the way knowledge must
precede all action. It is a question of understanding my destiny, of seeing
what the Deity really wants me to do; the thing is to find a truth which
is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and
die. And what use here would it be if I were to discover a so-called
objective truth, or if I worked my way through the philosophers' systems and
were able to call them all to account on request, point out inconsistencies in
every single circle? And what use here would it be to be able to work out a
theory of the state, and put all the pieces from so many places in one whole;
construct a world which, again, I did not inhabit but merely held up for others
to see? What use would it be to propound the meaning of Christianity, to
explain the many separate facts, if it had no deeper meaning for myself and my
life? And the better I became at it and the more I saw others appropriate
the creatures of my mind, the more distressing my situation would become,
rather like that of parents who in their poverty have to send their children
out into the world and turn them over to the care of others.
What use would it be if the
truth were to stand there before me, cold and naked, not caring whether I
acknowledged it or not, and inducing an anxious shudder rather than trusting
devotion? Certainly I won't deny that I still accept an imperative of
knowledge, and that one can also be influenced by it, but then it must
be taken up alive in me, and this is what I now see as the main
point. It is this my soul thirsts for as the African desert thirsts for water.
That is what I lack, and this is why I am like a man who has collected
furniture and rented rooms but still hasn't found the beloved with whom to
share life's ups and downs. But to find that idea, or more properly to find
myself, it is no use my plunging still further into the world. And that is
exactly what I did before, which is why I thought it would be a good idea to
throw myself into jurisprudence, to be able to sharpen my mind on life's
many complications. Here a whole mass of details offered itself for me to lose
myself in; from the given facts I could perhaps fashion a totality, an organism
of criminal life, pursue it in all its darker sides (here, too, a certain
community spirit is much in evidence). That's also what made me want to become
an attorney, so that by taking on another's role I could acquire a sort
of surrogate for my own life and in this exchanging of externals find some sort
of diversion.
That's what I lacked for
leading a completely human life and not just a life of knowledge,
to avoid basing my mind's development on – yes, on something that people call
objective – something which at any rate isn't my own, and base it instead on
something which is bound up with the deepest roots of my existence,* through
which I am as it were grown into the divine and cling fast to it even though
the whole world falls apart. This, you see, is what I need, and this is what
I strive for. So it is with joy and inner invigoration that I contemplate
the great men who have found that precious stone for which they sell
everything, even their lives, † whether I see them intervening forcefully in
life, with firm step and following unwaveringly their chosen paths, or run into
them off the beaten track, self-absorbed and working for their lofty goals. I
even look with respect upon those false paths that also lie there so close by.
It is this inward action of man, this God-side of man, that matters, not a mass
of information. That will no doubt follow, but then not in the guise of an
accidental accumulation or a succession of details side by side with any
system, without a focal point upon which all radii converge.
*How near, besides, is man to
madness despite all his knowledge? What is truth other than to live for an idea?
Everything must in the final analysis be based on a postulate. But only when it
no longer stands outside him but he lives it, only then, for him, does it cease
to be a postulate (Dialectic-Dispute).
†So it will be easy for us
the first time we receive the ball of yarn from Ariadne (love) to through all
the mazes of the labyrinth (life) and slay the monster. But how many plunge
into life (the labyrinth) without observing that precaution (the young girls
and little boys who are sacrificed every year to the Minotaur?
This focal point is something
I too have looked for. Vainly, I have sought an anchorage, not just in the
depths of knowledge, but in the bottomless sea of pleasure. I have felt the
well-nigh irresistible power with which one pleasure holds out its hand to
another; I have felt that inauthentic kind of enthusiasm which it is capable of
producing. I have also felt the tedium, the laceration, which ensues. I have
tasted the fruits of the tree of knowledge and have relished them time and
again. But this joy was only in the moment of cognition and left no deeper
remark upon me. It seems to me that I have not drunk from the cup of wisdom but
have fallen into it. I have tried to find that principle for my life by
resignation, by supposing that, since everything went according to inscrutable
laws, it could not be otherwise, by blunting my ambition and the feelers of my
vanity. Because I was unable to make everything suit my ability, I withdrew
with a consciousness of my own competence, rather as a worn-out clergyman
resigns with his pension.
What did I find? Not my 'I',
for that is what I was in that way trying to find (I imagined, if I may so put
it, my soul shut up in a box with a spring lock in front, which the outside
surroundings would release by pressing the spring). – So the first thing to be
resolved was this search for and the discovery of the Kingdom of Heaven. A
person would no more want to decide the externals first and the fundamentals
afterwards than a heavenly body would decide first of all about its surface,
about which bodies it would turn its light side to and to which its dark side,
without first letting the harmony of centrifugal and centripetal forces bring
it into being and letting the rest develop by itself. One must first learn to know
oneself before knowing anything else (gnothi seauton). Only when the
person has inwardly understood himself, and the sees the course forward
from the path he is to take, does his life acquire repose and meaning; only
then is he free of that irksome, fateful traveling companion – that's life's
irony* which appears in the sphere of knowledge and bids true knowing begin
with a not-knowing. (Socrates),† just as God created the world from nothing.
*It may well also persist in
a certain sense, but he is in a position to withstand those squalls in life,
for the more the person lives for an idea, the more easily he also comes to sit
on the wonder-chair before the whole world. Often, too, when one is most
convinced that one knows oneself, one can be seized by a curious anxiety that
one has really only learned someone else's life by rote.
†The proverb also says: 'From
children and the insane one shall hear the truth.' And here, surely, it is not
a matter of truth according to premises and conclusions. Yet how often have the
words of a child or a madman thundered down on the man on whom acuity could
make no impression.
But it is especially at home
in the navigable waters of morality, for those who have yet to enter the trade
winds of virtue. Here it tosses a person about in the most terrible way,
letting him feel happy and content one moment in his resolve to go ahead down
the right path, only to hurl him into the abyss of despair the next. Often it
lulls a person to sleep with the thought, 'That's just the way it is', only to
awaken him on a sudden to a rigorous interrogation. Often it seems to let a
veil of oblivion fall over the past, only to allow every single trifle to come
vividly to light once more. When he struggles along the right path, rejoicing
in having overcome the power of temptation, perhaps almost simultaneously, hard
upon the most perfect victory, there comes some seemingly insignificant outer
circumstance which thrusts him down, like Sisyphus from the top of the hill.
Often, when a person has focused his energy on something, some little outer
circumstance crops up and destroys it all. (As I would say, someone weary of
life and about to throw himself into the Thames is stayed at the crucial moment
by the sting of a mosquito.) Often, as with the consumptive, a person feels his
best when things are at their very worst. In vain he tries to resist, he lacks
strength and it avails him nothing that he has endured the same thing many
times before; the kind of practice one acquires in that way is not to the point
here. No more than a person well enough practiced in swimming can keep afloat
in a storm unless he is deeply convinced, and has experience of the fact, that
he is indeed lighter than water, can a person who lacks this inner point of
orientation keep himself afloat in the storm of life. – Only when someone has
understood himself in this way is he in the position to maintain an independent
existence and so escape giving up his own I.
How often we see (at a time
when in our panegyrics we extol that Greek historian for knowing how to adopt a
foreign style so delusively like the original author's, rather than think he
should be censured, seeing that the first prize for an author is always for
having his own style – that is, with a form of expression and presentation
which bears the mark of his own individuality) – how often we see people who
either from spiritual laziness live on the crumbs that fall from other people's
tables, or for more egotistical reasons try to identify themselves with others
until they resemble the liar who, through frequent repetition of his stories,
ends up believing them himself.
Notwithstanding my still
being very far from this inward self-understanding, I have tried with profound
respect for its significance to fence my individuality about and have
worshipped the unknown God. I have tried with an untimely anxiety to avoid
coming into too close contact with those things whose attraction might exert
too much power over me. I have tried to appropriate much from them, studied
their individual characters and significance in human life, but at the same
time I have taken care, like the gnat, not to come too close to the flame. In
association with the ordinary run of men I have had but little to win or lose.
In part, their whole activity – so-called practical life* – has not interested
me much; in part, I was alienated from them ever further by the coolness and
indifference they showed towards the spiritual and deeper stirrings in man.
* That life, which is fairly
prevalent in the whole age, also manifests itself on a larger scale. Whereas
the past ages built works before which the observer could only stand in
silence, now they build a tunnel under the Thames (utility and advantage). Yes,
almost before a child has time to admire the beauty of a plant or some species
of animal or other, it asks: 'What use is it?'
My companions have, with few
exceptions exerted no marked influence upon me. A life that has not arrived at
an understanding with itself must necessarily present an uneven surface to the
world; all they had to go on are single facts and their apparent disharmony,
for they were not sufficiently interested in me to try to resolve this into a
higher harmony or see the necessity of it at all. Their judgment upon me was
therefore always one-sided, and I have vacillated between putting too much and
too little weight on their pronouncements. Their influence and the potential
deviations resulting from it in the compass of my life are also things I now
shun. So I am standing once more at the point where I must begin in another
way. I shall now try to look calmly at myself and begin to act inwardly, for
only in this way will I be able, as the child in its first consciously
undertaken act refers to itself as 'I', to call myself 'I' in a profounder sense.
But it calls for endurance,
and one cannot harvest straightway what one has sown. I will bear in mind that
philosopher's method, of having his disciples keep silent for three years, then
it should come. Just as one does not begin a feast with the rising of the sun
but with its setting, so also in the spiritual world one must first work ahead
for a time before the sun can really shine for us and rise in all of its glory.
For although it is said that God lets his sun rise upon both the good and the evil,
and lets the rain fall on the just and the unjust, that isn't so in the
spiritual world. So let the die be cast – I am crossing the Rubicon! This road
no doubt leads me into battle, but I will not give up. I will not lament
the past – why lament? I will work with vigour and not waste time on regrets
like the man stuck in a bog who wanted first to calculate how far he had sunk
without realizing that in the time spent on that he was sinking still deeper. I
will hurry along the path I have found and shout to everyone I meet not to look
back as Lot's wife did but remember that it is uphill that we are
struggling." (Papers and Journals, Hannay, pp. 32-38) [paragraph breaks
are mine]
(1 August 35 I A 75)
An Open Letter:
“In proportion to the
capacities granted me and also with various self-sacrifices I have diligently
and honestly worked for the inward deepening of Christianity in myself and in
others insofar as they are willing to be influenced. But simply because from
the beginning I have understood Christianity to be inwardness and my task to be
the inward deepening of Christianity, I have overscrupulously seen to it that
not a passage, not a sentence, not a line, not a word, not a letter has slipped
in about a proposal for an external change or suggesting a belief that the
problem is lodged in externalities, that external change is what is needed,
that external change is what will help us.” (An Open Letter, Hong, p. 49)
#
"Christianity
is inwardness, inward deepening. If at a given time the forms under which one
has to live are not the most perfect, if they can be improved, in God's name do
so. But essentially Christianity is inwardness." (An Open Letter,
Hong, pp. 49-50)
#
"With
my sights upon 'the single individual,' aiming at inward deepening in Christianity
in 'the single individual,' with the weapons of the spirit, simply and solely
with the weapons of the spirit, I have, as an individual, consistently fought
to make the single individual aware of the 'illusion' and to alert him from
being deceived by it. Just as I regard it as an illusion for somebody to
imagine that it is the external conditions and forms which hinder him in
becoming a Christian, so it is also the same illusion if someone imagines that
external conditions and forms will help him become a Christian," (AOL,
Hong, p. 50)
Armed Neutrality:
"I believe it is an
overstatement to say that Christianity in our time has been completely
abolished. No, Christianity is still present and in its truth, but as a teaching, as doctrine. What has been abolished and forgotten, however (and this
can be said without exaggeration), is existing
as a Christian, what it means to be Christian; what has been lost, what is
no longer present, so to speak, is the ideal picture of what it means to be a
Christian." (Armed Neutrality, Hong, p. 34)
#
"Every decisive
qualification of being a Christian is according to a dialectic or is on the
other side of a dialectic. The confusion is that, with the help of the
scientific-scholarly abrogation of the dialectical element, this has been
completely forgotten. In this way, instead of, as we suppose, going further
than the original Christianity, we have thrown Christianity back into the
esthetic." (Armed Neutrality, Hong, p.34)
#
"Therefore my task is
and has been to present in every way the ideal picture of being a Christian:
dialectically, pathetically (in the various forms of pathos), and in terms of
an understanding of man, modernized by constant reference to modern Christendom
and to the errors of a scientific-scholarly outlook." (Armed Neutrality,
Hong, p. 35)
#
"It certainly is
extremely important that the ideal picture of a Christian be held up to in
every generation, that it be illuminated particularly in relationship to the
errors of the times, but that the one who presents this picture must not above
all make the mistake of identifying himself with it in order to pick up some
followers, must not let himself be idolized and then with earthly or worldly
passion pass judgment upon Christendom. No, the purely ideal relationship must
be maintained. The one who presents this ideal must be the very first one to
humble himself under it, and even though he himself is striving within himself
to approach this ideal, he must confess that he is very far from being it. He
must confess that he is related only poetically to this ideal picture, while he
(and here he differs from the ordinary conception of a poet) personally and
Christianly is related to the presented
picture, and that only as a poet presenting the picture is he out in front."
(Armed Neutrality, Hong, p. 37)
#
"If I were involved with
pagans, I could not be neutral; then in opposition to them I would have to say
that I am a Christian. But I am living in Christendom among Christians or among
men who all claim to be Christians. It is not up to me, a man, to judge others,
particularly in the role of one who knows men's hearts, which here would have
to be the case. Now if I were to insist that I am a Christian, what would it
mean in this situation? It would mean that I am a Christian in contrast to
Christians—that is, that I am a Christian raised to the second power."
(Armed Neutrality, Hong, p. 43)
#
"I understand very well
how I ought to conduct myself in order to be understood—honored and
esteemed—how I could gain these benefits even by preaching Christianity. But
this is simply unchristian—that the one who preaches Christianity is not what
he himself what he says is Christianity. Christ has not inaugurated
assistant-professors, but imitators. Follow me. It is not cogito ergo sum—but
the opposite, sum ergo cogito. It is not: I think self-renunciation,
therefore I am self-renouncing, but if I am truly self-renouncing, then I must
certainly have also the thought self-renunciation. The one who preaches
Christianity shall therefore (he shall, it is something he has to take
care of himself) himself be just as polemical as that which he preaches."
(AN, Hong, Supplement, pp. 66-67) (IX A 49
n.d. 1848)
#
"As soon as the category
"the single individual" goes out, Christianity is abolished. Then the
individual will relate to God through the race, through an abstraction, through
a third party—and then Christianity is eo
ipso abolished. If this happens, then the God-man is a phantom instead of
an actual prototype." AN, Hong, Supplement, p. 89) (X¹ A 646 n.d. 1849)
#
"Another Dimension to Being a Christian
What is called humanity today
is not purely and simply humanity but a diffused form of the essentially
Christian. Originally the procedure was this: with "the universally human
consciousness" as the point of departure, to accept the essentially
Christian. Now the procedure is this: From a point of origin which already is a
diffused form of essentially Christian, to become a Christian. " (AN, Hong, Supplement, p. 100) (x³ A
204 n.d. 1850)
Attack on Christendom:
"But
what then is 'Christendom'? Is not 'Christendom' the most colossal attempt at
serving God, not by following Christ, as He required, and suffering for the
doctrine, but instead of that, by 'building the sepulchers of the prophets and
garnishing the tombs of the righteous' and saying, 'If we had been in the days
of our fathers, we should not have been partakers with them in the blood of the
prophets'?" (AC, Lowrie, p. 121)
#
"In
case the priest should be by any manner of means what the oath upon the New
Testament obliges him to be, namely, a disciple of Christ, and his life an
imitation of Christ, then his engagement as a royal functionary is the greatest
obstacle. At the very moment when he should move in the direction in which his
oath upon the New Testament requires him to move, he must break with his
position as a royal functionary " (AC, Lowrie, p, 130)
#
"For
believe me that there is nothing, no heresy, no sin, nothing whatsoever so
abhorrent to God as the official. And that thou canst well understand; for
since God is a personal being, thou canst well conceive how abhorrent it is to
Him that people want to wipe His mouth with formulas, to wait upon Him with
official solemnity, official phrases, etc. Yea, precisely because God is
personality in the most eminent sense, sheer personality, precisely for this
cause is the official infinitely more loathsome to Him than it is to a woman
when she discovers that a man is making love to her. . .out of a book of
etiquette." (AC, Lowrie, p. 153)
#
"What
every religion in which there is any truth aims at, and what Christianity aims
at decisively, is a total transformation in a man, to wrest from him through
renunciation and self-denial all that, and precisely that, to which he
immediately clings, in which he immediately has his life. This sort of
religion, as "man" understands it, is not what he wants." (AC,
Lowrie, p. 221)
#
"There
is nothing so objectionable to God as
hypocrisy. According to God's appointment the precise task of life is to be
converted, transformed, because by nature every man is born a hypocrite."
(AC, Lowrie, p. 251)
#
"No,
the proof that something is truth from the willingness to suffer for it, can
only be advanced by one who himself is willing to suffer for it. " (AC,
Lowrie, p.271)
#
"The
Instant is when the man is there, the right man, the man of the Instant.
This is a secret which eternally will remain hidden from all worldly
shrewdness, from everything which is only to a certain degree. Worldly
shrewdness stares and stares at events, at circumstances, it reckons and
reckons, thinking that it might be able to distill the Instant out of the
circumstances, and so become itself a power by the aid of the Instant, this
breaking through of the eternal, hoping that itself might be rejuvenated, as it
so greatly needs to be, by means of the new." (AC, Lowrie, pp 280-81)
#
"The point of view which
I have to indicate again and again is of such a singular sort that in the
eighteen hundred years of 'Christendom' I have nothing to hold on to, nothing
that is analogous, nothing that corresponds to it. So also in this respect,
with regard to the eighteen hundred years, I stand literally alone. The only
analogy I have before me is Socrates. My task is a Socratic task, to revise the
definition of what it is to be a Christian. For my part, I do not call myself a
'Christian' (thus keeping the ideal free), but I am able to make it evident
that the others are that still less than I." (AC, Lowrie, pp. 282-83)
#
"O Socrates, if with
kettledrums and trumpets thou hadst proclaimed thyself the most knowing man,
the Sophists would soon had the better of thee. No, thou wast the ignorant man;
but thou didst possess at the same time the confounded quality of being able,
precisely by the aid of the fact that thou thyself wast ignorant, to make it
evident that the others knew still less than thou, did not even know that they
were ignorant." (AC, Hong, p. 284)
#
"My Task
"I do not call myself a
Christian, do not say myself that I am a Christian." It is this I must
constantly reiterate, and which everyone who would understand my quite
particular task must train himself to be able to understand.
Yes, I know it well enough,
it sounds almost like a sort of madness, in this Christian world where all and everybody
is Christian, where to be a Christian is something therefore which everyone is
as a matter of course—that there, in this Christian world, one says of oneself,
"I do not call myself a Christian," and especially one whom
Christianity concerns to the degree that it concerns me.
But it cannot be otherwise;
in the world's twaddle the truer view must always seem like a sort of madness.
And that it is a world of twaddle in which we live, that incidentally it is
precisely by reason of this twaddle that everybody is a Christian in a sense,
is certain enough.
Nevertheless I neither can
alter my statement nor do I dare to—otherwise there would come about also
perhaps another alteration, that the Power, it is an omnipotent Power, which in
a singular way makes use of my impotence, might take its hand off me and let me
sail on my own sea. No, I am neither willing to alter my statement, nor do I
dare to; I cannot be of service to the legions of knavish tradesman, I mean the
priests, who by falsifying the definition of Christianity for the sake of
business profits have acquired millions and millions of Christians: I am not a
Christian—and unfortunately I am able to make it evident that the others are
not either, yea, even less than I. For they imagine that they are Christians,
or they claim it mendaciously, or (like the priests) they make others believe
it, so that thereby the priests' business becomes flourishing.
The point of view which I
have to indicate again and again is of such a singular sort that in eighteen
hundred years of "Christendom" I have nothing to hold on to, nothing
that is analogous, nothing that corresponds to it. So also in this respect,
with regard to the eighteen hundred years, I stand literally alone.
The only analogy I have
before me is Socrates. My task is a Socratic task, to revise the definition of
what it is to be a Christian. For my part I do not call myself a
"Christian" (thus keeping the ideal free), but I am to make it
evident that the others are that still less than I.
Thou noble simpleton of olden
times, thou, the only man I admiringly recognize as teacher; there is
but little concerning thee that has been preserved, thou amongst men the only
true martyr to intellectuality, just as great qua character as qua
thinker; but this little, how infinitely much it is! How I long, afar from
these battalions of thinkers which "Christendom" puts into the field
under the name of Christian thinkers (for after all, apart from them, there
have in the course of the centuries lived in "Christendom" several
quite individual teachers of real significance)—how I long, if only for half an
hour, to be able to talk with thee.
It is in an abyss of
sophistry Christianity is lying—far, far worse that when the sophists
flourished in Greece. These legions of priests and Christian docents are all
Sophists, living (as was said of the Sophists of old) by making those who
understood nothing believe something, then treating this human-numerical factor
as the criterion of what truth, what Christianity is.
But I do not call myself a
"Christian." That this is highly embarrassing to the sophists, I
understand very well, I understand very well that they would much prefer that
with kettledrums and trumpets I should proclaim myself the only true Christian,
I understand very well too that they seek, untruly, to represent my course of
action in this way. But one does not dupe me! In a certain sense I am very
easily duped in almost every relationship into which I have entered—but then
that was because I myself willed it. When I do not will it, there is in my
generation no one who dupes me—a consummate detective talent such as I.
So then they do not dupe me:
I do not call myself a "Christian." In a certain sense then it seems
easy enough to get rid of me; for in fact the others are all of them men of a
very different kidney, they are all true Christians. Yes, yes, so it seems; but
it is not so. For just because I do not call myself a Christian it is
impossible to get rid of me, possibly as I do the confounded quality of being able,
precisely by the aid of not calling myself a "Christian," to make it
evident that the others are still less Christians.
O Socrates, if with
kettledrums and trumpets thou hadst proclaimed thyself the most knowing man,
the sophists would soon have had the better of thee. No, Thou wast the ignorant
man; but thou didst possess at the same time the confounded quality of being
able, precisely by the aid of the fact of the fact that thou thyself wast
ignorant, to make it evident that the others knew still less than thou, did not
even know that they were ignorant.
But as it befell thee
(according to what thou sayest in thy "Defense," as ironically enough
thou hast called the cruelest satire upon any generation), that thou didst
bring down upon thee many enemies by making it evident that they were ignorant;
and as they imputed to thee the inference that thou thyself must be what thou
were able to show the others were not, they therefore out of envy conceived a
grudge against thee; so it has befallen me. It has exasperated men against me
that I am able to make it evident that the others are Christians still less
than I am, who yet am so very diffident about my relation to Christianity that
I truly see and admit that I am not a Christian. And they would impute to me
the inference that this affirmation is only a hidden form of pride, that I
surely must be what I am able to prove the others are not. But this is a
misunderstanding: it is entirely true that I am not a Christian; and it is an
overhasty conclusion that because I can show that the others are not
Christians, therefore I myself must be one—just as overhasty as it would be to
conclude, for example, from the fact that a man is a foot higher than another, ergo
he must be six yards high.
My task is to revise the
definition of a Christian. There is only one man living who is competent to
furnish a real criticism of my work—that is I myself. There was some truth in
what was said to me a good many years ago by Dean Hoeford-Hansen, as he now is,
apropos of the intention he had of writing a review of the Concluding
Postscript. He said that on reading the review that book contained of the
earlier literary work, he gave up the thought of writing a review in the
instance where the author was the only person capable of furnishing a real
criticism of my work. The only man who occasionally has said a fairly true word
about my significance is Professor R. Nielson; but it is a true perception he
got from private conversation with me.
When now such competent
judges as, for example, messrs. Israel Levine, Davidson, Siesby, or such
unbefuddled thinkers as Grüne, or such frank and open characters as the
anonymous writers and the like, before so illegitimate a tribunal also as the
public, pass judgment upon a work so singular, it naturally will come to—well,
just what it has come to, a thing which pains me for the sake of this little
nation, which by such a sight it is made ridiculous qua nation.
But even if one man or
another somewhat more competent undertakes to say something about my taste, it
comes to nothing more than that a fleeting glance at my situation the author
finds in a trice some earlier instances or another which corresponds to it, as
he declares.
In that way it comes to
nothing just the same. That upon which a man with my leisure, my diligence, my
talents, my culture (for which Bishop Mynster in fact has given me a
certificate in print) has spent not merely fourteen years but essentially his
whole life—that then some priest or another, at the most a professor, should
not need more than a fleeting glance in order to be able to appraise it, is of
course a piece of foolishness. And that what is singular to such a degree that
at once it was branded, "The individual—I am not a Christian," a
thing which certainly has not occurred in the eighteen hundred years of
Christianity, where everything is branded, "Congregation, society—I am a
true Christian"—that then some priest or another, at the most a professor,
should at once find an analogy to it, it is also a piece of foolishness. Upon
more careful inspection one would find that it is precisely an impossibility.
But this one does not think worth while; one prefers a fleeting glance at my
situation, then an equal fleeting glance the earlier one, and with that one has
immediately analogies enough for mine…as the public is well able to understand.
Nevertheless it is as I say:
in the eighteen hundred years of "Christendom" there is absolutely
nothing corresponding to my task, nothing analogous to it; it is the first time
in 'Christendom.'" (AC, Lowrie, pp. 282-85)
Book on Adler:
"To find the conclusion,
it is necessary first of all to observe that it is lacking, and then in turn to
feel quite vividly the lack of it. It might therefore be imagined that an
essential author, just to make evident the misfortune that men are living
without a conclusion, might write a fragment (but by calling it that he would
avoid all misapprehension), though in another sense he provided the conclusion
by providing the necessary life-view. And after all a world-view, a life-view,
is the only true condition of every literary production. Every poetic
conclusion is an illusion. If a life-view is developed, if it stands out whole
and clear in its necessary coherence, one has no need to put the hero to death,
one may as well let him live; the premise is nevertheless resolved and
satisfied in the conclusion, the development is complete." (BA, Lowrie, p.
114)
#
"The premise-author is
easily recognized and easily described, if one only will remember that he is
the exact opposite to the essential author, that while the former is outwardly
directed, the latter is inwardly directed." (BA, Lowrie, p.116)
#
"Premise-authors are the
opposite of the essential authors, for the latter has his own perspective, he
continually comes behind himself in his individual productions; he strives
forward indeed, but within the totality, not after it; he never raises more
doubt than he can explain; his A is always greater than his B; he never makes a
move on an uncertainty. For he has a definite world-view and life-view which he
follows, and with this he is in advance of his literary productions, as the
whole is always before the parts. Be it much or little he has hitherto
understood by his world-view, he explains only what he has understood; he does
not wait superstitiously for something from the outside to turn up suddenly and
bring him to an understanding, instruct him suddenly what he really
wills." (BA, Lowrie, p. 117)
#
"In so far as an
essential author may be said to feel a need to communicate himself, this need
is purely immanent, an enjoyment of his understanding raised to the second
power, or else it would be for him an ethical task consciously assumed. The
premise-author feels no need to communicate himself, for essentially he has
nothing to communicate: he lacks precisely the essential thing, the conclusion,
the meaning in relation to the premises." (BA, Lowrie, p.117-18)
#
"So it is to be seen
that when the fact of having had a revelation is transposed completely into
reflection, this fact of having had a revelation must in one way or another
come to be altogether impenetrable, or else work itself into a contradiction.
For if the idea of a serviceable reflection
conquers, a man will keep the very fact of revelation isolated and
hidden, watching out with fear and trembling for the ruinous consequences which
the direct communication must have, and shuddering at the responsibility. But
therewith at the same time he gives up authority;
he makes himself presumptuously into a genius, whereas God had called him to be
an apostle. That is to say: in the idea of reflection a genius is the highest,
an apostle is an impossibility; for the idea of an apostle is precisely the
divine authority." (BA, Lowrie, pp. 131-32)
#
"Let us now begin. So it
is assumed that something has happened to him which was extraordinary or by
which he became extraordinary. From this moment his life has been sequestered
by a higher power. The question now is about the inwardness of the reflection
with which he undertakes his task. Reflection is the mediator, the help of
which he must use first and foremost to render himself harmless. Dialectically
he will at once perceive that the extraordinary has the dangerous discrimen
that what he is in truth may for the others become the greatest ruin. He will
therefore at the same moment shut himself up in impenetrable silence, shut
himself up against every other, lest any undialectical imprudence should
corrupt the whole thing into gossip, but that the extraordinary may have to
settle on the leas in the pause of silence. "One does not sew a new piece
of cloth in an old garment, nor put new wine into old wine-skins, lest the rent
become worse and the wine-skins burst" – and so it will come about when
the absolutely new point of departure is by overhasty bustle bunglingly joined
with the old, so that it does only harm." (BA, Lowrie, p. 153-54)
#
"If the thing of being
or becoming a Christian is to have its decisive qualitative reality, it is
necessary above all to get rid of the whole delusion of after-history, so that
he who in the year 1846 becomes a Christian becomes that by being
contemporaneous with the coming of Christianity into the world, in the same
sense as those who were contemporaneous before the eighteen hundred
years." (BA, Lowrie, p. 161)
#
"In the case of the
genius there may come about the change that he develops himself to be what
κατά δυναμιν [kata
dynamin] he is, that he attains conscious possession of himself. In so far as
one uses the expression "paradox" to indicate the new in which a
genius may have to contribute, it is used only in an unessential sense of the
transitory paradox of anticipation which is compressed into something
paradoxical and in turn disappears. A
genius in his first effort at communication may be paradoxical, but the more he
comes to himself the more the paradox disappears. A genius may perhaps be a
century ahead of his age and hence stands there as a paradox, but in the end,
the race will assimilate what was once a paradox, so that it is no longer
paradoxical." (BA, Lowrie, p. 202)
#
"Spiritually understood,
dizziness may have a double characteristic. It may be occasioned by the fact
that a man has so wondered astray in the infinite that nothing finite can
acquire for him substantial existence, that he can get no standard of
measurement. This kind of dizziness consists rather in an excess of
imagination, and, inasmuch as one might conceive of dizziness metaphorically
with relation to the eye, one might call it single-sighted dizziness.
The other kind of dizziness produced by an abstract dialectic, owing to the
fact that it sees everything double, sees nothing at all. This kind of
dizziness one might call double-sighted dizziness. Salvation from all
dizziness, spiritually understood, is essentially to seek the ethical, which by
qualitative dialectic disciplines and limits the individual and establishes his
task." (BA, Lowrie, p. 221-22)
#
"It is especially from
the first kind of dizziness that Adler suffers. As a dialectician he was first
educated by Hegel, whose System has no ethic and whose dialectic, far from
being an existential dialectic, is a sort of fantasy-intuition. From the dizzy
height of the Hegelian metaphysic Adler plunges down headlong into the
religious sphere, and now discovers, if one will, orthodoxy, but, be it noted,
an orthodoxy without the ethical. When relationship to ethics is abandoned one
may say that dizziness must come about by necessity." (BA, Lowrie, p. 222)
#
"Regarded as a problem,
'the instant' is undeniably a very difficult one, since it must concern itself
with the dialectic between the temporal and the eternal. The eternal is
infinite in content, and yet it must be made commensurable with the temporal,
and the contact is in the instant. Yet this instant is nothing. Thinking here
comes to a stop with the most dreadful contradiction, with the most taxing of
all thoughts, which, if it were to be held for long at the highest pitch of
mental exertion, must bring the thinker to madness. To build card-houses on the
table is not difficult, but that a huge edifice might be built upon what is
smaller than the edge of a card, upon a foundation which is nothing (for the
instant as such does not exist, it is merely the confine between time past and
time future, it is when it has been)—that certainly is a dreadful
contradiction." (BA, Lowrie, p. 223)
#
"But what then can put a
stop to this dizziness which comes about when a man stands still and will not
seriously consider any life task for himself and therefore is like a galvanized
frog which has for an instant a spasm? What can check this dizziness? What can
master the desperate supertension of the instant? The ethical can." (BA, Lowrie, p. 224)
#
"Most men live in
relation to their own self as if they were constantly out, never at home; the
occurrences and undertakings of their life flutter indefinitely about this
self; they sometimes perhaps shut their door . . . in order to be at home, but
they do not shut out the distracting thought, and so are themselves
'out.'" (BA, Lowrie, p. 244)
#
"All religiousness
consists in inwardness, in enthusiasm, in strong emotion, in the qualitative
tension by the springs of subjectivity. When one beholds people as they are for
the most part, one cannot deny that they have some religiousness, some concern
to be enlightened and instructed about religious things, but without allowing
these things to affect them too closely. For, observing more nearly, one easily
discovers that in their religiousness they relate themselves to their self at a
certain distance; they make good resolutions for the future, but not for
the present, not for the present instant, to begin right away;
contemporaneously with the resolution they do not carry it out,
contemporaneously with the resolution they have rather the notion that there is
still some time, if it were only half an hour before they need to begin. They
make sacred promises, they resolve . . . tomorrow, etc., but what is really the
decisive point, to be entirely present to themselves in self-concern, is
something with which they are totally unacquainted." (BA, Lowrie, p. 244)
#
"Most men in their
religiousness are present at the most in a bygone time or in a time to come,
but not in a present time." (BA, Lowrie, p. 245)
#
"To be entirely present
to oneself is the highest thing and the highest task for the personal life, it
is the power on account of which the Romans called the Gods presentes. But this thing of being
entirely present to oneself in self-concern is the highest in religion, for
only thus can it absolutely be comprehended that one absolutely is in need of
God every instant, so that everything belonging to time past or time to come or
generally to indefinite time, such as evasions, excuses, digressions, etc.,
grows pale and vanishes, as the other sort of jugglery, which also belongs to
the indefinite time of the gloaming and the twilight, retreats and vanishes
before the bright light of day. When one is not present to oneself, then one is
absent in the past or in the future time, then one's religiousness is
recollection of an abstract purpose, then one dwells perhaps piously in the
piety of an ancient and vanished age, or builds, religiously understood, the
objective religiousness like the Tower of Babel – but this night shall thy soul
be required of thee." (BA, Lowrie, p. 246)
#
"With
regard to all inwardness which reflects upon the purely human, the merely human
(so with regard to all inwardness within the sphere of immanence), the
fact of being deeply moved, of being shaken, is to be taken in the sense of
shaking a man till he awakes. If this emotion expresses itself, breaks out in
words, the transposition occurs in feeling and imagination within such concepts
and definitions of concepts which every man may be said to discover in using
the words; the transposition is not limited by specific, qualitative concepts
which have an historical validity outside the individual and higher than every
human individual and paradoxically higher than every human individual, a
paradoxical historical validity." (BA, Lowrie, p. 252)
#
"It
is different with the definition of a Christian awakening to a religious
interest which lies in the sphere of transcendence. The emotional
seizure of the individual by something higher is far from defining a Christian
adequately, for by emotion may be expressed a pagan view, pagan conceptions of
God. In order to express oneself Christianly, there is required, besides the
more universal language of the heart, also skill and schooling in the
definition of Christian concepts, while at the same it is of course assumed
that the emotion is of a specific, qualitative sort, the Christian emotion. –
But since Christian thought through the centuries has gradually absorbed in a
more universal way the whole world-development, its conceptual language having
passed over into a volatilized traditional use (which lies on a line with being
a Christian of sorts by virtue of living in geographical Christendom), it may
come about that one who only in a more universal way is emotionally gripped by
something higher expresses himself in the language of Christian concepts – of
course, this is the result which might well be expected." (BA, Lowrie, pp.
252-53)
#
"So
Magister A. is deeply affected. That in the first moment of emotion one is
easily exposed to the confusion of confounding the change within oneself with a
change outside oneself, of confounding the fact that one sees everything
changed with the notion that something new must have come into being, this is a
thing well enough known, I do not need to dwell upon it." (BA, Lowrie, p.
256)
Christian Discourses:
"Nothing
is more certain than that every word in my Discourses is true. I have nothing
to alter. So then, should I now take it back for fear of personal danger? No,
that I dare not do. What I am, I am only and solely by believing and obeying
God. The moment I catch myself in
fleeing cowardly from any danger into which He would lead me, I have avoided
sure enough the danger – but to my own destruction. Woe unto me, I collapse into nothing! But along with God I can endure everything –
so I hope to God – without Him, nothing." (Christian Discourses, Lowrie,
journal notes of March 27, '48, prefaced to Part I)
#
"Anxiety
for the next day is commonly associated with anxiety for subsistence. This is a
very superficial view. All earthly and worldly anxiety is at bottom anxiety for
the next day. Earthly and worldly anxiety is rendered possible by the fact that
man, compounded of the temporal and the eternal, became a self; but in becoming
a self the next day became existent for him. And here it is fundamentally that
the battle is fought." (CD, Lowrie, p. 74) (The Anxiety of
Self-Torment)
#
"One
sometimes complains and finds it tragic that the future is so dark before one.
Ah, the misfortune is just this, that it is not dark enough when fear and
presentiment and expectation and earthly impatience glimpse the next day! One
who rows a boat turns his back to the goal toward which he labours. So it is
with the next day. When by the help of the eternity a man lives absorbed in
today, he turns his back to the next day. The more he is eternally absorbed in
today, the more decisively does he turn his back upon the next day, so that he
does not see it at all. If he turns around, eternity is confused before his
eyes, it becomes the next day. But if for the sake of labouring more
effectively towards the goal (eternity) he turns his back, he does not see the
next day at all, whereas by the help of eternity he sees quite clearly today
and its task." (CD, Lowrie, p. 76) (The Anxiety of Self-Torment)
#
"He
who wills the end must will the means. But this involves, does it not, the
assumption or admission that a man knows what he wills. This being assumed, we
bring him to a halt by the 'means', by saying, 'Then thou must also will
the means'. Sometimes, however, it may be necessary to go back a step further
and say, 'He who wills something must first of all know what it is he wills,
must have an understanding of what he wills'." (CD, Lowrie, p. 101) (We
Suffer but Once)
#
"The
once of suffering is the instant, or we suffer only once. Though suffering
lasts seventy years, that is only once; though the 'once' is the seven times
ten of the seventy years, that is only once, it is still only one time. For
time itself in its totality is the instant; eternally understood, the temporal
is the instant, and the instant eternally understood is only 'once'. In vain
would the temporal assume an air of importance, count the instants, and add
them all together – if eternity has any say in the matter, the temporal never
gets further than, never comes to more than, the 'once'. For eternity is the
opposite; it is not the opposite to a single instant (this is meaningless), it
is the opposite to the temporal as a whole, and it opposes itself the power of
eternity against the temporal amounting to more than that." (CD, Lowrie,
pp. 103-04) (We Suffer but Once)
#
"The
'one time' of suffering is no time. As the proverb says,
'Once is no habit' (literally, one time is no time). Whether this is true in
the situation to which the proverb applies, I leave undecided; it is quite
possible that the proverb is not true, and yet what the proverb says is true—a
proverb in fact is anything but an eternal truth, it talks only of the
temporal. But when the contrast is that between time and eternity, it is
eternally certain that one time is no time, and in no other case is its truth
so clearly and decisively evident." (CD, Lowrie, p.106)
#
"The
'once' of suffering is a transition, a passage-way. Thou must go through
it, and though it were to last as long as life, and though it were as hard as a
sword which transfixes your heart, it is yet only a passage-way. It is not true
that it is the suffering which goes through thee, it is thou that goest through
it—in the eternal understanding of the case, entirely unharmed." (CD,
Lowrie, p. 107) (We Suffer but Once)
#
"Sin
is man's destruction. Only the rust of sin can consume the soul – or eternally destroy it. For here indeed is the
remarkable thing from which already that simple wise man of olden time derived
a proof of the immortality of the soul, that the sickness of the soul (sin) is
not like a bodily sickness which kills the body. Sin is not a passage-way which
a man has to pass through once, for from it one shall flee; sin is not (like
suffering) the instant, but an eternal fall from the eternal, hence it is not
'once', and it can not possibly be that its 'once' is no time." (CD,
Lowrie, p. 108) (We Suffer but Once)
#
"The child is completely
turned outward, its inwardness is extraversion, and to that extent the child is
wide awake. But for a man, to be awake means to be eternally turned inward in
inwardness, and so the child is dreaming, it dreams it is sensually at one with
everything, almost to the extent of confounding itself with the
sense-impression. In comparison with the child, the youth is more turned
inward, but in imagination; he dreams, or it is as though everything about him
were dreaming. On the other hand, he who in the sense of eternity is turned
inward perceives only what is of the spirit, and for the rest he is like a
sleeper, an absentee, a dead man, with respect to the perceptions of flesh and
blood, of the temporal, of the imaginative—in him the spirit is awake, the lower
functions sleep; hence he is awake." (CD, Lowrie, p. 113)
(Affliction—Hope)
#
"But he who dreams must
be awakened, and the deeper the man is who slumbers, or the deeper he slumbers,
the more important it is that he be awakened, and the more powerfully must he
be awakened. In case there is nothing that awakens the youth, this dream-life
is continued in manhood. The man doubtless thinks that he is dreaming no more,
and in a sense he is not; perhaps he scorns and despises the dreams of youth,
but precisely this shows that his life is a failure. In a sense he is awake,
yet he is not in an eternal sense and in the deepest sense awake." (CD, Lowrie, p. 113) (Affliction—Hope)
#
"Where
then is hope? Is hope in the rushing wind of the storm? Oh, no, not more than
God's voice was in the rushing wind, but in the gentle breeze, like a whisper
in man's inmost parts, all too easily ignored. But what is it then that
affliction would accomplish? It would have that whisper heard in the inmost
parts. But does not then the affliction counteract itself, must not its
tempestuous wind drown out this voice? No,
affliction is
able to drown out every earthly voice, that is precisely what it has to do, but
the voice of eternity within a man it cannot drown. Or conversely; it is the
voice of eternity within which demands to be heard, and to make a hearing for
itself it makes use of the loud voice of affliction. Then, when by the aid of
affliction all irrelevant voices are brought to silence, it can be heard, this
voice within." (Christian Discourses, Lowrie, p. 114; Affliction—Hope)
#
"A bird in the hand is
worth two in the bush; a little smaller profit seems preferable to the immense
. . . uncertain gain. Yes, so it seems in temporal existence, which sees
everything topsy-turvy. And there is hardly anything more topsy-turvy than the
notion that the eternal is the uncertain, and hardly any shrewdness more
topsy-turvy than that which lets go of the eternal because it is uncertain and
grasps the temporal … because it is the certain." (CD, Lowrie, p. 139) (To
Gain Eternally)
#
"For in fact only the
temporal can be lost temporally; anything else but the temporal it is
impossible for temporal existence to take from thee; when thou knowest that it
is temporal existence as such which has taken something from thee, by the same
token thou knowest that it must be something temporal it took. In case the
dreadful thing occurs that a man in temporal existence losses the eternal,
this is no longer a loss, it is perdition." (CD, Lowrie, pp. 140-41) (To
Gain Eternally)
#
"And above all let us
not forget that not only theft and murder and drunkenness and the like are
sins, but that properly sin is: in time to lose eternity." (CD, Lowrie, p. 141) (To Gain Eternally)
#
"So then, when the
sufferer, whatever he may have lost, is not himself guilty of disturbing
dreadfully the divine order of things, only the temporal can be lost
temporally. Because man has in him something eternal, therefore he can lose the
eternal, but this is not to lose, it is to be lost; if there were nothing
eternal in man, he could not be lost." (CD, Lowrie, p. 142) (To gain
Eternally)
#
"Now let us draw these
thoughts together (like a net) to catch joy, or to catch the sufferer for joy.
If only the temporal can be lost temporally, and only the eternal can be gained
eternally, the gain is indeed evident; in losing the temporal I gain
eternity." (CD, Lowrie, p. 142) (To Gain Eternally)
#
"What thou dost lose
temporally thou dost gain eternally. Thou dost not get it back in the temporal
sense, that is impossible, and it would not be any gain; but thou dost get it
back in the sense of eternity—if thou dost lose it temporally, that is, if thou
thyself will not (ah, by willing to be lost!) transform the temporal into
something other than it is." (CD, Lowrie, p.144) (To gain Eternally)
#
"Is not this then
joyful, that whenever in temporal existence there is the loss and the pain of
loss, eternity is at hand to offer the sufferer more than compensation? The
sufferer himself is in fact compounded of the temporal and the eternal. So when
temporal existence inflicts upon him the greatest loss it is able inflict, the
question is whether, by an act of treason against himself and against eternity,
he will bestow upon the loss of the temporal the power to become something
other than it is, a temporal loss, whether he wills to lose the eternal; or
whether, true to himself, and to the eternal, he does not permit the loss of
the temporal to become something other than it is, a temporal loss. If he does this,
then the eternal in him had conquered. To let go of the temporal in such a
way that it is lost temporally, to lose only temporally the lost temporal
possession, is a precise indication of the presence of the eternal in the
loser, is a token that the eternal in him has conquered." (CD, Lowrie,
p. 146) (To Gain Eternally)
#
"Only by the aid of the
eternal is a man able to let go of the lost temporal possession in such a way
that he merely loses it temporally. If the eternal does not lend its aid, he
loses much more than the temporal. But if temporally to lose the temporal is an
indication of the eternal in the loser, then eternity is indeed very close to
him. At the outset the only ground for fear we saw was that the prospects of
the compensation of eternity are so remote, this being all there was to prevent
one from finding the joy in the fact that what one loses temporally one gains
eternally." (CD, Lowrie, p.147) (To Gain Eternally)
#
"So then there is really
no loss in the world, but sheer gain. For every 'loss' is temporal; but what
thou dost lose temporally thou dost gain eternally, the loss of the temporal is
the gain of eternity. Only sin is man's ruin. But precisely this is sin: to
lose the eternal temporally, or to lose the lost temporal possession otherwise
than temporally, which is perdition."
(CD, Lowrie, p. 148) (Gain All—Lose Nothing)
#
"For if the 'all' which
I gain is truly all, then that which in another sense is called all, the all
which I lose, must be the false all; but when I lose the false all, I in fact
lose nothing; and when I gain the true all, I lose in fact the false all—so I
lose nothing. Thou knowest perhaps that for an instant that one might fight
this joyful thought through to victory in two ways. One might strive to make it
perfectly clear to oneself that the all which one loses is the false all, is
nothing. Or one takes another path, aspiring after the full conviction of
spiritual certitude that the all which one gains is truly all. The later
procedure is the best, the only way. For in order to acquire the power that the
false all is nothing, one must have the aid of the true all, otherwise the
false all takes away one's power. " (CD, Lowrie, p. 150) (Gain All—Lose Nothing)
#
"But
we are agreed that the question whether and how far he knows what misfortune is
depends upon whether he knows what the goal is. Only he who has a true notion
of what is the goal set before men, only he who knows what misfortune is and
what is good fortune. He who has the false notion of the goal has also a false
notion of good fortune and misfortune, he calls that good fortune which leads
him to . . . the false goal and so prevents him from attaining the goal (the true goal). But that which
prevents one from attaining the goal is in fact misfortune." (CD, Lowrie,
pp. 155-56) (Misfortune is Good Fortune)
#
"Let
us now make it quite clear to ourselves that what they ordinarily call good
fortune and misfortune do not equally well lead to the goal, but that what ordinarily is called misfortune does alone
or at least principally lead to the
goal. What is it that may prevent a man from attaining the goal? Why precisely the
temporal. And how does it seriously prevent him? When good fortune so called
leads him to the goal of temporal existence. For when by means of good fortune a
man attains the goal of temporal existence, he is farthest from attaining the
goal." (CD, Lowrie, pp. 158-59) (Misfortune is Good Fortune)
#
"We
say of a man that, however fortunate he may be, he lacks one thing if he has
not the consciousness of his good fortune. But the true consciousness of his
good fortune (without which, as has been said, the good fortune is not good
fortune) is contained in, framed in, the consciousness that God is love.
Knowledge about God being love is not yet the consciousness of it. For to have
consciousness, a personal consciousness, it is requisite that in my knowing I
have at the same time knowledge of myself and of my relationship to my knowing.
This is to believe that God is love, it is to love Him." (CD, Lowrie, p.
203) (IF We Love God)
#
"Seek
first God's Kingdom, that is, become like the lilies and the birds, that is,
become perfectly silent—then shall the rest be added unto you." (CD,
Lowrie, p. 332) (The Lilies & the Birds)
#
“What
is joy? Or what is it to be joyful? It is to be present to oneself; but to be
truly present to oneself is this thing of ‘today’, that is , this thing of being
today, of truly being today. And in the same degree that it is more true
that thou art today, in the same degree that thou art quite present to
thyself in being today, in that very same degree is the baleful tomorrow
non-existent for thee. Joy is the present tense, with the whole emphasis upon
the present. Therefore it is that God is blessed, who eternally says,
Today. And therefore it is that the lilies and the birds are joy, because with
silence and unconditional obedience they are entirely present to themselves in
being today.” (CD, Lowrie, pp. 349-50)
(The Lilies & the Birds)
#
“Oh,
absolute joy, that His is the kingdom and the power and the glory – for ever
and ever, for eternity! ‘For eternity’ – behold, this day, the day of eternity,
never comes to an end. Only hold fast therefore to this, that His is the
kingdom and the power and the glory in eternity, and thus for thee there is a
day which never comes to an end, a day in which thou canst remain eternally
present to thyself. Then let the heavens fall and the stars change their place
in the overturning of all things, let the bird die and the lily fade—yet thy
joy in worship outlives, and thou in thy joy dost outlive, even now today,
every destruction. Consider what applies to thee, if not as a man, at least as
a Christian, that even the danger of death is for thee so unimportant that it
is said, ‘Even now today art thou in Paradise,’ And thus the transition from
time to eternity (the greatest possible transition) is so swift – and though it
were to occur in the midst of universal destruction, it is yet so swift that
thou even now today art in Paradise, for the fact that thou dost Christianly remain
in God.” (CD, Lowrie, p. 355) (The
Lilies & the Birds)
Concept of Anxiety:
"The
present work has set as its task the psychological treatment of 'anxiety,' but
in a way that it constantly keeps in mente [in mind] and before its eye the dogma of
hereditary sin." (CA, Thomte, p. 14)
#
"Corresponding to the
concept of sin is earnestness. Now ethics should be a science in which sin
might be expected to find a place. But here is a great difficulty. Ethics is
still an ideal science, and not only in the sense that every science is ideal.
Ethics proposes to bring ideality into actuality. On the other hand, it is not
the nature of its movement to raise actuality up into ideality." (CA,
Thomte, p. 16)
#
"Sin, then, belongs to
ethics only insofar as upon this concept it is shipwrecked with the aid of
repentance.*
*In his work Fear and Trembling, Johannes de Silentio
makes several observations concerning this point. In this book, the author
several times allows the desired ideality of esthetics to be shipwrecked on the
required ideality of ethics, in order through these collisions to bring to
light the religious ideality as the ideality that precisely is the ideality of
actuality, and therefore just as desirable as that of esthetics and not as
impossible as the ideality of ethics. This is accomplished in such a way that
the religious ideality breaks forth in the dialectical leap and in the positive
mood—"behold all things have become new" as well as in the negative
mood that is the passion of the absurd to which the concept 'repetition'
corresponds. Either all existence [Tilværelson] comes to an end in the
demand of ethics, or a new condition is provided and the whole of life and of
existence begins anew, not through the immanent continuity with the former
existence, which is a contradiction, but through a transcendence. This
transition separates repetition from the former existence [Tilværelse]
by such a chasm that one can only figuratively say that the former and the
latter relate themselves to each other as the totality of living creatures in
the ocean relates itself to those in the air and to those upon the earth. Yet,
according to the opinion of some natural scientists, the former as a prototype
prefigures in its imperfection all that the latter reveals.
With regard to this category,
one may consult Repetition by Constantin Constantius (Copenhagen: 1843).
This is no doubt a witty book, as the author intended it to be. To my
knowledge, he is indeed the first to have a lively understanding of
'repetition' and to have allowed the pregnancy of the concept to be seen in the
explanation of the relation of the ethnical and the Christian, by directing
attention to the invisible point and to the discrimen rerum [turning
point] where one science breaks against another until a new science comes to
light. But what he has discovered he has concealed again by arraying the
concept in the jest of an analogous conception. What has motivated him to do
this is difficult to say, or more correctly, difficult to understand. He
himself mentions that he writes in a manner so 'that heretics would not
understand him.'
Since he wanted to occupy
himself with repetition only esthetically and psychologically, everything had
to be arranged humorously so as to bring about the impression that the word in
one instant means everything and in the next instant the most insignificant of
things, and the transition, or rather the constant falling down from the
clouds, is motivated by its farcical opposite. In the meantime, he has stated
the whole matter very precisely on page 34: 'repetition is the interest [Interesse]
of metaphysics, and also the interest upon which metaphysics comes to grief;
repetition is the watchword [Loesnet] in every ethical view: repetition
is conditio sine qua non [the indispensable condition] for every issue
of dogmatics.'
The first statement has
reference to the thesis that metaphysics as such is disinterested, something
that Kant has said about esthetics. As soon as interest steps forth,
metaphysics steps aside. For this reason the word is italicized. In actuality,
the whole interest of subjectivity steps forth, and now metaphysics runs
aground. If repetition is not posited, ethics becomes a binding power. No doubt
it is for this reason that the author states that repetition is the watchword
of every ethical view. If repetition is not posited, dogmatics cannot exist at
all, for repetition begins in faith, and faith is the organ for issues of
dogma.
In the realm of nature,
repetition is present in its immovable necessity. In the realm of spirit, the
task is not to wrest a change from repetition or to find oneself moderately
comfortable during the repetition, as if spirit stood only in an external
relation to the repetition of spirit (according to which good and evil would
alternate like summer and winter), but to transform repetition into something
inward, into freedom's own task, into its highest interest, so that while
everything else changes, it can actually realize repetition. At this point
finite spirit despairs. This is something Constantin has suggested by stepping
aside himself and allowing repetition to break forth in the young man by virtue
of the religious. For this reason Constantin mentions several times that
repetition is a religious category, too transcendent for him, that it is a
movement by virtue of the absurd, and on page 142 it is further stated that
eternity is the true repetition. All of this Professor Heiberg failed to
notice. Instead, through his learning, which like his New Year's Gift is
superbly elegant and neat, he kindly wished to help this work [Repetition]
become a tasteful and elegant triviality by pompously bringing the matter to
the point where Constantin begins, or to recall a recent work, by bringing the
matter to the point where the esthete in Either/Or had brought it in
'The Rotation of Crops."
If Constantin had actually
felt himself flattered by enjoying the singular honor of having been brought
into such an undeniably select company in this manner, he must, in my opinion,
since he wrote the book, have gone stark mad. But if, on the other hand, an
author such as he, writing to be misunderstood, forgot himself and did not have
ataraxia enough to count it to his credit that Professor Heiberg had failed to
understand him, he must again be stark mad. This is something I need not fear,
since the circumstance that hitherto he has made no reply to Professor Heiberg
indicated sufficiently that he understands himself." (CA, Thomte,
pp.17-19)
#
"It is easy to see the
difference in the movements, to see that the ethics of which we are now
speaking belongs to a different order of things. The first ethics was
shipwrecked on the sinfulness of the single individual. Therefore, instead of
being able to explain this sinfulness, the first ethics fell into an even
greater and ethically more enigmatic difficulty, since the sin of the
individual expanded into the sin of the whole race. At this point, dogmatics
came to the rescue with hereditary sin. The new ethics presupposes dogmatics, and
by means of hereditary sin it explains the sin of the single individual, while
at the same time it sets ideality as a task, not by a movement from above and
downward but from below and upward."
(CA, Thomte, pp. 20-21)
#
"It
is common knowledge that Aristotle used the term 'first philosophy' primarily
to designate metaphysics, though he included within it a part that according to
our conception belongs to theology. In paganism it is quite in order for
theology to be treated there. It is related to the same lack of an infinite
penetrating reflection that endowed the theater in paganism with reality as a kind of divine worship. If we
now abstract from this ambiguity, we could retain the designation and by 'first
philosophy' understand that totality of science which we might call 'ethnical,'
whose essence is immanence and is expressed in Greek thought by 'recollection,'
and by 'second philosophy' understand that totality of science whose essence is
transcendence or repetition." (CoA, Thomte, p. 21)
#
"That which can be the
concern of psychology and with which it can occupy itself is not that sin comes
into existence [bliver til], but how it can come into existence."
(CA, Thomte, pp. 21-22)
#
"Just as Adam lost
innocence by guilt, so every man loses it in the same way. If it was not by
guilt that he lost it, then it was not innocence that he lost; and if he was
not innocent before becoming guilty, he never became guilty." (CA, Thomte,
p. 35)
#
"But innocence is lost
only by guilt. Every man loses innocence essentially in the same way that Adam
lost it." (CA, Thomte. P. 36)
#
"Innocence, unlike
immediacy, is not something that must annulled, something whose quality is to
be annulled, something that properly does not exist (er til), but rather, when it
is annulled, and as a result of being annulled, it for the first time comes
into existence (bliver til) as that which it was before being annulled
and which now is annulled. Immediacy is not annulled by mediacy, but when
mediacy appears, in that movement it has annulled immediacy. The annulment of
immediacy is therefore an immanent movement within immediacy, or it is an
immanent movement in the opposite direction within mediacy, by which mediacy
presupposes immediacy. Innocence is something that is cancelled by a transcendence,
precisely because innocence is something (whereas the most correct
expression of immediacy is that which Hegel uses about pure being; it is
nothing). The reason is that when innocence is canceled by transcendence,
something entirely different comes out of it, whereas mediacy is just
immediacy." (CA, Thomte, pp. 36-37)
#
"The fact that ignorance
when viewed from without is regarded as something defined in the direction of
knowledge is of no concern whatever to ignorance." (CA, Thomte, p. 37)
#
"Just as the relation of
anxiety to its object, to something that is nothing (linguistic usage also says
pregnantly: to be anxious about nothing), is altogether ambiguous, so also the
transition that is to be made from innocence to guilt will be so dialectical
that it can be seen that the explanation is what it must be,
psychological." (CA, Thomte, p. 43)
#
"That anxiety makes its
appearance is the pivot upon which everything turns. Man is a synthesis of the
psychical and the physical; however, a synthesis is unthinkable if the two are
not united in a third. This third is spirit. In innocence, man is not merely
animal, for if he were at any moment of his life merely animal, he would never
become man. So spirit is present, but as immediate, as dreaming. Inasmuch as it
is now present, it is in a sense a hostile power, for it constantly disturbs
the relation between soul and body, a relation that indeed has persistence and
yet does not have endurance, inasmuch as it first receives the latter by the
spirit. On the other hand, spirit is a friendly power, since it is precisely
that which constitutes the relation. What, then, is man's relation to this
ambiguous power? How does the spirit relate itself to itself and to its
conditionality? It relates itself as anxiety. Do away with itself, the spirit
cannot; lay hold of itself, it cannot, as long as it has itself outside of
itself." (CA, Thomte, pp. 43-44)
#
"There remains the
serpent. I am no friend of cleverness and shall, volente deo [God
willing], resist the temptation of the serpent, who, as at the dawn of time,
when he tempted Adam and Eve, has in the course of time tempted writers to be
clever. Instead, I freely admit my inability to connect any definite thought
with the serpent. Furthermore, the difficulty with the serpent is something
quite different, namely, that of regarding the temptation as coming from
without." (CA, Thomte, p. 48)
#
"Anxiety is neither a
category of necessity nor a category of freedom; it is entangled freedom, where
freedom is not free in itself but entangled, not by necessity, but in
itself." CA, Thomte, p. 49)
#
"Anxiety may be compared
with dizziness. He whose eye happens to look down into the yawning abyss
becomes dizzy. But what is the reason for this? It is just as much in his own
eye as in the abyss, for suppose he had not looked down. Hence anxiety is the
dizziness of freedom, which emerges when the spirit wants to posit the
synthesis and freedom looks down into its own possibility, laying hold of
finiteness to support itself. Freedom succumbs in this dizziness. Further than
this, psychology cannot and will not go. In that very moment everything is
changed, and freedom, when it again rises, sees that it is guilty. Between
these two moments lies the leap, which no science has explained and which no
science can explain." (CA, Thomte, p. 61)
#
"If a person does not
first make clear to himself the meaning of 'self,' it is of no use to say of
sin that it is selfishness. But 'self' signifies precisely the contradiction of
positing the universal as the particular. Only when the concept of the
particular is given can there be any talk of selfishness; however, although
there have lived countless million of such 'selves,' no science can say what
the self is without again stating it quite generally.*
*This is well worth further
consideration, for precisely at this point it must become apparent to what
extent the recent principle that thought and being are one is adequate, if on
one hand a person does not impair it with untimely and partly foolish
misunderstandings, and if on the other hand he does not wish to have a highest
principle that commits him to thoughtlessness. Only the universal is by the
fact that it is thought and can be thought (not merely in imaginative
constructing, for what cannot be thought!) and is as that which can be thought.
The point about the particular is precisely its negative relation to the
universal and its repellant relation to it. But as soon as a person thinks the
particular away it is cancelled, and as soon as it is thought, it is altered.
Therefore, either he does not think the particular but only imagines that he
thinks it, or he thinks it and merely imagines that it is included in
thought." (CA, Thomte, pp. 78-79)
#
And this is the wonder of
life, that each man who is mindful of himself knows what no science knows,
since he knows who he himself is, and this is the profundity of the Greek
saying gnothi seauton [know yourself],* which too long has been
understood in the German way as pure self-consciousness, the airiness of
idealism. It is about time to seek to understand it in the Greek way, and then
again as the Greeks would have understood it if they had possessed Christian
presuppositions. However, the real "self" is posited only by the
qualitative leap. In the prior state there can be no question about it.
Therefore, when sin is explained by selfishness, one becomes entangled in
indistinctness, because, on the contrary, it is by sin and in sin that
selfishness comes into being."
*The Latin saying unum noris omnes (if you know one, you
know all) light-mindedly expresses the same and actually expresses the same, if
by unum is understood the
observer himself, and one does not inquisitively look for an omnes but
earnestly holds fast to the one that actually is all." (CA, Thomte, pp.
78-79)
#
“However, the 'real' self is
posited only by the qualitative leap. In the prior state there can be no
question about it. Therefore, when sin is explained by selfishness, one becomes
entangled in indistinctness, because, on the contrary, it is by sin and in sin
that selfishness comes into being.”
(CA, Thomte, p. 79)
#
"In the sphere of
historical freedom, transition is a state. However, in order to understand this
correctly, one must not forget that the new is brought about by a leap. If this
is not maintained, the transition will have a quantitative preponderance over
the elasticity of the leap." (CA, Thomte, p. 85)
#
"Man, then, is a
synthesis if psyche and body, but he is also a synthesis of the temporal and
the eternal. That this often has been stated, I do not object at all, for
it is not my wish to discover something new, but rather it is my joy and
dearest occupation to ponder over that which is quite simple.
As for the latter synthesis,
it is immediately striking that it is formed differently from the former. In
the former, the two factors are psyche and body, and spirit is the third, yet
in such a way that one can speak of a synthesis only when spirit is posited.
The latter synthesis has only two factors, the temporal and the eternal. Where
is the third factor? And if there is no third factor, there is really no
synthesis, for a synthesis that is a contradiction cannot be completed as a
synthesis without a third factor, because the fact that the synthesis is a
contradiction asserts that it is not. What then is the temporal?" (CA,
Thomte, p. 85)
#
"The present, however,
is not a concept of time, except precisely as something infinitely contentless,
which again is the infinite vanishing. If this is not kept in mind, no matter
how quickly it may disappear, the present is posited, and being posited it
again appears in the categories: the past and the future. The eternal, on the
contrary, is the present. For thought, the eternal is the present in terms of
an annulled succession (time is the succession that passes by). For
representation, it is a going forth that nevertheless does not get off the
spot, because the eternal is for representation the infinitely contentful
present. So also in the eternal there is no division into the past and the
future, because the present is posited as the annulled succession." (CA,
Thomte, p. 86)
#
"Time is, then, infinite
succession; the life that is in time and is only of time has no present. In
order to define the sensuous life, it is usually said that it is in the moment
and only in the moment. By the moment, then, is understood that abstraction
from the eternal that, if it is to be the present, is a parody of it. The
present is the eternal, or rather, the eternal is the present, and the present
is full." (CA, Thomte, p. 86)
#
The moment signifies the
present as that which has no past and no future, and precisely in this lies the
imperfection of the sensuous life. The eternal also signifies the present as
that which has no past and no future, and this is the perfection of the
eternal." (CA, Thomte, p. 87)
#
"The moment is that
ambiguity in which time and eternity touch each other, and with this the
concept of temporality is posited, whereby time constantly intersects
eternity and eternity constantly pervades time. As a result, the
above-mentioned division acquires its significance: the present time, the past
time, the future time." (CA, Thomte; p. 89)
#
"For the Greeks, the
eternal lies behind as the past that can only be entered backwards.*
*Here the category that I
maintain should be kept in mind, namely, repetition, by which eternity is
entered forwards." (CA, Thomte, p.90)
#
"Just as (in the
previous chapter) the spirit, when it is about to be posited in the synthesis,
or, more correctly, when it is about to posit the synthesis as the spirit's
(freedom's) possibility in the individuality, expresses itself as anxiety, so
here the future in turn is the eternal's (freedom's) possibility in the
individuality expressed as anxiety. As freedom's possibility manifests itself
for freedom, freedom succumbs, and temporality emerges in the same way as
sensuousness in its significance as sinfulness. Here again I repeat that this
is only the final psychological expression for the final approximation to the qualitative
leap." (CA, Thomte, p. 91)
#
"The possible
corresponds to the future. For freedom, the possible is the future, and the
future is for time the possible. To both of these correspond anxiety in the
individual life. An accurate and correct linguistic usage therefore associates
anxiety and the future." (CA, Thomte, p. 91)
#
"If I am anxious because of a past
offense, it is because I have not placed it in an essential relation to myself
as past and have in some deceitful way or another prevented it from being
past." (CA, Thomte, pp. 91-92)
#
"The moment sin is
posited, temporality is sinfulness. We do not say that temporality is
sinfulness any more than sensuousness is sinfulness, but rather that when
sinfulness is posited, temporality signifies sinfulness. Therefore he sins who
lives only in the moment as abstracted from the eternal." (CA, Thomte, p.
92-93)
#
"The concepts of sin and
guilt posit precisely the single individual as the single individual. There is
no question about his relation to the whole world or to all of the past. The
point is only that he is guilty, and yet he is supposed to have become guilty
by fate, consequently by all that of which there is no question, and thereby he
is supposed to have become something that precisely cancels the concept of
fate, and this he is supposed to have become by fate.
A misunderstanding of this
contradiction will result in a misunderstanding of the concept of hereditary
sin; rightly understood, it gives the true concept, in the sense that every
individual is both himself and the race, and the subsequent individual is not
essentially different from the first. In the possibility of anxiety, freedom
collapses, overcome by fate, and as a result, freedom's actuality rises up with
the explanation that it became guilty. Anxiety at its most extreme point, where
it seems as if the individual has become guilty, is not as yet guilt. So sin
comes neither as a necessity nor as an accident, and therefore providence
corresponds to the concept of sin." (CA, Thomte, p. 98)
#
"Now psychology again
has anxiety as its object, but it must be cautions. The history of the
individual life proceeds in a movement from state to state. Every state is
posited by a leap. As sin entered into the world, so it continues to enter into
the world if it is not halted. Nevertheless, every such repetition is not a
simple consequence but a new leap. Every such leap is preceded by a state as
the closest psychological approximation. This state is the object of
psychology. To the extent that in every state possibility is present, anxiety
is also present. Such is the case after sin is posited, for only in the good is
there a unity of state and transition."
(CA, Thomte, p. 113)
#
"It is not difficult to
see that all that has been presented here belongs to the realm of psychology.
Ethically, the point is to get the individual rightly placed in relation to
sin. As soon as this is accomplished, the individual stands repentant in sin.
According to the idea, in that very moment he has been brought to dogmatics.
Repentance is the highest ethical contradiction, partly because ethics requires
ideality but must be content to receive repentance, but partly because
repentance is dialectically ambiguous with regard to what it is to remove, an
ambiguity that dogmatics for the first time removes in the Atonement, in which
the category of hereditary sin becomes clear." (CA, Thomte, p. 117)
#
"The good, of course,
signifies the restoration of freedom, redemption, salvation, or whatever one
would call it." (CA, Thomte, p. 119)
#
"The demonic is
inclosing reserve, the demonic is anxiety about the good. Let the inclosing
reserve be x and its content x, denoting the most terrible, the most
insignificant, the horrible, whose presence in life few probably even dream
about, but also the trifles to which no one pays attention.* What then is the
significance of the good as x? It signifies disclosure.** Disclosure may in
turn signify the highest (redemption in an eminent sense) as well as the most
insignificant (an accidental remark). This must not disturb us, for the
category remains the same; the phenomenon have this in common—that they are the
demonic—although the difference otherwise is enormous enough to make one dizzy.
Here disclosure is good, for disclosure is the first expression of salvation.
*To be able to use one's
category is a condito sine qua non (indispensable condition) if
observation in a deeper sense is to have significance. When the phenomenon is
present to a certain degree, most people become aware of it but are unable to
explain it because they lack the category, and if they had it, they would have
a key that opens up whatever trace of the phenomenon there is, for the
phenomena within the category obey it as the spirits of the ring obey the ring.
**I have deliberately used
the word 'disclosure.' I could also have called the good 'transparency.' If I
feared that anyone might misunderstand the word 'disclosure' and the
development of its relation to the demonic, as if it were always a matter of
something external, something tangible disclosed in the confessional, but which
as something external would be of no help, I certainly would have chosen
another word." (CA, Thomte, pp. 126-27)
#
"Disclosure may have
already conquered; however, at the last moment, inclosing reserve ventures the
last attempt and is ingenious enough to transform the disclosure itself into a
mystification, and inclosing reserve has conquered.*
*It is readily seen that
inclosing reserve /eo ipso/ signifies a lie, or if one prefers, untruth. But untruth
is precisely unfreedom, which is anxious about disclosure." (CA, 128)
#
"(b) THE SCHEME FOR THE
EXCLUSION OR THE ABSENCE OF INWARDNESS. The absence of inwardness is always a
category of reflection, and consequently every form will have a double form.
Because the qualifications of the spirit are usually considered altogether
abstractly, the tendency is to overlook this. Usually immediacy is posited in
opposition to reflection (inwardness) and then the synthesis (or
substantiality, subjectivity, identity, that in which this identity is said to
consist: reason, idea, spirit). But in the sphere of actuality this is not the
case. There immediacy is also the immediacy of inwardness. For this reason, the
absence of inwardness is due in the first place to reflection." (CA, Thomte, pp. 141-42)
#
"Every form of the
absence of inwardness is therefore either activity-passivity or
passivity-activity, and whether it is one or the other, it is in the sphere of
self-reflection. The form itself runs through a considerable series of
nuances in proportion to the degree of the concretion of inwardness. There is an old saying that to
understand and to understand are two things, and so they are. Inwardness is an
understanding, but in concreto the
important thing is how this understanding is to be understood. To understand a
speech is one thing, and to understand what it refers to, namely, the personal,
is something else; for a man to understand what he himself says is one thing,
and to understand himself in what is said is something else." (CA, Thomte,
p. 142)
#
"The most concrete
content that consciousness can have is consciousness of itself, of the
individual himself—not the pure self-consciousness, but the self-consciousness
that is so concrete that no author, not even the one with the greatest power of
description, has ever been able to describe a single such self-consciousness,
although every single human being is such a one. This self-consciousness is not
contemplation, for he who believes this has not understood himself, because he
sees that meanwhile he himself is in the process of becoming and consequently
cannot be something completed for contemplation. This self-consciousness,
therefore, is action, and this action is in turn inwardness, and whenever
inwardness does not correspond to this consciousness, there is a form of the
demonic as soon as the absence of inwardness expresses itself as anxiety about
its acquisition." CA, Thomte, p. 143)
#
"What is certitude and
inwardness? It is no doubt difficult to give a definition of inwardness. In the
meantime, I shall at this point say that it is earnestness." (CA, Thomte,
p. 146)
#
"The phrase 'What has
made him earnest in life' must of course be understood, in a pregnant sense, as
that from which the individuality in the deepest sense dates his earnestness.
Having become truly earnest about that which is the object of earnestness, a
person may very well, if he so wishes, treat various things earnestly, but the
question is whether he first became earnest about the object of earnestness.
This object every human being has, because it is himself, and whoever has not become earnest about this, but about
something else, something great and noisy, is despite all his earnestness a
joker, and though he may deceive irony for some time, he will, volente deo
[God willing], still become comical because irony is jealous of earnestness. On
the other hand, whoever has become earnest at the right place will prove the
soundness of his spirit precisely by his ability to treat all other things
sentimentally as well as jokingly, although it makes a cold shiver run down the
spines of the dupes of earnestness when they see him joke about whenever made
them frightfully earnest." (CA, Thomte, p. 150)
#
"Inwardness, certitude,
is earnestness. This seems a little paltry. If at least I had said, it is
subjectivity, the pure subjectivity, the übergreifende
(encompassing) subjectivity, I would have said something, something that no
doubt would have made many earnest. However, I can also express earnestness in
another way. Whenever inwardness is lacking, the spirit is finitized.
Inwardness is therefore eternity or the constituent of the eternal in
man." (CA, Thomte, p. 151)
#
In one of Grimm's fairy tales
there is a story of a young man who goes in search of adventure to learn what
it is to be in anxiety. We will let the adventurer pursue his journey without
concerning ourselves about whether he encountered the terrible along his way.
However, I will say that this is an adventure that every human being must go
through—to learn to be anxious in order that he may not perish by neither
having been in anxiety or by succumbing in anxiety. Whoever has learned to be
anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate." (CA, Thomte, p. 155)
#
"Anxiety
is freedom's possibility, and only such anxiety is through faith absolutely
educative, because it consumes all finite ends and discovers all their
deceptiveness." (CA, Thomte, p. 155)
#
"If
an individual defrauds possibility, by which he is to be educated, he never
arrives at faith; then his faith will be the sagacity of finitude, just as his
school was that of finitude." (CA, Thomte, p. 157)
#
So
when the individual through anxiety is educated into faith, anxiety will
eradicate precisely what it brings forth itself." (CA, Thomte, p. 159)
#
"With
the help of faith, anxiety brings up the individuality to rest in providence.
So it is also in relation to guilt, which is the second thing anxiety
discovers. Whoever learns to know his guilt only from the finite is lost in the
finite, and finitely the question of whether a man is guilty cannot be
determined except in an external, juridical, and most imperfect sense."
(CA, Thomte, p. 161)
#
"That
'Hereditary Sin' is 'Guilt' is a real paradox. How paradoxical is best seen as
follows. The paradox is formed by a composite of heterogeneous categories.
'Hereditary' is a category of nature. 'Guilt' is am ethical category of spirit.
How can it occur to anyone to put these two together, the understanding says—to
say that something is hereditary which cannot by its very concept be
hereditary. It must be believed. The paradox in Christian truth always involves
the truth before God. A superhuman goal and standard are used – and with regard
to them there is only one relationship possible – that of faith. " CA,
Thomte, Supplement, p. 230) (JP II 1530;
Pap. X² A 481, n. d., 1850)
Concept of Irony:
"The
observer ought to be an amorist; he must not be indifferent to any feature, any
factor. But on the other hand he ought to have a sense of his own
predominance—but should use it only to help the phenomenon obtain its full
disclosure. Therefore, even if the observer does bring the concept along with
him, it is still of great importance that the phenomenon remain inviolate and
that the concept be seen as coming into existence [tilblivende] through the phenomenon. (CI, Hong, p. 9)
#
"If
what has been said so far is accurate, then it is manifest that the intention
in asking questions can be twofold. That is, one can ask with the intention of
receiving an answer containing the desired fullness, and hence the more one
asks, the deeper and more significant becomes the answer; or one can ask
without any interest in the answer except to suck out the apparent content by
means of questions and thereby leave an emptiness behind. The first method
presupposes, of course, that there is a plenitude; the second that there is an
emptiness. The first is the speculative method; the second the ironic.
Socrates in particular practiced the latter method" (CI, Hong, p. 36)
#
"The
Socratic thesis that virtue cannot be taught seems to contain a high degree of
positivity, since it traces virtue back either to a natural qualification or to
something fatalistic. Yet, in another sense virtue understood as immediate
harmony, as well as virtue in its fatalistic dispersion is an utterly negative
qualification. On the other hand, to say that virtue can be taught must be
understood as meaning either that an original emptiness in man is gradually
filled through teaching (but this is a contradiction, since something that is
absolutely foreign to man cannot be brought into him) or that an inner
condition of virtue gradually unfolds through successive teaching, and
consequently it presupposes the original presence of virtue. The misunderstanding
of the Sophist is that he presumes to want to impart something to man; the
Socratic misunderstanding, on the other hand, is to deny categorically that
virtue can be taught. That this Socratic conception is negative is obvious; it
expressly denies life, development—in short, history in its most universal and
widest sense. The Sophist denies the original presence; Socrates denies the
subsequent history. (CI, Hong, pp. 59-60)
#
"Now,
if irony is a qualification of subjectivity, we shall promptly see the necessity
of two manifestations of this concept, and actuality has indeed attached the
name to them. The first one, of course, is the one in which subjectivity
asserts its rights in world history for the first time. Here we have Socrates,
that is, we are hereby shown where we should look for the concept in its
historical manifestation. But once having made its appearance in the world,
subjectivity did not vanish again without trace, the world did not sink back
again into the earlier form of development; on the contrary, the old vanished
and everything became new. For a new mode of irony to be able to appear now, it
must result from the assertion of subjectivity in a still higher form. It must
be subjectivity raised to the second power, a subjectivity's subjectivity,
which corresponds to reflection's reflection." (CI, Hong, p. 242)
#
"If we consider irony as
it turns against all existence, here again it maintains the contradiction
between essence and phenomenon, between the internal and the external. It might
seem now that as the absolute negativity it would be identical with doubt. But
one must bear two things in mind—first, that doubt is a conceptual
qualification, and that irony is subjectivity's being-for-itself; second that
irony is essentially practical, that it is theoretical only in order to become
practical again—in other words, it has to do with the irony of itself and not
with the irony of the situation." CI, Hong, p. 257)
#
"Here,
then, we have irony as the infinite absolute negativity. It is negativity,
because it only negates; it is infinite because it does not negate this or that
phenomenon; it is absolute, because that by virtue of which it negates is a
higher something that still is not. The irony establishes nothing, because that
which is to be established lies behind it. It is a divine madness that rages
like a Tamerlane and does not leave one stone upon another. Here, then, we have
irony." (CI, Hong, p. 261)
#
"Irony
is a qualification of subjectivity. In irony, the subject is negatively free, since
the actuality that is supposed to give the subject content is not there. He is
free from the constraint in which the given actuality holds the subject, but he
is negatively free and as such is suspended, because there is nothing that
holds him." (CI, Hong, p. 262)
#
"But
in order for the ironic formation to be perfectly developed, it is required
that the subject also become conscious of his irony, feel negatively free as he
passes judgment on the given reality, and enjoy this negative freedom. So that this
might take place, the subjectivity must be in an advanced stage or, more
correctly as the subjectivity asserts itself, irony emerges. Face-to-face with
the given actuality, the subjectivity feels its power, its validity and
meaning. But as it feels this, it rescues itself, as it were, from the
relativity in which the given actuality wants to keep it." (CI, Hong, p.
263)
#
"But
if irony is a qualification of subjectivity, then it must manifest itself the
first time subjectivity makes its appearance in world history. Irony is,
namely, the first and most abstract qualification of subjectivity. This points
to the historical turning point where subjectivity made its appearance for the
first time, and with this we have come to Socrates." (CI, Hong, p. 264)
#
"As
pointed out earlier, when Socrates declared that he was ignorant, he
nevertheless did know something, for he knew about his ignorance; on the other
hand, however, this knowledge was not a knowledge of something, that is, did
not have any positive content, and to that extent his ignorance was ironic, and
since Hegel had tried in vain, in my opinion, to reclaim a positive content for
him, I believe that the reader must agree with me. If his knowledge had been a
knowledge of something, his ignorance would merely have been a conversational
technique. (CI, Hong, p. 269)
#
"Because
reflection was continually reflecting about reflection, thinking went astray,
and every step it advanced led further and further, of course, from any
content. Here it became apparent, as it does in all ages, that if one is going
to speculate, one had better be facing in the right direction. Speculative
thought utterly failed to see that what it was seeking was in its own seeking,
and when it would not look for it there, it was not to be found in all
eternity." (CI, Hong, p. 272)
#
"But
when I said earlier that actuality offers itself partly as a gift, the
individual's relation to a past is thereby implied. This past will not claim
validity for the individual and will not be overlooked or ignored. For irony,
however, there really never was a past. This was due to its refusal to be
involved in metaphysical inquiries. It confused the eternal I with the
temporal I. But the eternal I has no past, and as a result the
temporal I does not have one, either. But to the extent that irony is
good-natured enough to assume a past, this past may be of such a nature that
irony can have a free hand with it and play its game with it." (CI, Hong, p. 277)
#
"Therefore
Socrates' influence was simply to awaken—midwife that he was—not redeeming
except in an inauthentic sense." (CI, Hong, Supplement, p. 432) (Pap.
II A 103)
#
"Irony
is the birth-pangs of the objective mind (based upon the misrelationship,
discovered by the I, between existence and the idea of existence). Humor is the
birth-pangs of the absolute mind (based upon the misrelationship, discovered by
the I, between the I and the idea of the
I)." (CI, Hong, Supplement,
p.444-45) (Pap. III B 19)
#
"Definition
of Irony: Irony is the unity of ethical passion, which in inwardness infinitely
accentuates the private self, and of development, which in outwardness (in
association with people) infinitely abstracts from the private self. The effect
of the second is that no one notices the first; therein lies the art, and the
true infinitizing of the first is conditioned thereby." (CI, Hong,
Supplement, p.451) (Pap. VI A 8)
Concluding Unscientific Postscript:
"The issue presented in
that pamphlet, yet without the pretense of having solved it, since the pamphlet
wanted only to present it, reads as follows: Can a historical point of departure be given for an eternal
consciousness; how can such a point of departure be of more than historical
interest; can an eternal happiness be built on historical knowledge? (see
title page). In the pamphlet itself (p. 162), the following passage is to be
found: 'As is well known, Christianity is the only historical phenomenon that
despite the historical—indeed, precisely by means of the historical—has wanted
to be the single individual's point of departure for his eternal consciousness,
has wanted to interest him otherwise than merely historically, has wanted to
base his happiness on his relation to something historical." (CUP, Hong, p.15; Lowrie, 18)
#
"The
objective issue, then, would be about the truth of Christianity. The subjective
issue is about the individual's relation to Christianity. Simply stated: How
can I, Johannes Climacus, share in the happiness that Christianity promises?
The issue pertains to me alone, partly because, if properly presented, it will
pertain to everyone in the same way, and partly because all the others do have
faith already as something given, as a trifle they do not consider very
valuable, or as a trifle amounting to something only when decked out worth a
few demonstrations. So the presentation of the issue is not some sort of
immodesty on my part, but merely a kind of lunacy." (CUP, Hong, p. 17;
Lowrie, p. 20)
#
"In
order to make my issue as clear as possible, I shall first present the objective
issue and show how that is treated. The historical will thereby receive its
due. Next, I shall present the subjective issue. This is really more than the
promised sequel as a clothing in historical costume, since this costume is
provided merely be mentioning the word "Christianity." The first part
is the promised sequel; the second part is a renewed attempt in the same vein
as the pamphlet, a new approach to the issue of the Fragments."
(CUP, Hong, p. 17; Lowrie, p. 20)
#
"The
more objective the observer becomes, the less he builds an eternal happiness,
that is, his eternal happiness, on his relation to his observation, because an
eternal happiness is a question only for the impassioned, infinitely interested
subjectivity." (CUP, Hong, p. 32; Lowrie, p. 33) ^^
#
"Christianity is spirit,
spirit is inwardness, inwardness is subjectivity, subjectivity is essentially
passion, and at its maximum an infinite, personal, passionate interest for
one’s eternal happiness." (CUP, Hong, p. 33; Lowrie, p. 33) x
#
“As soon as subjectivity is
taken away, and passion from subjectivity, and infinite interest from passion,
there is no decision whatever. All decision, all essential decision, is rooted
in subjectivity. At no point does an observer (and that is what the objective
subject is) have an infinite need for a decision, and at no point does he see
it.” (CUP, Hong, p. 33; Lowry, p.33)
#
"On the whole, the
infinite reflection in which the subjective individual is first able to become
concerned about his eternal happiness is immediately recognizable by one thing,
that it is everywhere accompanied by the dialectical. Whether it is a word, a sentence, a book, a man, a society, whatever
it is, as soon as it is supposed to be a boundary, so that the boundary itself
is not dialectical, it is superstition and narrow-mindedness. In a human being
there is always a desire, at once comfortable and concerned, to have something
really firm and fixed that can exclude the dialectical, but this is
cowardliness and fraudulence toward the divine. Even the most certain of
all, a revelation, eo ipso [precisely thereby] becomes dialectical when
I am to appropriate it; even the most fixed of all, an infinite negative
resolution, which is the individuality's infinite form of God's being within him,
promptly becomes dialectical." (CUP, Hong, pp. 34-35 fn; Lowry, p.34 fn)
#
"The modest, immediate,
totally unreflective subject remains naively convinced that if only the
objective truth stands firm, the subject will be ready and willing to slip it
on. Here we instantly witness the youthfulness (Grundtvig also prides himself
on this) that has no inkling of that subtle little Socratic secret; that the
relation of the subject is precisely the knotty difficulty. If truth is spirit,
then truth is inward deepening and is not an immediate and utterly uninhibited
relation of an immediate Geist
(spirit, mind) to sum total of propositions, even though this relation is
confusingly given the name of the most decisive expression of subjectivity:
faith. The direction of unreflectiveness is always oriented outward, thereunto,
toward, in striving to reach its goal, toward the objective. The Socratic
secret—which, unless Christianity is to be an infinite retrogression, can be
infinitized in Christianity only by an even deeper inwardness—is that the
movement is inward, that the truth is the subject's transformation within
himself." (CUP, Hong, pp. 37-38; Lowrie, pp. 37-38)
#
"The Church theory has
been sufficiently lauded as objective, a word that in our age has become a way
of making honorable amends by which thinkers and prophets believe they are
telling one another something of great importance. It is just too bad that
where one should be objective, in strict scholarship, objectivity is rare,
because the savant equipped with expert autopsy is a great rarity. In relation
to Christianity, however, objectivity is an extremely unfortunate category, and
the one who has objective Christianity and nothing else is eo ipso [precisely thereby] a pagan, because Christianity is precisely
a matter of spirit and of subjectivity and of inwardness. " (CUP, Hong,
pp. 42-43; Lowrie, p.42)
#
"Now, I shall not deny
that the Church theory is objective but rather point it out in the following
way. When an individual infinitely, impassionedly interested in his own eternal
happiness is placed in relation to the Church theory in such a way that he
intends to base his eternal happiness upon it, he becomes comic. He becomes
comic not because he is infinitely, impassionedly interested—this is indeed the
good thing about him—but he becomes comic because the objectivity is
incongruous with his interest."
(CUP, Hong, p. 43; Lowrie, p. 42)
#
"What has been intimated
here has been emphasized in Fragments frequently enough, namely, that
there is no direct and immediate transformation to Christianity, and that
therefore all those who in that way want to give a rhetorical push in order to
bring one into Christianity or even help one into it by a thrashing—they are
all deceivers—no, they know not what they do." (CUP, Hong, p. 49; Lowrie p. 47)
#
"Like is understood only
by like, and the old sentence, quicquid cognoscitur per modum cognoscentis
cognoscitur [whatever is known is known in the mode of the knower], must
indeed be amplified in such a way that there is also a mode in which the knower
knows nothing whatever or that his knowing amounts to a delusion. With
reference to a kind of observation in which it is of importance that the
observer be in a definite state, it holds true that when he is not in that state
he does not know anything whatever. Now, he can deceive one by saying that he
is in that state although he is not, but if it turns out so fortunately that he
himself declares that he is not in the requisite state, he deceives no
one." (CUP, Hong, pp. 52-53; Lowrie, p. 51)
#
"In all knowing in which
it holds true that the object of cognition is the inwardness of the subjective
individual himself, it holds true that the knower must be in that state."
(CUP, Hong, p. 53; Lowrie, p. 51)
#
"If the subjective
individual himself has not worked himself through and out of his objectivity,
all appeal to another individuality will be only a misunderstanding. And if the
subjective individual has done that, he will certainly know his own course and
the dialectical presuppositions in and according to which he has his religious
existence. The course of development of the religious subject has the peculiar
quality that the pathway comes into existence for the single individual and
closes up behind him." (CUP, Hong, pp. 66-67; Lowrie, p. 62)
#
This mixture of jest and
earnestness that makes it impossible for a third person to know definitely
which is which—unless the third person knows it by himself. This craftiness
that now and then perhaps even places a false stress on the indifferent, so
that the expert may precisely in this way best grasp what is dialectically
decisive and the heretics may have nothing to gossip about. This mode of
presentation, so integral his individuality, that briskly and refreshingly
blazes its own trail and does not expire in a mosaic of slogans and authorized
clichés and current locutions that with quotation marks betray that the writer
is keeping up with the times, whereas Lessing confides to one sub rosa
(privately) that he is keeping up with his thought." CUP, Hong, p. 69;
Lowrie, pp.62-63)
#
"The subjective
thinker is aware of the dialectic of communication. Whereas objective
thinking is indifferent to the thinking subject and his existence, the
subjective thinker as existing is essentially interested in his own thinking,
is existing in it. Therefore, his thinking has another kind of reflection,
specifically, that of inwardness, of possession, whereby it belongs to the
subject and to no one else. Whereas objective thinking invests everything in
the result and assists all humankind to cheat by copying and reeling off
results and answers, subjective thinking invests everything in the process of
becoming and omits the result, partly because this belongs to him, since he
possesses the way, partly because he as existing is continually in the process
of becoming, as is every human being who has not permitted himself to be
tricked into becoming objective, into inhumanly becoming speculative
thought." (CUP, Hong, pp. 72-73; Lowrie, pp. 67-68)
#
"The subjective
existing thinker is aware of the dialectic of communication. Whereas
objective thinking is indifferent to the thinking subject and his existence,
the subjective thinker as existing is essentially interested in his own
thinking, is existing in it. Therefore his thinking has another kind of
reflection, specifically, that if inwardness, of possession, whereby it belongs
to the subject and to no one else."
(CUP, Hong, p. 73; Lowrie, pp. 67-68)
#
"The reflection of
inwardness is the subjective thinker's double-reflection. In thinking, he
thinks the universal, but as existing in this thinking, as acquiring this in
his inwardness, he becomes more and more subjectively isolated. The difference
between subjective and objective thinking must also manifest itself in the form
of communication. This means that the subjective thinker must promptly become
aware that the form of communication must artistically possess just as much
reflection as he himself, existing in his thinking, possesses. Artistically,
please note, for the secret does not consist in his enunciation of the
double-reflection directly, since such an enunciation is a direct
communication." (CUP, Hong, pp. 73-74; Lowrie, pp. 68-69)
#
"So it is
also in a God-relationship. Just because he himself is continually in the
process of becoming in an inward direction, that is, in inwardness, he can
never communicate himself directly, since the movement is here the very
opposite." (CUP, Hong, fn. pp.
73-74; Lowrie, fn. p. 68)
#
"Ordinary communication
between one human being and another is entirely immediate, because people
ordinarily exist in immediacy. When one person states something and another
acknowledges the same thing verbatim, they are assumed to be in agreement and
to have understood each other. Yet, because the one making the statement is
unaware of the duplexity [Dobbelthed]
of thought-existence, he is also unable to be aware of the double-reflection of
communication. Therefore he has no intimation that this kind of agreement can
be the greatest misunderstanding and naturally has no intimation that, just as
the subjective existing thinker has set himself free by the duplexity, so the
secret of communication hinges upon setting the other free, and for that reason
he must not communicate himself directly, indeed, it is ever irreligious to do
so. (CUP, Hong, p. 74; Lowrie, p. 69)
#
"Suppose it was the
life-view of a religiously existing subject that one may not have followers,
that this would be treason to both God and men: suppose he were a bit obtuse (for
if it takes a bit more than honesty to do well in this world, obtuseness is
always required in order to be truly successful and to be understood by many)
and announced this directly with unction and pathos—what then? Well, then, he
would be understood and soon ten would apply who, just for a free shave each
week, would offer their services in proclaiming this doctrine; that is, in
further substantiation of the truth of this doctrine, he would have been so
very fortunate as to gain followers who accepted and spread this doctrine about
having no followers." (CUP, Hong, p. 75; Lowrie, p. 70)
#
"Objective thinking is
completely indifferent to subjectivity and thereby to inwardness and
appropriation; its communication is therefore direct. It is obvious that it
does not therefore have to be easy. But it is direct; it does not have the
illusiveness and the art of double-reflection." (CUP, Hong, p. 75; Lowrie,
p. 70)
#
"The form of
communication is something different from the expression of a communication.
When a thought has gained its proper expression in a word, which is attained
through the first reflection, there comes a second reflection, which bears upon
the intrinsic relation of the communication to the communicator and renders the
existing communicator's own relation to the idea." (CUP, Hong, p.76;
Lowrie, p. 71)
#
"Ordinary communication,
objective thinking, has no secrets; only doubly reflected subjective thinking
has secrets; that is, all its essential content is essentially a secret,
because it cannot be communicated directly. This is the significance of the
secrecy. That this knowledge cannot be stated directly, because the essential
in this knowledge is the appropriation itself, means that it remains a secret
for everyone who is not through himself doubly reflected in the same way, but
that this is the essential form of the truth means that this cannot be said in
any other way. " (CUP, Hong, p. 79; Lowrie, p. 73)
#
"In his
existence relation to the truth, the existing subjective thinker is just as negative
as positive, has just as much of the comic as he essentially has of pathos, and
is continually in the process becoming, that is, striving. Since the existing
subject is existing (and that is the lot of every human being, except the
objective ones, who have pure being to be in), he is indeed in the process of
becoming." (CUP, Hong, p. 80;
Lowrie, p. 74)
#
"The negative thinkers
therefore always have the advantage that they have something positive, namely
this, that they are aware of the negative; the positive thinkers have nothing
whatever, for they are deluded. Precisely because the negative is present in
existence and present everywhere (because being there, existence, is
continually in the process of becoming), the only deliverance from it is to become
continually aware of it. By being positively secured, the subject is indeed
fooled. The negativity that is in existence, or rather the negativity of the
existing subject (which his thinking must render essentially in an adequate
form), is grounded in the subject's synthesis, in his being an infinite
existing spirit." (CUP, Hong, pp. 81-82; Lowrie, p. 75)
#
"The subjective existing
thinker who has the infinite in his soul has it always, and therefore his form
is continually negative. When this is the case, when he, actually existing,
renders the form of existence in his own existence, he, existing, is
continually just as negative as he is positive, for his positivity consists in
the inward deepening in which he is cognizant of the negative. Among the so-called
negative thinkers, however, there are a few who, after gaining an inkling of
the negative, succumb to the positive and go roaring out into the world in
order to recommend, urge, and offer their beatifying negative wisdom for
sale—and one can surely hawk a result just as one hawks Holstein herring etc.
These hawkers are scarcely more sagacious than the positive thinkers, but it is
rather inconsistent of the positive thinkers to become angry with them, for
they are essentially positive. The hawkers are not existing thinkers. Perhaps
they were so once, until they found a result; from that moment they no longer
exist as thinkers but as hawkers and auctioneers." (CUP, Hong, p. 84;
Lowrie, p. 78)
#
"One who is existing is
continually in the process of becoming; the actually existing subjective
thinker, thinking, continually reproduces this in his existence and invests all
his thinking in becoming. This is similar to having style. Only he really has
style who is never finished with something but ‘stirs the waters of language’
whenever he begins, so that to him the most ordinary expression comes into
existence with newborn originality. To be continually in the process of
becoming in this way is the illusiveness of the infinite in existence. It could
bring a sensate person to despair, for one continually feels an urge to have
something finished, but this urge is of evil and must be renounced.” (CUP,
Hong, p. 86; Lowrie, p. 79)
#
"The relative difference
between the comic and the tragic in immediacy vanishes in double-reflection,
where the difference becomes infinite and identity is thereby posited.
Religiously, the comic expression of worship is therefore just as devout as its
pathos-filled expression. What lies at the root of both the comic and the
pathos-filled is the misrelation, the contradiction between the infinite and
the finite, the eternal and the becoming. A pathos that excludes the comic is
therefore a misunderstanding, is not pathos at all. The subjectively existing
thinker is therefore just as bifrontal as the existence-situation itself. The
interpretation of the misrelation, viewed with the idea ahead, is pathos; the
interpretation of the misrelation, viewed with the idea behind, is the comic.
When the subjective existing thinker turns his face toward the idea, his
interpretation of the misrelation is pathos-filled; when he turns his back to
the idea, allowing it to shine from behind into the same misrelation, his
interpretation is comic." (CUP, Hong, pp. 89-90; Lowrie, pp. 82-83)
#
"That the existing subjective
thinker is continually striving does not mean, however, that in a finite sense
he has a goal toward which he is striving, where he would be finished when he
reached it. No, he is striving infinitely, is continually in the process of
becoming, something that is safeguarded by his being just as negative as
positive and by his having just as much of the essentially comic as of the
essentially pathos-filled, and that has its basis in the circumstance that he
is existing and renders this in his thinking." (CUP, Hong, p. 91; Lowrie,
p. 84)
#
"But the
genuine subjective existing thinker is always just an negative as he is
positive and vice versa: he is always that as long as he exists, not once and
for all in a chimerical mediation. And his communication corresponds to this,
let by being overly communicative he meaninglessly transform a learner's
existence [Tilværelse];
he always keeps open the wound of negativity, which at times is a saving factor
(the others let the wound close and become positive—deceived); in his
communication, he expresses the same thing. He is, therefore, never a teacher,
but a learner, and if he is continually just as negative as positive, he is
continually striving." (CUP, Hong, p. 85)
#
"To have been very close
doing something already has its comic aspect, but to have been very close to
making the leap is nothing whatever, precisely because the leap is the category
of decision. And now in utmost earnestness to have wanted to make the leap—yes,
that Lessing is indeed a rogue, for surely he has, if anything, with the utmost
earnestness made the ditch broad—is that not just like making fun of people!
Yet, as it is well known, with regard to the leap is also possible to make more
fun of people in a more popular manner: one closes one's eyes, grabs oneself by
the neck à la Münchhausen, and then—then one stands on the other side,
on that other side of sound common sense in the promised land of the
system." (CUP, Hong, p. 99; Lowrie, p. 91)
#
"Lessing perceives very
well that the leap, as decisive, is qualitatively dialectical and permits no
approximating transition." (CUP, Hong, p. 103; Lowrie. p. 94)
#
"So these two, Lessing
and the systematician, both speak of a continued striving—the only difference
is that Lessing is obtuse or truthful enough to call it a continued striving,
the systematician sagacious or untruthful enough to call it the system."
(CUP, Hong, p. 108; Lowrie, p. 99)
#
"Only when the
beginning, at which point reflection comes to a halt, is a breakthrough, so
that the absolute beginning itself breaks through the endlessly perpetuated
reflection—only then is the beginning presuppositionless. But if it is a break
whereby reflection is broken off in order that the beginning can emerge, then
this beginning is not absolute, since it has occurred by a shifting from one
genus to another." (CUP, Hong, p.113; Lowrie, p. 103)
#
"What if, rather than
speaking or dreaming of an absolute beginning, we speak of a leap?" (CUP,
Hong, p. 115; Lowrie, p. 105)
#
"The continued striving
is the expression of the existing subject's ethical life-view. The continued
striving must therefore not be understood metaphysically, but neither is there
any individual who exists metaphysically. Thus, through a misunderstanding a
contrast could be drawn between systematic conclusiveness and the continued
striving for truth. One might then be able, and perhaps has even tried, to bear
in mind the Greek notion of continually wanting to be a learner. But that is
only a misunderstanding in this sphere. On the contrary, ethically understood,
the continued striving is the consciousness of being an existing individual,
and the continued learning the expression of the perpetual actualization, which
at no moment is finished as long as the subject is existing; the subject is
aware of this and is therefore not deluded." CUP, Hong, pp. 121-22;
Lowrie, pp. 110-11)
#
"Objectively, one
continually speaks only about the case in point; subjectively, one speaks about
the subject and subjectivity—and see, the subjectivity itself is the case in
point. It must continually be insisted upon that the subjective issue is not
something about the case in point but is the subjectivity itself. In other
words, since the issue is the decision and all decision, as shown previously,
is rooted in subjectivity, it is important that objectively there be no trace
whatever of any case in point, because at that very moment the subjective
individual wants to evade some of the pain and crisis of decision, that is,
wants to make the issue somewhat objective." (CUP, Hong, p. 129; Lowrie,
p. 115)
#
"It is generally thought
that to be subjective is no art. Well, of course, every human being is
something of a subject. But now to become what one is as a matter of a
course—who would waste his time on that? That would indeed be the most
dispensable of all tasks. Quite so. But that is why it is already so very
difficult, indeed, the most difficult of all, because every human being has a
strong natural desire and drive to become something else and more. " (CUP,
Hong, p. 130; Lowrie, p. 116)
#
"The
longer life goes on and the longer the existing person through his action is
woven into existence, the more difficult it is to separate the ethical from the
external, and the easier it is to corroborate the metaphysical tenant that the
outer is the inner, the inner is the outer, the one wholly commensurate with
the other." (CUP, Hong, p. 138)
#
"But back
to the beginning. With the true ethical hypertension of the infinite, he
rejects everything. In fables and fairy tales there is a lamp called the
wonderful lamp; when it is rubbed, a spirit appears. Jest! But freedom, that is
the wonderful lamp. When a person rubs it with ethical passion, God comes into
existence for him. And look, the spirit of the lamp is a servant (so wish for
it, you whose spirit is a wish). But the person who rubs the wonderful lamp of
freedom becomes a servant—the spirit is the lord. This is the beginning. Let us
now see if it will do to add something else to the ethical. So the resolving
person says: I will—but I also want to have world-historical importance—aber [but]. So
there is an aber—and
the spirit vanishes again, because the rubbing has not been done properly, and
the beginning does not occur. But if it has occurred or has been done properly,
every subsequent aber
must again be renounced, even if existence in the most flattering and
inveigling way did everything to force it upon one." (CUP, Hong, pp. 138-39; Lowrie,
p. 124)
#
"In order to understand
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. Even another person with whom he is living can
only become intelligible to him only through the external, and inasmuch as that
is so, the conception is already involved in dubiousness. But the more
complicated the externality is in which the ethical internality is to reflect
itself, the more difficult the observing becomes, until finally it goes astray
in something quite different, in the esthetic." (CUP, Hong, pp 141-42;
Lowrie, p.127)
#
"The ethical as the
absolute is infinitely valid in itself and does not need embellishment in order
to look better…" (CUP, Hong, p. 142; Lowrie, p. 127)
#
"The ethical is
inwardness, and the smaller the range in which one sees it, if one does see it
in its infinity, the better one sees it; whereas the person who thinks he must
have world-historical embellishments in order thereby to see it better shows in
doing so that he is ethically immature." (CUP, Hong, p. 143; Lowrie, p.
128)
#
"Finally, how ludicrous
that the incessant association with world history has given birth to this
conclusion. What the most obtuse person, confirmed in a house of correction, is
able to understand is improved by cathedral wisdom and made into that genuine
speculative profundity. Alas, while the honorable Herr Professor is explaining
all existence, he has in sheer absentmindedness forgotten what he himself is
called, namely that he is a human being, a human being pure and simple, and not
a fantastical three-eights of a paragraph. He concludes the system; he
announces in a concluding paragraph that he will discover the ethical—which
this generation, including him and me, is supposed to actualize—for it has not
yet been discovered." (CUP, Hong, 145; Lowrie, pp 129-30)
#
"Only by paying sharp
attention to myself can I come to realize how a historical individuality acted
when he was living, and I understand him only when I keep him alive in my
understanding and do not, as children do, break up the clock in order to
understand the life in it, and do not, as speculative thoughts does, change him
into something totally different in order to understand him. But what it is to
live I cannot learn from him as someone dead and gone. I must experience that
for myself, and therefore I must understand myself, not the reverse: after
first having world-historically misunderstood him now to go further and allow
this misunderstanding to help me misunderstand myself, as if I, too, were dead
and gone. When he was alive, the world-historical individuality probably helped
himself with the subjective ethics, and then Governance added world-historical
importance, if he obtained any." (CUP, Hong, pp.146-47; Lowrie, p. 131)
#
"If anyone says that
this is only an exercise in elocution, that I have only a bit of irony, a bit
of pathos, a bit of dialectic with which to work, I
shall answer: What else
should the person have who wants to present the ethical? Should he perhaps have
managed to put it objectively in paragraphs and geläufigt [glibly] by rote, and
thus contradict himself by the form? I believe that if the ethical is quod
erat demonstrandum [ that which was to be demonstrated], then irony,
pathos, and dialectic are quod desideratur [that which is wanted]. Yet I
do not at all think that I have exhausted the ethical by my scribblings,
because it is infinite." (CUP, Hong, p. 153; Lowrie, p. 137)
#
"First then, the
ethical, to become subjective, then the world-historical. Surely even the most
objective person is basically in secret agreement with what has been stated
here, that first of all the wise person ought to understand the same thing that
the simple person understands and ought to feel bound to the same thing that
binds a simple person—and that only then should he pass on to the
world-historical. First, then, the simple." (CUP, Hong, pp. 159-60;
Lowrie, p. 142)
#
"But the ethical is not
only a knowing; it is also a doing that is related to a knowing, and a doing of
such a nature that the repetition of it can at times become more difficult than
the first doing." (CUP, Hong, pp. 160-61; Lowrie, p. 143)
#
At this point my
introspection was interrupted because my cigar was finished and a new one had
to be lit. So I smoked again, and then suddenly this thought crossed my mind:
You must do something, but since with your limited capabilities it will be
impossible to make anything easier than it has become, you must, with the same
humanitarian enthusiasm as the others have, take it upon yourself to make something
more difficult." (CUP, Hong, p. 186; Lowrie, pp. 165-66)
#
"That the knowing spirit
is an existing spirit, and that every human being is such a spirit existing for
himself, I can not repeat often enough, because the fantastical disregard of
this has been the cause of much confusion." (CUP, Hong, p. 189; Lowrie, p.
169)
#
"When for the existing
spirit qua existing there is a question about truth, that abstract
reduplication of truth recurs, but existence itself, existence itself is the
questioner, who does indeed exist, holds the two factors apart, one from the
other, and reflection shows two relations. To objective reflection, truth
becomes something objective, an object, and the point is to disregard the
subject. To subjective reflection, truth becomes appropriation, inwardness,
subjectivity, and the point is to immerse oneself, existing, in subjectivity.
But what then? Are we to remain in this disjunction, or does mediation offer
its kind assistance here, so that the truth becomes subject-object? Why not?
But can mediation then help the existing person so that he himself, as long as
he is existing, becomes mediation, which is, after all, sub specie aeterni,
whereas the poor existing one is existing?" (CUP, Hong, pp. 191-92;
Lowrie, p. 171-72)
#
"With the subject-object
of mediation, we have merely reverted to abstraction, inasmuch as the
definition of truth as subject-object is exactly the same as: the truth is,
that is, the truth is a redoubling [Fordoblelse]. Consequently, the
exalted wisdom has again been absentminded enough to forget that it was an
existing spirit who asked about the truth. Or is perhaps the existing spirit
himself the subject-object? In that case, I am obliged to ask: where is such an
existing human being who is also a subject-object? Or shall we perhaps here
again first transmute the existing spirit into something in general and then
explain everything except what was asked about." (CUP, Hong, p. 192;
Lowrie, p. 172)
#
"We return, then, to the
two ways of reflection and have not forgotten that is the existing spirit who
is asking, simply an individual human being, and are not able to forget,
either, that his existing is precisely what will prevent him from going both
ways at once, and his concerned questions will prevent him from light-mindedly
and fantastically becoming a subject-object. Now, then, which of the ways is
the way of truth for the existing spirit? Only the fantastical I-I is
simultaneously finished with both ways or advances methodically along both ways
simultaneously, which for an existing human being is such an inhuman way of
walking that I dare not recommend it." (CUP, Hong, p. 193; Lowrie, pp.
172-73)
#
"The way of objective
reflection turns the subjective individual into something accidental and
thereby turns existence into an indifferent, vanishing something. The way to
the objective truth goes away from the subject, and while the subject and
subjectivity become indifferent [liegegyldig], the truth also becomes
indifferent, and that is precisely its objective validity [Gyldighed],
because the interest, just like the decision, is subjectivity. The way of
objective reflection now 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, from an
objective point of view, altogether properly, infinitely indifferent,
altogether properly, because, as Hamlet says, existence and nonexistence have
only subjective significance. At its maximum, this way will lead to a
contradiction, and to the extent that the subject does not become totally
indifferent to himself, this is merely an indication that his objective
striving is not objective enough. At its maximum, it will lead to the
contradiction that only objectivity has come about, whereas subjectivity has
gone out, that is, the existing subjectivity that has made an attempt to become
what in the abstract sense is called subjectivity, the abstract form of an
abstract objectivity. And yet, viewed subjectively, the objectivity that has
come about is at its maximum either a hypothesis or an approximation, because
all eternal decision is rooted specifically in subjectivity." (CUP, Hong,
p.193-94; Lowrie, p. 173)
#
"Subjective reflection
turns inward toward subjectivity and in this inward deepening will be of the
truth, and in such a way that, just as in the preceding, when objectivity was
advanced, subjectivity vanished, here subjectivity as such becomes the final
factor and objectivity the vanishing. Here it is not forgotten, even for a
single moment, that the subject is existing, and that existing is a becoming,
and that truth as the identity of thought and being is a chimera of abstraction
and truly only a longing of creation, not because truth is not an identity, but
because the knower is an existing person, and thus truth can not be an identity
for him as long as he exists." (CUP, Hong, p.196; Lowrie, p. 175-76)
#
"If the existing person
could actually be outside himself, the truth would be something concluded for him.
But where is this point? The I-I is a mathematical point that does not
exist at all; accordingly anyone who can take this standpoint—no one stands in
the way of anyone else. Only momentarily can a particular individual, existing,
be in a unity of the infinite and finite that transcends existing. This instant
is the moment of passion." (CUP, Hong, p. 197; Lowrie, p 176)
#
"All essential knowing
pertains to existence, or only the knowing whose relation to existence is
essential is essential knowing. Essentially viewed, the knowing that does not
inwardly in the reflection of inwardness pertain to existence is accidental
knowing, and its degree and scope, essentially viewed are a matter of
indifference. That essential knowing is essentially related to existence does
not, however, signify the above-mentioned abstract identity between thinking
and being, nor does it signify that the knowledge is objectively related to
something existent [Tilvaerende] as its object, but it means that 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. Therefore, only ethical and ethical-religious knowing is
essential knowing. But all ethical and ethical-religious knowing is essentially
a relating to the existing of the knower." (CUP, Hong, pp. 197-98; Lowrie,
pp. 176-77)
#
"In order to clarify the
divergence of objective and subjective reflection, I shall now describe
subjective reflection in its search back and inward into inwardness. At its
highest, inwardness in an existing subject is passion; truth as a paradox
corresponds to passion, and that truth becomes a paradox is grounded precisely
in its relation to an existing subject. In this way the one corresponds to the
other. In forgetting that one is an existing subject, one loses passion, and in
return, truth does not become a paradox; but the knowing subject shifts from
being human to being a fantastical something, and truth becomes a fantastical
object for its knowing.” (CUP, Hong, pp. 198-99; Lowrie, p. 177-78)
#
"When the question
about truth is asked objectively, truth is reflected upon objectively as an
object to which the knower relates himself. What is reflected upon is not the
relation but that what he relates himself to is the truth, the true. If only
that to which he relates himself is the truth, the true, then the subject is in
the truth. When the question about truth is asked subjectively, the
individual's relation is reflected upon subjectively. 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.*
* The reader will note that
what is being discussed here is essential truth, or the truth that is related
essentially to existence, and that it is specifically in order to clarify it as
inwardness or as subjectivity that the contrast is pointed out." (CUP,
Hong, p. 199; Lowrie, p. 178)
#
“Let us take the knowledge of
God as an example. 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. Now, on which side is
the truth? Alas, must we not at this point resort to mediation and say: it is
on neither side; it is in the mediation? Superbly stated, if only someone could
say how an existing person goes about being in mediation, because to be in
mediation is to be finished; to exist is to become. An existing person can not
be in two places at the same time, cannot be subject-object. When he is closest
to being in the two places at the same time, he is in passion; but passion is
only the momentary, and passion is the highest pitch of subjectivity.” (CUP,
Hong, p. 199; Lowrie, p. 178)
#
“If someone who lives in the midst of
Christianity enters, with the 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
who lives in an idolatrous land but prays with all the passion of infinity,
although his eyes are resting upon an idol – where, then, is there more truth?
The one prays in truth to God although he is worshipping an idol; the other
prays in untruth to the true God and is therefore in truth worshipping an
idol.” (CUP, Hong, p. 201; Lowrie, p. 179-80)
#
“Objectively the emphasis is on what is said; subjectively the emphasis is on how it is said. This
distinction applies even aesthetically and is specifically expressed when we
say that in the mouth of this or that person something that is truth can become
untruth. Particular attention should be paid to this distinction in our day,
for if one were to express in a single sentence the difference between ancient
times and our time, one would no doubt have to say: In ancient times there were
only a few individuals who knew the truth; now everyone knows it, but
inwardness has an inverse relation to it. Viewed esthetically, the
contradiction that emerges when truth becomes untruth in this and that person's
mouth is best interpreted comically. Ethically-religiously, the emphasis is
again on: how. But this 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. Objectively, the
question is about categories of thought; subjectively, about inwardness. At its
maximum, this how is the passion of the infinite, and the passion of the
infinite is the very truth. But the passion of the infinite is precisely
subjectivity, and thus subjectivity is the truth. From the objective point of
view, there is no infinite decision, and thus it is objectively correct that
the distinction between good and evil is canceled, along with the principle of
contradiction, and thereby also the infinite distinction between truth and
falsehood. 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." (CUP, Hong, pp.
202-03; Lowrie, pp. 181-82)
#
"But precisely because
the subject is existing, the 'how' that is subjectively emphasized is
dialectical also with regard to time. In the moment of the decision of passion,
where the road swings off from objective knowledge, it looks as if the infinite
decision were thereby finished. But at the same moment, 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, but is nevertheless a striving." (CUP, Hong, p. 203; Lowrie, p.
182)
#
"When subjectivity is
truth, the definition of truth must also contain in itself an expression of the
antithesis to objectivity, a memento of that fork in the road, and this
expression will at the same time indicate the resilience of the inwardness.
Here is such a definition of truth: An
objective uncertainty, held fast through appropriation with the most passionate
inwardness, is the truth, the highest truth there is for an existing person. At the point where the
road swings off (and where that is cannot be stated objectively, since it is
precisely subjectivity), objective knowledge is suspended. Objectively, he has
only uncertainty, but this is precisely what intensifies the infinite passion
of inwardness, and truth is precisely the daring adventure of choosing the
objective uncertainty with the passion of the infinite.” (CUP, Hong, p. 203;
Lowrie, p. 182)
#
"But the
definition of truth stated above is a paraphrasing of faith. Without risk, no
faith. Faith is the contradiction between the infinite passion of inwardness
and the objective uncertainty. If I am able to apprehend God objectively, I do
not have faith; but because I cannot do this, I must have faith. If I want to
keep myself in faith, I must continually see to it that I hold fast the
objective uncertainty, see to it that in the objective uncertainty I am 'out on
70,000 fathoms of water' and still have faith." (CUP, Hong, p. 204; Lowrie, p. 182)
#
"The thesis that
subjectivity, inwardness, is truth contains the Socratic wisdom, the undying
merit of which is to have paid attention to the essential meaning of existing,
of the knower's being an existing person. That is why, in his ignorance,
Socrates was in the truth in the highest sense within paganism. To comprehend
this, that the misfortune of speculative thought is that it forgets again and
again that the knower is an existing person, can already be difficult in our
objective age. 'But to go beyond Socrates, when one has not comprehended the
Socratic—that, at least, is not Socratic.' See 'The Moral' in Fragments.
Just as in Fragments, let us from this point try a category of thought
that actually does go beyond. Whether it is true or false is of no concern to
me, since I am only imaginatively constructing, but this much is required, that
it at least be clear that the Socratic is presupposed in it, so that I at least
do not end up behind Socrates again." (CUP, Hong, p. 204; Lowrie, p. 183)
#
"Socratic ignorance is
an analogue to the category of the absurd, except that there is less objective
certainty in the repulsion exerted by the absurd, since there is only the
certainty that it is absurd, and for that very reason there is infinitely
greater resilience in the inwardness. The Socratic inwardness in existing is an
analogue to faith, except that the inwardness of faith, corresponding not to
the repulsion exerted by ignorance but to the repulsion exerted by the absurd,
is infinitely deeper." (CUP, Hong, p. 205; Lowrie, p. 183-84)
#
"Viewed Socratically,
the eternal essential truth is not as all paradoxical in itself, but only by
being related to an existing person. This is expressed in another Socratic thesis:
that all knowledge is recollecting. This thesis is an intimation of the
beginning of speculative thought, but for that reason Socrates did not pursue
it; essentially, it became Platonic. This is where the road swings off, and
Socrates essentially emphasizes existing, whereas Plato, forgetting this, loses
himself in speculative thought." (CUP, Hong, p. 205; Lowrie, p. 184)
#
"The great merit of the
Socratic was precisely to emphasize that the knower is an existing person and
that to exist is the essential. To go beyond Socrates by failing to understand
this is nothing but a mediocre merit. This we must keep in mente [in
mind] and then see whether the formula cannot be changed in such a way that one
actually does go beyond the Socratic."
(CUP, Hong, p. 207; Lowrie, p. 185)
#
"So, then, subjectivity,
inwardness, is truth. Is there a more inward expression for it? Yes, if
the discussion about 'Subjectivity, inwardness, is truth' begins in this way:
'Subjectivity is untruth.' But let us not be in a hurry. Speculative thought
also says that subjectivity is untruth but says it in the very opposite
direction, namely, that objectivity is truth. Speculative thought defines
subjectivity negatively in the direction of objectivity. The other definition ,
however, puts barriers in its own way at the very moment it wants to begin,
which makes the inwardness so much more inward." (CUP, Hong, p. 207;
Lowrie, p. 185) x
#
"Subjectivity is truth.
The paradox came into existence through the relating of the eternal, essential
truth to the existing person. Let us now go further; let us assume that the
eternal, essential truth is itself the paradox. How does the paradox emerge? By
placing the eternal, essential truth together with existing. Consequently, if
we place it together in the truth itself, the truth becomes a paradox. The
eternal truth has come into existence in time. That is the paradox." (CUP,
Hong, p.209; Lowrie, p.187)
#
"What, then, is the
absurd? 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, inasmuch as all immediate recognizability is pre-Socratic
paganism and from the Jewish point of view is idolatry." (CUP, Hong, p.
210; Lowrie, p. 188)
#
"The difference between
the Socratic position and the position that goes beyond the Socratic is clear
enough and is essentially the same as in the Fragments, for in the
latter nothing has changed, and in the former the matter has only been made
somewhat more difficult, but nevertheless not more difficult than it is. It has also become more difficult because,
whereas in /Fragments/ I set forth the thought-category of the paradox only in
an imaginary construction, here I have also latently made an attempt to make
clear the necessity of the paradox, and even though the attempt is somewhat
weak, it is still something different from speculatively canceling the
paradox." (CUP, Hong, p. 213;
Lowrie, p. 191)
#
"If,
however, subjectivity is truth, and subjectivity is the existing subjectivity,
then, if I may put it this way, Christianity is a perfect fit. Subjectivity culminates in passion,
Christianity is paradox; paradox and passion
fit each other perfectly, and paradox perfectly fits a person situated
in the extremity of existence.
Indeed in the whole world there are not to be found two lovers who fit each other as do
paradox and passion, and their quarrel is only like a lover's quarrel when the
quarrel is about whether it was he who awakened her passion or it was she who
awakened his—and similarly here, the existing person has been situated in the extremity
of existence by the paradox itself. And what is more glorious for lovers than
to be granted a long time together without the occurrence of any change in the
relationship except that it become more inward? And this is indeed granted to
that very unspeculative understanding
between passion and paradox, for they have been granted all of time, and not
until eternity is there a change." (CUP, Hong, p. 230; Lowrie, p. 206 )
#
"The direct relationship
with God is simply paganism, and only when the break has taken place, only then
can there be a true God-relationship. But this break is indeed the first act of
inwardness oriented to the definition that truth is inwardness." (CUP,
Hong, p. 243; Lowrie, p. 218)
#
"The observer does not
glide directly to the result but on his own must concern himself with finding
it and thereby break the direct relation. This break is the actual breakthrough
of inwardness, an act of self-activity, the first designation of truth as
inwardness." (CUP, Hong, p. 244;
Lowrie, p. 218)
#
"All paganism consists
in this, that God is related directly to a human being, as the remarkably
striking to the amazed. But the spiritual relationship with God in truth, that
is, inwardness, is first conditioned by the actual breakthrough of inward
deepening that corresponds to the divine cunning that God has nothing
remarkable, nothing at all remarkable, about him—indeed, he is so far from
being remarkable that he is invisible, and thus one does not suspect that he is
there, although his invisibility is in turn his omnipresence." (CUP, Hong,
p. 245; Lowrie, pp. 219-20)
#
"My main thought was
that, because of the copiousness of knowledge, people in our day have forgotten
what it means to exist, and what inwardness is, and that the
misunderstanding between speculative thought and Christianity could be
explained by that. I now resolved to go back as far as possible in order not to
arrive too soon at what it meant to exist religiously, not to mention existing Christianly-religiously,
and in that way leave dubieties behind me. If people have forgotten how to
exist religiously, they had probably also forgotten what it means to exist
humanly; therefore this would have to be brought out. But this must not on any
account be done didactically, because then the misunderstanding would in a new
misunderstanding instantly make capital of the explanatory attempt, as if
existing consisted in coming to know something about a particular point. If
this is communicated as knowledge, the recipient is mistakenly induced to
understand that he is induced to understand that he is gaining something to
know, and then we are back in knowledge again. Only the person who has an idea
of a misunderstanding's tenacity in assimilating even the most rigorous attempt
at explanation, yet remaining a misunderstanding, only he will be aware of the
difficulty of an authorship in which care must be taken with every word, and
every word must go though the process of double-reflection." (CUP, Hong,
p. 249-50; Lowrie, 223)
#
"So, then, I resolved to
begin, and the first thing I wanted to do in order to start from the bottom was
to have the relation between the esthetic and the ethical come into
existence in an existing individuality. The task was set, and I foresaw
that the work would be copious enough, and above all I would have to be
prepared to remain still at times when the spirit would not support me with
pathos. But what happened then I shall tell in an appendix to this chapter.
" (CUP, Hong, p. 251; Lowrie, p. 224)
#
"What happens? As I go
on this way, Either/Or is published. What I aimed to do had been done right
here. I became very unhappy at the thought of my solemn resolution, but then I
thought once again: After all, you have not promised anyone anything; as long
as it is done, that is just fine. But things became worse for me, because step
by step, just as I wanted to begin the task of carrying out my resolution by
working, there appeared a pseudonymous book that did what I wanted to do. There
was something strangely ironic about it all." (CUP, Hong, p. 251; Lowrie,
p. 224)
#
"Either/Or, the
title of which is indicative, has the existence-relation between the esthetic
and the ethical materialize into existence in the existing individuality. This
to me is the book's indirect polemic against speculative thought, which is
indifferent to existence." (CUP, Hong, p.252; Lowrie, p. 226)
#
"Part 1 is an
existence-possibility that cannot attain existence, a depression that must be
worked upon ethically." (CUP, Hong, p. 253; Lowrie, p. 226)
#
"Part 1 is an
existence-possibility that cannot attain existence, a depression that must be worked
upon ethically. Essentially it is a depression, and so deep that, although
autopathetic, it deceptively occupies itself with the sufferings of others
('Silhouettes') and otherwise deceives under the guise of desire, common sense,
corruption, but the disguises are simultaneously its strength and its weakness,
its strength in imagination and its weakness in attaining existence. It is a
fantasy-existence in aesthetic passion, therefore paradoxical and running aground
on time. At its maximum, it is despair. Consequently, it is not existence, but
existence-possibility oriented toward existence, and brought so close that one
almost feels how every moment is wasted in which a decision has not yet been
reached. But the existence-possibility in the existing A does not want to be
conscious of this and holds existence at bay by the most subtle of deceptions,
by thinking. He has thought everything possible, and yet has not existed at
all. The result is that only the Diapsalmata are purely outpourings, whereas
the rest has rich intrinsic thought-content, which can easily deceive, as if
having thought about something were identical with existing. If a poet had
designed the work, he would hardly have thought of this and perhaps, by means
of the work itself, would have promoted the old misunderstanding again. In
other words, the relation must not be between immature and immature thinking,
but between not existing and existing. Therefore, as a thinker, A is advanced;
as a dialectician, he is far superior to B. He possesses all the seductive
gifts of understanding and intellect; it thereby becomes more clear what makes
B differ from him." (CUP, Hong, p. 253; Lowrie, pp. 226-27)
#
"Part II is an
ethical individual existing on the basis of the ethical. Part II is also that
which brings out Part I, since A would in turn have conceived of being an
author as a possibility, actually carry it out—and then leave it there. (CUP,
Hong, p. 253; Lowrie, p. 227)
#
"Having gone through
phantasmal, nebulous images, through the distractions of a luxuriant
thought-content (the development of which, if it is good for anything, is the
author's chief merit), one comes to a very specific human being existing on the
basis of the ethical. There is a change of scenery, or, more correctly, now the
scene is there; instead of a world of possibility, animated by imagination and
dialectically arranged, an individual has come into existence—and the only
truth that builds up is truth for you—that is, truth is inwardness, the
inwardness of existence, please note, and here in ethical definition."
(CUP, Hong, p. 254; Lowrie, p. 227)
#
"There is no
didacticizing, but this does not mean that there is no thought content; to
think is one thing and to exist in what has been thought is something
else." (CUP, Hong, p. 254; Lowrie, p. 228)
#
"The transparency of
thought in existence is inwardness." (CUP, Hong, p. 255; Lowrie, p. 228)
#
"If it were to be
pointed out clearly in E/O where the discrepancy lies, the book would have
needed to have a religious orientation instead of an ethical orientation and
would already have said all at once what in my opinion should be said only
successively. The discrepancy was not touched upon at all, and that was quite
in accord with my design. Of course, whether this point had been clear to the
author, I do not know." (CUP, Hong, 257-58; Lowrie, p. 230)
#
"It is in this moment of
decision that the individual needs divine assistance, although it is quite
correct that one must first have understood the existence-relation between the
esthetic and the ethical to be at this point—that is, by being there in passion
and inwardness, one indeed becomes aware of the religious—and of the leap.
Furthermore, the definition of truth as inwardness, that it is upbuilding, must
be explicitly understood before it is even religious, to say nothing of being
Christianly religious. It
holds true of everything upbuilding that it first and foremost evokes the
requisite adequate terror, because otherwise the upbuilding is make-believe.
With the passion of the infinite, the ethicist in the moment of despair had
chosen himself out of the terror of having
himself, his life, his actuality, in esthetic dreams, in depression, in
hiddness." (CUP, Hong, p. 258; Lowrie, p. 230) "
(CUP, Hong, p. 258; Lowrie, p. 230)
#
"For the
person who with infinite passion has had the inwardness to grasp the ethical,
to grasp duty and the eternal validity of the universal, no terror in heaven,
on earth, and in the abyss can compare with of facing a collision in which the
ethical becomes the temptation. Yet everyone faces this collision, if in no
other way , then by one's being religiously assigned to relating oneself to the
religious paradigm—that is, because the religious paradigm is the irregularity
and yet is supposed to be the paradigm (which like God's omnipresence as
invisibility and revelation as a mystery), or because the religious paradigm
does not express the universal but the singular (the particular , for example,
by appealing to visions, dreams, etc.) and yet is supposed to be the
paradigm." (CUP, Hong, p. 259; Lowrie, p. 231)
#
"Repetition is basically
the expression for immanence; thus one finishes despairing and has oneself; one
finishes doubting and has the truth. Constantin Constantius, the esthetic
schemer, who ordinarily despairs of nothing, despairs of repetition, and the
Young Man illustrates that if it is to come into existence it must be a new
immediacy, so that it is itself a movement by virtue of the absurd, and
the teleological suspension an ordeal." (CUP, Hong, p. 263; Lowrie,
p. 235)
#
"The teleological
suspension of the ethical must have an even more definite religious expression.
The ethical is then present at every moment with its infinite requirement, but
the individual is not capable of fulfilling it. This powerlessness of the
individual must not be seen as an imperfection in the continued endeavor to
attain an ideal, for in that case the suspension is no more postulated than the
man who administers his office in an ordinary way is suspended. The suspension consists
in the individual's finding himself in a state exactly opposite to what the
ethical requires. Therefore, far from being able to begin, every moment he
continues in this state he is more and more prevented from being able to begin;
he relates himself to actuality not as a possibility but as
impossibility." (CUP, Hong, pp. 266-67; Lowrie, p. 238)
#
"The ethicist in
Either/Or did indeed give a religious touch to the ethical category of choosing
oneself by accompanying the act of despair with repenting oneself out of
continuity with the race, but this was a vitiation that no doubt had its basis
in the aim of keeping the work ethical—quite as if in accordance with my
wishes—namely, in order that every factor could become clear separately."
(CUP, Hong, p. 268; Lowrie, p. 239)
#
"This is how matters
stood when a book titled The Concept of Anxiety was published—a simple,
psychologically oriented deliberation on the dogmatic issue of hereditary
sin." (CUP, Hong, p. 268)
#
"But if it is a
misfortune of our age that it has come to know too much, has forgotten what it
means to exist and what inwardness is, then it is important that sin not be
conceived in abstract categories, in which it cannot be conceived at all, that
is, decisively, because it stands in an essential relation to existing.
Therefore it was good that the work was a psychological inquiry, which in
itself makes clear that sin cannot find a place in the system, presumably just
like immortality, faith, the paradox, and other concepts that are essentially
related to existing, just what systematic thinking ignores. The expression
'anxiety' does not lead one to think of paragraph-pomposity but rather of
existence-inwardness. Just as 'fear and trembling' is the state of the
teleologically suspended person when God tempts him, so also is anxiety the
teleologically suspended person's state of mind in that desperate exemption
from fulfilling the ethical. When truth is subjectivity, the inwardness of sin
as anxiety in the existing individuality is the greatest possible distance and
the most painful distance from the truth." (CUP, Hong, p. 269; Lowrie, p.
240)
#
"The Concept of
Anxiety differs essentially from the other pseudonymous works in that its
form is direct and even somewhat didactic. Perhaps the author thought that at
this point a communication of knowledge might be necessary before a transition
could be made to inward deepening. The latter task pertains to someone who is
presumed essentially to possess knowledge and who does not merely need to know
something but rather needs to be influenced. The somewhat didactic form of the
book was undoubtedly the reason it found little favor in the eyes of the
assistant professors as compared to the other pseudonymous works. " (CUP,
Hong, pp. 269-70; Lowrie, p. 241)
#
"That subjectivity,
inwardness, is truth was my thesis. I have tried to show how in my view the
pseudonymous authors tend toward this thesis, which at its maximum is
Christianity. That it is also possible to exist with inwardness also outside
Christianity, the Greeks among others have adequately shown, but in our day
things seem actually to have gone so far that we are all Christians and
knowledgeable about Christianity, it is already a rarity to encounter a person
who has even as much existing inwardness as a pagan philosopher." (CUP,
Hong, pp. 278-79; Lowrie, p. 248)
#
"But what does it mean
to have actually reflected oneself out of the immediate without having
become a master in the comic—what does it mean? Well, it means that one is
lying. What does it mean to give assurances that one has reflected oneself out
and to communicate this in direct form as information—what does it mean? Well,
it means that one is lying. In the world
of spirit, the different stages are not like cities on a journey, about which
it is quite all right for the traveler to say directly, for example: We left
Peking and came to Canton and were in Canton on the fourteenth. A traveler like
that changes place, not himself: and thus it is all right for him to mention
and to recount the change in a
direct, unchanged form. But in the world of spirit to change place is to be
changed oneself, and therefore all direct assurance of having arrived here and
there is an attempt à la Münchhausen.” (CUP, Hong, p. 281; Lowrie, p. 250)
#
"I know very well that
people usually admire the artist-life of a person who follows his talent
without accounting to himself for what it means to be human, so that the
admirer forgets him in admiration over his work of art. But I also know that
the tragedy of an existing person of that sort is that he is a variant and the
differential is not personally reflected in the ethical. I also know that in
Greece a thinker was not a stunted existing person who produced works of art,
but he himself was an existing work of art." (CUP, Hong, p. 303; Lowrie,
p.269)
#
Hegel is perfectly and
absolutely right in maintaining that, looked at eternally, sub specie
aeterni, there is no aut/aut in the language of abstraction, in pure
thought, in pure being. Where in the devil would it be, since abstraction,
after all, simply removes the contradiction; therefore Hegel and the Hegelians
should instead take the trouble to explain what is meant by the masquerade of
getting contradiction, movement, transition, etc., into logic. The defenders of
aut/aut are in the wrong if they push their way into the territory of
pure thinking and want to defend their cause there. (CUP, Hong, p. 305; Lowrie,
p.270)
#
"But where everything is
in the process of becoming, where only so much of the eternal is present that
it can have a constraining effect in the passionate decision, 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." (CUP, Hong, p. 307; Lowrie,
p. 272)
#
"Here again is an
example of how the simplest task is the most difficult. To exist, one thinks,
is nothing much, even less an art. Of course, we all exist, but to think
abstractly—that is something. But truly to exist, that is, to permeate one's
existence with consciousness, simultaneously to be eternal, far beyond it, as
it were, and nevertheless present in it and nevertheless in a process of
becoming—that is truly difficult. (CUP, Hong, p 308; Lowrie, p. 273)
#
"For the existing
person, existing is for him his highest interest, and his interestedness in
existing is his actuality. What actuality is cannot be rendered in the language
of abstraction. Actuality is an inter-esse
[between-being] between thinking and being in the hypothetical unity of
abstraction. Abstraction deals with possibility and actuality, but its
conception of actuality is a false rendition, since the medium is not
actuality, but possibility." (CUP, Hong, p. 314; Lowrie, p. 279)
#
"The actual subjectivity
is not the knowing subjectivity, because with knowledge he is in the medium of
possibility, but in the ethical existing subjectivity." (CUP, Hong, p. 316; Lowrie, p. 281)
#
"The Cartesian cogito
ergo sum [I think therefore I am] has been repeated often enough. If the I
in cogito is understood to be an individual human being, then the
statement demonstrates nothing: I am thinking ergo I am, but if I am
thinking, no wonder, then, that I am; after all, it has already been said, and
the first consequently says even more than the last. If then, by the I in cogito
one understands a single individual existing human being, philosophy shouts:
foolishness, foolishness, here is not a matter of my I or your I
but of the pure I. But surely this pure I can have no other
existence but thought existence." (CUP, Hong, p. 317; Lowrie, p. 281)
#
"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. Therefore the ethical wants to prevent every attempt at
confusion, such as, for example, wanting to
observe the world and human beings ethically. That is, to observe ethically
cannot be done, because there is only one ethical observing – it is
self-observation." (CUP, Hong, p. 320; Lowrie, p. 284)
#
"The ethical can only be
carried out by the individual subject, who is then able to know what lives
within him – the only actuality that does not become a possibility by being
known and cannot be known only by being thought, since it is his own actuality,
which he knew as thought-actuality, that is, as possibility, before it became
actuality, whereas with regard to another's actuality he knew nothing about it
before he, by coming to know it, thought it, that is, changed it into
possibility." (CUP, Hong, pp. 320-21; Lowrie, p. 284)
#
"With regard to every
actuality outside myself, it holds true that I can grasp it only in thinking.
If I were actually able 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. That is, if I make the
actuality alien to me into my own actuality, it does not mean that by knowing
it I become he, but it means a new actuality that belongs to me as different
from him." (CUP, Hong, p. 321; Lowrie, p. 285)
#
"Scripture teaches:
"Judge not, that you not be judged." This is said as an admonition
and warning, but it is also an impossibility. One person cannot ethically judge
another, because the one can understand the other only as a possibility. Thus,
when someone is occupied with wanting to judge another,, this is a
manifestation of his weakness, that he was only judging himself." (CUP,
Hong, p. 322; Lowrie, p. 286)
#
"What then is actuality?
It is the ideality. But aesthetically and intellectually ideality is the
possibility (a transfer ab esse ad posse). Ethically, the ideality is
the actuality within the individual himself. Actuality is interiority
infinitely interested in existing; which the ethical individual is for
himself." (CUP, Hong, p. 325; Lowrie, p. 289
#
"The individual's own
ethical reality is the only reality. – That this seems strange to many does not
surprise me." (CUP, Hong, p. 327; Lowrie, p. 291)
#
"If existing can not be
thought, and the existing person is thinking nevertheless, what does this mean?
It means that he thinks momentarily; he thinks before and he thinks after. His
thinking cannot attain absolute continuity. Only in a fantastical way can an
existing person continually be sub specie
aeterni." (CUP, Hong, p. 329; Lowrie, p. 293)
#
"To give thinking
supremacy over everything else is gnosticism; to make the subjective
individual's ethical actuality the only actuality could seem to be acosmism.
That it will so appear to a busy thinker who must explain everything, a hasty
pate who traverses the whole world, demonstrates only that he has a very poor
idea of what the ethical means for the subjective individual. If ethics
deprived such a busy thinker of the whole world and let him keep his own self,
he would very likely think, ‘Is this anything? Such a trifling thing is not
worth keeping. Let it go along with all the rest’ –then, then it is acosmism.
But why does a busy thinker like that talk and think so disrespectfully of
himself? Indeed, if the intention were that he should give up the whole world
and be satisfied with another’s person’s ethical actuality, well, then he would
be in the right to make light of the exchange. But to the individual his own
ethical actuality ought to mean, ethically, even more than heaven and earth and
everything found therein, more than world's history's six thousand years, and
more than astrology, veterinary science, together with everything the times
demand, which esthetically and intellectually is a prodigious
narrow-mindedness. If it is not so, it is the worst for the individual himself,
because then he has nothing at all, no actuality at all, because to everything
else he has at the very most only a relation of possibility." (CUP, Hong,
p. 341; Lowrie, p.305)
#
"The transition from
possibility to actuality is, as Aristotle rightly teaches, 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 presupposes
it or which it presupposes. There is a halt, a leap. When someone says that
this is because I am thinking of something definite and not abstracting, since
in that case I would discern that there is no break, then my repeated answer
would be: Quite right; abstractly thought, there is no break, but no transition
either, because viewed abstractly everything is. However, when existence
gives movement time and I reproduce this, then the leap appears in just a way a
leap can appear: it must come or it has been. Let us take an example from the
ethical. It has been said often enough that the good has its reward in itself,
and thus it is not only the most proper but also the most sagacious thing to
will the good. A sagacious eudaemonist is able to perceive this very well:
thinking in the form of possibility, he can come as close to the good as is
possible, because in possibility as in abstraction the transition is only an
appearance. But when the transition is supposed to become actual, all sagacity
expires in scruples. Actual time separates the good and reward from him so
much, so eternally, that sagacity cannot join them again, and the eudaemonist
declines with thanks. To will the good is indeed the most sagacious thing—yet
not as understood by sagacity but as understood by the good. The transition is
clear enough as a break, indeed, as a suffering." (CUP, Hong, pp. 342-43;
Lowrie, p. 306)
#
"Subjectivity is truth;
subjectivity is actuality." (CUP, Hong, p. 343; Lowrie, p. 306)
#
"The subjective thinker
is a dialectician oriented to the existential; he has the intellectual passion
to hold firm the qualitative disjunction. But, on the other hand, if the
qualitative disjunction is used flatly and simply, if it is applied altogether
abstractly to the individual human being, then one can run the ludicrous risk
of saying something infinitely decisive,
and of being right in what one says, and still not say the least thing."
(CUP, Hong, p. 350; Lowrie, p. 313)
#
"When the death penalty
is placed on every crime, the result is that no crimes are punished. It is the
same with the absolute disjunction when applied flatly and simply; it is just
like a silent letter—it cannot be pronounced or, if it can, it says nothing.
The subjective thinker, therefore, has with intellectual passion the absolute
disjunction as belonging to existence, but he has it as the final decision that
prevents everything from ending in a quantifying. Thus he has it readily available,
but not in a way that by abstractly recurring to it he just frustrates
existence. The subjective thinker, therefore, has also esthetic passion and
ethical passion, whereby concretion is gained. All existence-issues are
passionate, because existence, if one becomes conscious of it, involves
passion." (CUP, Hong, pp. 350-51;
Lowrie, p. 313)
#
"The subjective
thinker’s task is to understand himself
in existence." (CUP, Hong, p. 351; Lowrie, p. 313)
#
"Instead of having the
task of understanding the concrete abstractly, as abstract thinking has, the
subjective thinker has the opposite task of understanding the abstract
concretely. Abstract thinking turns from the concrete human beings to
human-kind in general; the subjective thinker understands the abstract concept
to be the concrete human being, to be this individual existing human
being." (CUP, Hong, p. 352; Lowrie, p. 315)
#
"In a certain sense, the
subjective thinker speaks just as abstractly as the abstract thinker, because
the latter speaks about humanity in general, subjectivity in general, the other
about one human being (unum noris omnes
[if you know one, you know all]). But this one human being is an existing human
being, and the difficulty is not left out. To understand oneself in existence
is also the Christian principle,
except that this self has received
much richer and much more profound qualifications that are even more difficult
to understand together with existing. The believer is a subjective thinker, and
the difference, as shown above, is only between the simple person and the
simple wise person. Here again this oneself
is not humanity in general, subjectivity in general, and other such things,
whereby everything becomes easy inasmuch as the difficulty is removed and the
whole matter is shifted over into the shadow play of abstraction." (CUP,
Hong, p. 353; Lowrie, p. 316)
#
“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. The
systematic eins, zwei, drei is an abstract
form that also must inevitably run into trouble whenever it is to be applied to
the concrete. To the same degree as the subjective thinker is concrete, to the
same degree his form must be concretely dialectical. But just as he himself is
not a poet, not an ethicist, not a dialectician, so also his form is none of
theirs directly. His form must first and last be related to existence, and in
this regard he must have at his disposal the poetic, the ethical, the
dialectical, the religious. Compared with that of a poet, his form will be
abbreviated; compared with that of an abstract dialectician, his form will be
broad. That is, viewed abstractly, concretion in the existential is breadth.
For example, relative to abstract thinking the humorous is breadth, but
relative to concrete existence-communication it is by no means breadth, unless
it is broad in itself. Relative to his thought, an abstract thinker’s person is
a matter of indifference, but existentially a thinker must be presented
essentially as a thinking person, but in such a way that as he expresses his
thought he also describes himself. Relative to abstract thinking, jest is
breadth, but relative to concrete existence-communication it is not breadth if
the jest itself is not broad. But because the subjective thinker is himself
essentially an existing person in existence and does not have the medium of
imagination for the illusion of esthetic production, he does not have the
poetic repose to create in the medium of imagination and esthetically to
accomplish something disinterestedly. Relative to the subjective thinker’s
existence-communication, poetic repose is breadth. Subordinate characters,
setting, etc., which belong to the well balanced character of the esthetic production,
are in themselves breadth; the subjective thinker has only one
setting—existence—and has nothing to do with localities and such things. The
setting is not in the fairyland of the imagination, where poetry produces
consummation, nor is the setting laid in England, and historical accuracy is
not a concern. The setting is inwardness in existing as a human being; the
concretion is the relation of the existence-categories to one another.
Historical accuracy and historical actuality are breadth. “ (CUP, Hong, pp.
357-58; Lowrie, pp. 319-320)
#
"The reader of the
fragment of philosophy in Fragments will recollect that the pamphlet was
not didactic but imaginatively constructing. It took its point of departure in
paganism in order by imaginatively constructing to discover an understanding of
existence that truly could be said to go beyond paganism. (CUP, Hong, p. 361;
Lowrie p. 323)
#
"When Christianity
entered into the world, people were not Christians, and the difficulty was to
become a Christian; nowadays the difficulty in becoming a Christian is that one
must self-actively transform an initial being-Christian into a possibility in
order to become a Christian in truth."
(CUP, Hong, p. 365; Lowrie, p. 326)
#
"In short: it is easier to become a Christian if I am
not a Christian than to become a Christian if I am one, and this decision is
reserved for the person who has been baptized as an infant." (CUP, Hong, p. 366; Lowrie, p. 327)
#
"In relation to an
eternal happiness as the absolute good, pathos does not mean words but that
this idea transforms the whole existence of an existing person. Esthetic pathos
expresses itself in words and can in truth signify that the individual abandons
himself in order to lose himself in the idea, whereas existential pathos results
from the transforming relation of the idea to the individual's existence. If
the absolute telos [end, goal] does not absolutely transform the
individual's existence by relating to it, then the individual does not relate
himself with existential pathos but with esthetic pathos—for example, by having
a correct idea, but, please note, by which he is outside himself in the
ideality with the correctness of the idea in the ideality of actuality, is not
himself transformed into the actuality of the idea." (CUP, Hong, p. 387;
Lowrie, p. 347 )
#
"The point here as
everywhere is to keep the specific spheres separated from one another, to
respect the qualitative dialectic, the tug of decision that changes everything,
so that what was the highest in another sphere must be absolutely rejected in
this. With regard to the religious, the point is that this has passed through
the ethical." (CUP, Hong, p. 388; Lowrie, p. 347)
#
"Ethically the highest
pathos is the pathos of interestedness (which is expressed in this way, that I,
acting, transform my whole existence in relation to the object of interest);
esthetically the highest pathos is the pathos of disinterestedness. If an
individual throws himself away in order to grasp something great, he is
esthetically inspired; if he gives up everything in order to save himself, he
is ethically inspired." (CUP, Hong , pp. 390-91; Lowrie, p. 350).
#
"But one of the
gentlemen wishers, a 'serious man' who really wants to do something for his
eternal happiness, may say, 'Is it not possible to find out for certain,
clearly and briefly, what an eternal happiness is? Can't you describe it to me
while I shave, just as one describes the loveliness of a woman, the royal
purple, or distant regions?' It is good that I cannot do it, good that I am not
of a poetic nature or a kindly clergyman, because then I would be capable of
beginning to do it, and perhaps I might succeed—in once again subsuming eternal
happiness under esthetic categories so that the maximum of pathos would become
the marvelousness of description, even though it is a task that esthetically is
enough to despair over—esthetically to have to make something out of an
abstraction such as eternal happiness."
(CUP, Hong, pp. 392-93; Lowrie, pp. 351-52)
#
"All relative willing is
distinguished by willing something for something else, but the highest telos must be willed for its own sake.
And this highest telos is not a
something, because then it relatively corresponds to something else and is
finite. But it is a contradiction absolutely to will something finite, since
the finite must indeed come to an end, and consequently there must come a time
when it can no longer be willed. But to will absolutely is to will the
infinite, and to will an eternal happiness is to will absolutely, because it
must be capable of being willed at every moment. And the reason it is so
abstract and viewed esthetically, the meagerest of conceptions is that it is
the absolute telos for a person who
wills and strives absolutely—and does not thoughtlessly imagine that he is
finished and does not foolishly become involved in haggling, whereby he only
loses the absolute telos. And the reason it is foolishness in the finite sense
is precisely that it is the absolute telos
in the infinite sense. The person who wills does not want to know anything
about this telos except that it
exists, because as soon as he finds out something about it, he already begins
to be slowed down in his pace." (CUP, Hong, p. 394; Lowrie, p. 353)
#
"But the pathos lies in
the individual's expressing this existentially in existence; the pathos lies
not in testifying to an eternal happiness but in transforming one's own
existence into a testimony to it. Poetic pathos is a pathos of difference, but
existential pathos is the poor man's pathos, the pathos for everyone, because
every human being can act within himself, and at times one finds in a
maidservant the pathos sought in vein in the existence of a poet. The
individual himself can then easily examine how he relates himself to an eternal
happiness or whether he relates himself to it. He needs only to allow
resignation to inspect his entire immediacy with all its desires etc. If he
finds a single point, an obduracy, he is not relating to himself to an eternal
happiness. Nothing is easier – that is, if it is difficult, it is just because
his immediacy is unwilling to expose itself to inspection; but that, of course,
is already more than sufficient evidence that the individual is not relating
himself to an eternal happiness. When resignation makes a visitation to
immediacy, it gives notice that the individual must not have his life in it,
and resignation gives it notice of what can happen in life." (CUP, Hong,
pp. 394-95; Lowrie, p. 353)
#
"The individual does not
cease to be a human being, does not take off the multitudinously compounded
suit of finitude in order to put on the abstract attire of the monastery, but
he does not mediate between the absolute telos and the finite. In
immediacy, the individual is firmly rooted in the finite; when resignation is
convinced that the individual has the absolute orientation toward the absolute telos,
everything is changed, the roots are cut. He lives in the finite, but he does
not have his life in it. His life, like the life of another, has the diverse
predicates of a human existence, but he is within them like the person who
walks in a stranger's borrowed clothes. He is a stranger in the world of
finitude, but he does not define his difference from the worldiness by
foreign dress (this is a contradiction, since with that he defines himself in a
worldly way); he is incognito, but his incognito consists in looking like
everyone else." (CUP, Hong, p. 410; Lowrie, p. 367)
#
"Ethics, therefore, must
also denounce all the jubilation heard in our day over having surmounted
reflection. Who is it who is supposed to have surmounted reflection? An
existing person. But existence itself is the sphere of reflection, and an
existing person is in existence and therefore in reflection—how, then, does he
go about surmounting it? (CUP, Hong, p. 421; Lowrie, p. 377)
#
"The point is this: the
individual first becomes infinitized by the daring venture; it is not the same
individual and the daring venture is not one among several undertakings, one
more predicate about the one and same individual—no, through the daring venture
he himself becomes someone else. Before he has made the venture, he can only
understand it as lunacy (and this is far preferable to being a thoughtless
blatherpate who sits and fancies that he understands it as wisdom—and yet
desists from doing it, whereby he denounces himself as a lunatic, whereas the
person who regards it as lunacy still comes off as sagacious by leaving it
alone), and when he has ventured it, he is no longer the same person. Thus the discrimin
[distinctive mark] of the transition gains suitable room, an intervening
chasmic abyss, a suitable setting for the passion of the infinite, a chasm that
the understanding cannot cross over, neither forth or back." (CUP, Hong,
pp. 423-24; Lowrie, 379)
#
"It is always
lunacy to venture, but to venture everything for an expected eternal happiness
is general lunacy. But the question about certainty and definiteness is
sagacity; because it is a subterfuge in order to avoid the strenuousness of
action and venturing and shades the issue into knowledge and nonsensical talk.
No, if I, acting, am truly to venture and truly to aspire to the highest good,
then there must be uncertainty and, if I may put it this way, I must have room
to move. But the greatest space in which I can move, where there is space
enough for the most rigorous gesture of infinite passion, is uncertainty of
knowledge with regard to an eternal happiness, or that choosing it is lunacy in
the finite sense—see, now there is room, now you can venture!" (CUP, Hong, p. 426; Lowrie 381-82)
#
"Therefore
eternal happiness, as the absolute good, has the remarkable quality that it can be defined only in the mode in which
it is acquired, whereas other goods, just because the mode of acquisition
is accidental or at any rate relatively dialectical, must be defined by the
good itself. Money, for example, can be acquired by work and can also be
obtained without work, and in turn both are different in many ways, but money
still remains the same good. Knowledge, for example, is acquired differently
according to talent and outward circumstances and therefore cannot be defined
by the mode of acquisition. But nothing else can be said of eternal happiness
than that it is the good that is attained by absolutely venturing everything." (CUP, Hong, pp. 426-27; Lowrie, p. 382)
#
From the preceding portion it
must be recalled that existential pathos is action or the transformation of
existence. The appointed task is simultaneously to relate oneself absolutely to
the absolute telos [end, goal] and
relatively to relative ends. But this task must now be understood more
specifically in its concrete difficulty, lest the existential pathos be revoked
within esthetic pathos, as if it were existential pathos to say this once and for all, or once a
month, with the unchanged passion of immediacy. If everything were decided on
paper, one would start on the ideal task at once; but in existence the
beginning must be made by practicing the relation to the absolute telos, and taking power away from immediacy.
On paper, the individual is a third party, a rapid something that is promptly
"at your service." The actual individual is, after all, in immediacy
and to that extent is actually in the relative ends absolutely. (CUP, Hong, p.431; Lowrie, p. 386)
#
"Now the individual
begins, not, please note, by simultaneously relating himself absolutely to the
absolute telos and relatively to the relative ends, but he begins by
practicing the absolute relation through renunciation. The task is ideal and
perhaps is never accomplished by anyone; it is only on paper that one begins
summarily and is promptly finished. In order to relate himself absolutely to
the absolute telos, the individual must have practiced renunciation of
the relative ends, and only then can there be any question of the ideal task:
simultaneously to relate oneself absolutely to the absolute and relatively to
the relative. Not prior to this, because before this has been done the
individual is continually more or less immediate and to that extent relates
himself absolutely to relative ends." (CUP, Hong, pp. 431-32; Lowrie, pp.
386-87)
#
"Our
religious person chooses the way to the amusement park, and why? Because he
dare not choose the way to the monastery. And why does he dare not do that?
Because it is too exclusive. So he goes out there. 'But he does not enjoy
himself,' someone may say. Yes, he does indeed. And why does he enjoy himself?
Because the humblest expression for the relationship with God is acknowledge
one's humanness, and it is human to enjoy oneself." (CUP, Hong, p. 493;
Lowrie, pp. 440-41)
#
"The
meaning of religious suffering is dying to immediacy; its actuality is its
essential continuance, but it belongs to inwardness and must not express itself
externally (the monastic movement). When we take a religious person, the knight
of hidden inwardness, and place him in the existence-medium, a contradiction
will appear as he relates himself to the world around him, and he himself must
become aware of this. The contradiction does not consist in his being different
from everyone else (this self-contradiction is precisely the law for the
nemesis the comic brings upon the monastic movement), but that the
contradiction is that he, with all this inwardness hidden within him, with this
pregnancy of suffering and benediction in his inner being, looks just like all
the others—and inwardness is indeed hidden simply by his looking exactly like
others.* There is something comic here, because here is a contradiction, and
where there is a contradiction, the comic is also present. This comic aspect,
however, is not for others, who know nothing about it, but is for the religious
person himself when humor is his incognito, as Frater Taciturnus says (see Stages
on Life's Way)."
*
Another author has correctly traced (in Either/Or) the ethical to the
qualification that it is every human being's duty to become open—thus to disclosure.
Religiousness, on the other hand, is hidden inwardness, but, please note, not
the immediacy that is supposed to become open, not the untransformed
inwardness, but the inwardness whose transformed qualification is to be hidden.
–Incidentally, it hardly needs to be recalled that when I say that the
religious person's incognito is to look exactly like all the others, this does
not mean that his incognito is the actuality of a robber, a thief, a murderer,
because the world certainly has not sunk so deep that an open breach of
legality can be regarded as universally human. No, the expression 'to look
exactly like all other human beings' naturally makes sure of legality, but this
may very well also be without there being any religiousness in a
person." (CUP, Hong, pp. 499-500;
Lowrie, pp. 446-47)
#
"Let us take irony. As
soon as an observer discovers an ironist, he will be attentive, because it is
possible that the ironist may be an ethicist. But he can be fooled, because it
is not certain that the ironist is an ethicist. The immediate person is
distinguishable at once, and as soon as he is recognized it is certain that he
is not an ethicist, because he has not made the movement of infinity. The
ironical rejoinder, if it is correct (and the observer is assumed to be a tried
and tested man who knows all about tricking and unsettling the speaker in order
to see if what he says is something learned by rote or has a bountiful ironic
value such as an existing ironist will always have), betrays that the speaker
has made the movement of infinity, but no more." (CUP, Hong, p. 502;
Lowrie, p. 448 )
#
"The irony emerges by
continually joining the particulars of the finite with the ethical infinite
requirement and allowing the contradiction to come into existence." (CUP,
Hong, p. 502; Lowrie, p. 448)
#
"If
someone would say: Repentance is a contradiction, ergo it is comic—one would
promptly see that this is nonsense. Repentance is in the ethical-religious
sphere and thus is qualified in such a way that it has only one higher sphere,
namely, the religious in the strictest sense." (CUP, Hong, pp. 518-19; Lowrie p. 463)
#
“The dialectical reader will
readily see that this investigation is going backward instead of forward. In §1
the task was assigned: simultaneously to relate oneself absolutely to the
absolute telos (end, goal) and
relatively to relative ends. Just as a beginning was to be made on this, it
appeared that first of all immediacy had to be surmounted or the individual had
to die to it before there could be any question of carrying out the task in §1.
§2 made suffering the essential expression of the existential pathos, suffering
as dying to immediacy, suffering as the distinctive mark of an existing
person’s relation to the absolute telos.
In §3, guilt is made the decisive expression of the existential pathos, and the
distance from the task in §1 is even greater, yet not in such a way that the task
is forgotten but in such a way that the examination, with an eye on the task
and immersing itself in existence, goes backward. That is, this is what happens
in existence, and the examination seeks to reproduce it." (CUP, Hong, pp.525-26; Lowrie, pp. 468-69)
#
"And just as the
beginning is about to be made here, it is discovered that, since meanwhile time
has been passing, a bad beginning has been made and that the beginning must be
made by becoming guilty, and from that moment total guilt, which is decisive,
practices usury with new guilt." (CUP, Hong. P. 526; Lowrie, p. 469)
#
"This backwards movement
is nevertheless a forward movement inasmuch as immersing oneself in something
means to go forward. The deception in abstracto and on paper is that the
individual, like Icarus, is supposed to be up and off in the ideal task. But
this progress, as chimerical, is sheer retrogression, and that every time an
existing person begins anything like that, the inspector of existence (the
ethical) notices him, notices that he is making himself guilty, even if he does
not notice it. But the more the individual with the task immerses himself in
existence, the more he goes forward, although the expression, if you please
goes backward. But just as all more profound deliberation is a return to the
ground, so the task's recall to the more concrete is an immersion in
existence." (CUP, Hong, p. 527; Lowrie, p. 469)
#
“But how can the
consciousness of guilt become the decisive expression for an existing person’s
pathos-filled relation to an eternal happiness, and in such a way that every
existing person who does not have this consciousness is eo ipso not relating himself to his eternal happiness? Indeed, one
would think that this consciousness expresses that one is not relating oneself
to it, decisively expresses that it is lost and the relation abandoned. The
answer is not difficult. Because it is the existing person who is supposed to
relate himself to it, but guilt is the most concrete expression of existence,
the consciousness of guilt is the expression for the relation.” (CUP, Hong, pp.
527-28; Lowrie, p. 470)
#
"So, then, the existing
person would be able to shove the guilt away from himself onto existence, or
onto the one who placed him in existence, and thus be without guilt. Without
any ethical thunder, let us simply and dialectically look where we are going.
The proposed procedure contains a contradiction. It can never occur to someone
who is essentially guiltless to shove guilt away from himself, because the
guiltless person has nothing at all to do with the category of guilt.
Therefore, when in a particular case someone shoves the guilt away from himself
and considers himself without guilt, at that very same moment he makes a
concession, that on the whole he is the one who is essentially guilty, except
that in this particular case he possibly is not guilty." (CUP, Hong, p.
528; Lowrie, p. 470)
#
"Thus the essential
consciousness of guilt is the greatest possible immersion in existence , and it
also expresses that an existing person relates himself to an eternal happiness
(the childish and comparative guilt-consciousness relates itself to itself and
to the comparative),expresses the relation by expressing the misrelation. Yet
even though the consciousness is ever so decisive, it is always the relation
that carries the misrelation, except that the existing person cannot get a firm
hold of the relation because the misrelation continually places itself in
between as the expression for the relation. But on the other hand, they still
do not repel each other (the eternal happiness and the existing person) so that
a break establishes itself as such; on the contrary, it is only by being held
together that the misrelation repeats itself as the decisive consciousness of
essential guilt, not of this or that guilt." (CUP, Hong, pp. 531-32;
Lowrie, p. 473-74)
#
"Humor as the confinium
[border territory] of the religiousness of hidden inwardness comprehends the
totality of the guilt-consciousness. Therefore the humorist seldom speaks of
this or that guilt, because he comprehends the total, or he incidentally
stresses this or that particular guilt because the totality is thereby
indirectly expressed." (CUP, Hong, p. 550; Lowrie, p. 489)
#
"Humor discovers the
comic by joining the total guilt together with all the relativity between
individuals. The basis of the comic is the underlying total guilt that sustains
this whole comedy. In other words, if essential guiltlessness or goodness
underlies the relative, it is not comic, because it is not comic that one
stipulates more or less within the positive qualification. But if the
relativity is based upon the total guilt, then the more or less is based upon
that which is less than nothing, and this is the contradiction that the comic
discovers." (CUP, Hong, p. 554-55; Lowrie, p. 493)
#
"The issue set forth
(see Section II, Chapter IV) was an existence-issue and as such pathos-filled
and dialectical. The first subdivision (A), the pathos-filled part, the
relation to an eternal happiness, has been discussed. Now we shall proceed to
the dialectical subdivision (B), which is the decisive part for the issue. The
religiousness that has been discussed up until now and for the sake of brevity
will now be termed Religiousness A and is not specifically Christian religiousness.
On the other hand, the dialectical is decisive only insofar as it is joined
together with the pathos-filled and gives rise to the new pathos." (CUP,
Hong, p. 555; Lowrie, p. 493)
#
"Ordinarily,
one is not simultaneously aware of both parts. The religious address will
represent the pathos-filled and cross out the dialectical, and
therefore—however well intentioned, at times a jumbled, noisy pathos of all
sorts, esthetics, ethics, Religiousness A,
and Christianity—it is therefore at times self-contradictory; 'but there are
lovely passages in it,' especially lovely for the person who is supposed to act
and exist according to it. The dialectical has its revenge by covertly and
ironically mocking the gestures and big words, and above all by its ironic
critique of a religious address—that it can very well be heard, but it cannot
be done." (CUP, Hong, pp. 555-56)
#
"Scientific
scholarship wants to take charge of the dialectical and to that end bring it
over into the medium of abstraction, whereby the issue is again mistreated,
since it is an existence-issue, and the actual dialectical difficulty
disappears by being explained in the medium of abstraction, which ignores
existence. If the turbulent religious address is for sentimental people who are
quick to sweat and to be sweated out, then the speculative interpretation is
for pure thinkers; but neither of the two is for acting and, by virtue of
acting, for existing human beings." (CUP, Hong, p. 556; Lowrie, p. 494)
#
"The distinction between
the pathos-filled and the dialectical must, however, be qualified more
specifically, because Religiousness A
is by no means undialectical. Religiousness A
is the dialectic of inward deepening; it is the relation to an eternal
happiness that is not conditioned by a something but is the dialectical inward
deepening of the relation, consequently conditioned only by the inward
deepening, which is dialectical. On the other hand, Religiousness B, as it will be called from now on, or
paradoxical religiousness, as it has been called, or the religiousness that has
the dialectical in the second place, makes conditions in such a way that the
conditions are not the dialectical concentrations of inward deepening, but a
definite something that qualifies the eternal happiness more specifically
(whereas in A the more specific
qualification of inward deepening is only a more specific qualification), not
by qualifying more specifically the individual's appropriation of it but by
qualifying more specifically the eternal happiness, yet not as a task for
thinking but as paradoxically repelling and giving rise to a new
pathos." (Hong, p. 556; Lowrie, p.
494)
#
"Religiousness A must be present in the individual
before there can be any consideration of becoming aware of the dialectical B. When the individual in the most
decisive expression of existential pathos relates himself to an eternal
happiness, then there can be consideration of becoming aware of how the
dialectical in the second place (secundo loco) thrusts him down into the
pathos of the absurd. Thus it is evident how foolish it is if a person without
pathos wants to relate himself to the essentially Christian, because before
there can be any question at all of simply being in the situation of becoming
aware of it one must first of all exist in Religiousness A." (CUP, Hong, p. 556-57; Lowrie, p. 494-95)
#
"Note. Insofar as the
upbuilding is the essential predicate of all religiousness, Religiousness A also has its upbuilding. Wherever the
relationship with God is found by the existing person in the inwardness of
subjectivity, there is the upbuilding, which belongs to subjectivity, whereas
by becoming objective one relinquishes that which, although belonging to
subjectivity, is nevertheless no more arbitrariness than erotic love and being
in love, which indeed one also relinquishes by becoming objective. The totality
of guilt-consciousness is the most upbuilding element in Religiousness A.*
The upbuilding element in the sphere of Religiousness A is that of immanence, is the
annihilation in which the individual sets himself aside in order to find God,
since it is the individual himself who is the hindrance. ** Here the upbuilding is quite properly
distinguishable by the negative, by the self-annihilation that finds the
relationship with God within itself, that suffering-through sinks into the
relationship with God, finds its ground in it, because God is in the ground
only when everything in the way is cleared out, every finitude, and first and
foremost the individual in his finitude, in his caviling against God.
Esthetically, the sacred resting place of the upbuilding is outside the
individual; he seeks that place. In the ethical-religious sphere, the
individual himself is the place, if the individual has annihilated himself.
This is the upbuilding of
Religiousness A. If one does not pay
attention to this and to having this qualification of the upbuilding in
between, everything is confused again as one defines the paradoxical
upbuilding, which then is mistakenly identified with an external esthetic
relation. In religiousness B, the
upbuilding is something outside the individual; the individual does not find
the upbuilding by finding the relationship with God within himself but relates
himself to something outside himself in order to find the upbuilding. The
paradox is that this apparently esthetic relationship, that the individual
relates himself to something outside himself, nevertheless is to be the
absolute relationship with God, because in immanence God is neither a
something, but everything, and is infinitely everything, not outside the
individual, because the upbuilding consists in his being within the individual.
The paradoxical upbuilding therefore corresponds to the category of God in time
as an individual human being, because, if that is the case, the individual
relates himself to something outside himself.
That this cannot be thought
is precisely the paradox. Whether the individual is not thrust back from this
is another matter – that remains his affair. But if the paradox is not held
fast in this way, then Religiousness A
is higher, and all Christianity is pushed back into the esthetic categories,
despite Christianity’s insistence that the paradox it speaks about cannot be
thought, is thus different from a relative paradox, which at best can be
thought with difficulty. It must be conceded to speculative thought that it
holds to immanence, even though it must be understood as different than Hegel’s
pure thinking, but speculative thought must not call itself Christian. That is
why I have never called Religiousness A
Christian or Christianity.
*The reader will please
recall that the direct relationship with God is esthetics and is actually no
relationship with God, any more than a direct relationship to the absolute is
an absolute relation, since the separation of the absolute has not commenced.
In the religious sphere, the positive is distinguished by the negative. The
highest well-being of a happy immediacy, which jubilates joy over God and all
existence, is very endearing but not upbuilding and essentially not any
relationship with God.
**The esthetic always
consists in the individual's fancying that he has been busy reaching for God
and taking hold of him, consequently in the illusion that the undialectical
individual is really clever if he can take hold of God as something
external." (CUP, Hong, Note pp. 560-61: Lowrie, pp. 497-98)
#
"THE DIALECTICAL
This is
essentially what Fragments has dealt with; therefore I may continually refer to
it and can be briefer. The difficulty is only to hold fast to the qualitative
dialectic of the absolute paradox and to keep the illusions at bay. What can
and shall and will be the absolute paradox, the absurd, the incomprehensible,
depends upon the passion in dialectically holding fast the distinction of
incomprehensibility. Just as in connection with something that can be
understood it is ludicrous to hear superstitious and fanatical, abstruse talk
about its incomprehensibility, so its opposite is equally ludicrous—to see, in
connection with the essentially paradoxical, attempts at wanting to understand
it, as if this were the task and not the qualitatively opposite; to maintain
that it cannot be understood, lest understanding, that is, misunderstanding,
end up by confusing all the other spheres." (CUP, Hong, pp. 561-62; Lowrie, pp. 498-99)
#
"In religiousness A, the
eternal is ubique et nusquam (everywhere and nowhere) but hidden by the
actuality of existence; in the paradoxical-religious, the eternal is present at
a specific point, and this is the break with immanence." (CUP, Hong, p.
571: Lowrie, p. 506)
#
"All interpretations of
existence take their rank in relation to the qualifications of the individual's
dialectical inward deepening. Presupposing what has been developed on this
subject in this book, I shall now only recapitulate and point out that of
course speculative thought plays no role, since, as objective and abstract, it
is indifferent to the category of the existing subjective individual and at the
most deals only with pure humanity. Existence-communication, however,
understands something different by unum (one) in saying unum noris,
omnes (if you know one, you know all), understands something different by
"yourself" in the phrase "know yourself," understands
thereby an actual human being and indicates thereby that the
existence-communication does not occupy itself with the anecdotal differences
between Tom, Dick, and Harry.
If in himself the individual
is undialectical and has dialectic outside himself, then we have the esthetic
interpretations. If the individual is dialectically turned inward in
self-assertion in such a way that the ultimate foundation does not itself
become dialectical, since the underlying self is used to surmount and assert
itself, then we have the ethical interpretation. If the individual is
defined as dialectically turned inward in self-annihilation before God, then we
have Religiousness A. If the individual is paradoxical-dialectical,
every remnant of the original immanence is annihilated, and all connection is
cut away, the individual is situated at the edge of existence, then we have the
paradoxical-religious. This paradoxical inwardness is the greatest
possible, because even the most dialectical qualification, if it is still
within immanence, has, as it were, a possibility of escape, of shifting away,
of a withdrawal into the eternal behind it; it is as everything were not
actually at stake. But the break makes the inwardness the greatest possible.*
*According to this plan, one
will be able to orient oneself and, without being disturbed by anyone's use of
Christ's name and the whole Christian terminology in an esthetic discourse,
will be able to look only at the categories." (CUP, Hong, pp. 571-72;
Lowrie, pp. 506-07)
#
"The various
existence-communications in turn take their rank in relation to the
interpretation of existing. (As abstract and objective, speculative thought
completely disregards existing and inwardness and, since Christianity indeed
paradoxically accentuates existing, is the greatest possible misunderstanding
of Christianity.) Immediacy, the esthetic, finds no contradiction in
existing; to exist is one thing, contradiction is something else that comes
from without. The ethical finds contradiction but within self-assertion.
Religiousness A comprehends
contradiction as suffering in self-annihilation, yet within immanence; but
ethically accentuating existing, it hinders the existing person in abstractly
remaining in immanence or in becoming abstract by wanting to remain in
immanence. The paradoxical-religious breaks with immanence and makes
existing the absolute contradiction—not within immanence but in opposition to
immanence. There is no underlying kinship between the temporal and the eternal,
because the eternal has entered into time and wants to establish kinship
there" (CUP, Hong, pp. 572-73; Lowrie, pp. 507-08)
#
"The issue continually
dealt with here was: how can a historical point of departure be given etc. In
Religiousness A there is no
historical point of departure. Only in the realm of time does the individual
discover that he must presuppose himself to be eternal. The moment in time is
therefore eo ipso swallowed by the eternal. In time, the individual
reflects upon his being eternal. This contradiction is only within immanence.
It is different when the historical is outside and remains outside, and the
individual, who was not eternal, now becomes eternal, and therefore does not
reflect on what he is but becomes what he was not, and please note, becomes
something that has the dialectic that as soon as it is it must have been,
because this is the dialectic of the eternal. –What is inaccessible to all
thinking is: that one can become eternal although one was not eternal.
In A, existing, my existence, is an element within my eternal
consciousness (please note, the element that is, not the element that is past,
because the latter is a volatilizing by speculative thought), consequently a
lesser thing that hinders me in being infinitely higher than I am. Conversely,
in B, existing, even though lower by being
paradoxically accentuated, is nevertheless so much higher that I first become
eternal in existence, and as a result existing by itself gives rise to a
qualification that is infinitely higher than existing." (CUP, Hong,
p. 573; Lowrie, p. 508)
#
"With
regard to Religiousness A, the
following applies: let the world's six thousand years of history be true or let
it not be true—in the matter of his happiness it makes no difference one way or
the other to the existing person,
because he rests ultimately in the consciousness of eternity." (CUP, Hong, fn p. 578; Lowrie, fn, p. 512)
#
"A human being according
to his possibility is eternal and becomes conscious of this in time: this is
the contradiction within immanence. But that the by-nature eternal comes into
existence in time, is born, grows up, and dies is a break with all thinking.
If, however, the coming into existence of the eternal in time is supposed to be
an eternal coming into existence, then Religiousness B is abolished, 'all theology is anthropology,' Christianity is
changed from an existence-communication into an ingenious metaphysical doctrine
addressed to professors, and Religiousness A
is prinked up with an esthetic-metaphysical ornamentation that in categorical
respects neither adds nor detracts." (CUP, Hong, p. 579: Lowrie, p.
513)
#
"The individual is
therefore unable to gain the consciousness of sin by himself, which is the case
with guilt-consciousness, because in guilt-consciousness the subject's
self-identity is preserved, and guilt-consciousness is the change of the
subject within himself. The consciousness of sin, however, is a change of the
subject himself, which shows that outside the individual there must be the
power that makes clear to him that he has become a person other than he was by
coming into existence, that he has become a sinner. This power is the god in
time." (CUP, Hong, p. 584; Lowrie, p. 517)
#
Being a Christian is Defined Subjectively in this Way: The decision rests in the subject; the appropriation
is the paradoxical inwardness that is specifically different from all other
inwardness." (CUP, Hong, p. 610; Lowrie, p. 540)
#
"The
opportunity seems to invite an open and direct explanation, yes, almost to
demand it even from one so reluctant – so, then, I shall use it for that
purpose, not as an author, because I am indeed not an author in the usual
sense, but as one who has cooperated so that the pseudonyms could become
authors. First of all I want to give thanks to Governance, who in such
multitudinous ways has encouraged my endeavor, has encouraged it over four and
one-quarter years without perhaps a single day's interruption of effort, has
granted me much more than I ever expected, even though I can truly testify that
I staked my life to the utmost of my capacity, more than I at least had expected,
even if to others the accomplishment seems to be a complicated triviality. So,
with fervent thanks to Governance, I do not find it unsettling that I cannot
quite be said to have achieved anything or, what is of less importance,
attained anything in the outer world. I find it ironically in order that the
honorarium, at least, in virtue of the production and of my equivocal
authorship, has been rather Socratic." (CUP, Hong, p. 628: Lowrie, First
& Last Declaration)
#
"Insofar
as the pseudonymous authors might have affronted any respectable person in any
way whatever, or perhaps even any man I admire, insofar as the pseudonymous
authors in any way might have disturbed or made ambiguous any actual good in
the established order – then there is no one more willing to make an apology
than I, who bear the responsibility for the use of the guided pen." (CUP,
Hong, p. 629; Lowrie, First & Last Declaration)
Diary Søren Kierkegaard:
"If
I has not been strictly raised in the Christian religion, had not had all that
inner suffering from early childhood, intensified precisely at the moment when
I definitively started my career: if I hadn't had that, and still know what I
know now, then I would become a poet and would actually have become that
interesting poet kat'exochèn [in an immanent sense]. There hardly has
lived any poet before me with a deeper knowledge of existence and especially of
the religious." (DSK, Rhode, p. 64) (1849)
#
"I
am accused of causing young people to acquiesce in subjectivity. Maybe, for a
moment. But how would it be possible to eliminate all the phantoms of
objectivity that act as an audience, etc., except by stressing the category of
the separate individual." (DSK, Rhode, p. 101) (1847)
#
"Life's
Worth: Not until a man has become so utterly unhappy, or has grasped the
woefulness of life so deeply that he is moved to say, and mean it: life for me
has no value—not until then is he able to make a bid for Christianity. And then
his life may acquire the very highest value." (DSK, Rhode, p. 150) (1854)
#
"Man
has an inborn terror of walking in the dark—what wonder then that he has an
inborn terror of the Unconditional, of getting himself involved with the
Unconditional, about which it is true that "no night and no darkness is
half as black" as this darkness and this night where all relative aims
(and ordinary milestones and signposts), where all mutual regards (the lanterns
that generally help shed light on our way), where even the tenderest and
deepest feelings of affection are extinguished, for if they aren't we are not
dealing with the absolutely Unconditional" (DSK, Rhode, p. 159) (1854)
#
"Every
human being is born with a seed of primitivity (for primitivity means a
possibility for [developing] the spirit. God who created it knows that best.
All profane, temporal, worldly intelligence has relation to destroying one's
primitivity. Christianity has relation to developing one's primitivity. Destroy
your primitivity, and you will most probably get along well in the world, maybe
achieve great success—but Eternity will reject you. Follow up your primitivity
and you will be shipwrecked in temporality, but accepted by Eternity."
DSK, Rhode, p. 159) (1854)
#
"One thing is to suffer;
another to graduate and become a professor in someone else's suffering. The
first is "the path"; the second is "going around it"
(wherefore the preposition "around" might serve as a motto for all
lecturing and lecture-preaching), and perhaps the "going-around" may
end in going down and out." (DSK, Rhode, p. 176) (1854)
Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses:
"But he probably would
think about it more earnestly, and when he had considered it very deeply he
perhaps would say, "He was right, after all; that is the way it is. Those
were brave words, full of pith and meaning; this is the way a person should be
spoken to, for wishes are futile." Probably he would then quietly begin to
move his inner being, and every time his soul would pause at a wish, he would
call to it and say: You know that you must not wish – and thereupon he went
further. When his soul became anxious, he called to it and said: When you are
anxious, it is because you are wishing; anxiety is a form of wishing, and you
know you must not wish – then he went further." (EUD, Hong, pp. 11-12) (The Expectancy of
Faith)
#
"The ability to be
occupied with the future is, then, a sign of the nobility of human beings; the
struggle with the future is the most ennobling. He who struggles with the
present struggles with a particular thing against which he can use his total
energy. Therefore, if a person had nothing else with which to struggle, it
would be possible for him to go victoriously through his whole life without
learning to know himself or his power. He who battles with the future has a
more dangerous enemy; he cannot remain ignorant of himself, since he is
battling with himself. The future is not; it borrows its power from him
himself, and when it has tricked him out of that it presents itself externally
as the enemy he has to encounter." (EUD, Hong, pp. 17-18) (The Expectancy
of Faith)
#
"What, then, is the
eternal power in a human being? It is faith. What is the expectancy of faith?
Victory—or, as Scripture so earnestly and so movingly teaches us, that all
things must serve for good those who love God. But an expectancy of the future
that expects victory—this has indeed conquered the future. The believer,
therefore, is finished with the future before he begins with the present,
because what has been conquered can no longer disturb, and this victory can
only make someone stronger for the present work." (EUD, Hong, p. 19) (The
Expectancy of Faith)
#
"But when I say, 'I have
faith,' it can all too often be obscure to me what I mean by that. Perhaps I am
wrong; maybe I am just creating my own notion of the future; perhaps I am
wishing, hoping, longing for something, craving, coveting; perhaps I am sure of
the future, and since I do this, it may seem to me that I have faith, although
I still do not. But when I ask myself the question: Do you expect victory?—then
every obscurity becomes more difficult, then I perceive that not only the
person who expects absolutely nothing does not have faith, but also the person
who expects something particular or who bases his expectancy on something
particular. And should this not be important, inasmuch as no one can be wholly
and indivisibly in the present before he is finished with the future? But one
is finished with the future only by conquering it, but this is precisely what
faith does, since its expectancy is victory. Every time I catch my soul not
expecting victory, I know that I do not have faith. When I know that, I also
know what I must do, because I also know that it is no easy matter to have
faith, the first condition, nevertheless, for my arriving at faith is that I
become aware of whether I have it or not." (Eighteen Upbuilding
Discourses, Hong, p. 27) (The Expectancy
of Faith)
#
"Through every deeper
reflection that makes him older than
the moment and lets him grasp the eternal, a person assures himself that he has
an actual relation to the world, and that consequently this relation cannot be
mere knowledge about this world and about himself as part of it, since such
knowledge is no relation, simply because in this knowledge he himself is
indifferent toward this world and this world is indifferent through his
knowledge of it. Not until the moment when there awakens in his soul a concern
about what the meaning the world has for him and he for the world, about what
meaning everything within him by which he himself belongs to the world has for
him and he therein for the world—only then does the inner being announce its
presence in this concern." (EUD,
Hong, p. 86) (Strengthening in the Inner Being)
#
"As soon as this
awakens, his knowledge will prove comfortless, because all knowledge in which a
person vanishes from himself, just as any explanation of this kind is
equivocal, explains now this and now that, can mean the opposite, just as any
witness of this kind, precisely when it is witnessed, is full of deceit and riddles
and only engenders anxiety." (EUD, Hong, p. 86) (Strengthening in the
Inner Being)
#
"What people foolishly
and impatiently crave as the highest without really knowing what they want,
what is horrifying to see when someone succeeds in doing it—namely, to win the
world and to have won it—this is what a person begins with, and it is so far
from being the goal that it is the very thing he should abandon. His soul is a
self-contradiction between the external and the internal, the temporal and the
eternal. It is a self-contradiction, because wanting to express the
contradiction within itself is precisely what makes it what it is. Therefore,
his soul is in contradiction and is self-contradiction. If it were not in
contradiction, it would be lost in the life of the world; if it were not
self-contradiction, movement would be impossible. It is to be possessed and
gained at the same time; it belongs to the world as its illegitimate
possession; it belongs to God as his legitimate possession; it belongs to the
person himself as his possession, that is, a possession that is to be gained.
Consequently, he gains – if he actually does gain – his soul from God, away
from the world, through himself." (EUD, Hong, p. 166-67) (To Gain
One's Soul in Patience)
#
"If a person wants to
embark upon this gaining, he is required to have the patience to begin in such
a way that he truthfully confesses to himself that it is the work of patience.
If he does not begin in such a way, he will never gain, since this gaining is
not like an earthly gaining that may for some time seem to net no gain, but on
the contrary it is a loss, at least apparently, and therefore it takes patience
to want to begin it, since the very thing that is inflammatory and provocative
to impatience nevertheless declares itself to be a gaining. What is all this
winning of which we speak? It is to acquire one's soul as it is, but it does
indeed seem that one has it from the start. Here it is a question not of adding
something to the soul but of subtracting something from it, that is to say,
something it apparently possessed." (EUD, Hong, p. 171) (To Gain One's
Soul in Patience)
#
"The person who is
deceived by the world can still hope that he will not be disappointed some
other time under other circumstances, but the person who deceives himself is
continually deceived even if he flees to the farthest limits of the world,
because he cannot escape himself." (EUD, Hong, p.211) (Patience in
Expectancy)
#
"Therefore it is always
a difficult matter for one person to offer another such a comfort, because when
the troubled one consults him and he then says, "I certainly do know where
comfort is to be found, indescribable comfort; indeed, what is more, it
transforms itself little by little in your soul into the highest joy."—then
the troubled one will probably listen attentively. But when it is added,
"Nevertheless, before this comfort can come, you must understand that you
yourself are simply nothing; you must chop down the bridge of probability that
wants to connect wish and impatience and desire and expectation with the object
wished for, desired, and expected; you must renounce the worldly mentality's
association with the future; you must retreat into yourself, not as into a
fortress that still defies the world while the self-inclosed person
nevertheless has with him in the fortress his most dangerous enemy (indeed, it
may even been to the enemy's advice he followed when he closed himself up in
this way), but into yourself, sinking down before your own nothingness and
surrendering yourself to grace and disgrace"—then the troubled one would
very likely go away distressed, like a rich young man who had much property,
distressed even though he did not have much property but still resembled the
young man so much that one could not tell them apart." (EUD, Hong, pp.
306-07) (To Need God)
#
"If, however, this view,
that to need God is man's highest perfection, makes life more difficult, it
does this only because it wants to view man according to his perfection and
bring him to view himself in this way, because in and through this view man
learns to know himself. And for the person who does not know himself, his
life is, in the deeper sense, indeed a delusion." EUD, Hong, p.312) (To
Need God)
#
When a person turns and faces
himself in order to understand himself, he steps, as it were, in the way of
that first self, halts that which was turned outward in hankering for and
seeking after the surrounding world that is its object, and summons it back
from the external. In order to prompt the first self to this withdrawal, the
deeper self lets the surrounding world remain what it is – remain dubious. This
is indeed the way it is; the world around us is inconstant and can be changed
into the opposite at any moment, and there is not one person who can force this
change by his own might or by the conjuration of his wish. The deeper self now
shapes the deceitful flexibility of the surrounding world in such a way that it
is no longer attractive to that first self. Then the first self either must
proceed to kill the deeper self, to render it forgotten, whereby the whole
matter is given up; or it must admit that the deeper self is right, because to
want to predicate constancy of something that continually changes is indeed a
contradiction, and as soon as one confesses that it changes, it can, of course,
change in that same moment. However much that first self shrinks from this,
there is no wordsmith so ingenious or no thought-twister so wily that he can
invalidate the deeper self's eternal claim. There is only one way out, and that
is to silence the deeper self by letting the roar of inconstancy drown it
out." (EUD, Hong, p. 314) )(To Need God)
#
"The thorn in the flesh,
then, is the contrast to the spirit's inexpressible beatitude, and the contrast
cannot be in the external, as if sufferings, chains, the scourges of
misunderstanding, and the terrors of death could take it all away from him, or
as if all the progress of learning and all the victories of faith in the wide
world could fully compensate him for the deprivation. As soon as the suffering
is perceived and the thorn festers, the apostle has only himself to deal with.
The beatitude has vanished, vanishes more and more—alas, it was inexpressible
to have it; the pain is inexpressible since it cannot even express the loss,
and the recollection is unable to do anything but languish in powerlessness. To
have been caught up into the third heaven, to have been hidden in the bosom of
beatitude, to have been expanded in God, and now to be tethered by the thorn in
the flesh to the thralldom of temporality! It is hard enough for a person to
experience the faithfulness of men, but to experience that there is a change in
God, a shadow of variation, that there is an angel of Satan that has the power
to tear a person out of this beatitude! Where then is there security for a
human being if it is not even in the third heaven? But let us not go astray;
this is how a worldling would talk who certainly knew what he was talking about
and had witnessed only to what he had experienced but did not know how to speak
humbly as an apostle, resigned to the will of God in whatever happens."
(EUD, Hong, pp. 336-37) (The Thorn in the Flesh)
#
"Then the past was
behind; repentance held it captive, cut away the connection with it, resisted
it, whether it wanted to launch a joint offensive, or a single renegade tried
to make a surprise attack." (EUD, Hong, p.342) (The Thorn in the Flesh)
#
"You who know what this
discourse is about, what shall I say to you? But you who do not know what the discourse
is about, let it be said to you that it is about how impatience suddenly
awakened as strong as a giant and with its anxiety changed the little into
much, the little period of time into an eternity, the little distance into a
chasmic abyss, that one difficulty into a decision of the totality, that one
deviation into the loss of the totality; that the discourse is about how
strength collapsed in weakness, distrust scared away all help, despondency
desponded of every hope, how the past, from which the soul thought it had
ransomed itself, again stood there with its demand, not as a recollection, but
more terrifying than ever by having conspired with the future; that the
discourse is about—the thorn in the flesh." (EUD, Hong, p.344) (The
Thorn in the Flesh)
#
"What, then, is the
victory; in what is the condition of the victors different from that of the
strugglers? Has God become changed? An answer in the affirmative seems to be a
hard saying, and yet it is so; at least the one who prays understands him differently
and demands no explanation. Has the one who prays become changed? Yes, because
he understands himself differently, and yet he does not stop being the one who
prays, since he gives thanks always." (EUD, Hong, p.400) (One Who Prays
Aright)
#
"…. And thus no
discourse, not even the most glorious, can help another person, because no one,
after all, understands another person except the spirit that is within
him." (EUD, Hong, Supplement, p. 438)(Pap. IV B 154:1 n.d. 1843)
#
"he who has the world is
like one who does not have it, and only he who, when he has the world, is like
one who does not have the world, only he has the world; otherwise the world has
him." (EUD, Hong, Supplement, p. 439)(Pap. IV B 154:2 n.d., 1843)
#
"….. and the discourse
seeks that single individual whom I with joy call my reader, whom it does not
expect to find as a prisoner, even less expects to be able to release him, not
even bring him food, but only wants to visit him." (EUD, Hong, Supplement,
p. 446) (Pap. V B 233:6 n.d., 1844)
#
"….when he was caught up
in third heaven, when he was hidden in the bosom of beatitude, and as if there
were no more strife for him, no presentment of strife, but all victory—but that
can vanish again! (*) What confidence can one have in that? And what shall a
person do in order to grasp it again? There is nothing to do; it is God's grace
itself that overshadows a person. And can it ever come again? No one knows
that. But faith? Yes, if it has not already grasped it—but to have grasped it
and now to be thrust back.
(*) in margin: It is hard enough for a person to experience the
faithlessness of human beings—but God's faithlessness—" (EUD, Hong,
Supplement, p.452 ) (Pap. V B 211:2
n.d., 1844)
#
"Inwardness is the
eternal, and desire is the temporal, but the temporal cannot hold out with the
eternal. Desire glows less and less fervently, and
at last its time is over, but
the time of inwardness is never over. Inwardness, its need for God, has then
conquered, and the supplicant does not seek God in the external world, does not
create him in his desires, but finds him in his inner being, and finally
believes that he himself never did desire so vehemently, never has been in such
a misunderstanding, and believes that such as he now has become he was from the
beginning. But he does not therefore pray less than before, because that which
made him pray was inwardness, and it has now conquered." (EUD, Hong, Supplement, p. 461) (Pap. V B 227:5)
#
"This
is how it is used. The subject of the single individual appears in every book
by the pseudonymous writers, but the price put upon being a single individual,
a single individual in the eminent sense, rises. The subject of the single
individual appears in every one of my upbuilding books, but there the single
individual is what every human being is. This is precisely the dialectic of
'the single individual' [changed from: the particular]. The single
individual can now mean the most unique of all and it can mean everyone. Now if
one desires to stimulate attention, one will use this category in rapid
succession but always in double-stroke. The pride in the one thought incites a
few, the humility in the other thought repels others, but this doubleness
provokes attention, and yet this is the idea of the 'single individual.' The
pride in the one thought eggs on a few who in that sense of the word could very
well desire to be the single individual of the pseudonyms. But then they are
repelled in turn by the thought of 'the single individual' in the sense of the
upbuilding.*"
In margin: *That is, the point of
departure of the pseudonymous writers is continually in the differences—the
point of departure in the upbuilding discourses is in the universally human.
(EUD, Hong, Supplement, p. 475-76) (Pap. VIII² B 192 n.d. 1847-48)
#
"But
on the other hand, the understanding, reflection, is also a gift of God. What
shall one do with it, how dispose of it if one is not to use it? And if one
then uses it in fear and trembling not for one's won advantage but to serve the
truth, if one uses it that way in fear and trembling and furthermore believing
that it still is God who determines the issue in its eternal significance,
venturing to trust in him, and with unconditional obedience yielding to what he
makes of it: is this not fear of God and serving God the way a person of
reflection can, in a somewhat different way than the spontaneous immediate
person, but perhaps more ardently. But if that is the case, does not a maieutic
element enter into the relation to other men or to various other men. The
maieutic is really only the expression for a superiority between man and man.
That it exists cannot be denied—but existence presses far more powerfully upon
the superior one precisely because he is a maieutic (because he has the
responsibility) than upon the other.
(EUD, Hong Supplement, p. 479) (pap. IX A 222)
Either/Or:
"Little by little,
hearing became my favorite sense, for just as it is the voice that reveals the
inwardness which is incommensurable with the outer, so the ear is the instrument
whereby that inwardness is grasped, hearing the sense by which by which it is
appropriated." (E/O. Hannay, p. 27)
#
"During my constant
occupation with these papers it dawned upon me that they could yield a new
aspect if regarded as the work of one man. I am quite aware of all that can be
objected to in this view, that it is unhistorical, improbable, preposterous
that one person should be the author of both parts, notwithstanding the reader
might well fall for the conceit that once you have said A you must say B.
However, I have still been unable to give up the idea. Then it would have to
been someone who had lived through both kinds of experience, or had deliberated
on both. For A’s papers contain a variety of attempts at an aesthetic view of
life; to convey a unified aesthetic life-view is scarcely possible. B’s papers
contain an ethical life-view." (E/O, Hannay, pp. 35-36)
#
"Aren't
people absurd! They never use the freedoms they do have but demand those they
don't have; they have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech."
(E/O, Hannay, p. 43)
#
"What
is to come? What does the future hold? I don't know, I have no idea. When from
a fixed point a spider plunges down as is its nature, it sees always before it
an empty space in which it cannot find a footing however much it flounders.
That is how it is with me: always an empty space before me, what drives me on
is a result that lies behind me. This life is back-to-front and terrible,
unendurable." (E/O, Hannay, p. 46)
#
"I
should add that in using the word 'stages' in the above, and in continuing to
use it in what follows, the idea must not be taken in such a literal way as to
imply that each stage exists independently, the one outside the other. I might
have more appropriately used the word 'metamorphoses'. The different stages
taken together represent the immediate stage, and this shows that the
individual stages are more like disclosures of predicates, so that all the
predicates tumble down into the wealth of the last stage, since this is the real
stage." (E/O, Hannay, p. 84)
#
"The sensual awakens,
though not to movement but to motionless rest, not to joy and gladness but to
deep melancholy. Desire is not yet awake, it is moodily hinted at. In desire
there is always the desired, which rises out of it and comes into view in a
bewildering twilight." (E/O, Hannay, p. 85)
#
"Accordingly the desire,
which at this stage is only there in a presentiment of itself, is motionless,
without disturbance, rocked gently only by an inexplicable inner motion. As the
life of a plant is confined to the earth, so is desire lost in the present in a
quiet longing, engrossed in a contemplation, yet it cannot evacuate its object,
essentially because in a deeper sense no object exists; nor, however, is its
object this lack of object, for then it would be straightway in motion; it
would be specified if in no other way then in sorrow and pain, but sorrow and
pain do not have in them that contradiction
which is characteristic of melancholy and depression, do not have that
ambiguity which is the sweetness of melancholy." (E/O, Hannay, p. 86)
#
"Desire awakens, and as
one always first realizes one has been dreaming at the moment of awakening, so
here too the dream is over. This arousal in which the desire awakens, this
tremor, separates desire and its object, gives desire an object. This is the
dialectical feature which must be kept sharply in mind; only when the object
exists does the desire exist; desire and its object are twins neither of which
enters the world a fraction of an instant before the other. Yet, though they
enter it at the exact same moment, and not even with the time interval that can
separate other twins, the importance of their coming into existence in this way
is not that they are united but, on the contrary, that they are separated. But
this, the sensual movement, this earthquake, for a moment splits the desire and
its object infinitely asunder; but as the principal of motion appears for a
moment to separate, so it reveals itself again as wishing to unite the separated
elements. The consequence of the separation is that desire is plucked out of
its substantial repose within itself, and the object as a result no longer
comes under the category of substance, but splits up into a multiplicity."
(E/O, Hannay, p. 89)
#
"The
contradiction in the first stage lay in the fact that desire could acquire no
object, but was in possession of its object without having desired it, and
therefore could not reach the point of desiring. In the second stage, the
object appears in its multiplicity, but since desire seeks its object in this
multiplicity, in a deeper sense it still has no object, it is not specified as
desire. In Don Giovanni, on the other hand, desire is specified
absolutely as desire, is connotationally and extensionally the immediate unity
of the two preceding stages. The first stage desired the One ideally; the
second stage desired the particular under the category of the multiple; the
third stage is the unity of these. (E/O, Hannay, p. 93)
#
"The
unhappy man is always absent from himself, never present to himself. But one
can be absent, obviously, either in the past or in the future. For this firm
delineation we would thank Hegel, and now, since we are not simple philosophers
looking upon this kingdom from afar, we shall as natives devote attention in
detail to the various stages that lie within it. So the unhappy one is absent.
But one is absent when living in the past or living in the future. The form of
expression is important, for it is evident, as philology also teaches us, that
there is a tense that expresses present in the past, and a tense that expresses
presence in the future; but the same science also teaches us that there is a
pluperfect tense in which there is no present, as well as a future perfect tense
with the same characteristics. These are the hoping and remembering
individuals. Inasmuch as they are only hoping or only remembering, these are
indeed in a sense unhappy individuals, if otherwise it is only the person who
is present to himself that is happy. However, one cannot strictly call an
individual unhappy who is present in hope or in memory. For what one must note
here is that he is still present to himself in one of these. From which we also
see that a single blow, be it ever so heavy, cannot make a person the
unhappiest. For one blow can either deprive him of hope, still leaving him
present in memory, or of memory, leaving him present in hope. " (E/O,
Hannay, p. 214)
#
"Consider
first the hoping individual. When, as a hoping individual (and of course to
that extent unhappy), he is not present to himself, he becomes unhappy in a
stricter sense. An individual who hopes for an eternal life is, indeed, in a
certain sense an unhappy individual to the extent that he renounces the
present, but nevertheless is strictly not unhappy, because he is present to
himself in this hope and does not come into conflict with the particular
moments of finitude. But if he cannot become present to himself in hope, but
loses his hope, hopes again, and so on, then he is absent from himself not just
in the present but also in the future, and we have a type of the unhappy."
(E/O, Hannay, pp. 214-15)
#
"When
two people fall in love and suspect they are made for each other, the thing is
to have the courage to break it off, for by continuing they only have
everything to lose and nothing to gain." (E/O, Hannay, p. 238)
#
"You take great delight
in 'comforting' people when they come to you in moments of crisis. You listen
to their explanations and then say, 'Yes, I see quite plainly now, there are
two possibilities, one can either do it or not do it, you will regret it either
way.' But he who mocks others mocks himself, and it is not a trivial matter but
a deep mockery of yourself, a sad proof of how loose the joints of your soul are,
that your view of life focuses on a single sentence, 'I say merely
either/or.'" (E/O, Hannay, p.478)
#
"For a moment it can
seem, for a moment it can look as if what the choice is between lies outside
the chooser; he has no relation to it, he can sustain an indifference in the
face of it." (E/O, Hannay, p. 482)
#
"You will see from this
why my view of a choice differs from yours, in the event that I can speak of
your having such, for the difference is precisely that yours prevents a
choice." (E/O, Hannay, p. 483)
#
"Fairy-tales tell us of
human beings whom mermaids and mermen captivated with their demonic music. To
break the spell, says the story, they had to play the same piece backwards
without a single mistake. The thought here is very profound but very difficult
to put into action, and yet it is so; the errors one has incurred must be
eliminated in this way, and every time a mistake is made one must make a fresh
start. (E/O, Hannay, p. 483)
#
"There, now you have
chosen—not indeed the better part, that you will agree; but really you have
made no choice at all, or you have chosen only figuratively. Your choice is an
aesthetic choice, but an aesthetic choice is no choice. In general, the act of
choosing in a literal and strict expression of the ethical. Wherever it is a
matter of an either/or is a stricter sense, one can always be sure that the
ethical is involved. The only absolute either/or there is the choice between
good and evil, but it is also absolutely ethical. The aesthetic choice is
either wholly immediate thus no choice, or it loses itself in
multiplicity." (E/O, Hannay, p. 485)
#
"What stands out in my
either/or is the ethical. So far, then, it is not a choice of some thing, not a
matter of the reality of the thing chosen, but of the reality of choosing. It
is this, though, that is decisive and what I shall try to awaken in you. To
reach this point it is possible for one man to help another, but once he has
reached it the importance the one can have for the other becomes more
subordinate." (E/O, Hannay, p. 490)
#
"When around me all has
become still, solemn as a starlit night, when the soul is all alone in the
world, there appears before it not a distinguished person, but the eternal
power itself. It is as though the heavens parted , and the I chooses itself –
or, more correctly, it accepts itself. The soul has then seen the highest,
which no mortal eye can see and which never can be forgotten. The personality
receives the accolade of knighthood which ennobles it for eternity. He does not
become someone other than he was before, he becomes himself; consciousness
unites." (E/O, Hannay, p. 491)
#
"In the ethical the
personality is centered in itself; the aesthetic is thus excluded absolutely,
or it is excluded as the absolute, but relatively it always stays behind. The
personality, through choosing itself, chooses itself ethically and excludes the
aesthetic absolutely; but since it is, after all, he himself the person
chooses, and through choosing himself does not become another nature but
remains himself, the whole of the aesthetic returns in its relativity. So the
either/or I have presented is in a sense absolute, for the options are choosing
and not choosing. When the choice confronting one is thus absolute, either/or
is also that. In another sense, however, the absolute either/or first appears
with the choice, for it is now that the options of good and evil appear. But
this choice is posited by and in the first choice need not detain me here. I
would merely press you to the point where the choice proves necessary, and
after that consider life under ethical categories. I am no ethical rigorist
inspired by a formal abstract freedom; once the choice is posited the whole of
the aesthetic returns, and you shall see that only then is life beautiful, and that
only in this way can a person succeed in saving his soul and gaining the whole
world, in using the world and not abusing it." (E/O. Hannay, pp. 491-92)
#
"Great as the
differences within the aesthetic sphere may be, all stages have the essential
similarity that spirit appears not in the form of spirit, but in the form of
immediacy. The differences may be extraordinary, from plain philistinism to the
greatest intellectual refinement, but even at the stage where such refinement
appears the spirit has the form not of spirit but of talent." (E/O, Hannay, p. 494)
#
"What then is
melancholy? It is hysteria of the spirit. There comes a moment in a man's life
when immediacy is as though ripened and when the spirit demands a higher form
of in which it will apprehend itself as spirit. In immediacy spirit coheres, as
it were, with the whole of earthly life, and now the spirit wants to gather
itself out of this dispersion, and make itself self-transparent; the
personality wants to be conscious of itself in its eternal validity. If this
does not happen and the movement halts and is pressed back, melancholy sets in.
[…] But melancholy is sin, really it is a sin as great as any, for it is the
sin of not willing deeply and sincerely, and this is a mother to all sins. This
sickness, or more properly, this sin, is extremely common in our time, and
accordingly it is under this that the whole of German and French youth
groan." (E/O, Hannay, pp. 499-500)
#
"What then is it you are
afraid of? You are not going to give birth to another human being, you will
only give birth to yourself. And yet, as I know well, there is a gravity in
this which perturbs the whole soul; to be conscious of oneself in one's eternal
validity is a moment more significant than everything in the world. It is as
though you were caught and trapped and now could never again escape, either in
time and eternity; it is as though you lost yourself, as though you ceased to
be; it is as though the next moment you would rue it and yet it cannot be
undone. It is as grave and significant moment when one binds oneself for an
eternity to an eternal power, when one receives oneself as the one whose memory
no time shall efface, when in an eternal and unfailing sense one becomes aware
of oneself as the person one is." (E/O, Hannay, 509)
#
So then choose despair, since
despair is itself a choice, for one can doubt without choosing to, but despair
one cannot without choosing to do so. And when one despairs one chooses again,
and what then does one chose? One chooses oneself, not in one’s immediacy, not
as this contingent individual, one chooses oneself in one’s eternal
validity. (E/O, Hannay, p. 513)
#
"Doubt is a despair of
thought, despair is a doubt of the personality. That is why I keep such a tight
hold on the category of choice, that being my watchword, the nerve of my life
view, and that is something I indeed have even if I make no claim at all to a
system. Doubt is the inner movement of thought itself, and in my doubt, I
conduct myself as impersonally as possible." (E/O, Hannay, p. 514)
#
"Doubt and despair
therefore belong to two quite different spheres, different sides of the soul
are set in motion. Still, I am not at all content with this, because doubt and
despair would then rank equally, and that is not the case. Despair is a far
deeper and more complete expression, its movement far more comprehensive than
doubt's. Precisely, despair is an expression of the whole personality, doubt
only of thought." (E/O, Hannay, p. 515)
#
"But I return to my
category, I am not a logician, I have only one such but I assure you it is the
choice of both my heart and my mind, my soul's desire and my salvation – I
return to the significance of choice. In choosing absolutely, then, I choose
despair, and in despair I choose the absolute, for I myself am the absolute, I
posit the absolute and am myself the absolute. But, as amounts to exactly the
same, I must say: I choose the absolute which chooses me, I posit the absolute
which posits me. For unless I bear in mind that this second expression is just
as absolute, my category of choice is false; for that category is precisely the
identity of both. What I choose I do not posit, for if it were not posited I
could not chose it, and yet if it were not posited through my choosing it I
would not choose it. If is for if it
were not I could not choose it; it is not,
for it can only come to be by my choosing it, otherwise my choice would be
illusory." (E/O, Hannay, pp.515-16)
#
"But what, then, do I
choose? This thing or that? No, I choose absolutely, and I choose absolutely
precisely through having chosen not to choose this thing or that. I choose the
absolute, and what is the absolute? It is myself in my eternal validity.
Anything other than myself I cannot choose as the absolute, for if I could choose
something else I choose it as something finite, and therefore do not choose it
absolutely. Even the Jew who chose God did not choose absolutely, for although
he chose the absolute he did not choose it absolutely, and so it ceased to be
the absolute and became something finite." (E/O, Hannay, p. 516)
#
"But what, then, is this
self of mine? If it is to be a matter of a first glance, a first shot at a
definition, my answer is: it is the most abstract thing of all which yet, at
the same time, is the most concrete thing of all – it is freedom." (E/O,
Hannay, p. 516)
#
"But the reason why it
can seem to an individual that he could constantly change yet remain the same,
as if his innermost being were an algebraic entity that could stand for
whatever it might be, is to be found in the fact that he has the wrong
attitude; he has not chosen himself, he has no conception of doing so, and yet
even in his lack of understanding there is an acknowledgment of the eternal
validity of personal existence. For someone with the right attitude, on the
other hand, things go differently. He chooses himself, not in a finite sense,
for then this 'self' would be something finite along with other finite things,
but in an absolute sense. And still he chooses himself and not another. This
self he chooses is infinitely concrete, for it is himself, and yet it is
absolutely different from his former self, for he has chosen it absolutely.
This self did not exist previously, for it came into existence through the
choice, and yet it has been in existence, for it was indeed 'he
himself'." (E/O, Hannay, p. 517)
#
"The choice here makes
the two dialectical movements at once: what is chosen does not exist and comes
into existence through the choice, and what is chosen exists, otherwise it would
not be a choice. For if the thing I chose did not exist but became absolute
through the choice itself, I would not have chosen, I would have created. But I
do not create myself, I choose myself. Therefore while nature has been created
out of nothing, while myself qua my immediate personal existence have
been created out of nothing, as free spirit I am born of the principle of
contradiction, or born by virtue of the fact that I chose myself." (E/O,
Hannay, pp. 517-18)
#
"You see why people have
such difficulty in choosing themselves: here absolute isolation is identical
with the deepest continuity, and as long as one has not chosen oneself it is as
if there was a possibility of becoming different, in one way or another."
(E/O, Hannay, p. 519)
#
"So then the choice of
despair is 'my self', for although when I despair I despair over myself as over
all else, the self I despair over is a finitude as every other finite thing,
while the self I chose is the absolute self or my self according to its
absolute validity. That being the case, you will see again why I keep on saying
in the above that the either/or I proposed between living aesthetically and
ethically is not a perfect dilemma, because there is only one option. Through
choosing it I do not really choose between good and evil, I choose the good,
but by virtue of choosing the good I chose the option between good and evil.
The original choice is constantly present in every subsequent
choice." (E/O. Hannay, p. 520)
#
"Here I will break off
these reflections in order to show how an ethical life-view looks at the person
and life and its meaning. For form's sake I return to some observations made
earlier about the relation between the aesthetic and the ethical. We said that
every aesthetic life-view was despair; this was because it was built upon what
may or may not be. That is not the case with the ethical life-view, for this
builds life upon what has being as its essential property. The aesthetic, we
said, is that in which a person is immediately what he is; the ethical is that
whereby a person becomes what he becomes. This in no way implies that someone
who lives aesthetically does not develop, but that he develops with necessity,
not with freedom; there occurs no metamorphosis in his case, no infinite
movement whereby he arrives at the point from which he becomes what he
becomes." (E/O, Hannay, p. 525)
#
"But he who has now
infinitely chosen himself –can he say, 'Now I own myself, I ask nothing more,
and to all the world's vicissitudes I oppose the proud thought: I am the one I
am'? By no means! If anyone were to express themselves in such a way one could
easily see they had gone astray. The basic mistake would also lie in his not
having chosen himself in the strictest sense; choose himself he may have done,
but he has done it from outside himself; he has understood quite abstractly
what it was to choose and had failed to grasp himself in his concretion; he has
not so chosen himself that, in the choice, he came to be within himself, had
not clothed himself in himself; he had chosen in respect to his necessity, not
of his freedom; he had taken the ethical option in vain,
aesthetically." (E/O, Hannay, p.
528)
#
"But he who has now
infinitely chosen himself—can he say, 'now I own myself, I own nothing more,
and to all the world's vicissitudes I oppose the proud thought: I am the one I
am'? By no means! If anyone were to express themselves in that way one could
easily see they had gone astray. The basic mistake would lie in his not having
chosen himself in the strictest sense; choose himself he may have done, but he
has done it from outside himself; he has understood quite abstractly what it
was to choose and had failed to grasp himself in his concretion; he had not so
chosen himself that, in the choice, he came to be within himself, had not
clothed himself in himself; he had chosen himself in respect of his necessity,
not of his freedom; he had taken the ethical option in vain; aesthetically. The
more truly meaningful the outcome that emerges, the more dangerous are the
false paths, and here too, accordingly, there appears a dreadful false path.
Once the individual has grasped himself in his eternal validity, this
overwhelms him with all its fullness. The temporal vanishes from sight. At
first, it fills him with an indescribable bliss and gives him an sense of absolute
security. If then, it is this that he begins to gaze one-sidedly upon, the
temporal presses its claims. They are rejected. What the temporal has to offer,
the more-or-less that presents itself here, is for him so very unimportant
compared to what he owns eternally. Everything stops short for him, it is as
though he had reached eternity before his time. He becomes lost in
contemplation, he gazes at himself, but his gazing cannot fill up time." (E/O, Hannay, pp. 528-29)
#
"The first
form the choice takes is a complete isolation. For in choosing myself I sever
myself from my relationship to the whole world until, in this separation, I end
up an abstract identity. […] The error is that the individual has chosen
himself altogether abstractly, and so the perfection he desired was similarly
abstract. It was for that reason I stressed that choosing oneself and repenting
oneself are identical, for repentance puts the individual into the most
heartfelt connection, the most intimate cohesion, with the surrounding
world." (E/O, Hannay, pp. 534-35)
#
"As in earthly life the
lovers long for the moment when they can breathe their love one to another, let
their souls fuse in a soft whisper, so the mystic longs for the moment when in
his prayer he can, as it were, steal into the presence of God. As the lovers
experience in that whisper their greatest bliss when really they have nothing
to talk about, so the mystic in his prayer is all the more blessed, his love
all the more happy, the less content there is in it, the more nearly in his
sigh he vanishes from before his own very eyes." (E/O, Hannay, p. 537)
#
“So the mystics fault is not
that he chooses himself, for in my opinion he does well to do that, his mistake
is that he does not choose himself properly; he chooses in respect to his
freedom, and yet he does not choose ethically. One can only choose oneself in respect to one’s freedom when
one chooses oneself ethically; but one can only choose oneself ethically by
repenting oneself, and it is only by repenting oneself that one becomes
concrete, and it is only as a concrete individual that one is a free
individual. The mystic’s mistake does not lie in something later but in the
very first movement. If one takes that to be correct, then every withdrawal
from life, every aesthetic self-torment is simply a further and proper
consequence. The mystic’s mistake is that in the choice he does not become
concrete for himself, and not for God either; he chooses himself abstractly and
therefore lacks transparency.” (E/O, Hannay, p. 540)
#
"Only when one has taken
possession of oneself in the choice, has attired oneself in one's self, has
penetrated oneself so totally that every moment is attended by the
consciousness of a responsibility for oneself, only then has one chosen oneself
ethically, only then has one repented oneself, only then is one concrete, only
then is one, in one's total isolation, in absolute continuity with the reality
one belongs to." (E/O, Hannay, pp. 540-41)
#
"I cannot return often
enough to this proviso that choosing oneself is identical with repenting
oneself, however simple in itself it may be. For upon this everything turns.
The mystic too repents, but he repents himself out of himself, not into
himself, he repents metaphysically, not ethically. (E/O, Hannay, p. 541)
#
Ethical repentance has but
two movements; either it abolishes its object or it bears it. These two
movements also indicate a concrete relation between the repenting individual
and the object of his repentance, whereas fleeing expresses an abstract
relation. The mystic chooses himself abstractly, and one can therefore say that
he constantly chooses himself out of the world; but the consequence is that he
cannot choose himself back into the world. The true concrete choice is that in
which in the very moment I choose myself out of the world I choose myself back
into it. For when I choose myself repentantly, I gather myself together in all
my finite concretion, and in thus having chosen myself out of the finite, I am
in the most absolute continuity with it.
(E/O, Hannay, p. 541)
#
"The
two standpoints indicated here [the Greek and the mystical] might be regarded
as attempts to realize an ethical view of life. The reason why they do not
succeed is that the individual has chosen himself in his isolation or has
chosen himself abstractly. This can also be put by saying that the individual
has not chosen himself ethically. He is therefore not connected to reality with
reality, and in that case no ethical life-view can be put into practice. On the
other hand, a person who chooses himself ethically chooses himself concretely
as this definite individual, and he achieves this concretion by the choice
being identical with the repentance which sanctions the choice. The individual
is then aware of himself as this definite individual, with these aptitudes,
these tendencies, these instincts, these passions, influenced by these definite
surroundings, as this definite product of a definite outside world. But in
becoming self-aware in this way, he assumes responsibility for it all. He does
not pause to consider whether to include some particular trait or not, for he
knows there is something far higher that he stands to lose if he does not. At
the instant of choice, then, he is in the most complete isolation for he
withdraws from the surroundings, and yet is at the same instant in absolute
continuity for he chooses himself as product; and this choice is freedom's
choice, so that in choosing himself as product he can just as well be said to
produce himself. At the instant of choice, then, he is at the conclusion, for
his personhood forms a closure, and yet in the same instant he is precisely at
the beginning for he chooses himself in respect to his freedom. As product he
is pressed into the forms of reality, in the choice he makes himself elastic,
he transforms the whole of his outwardness to inwardness. He has his place in
the world, with freedom he himself chooses his place, that is, he chooses this
place. He is a definite individual, in the choice he makes himself into a
definite individual, that is to say, into the same, for he chooses
himself." (E/O, Hannay, pp. 542-43)
#
“I want now to recall the
definition of the ethical I gave earlier, that it is that whereby a man comes to
be what he becomes. So it wants not to make the individual into another but
into himself; it wants not to do away with the aesthetic but to transfigure it.
To live ethically it is necessary for a person to become aware of himself, so
totally that no accidental feature escapes him.” (E/O, Hannay, pp. 544-45)
#
"People generally
consider the ethical altogether abstractly and therefore they seem to have a
secret horror of it. The ethical is then looked upon as something alien to
personal being, and one shrinks from abandoning oneself to it, for one cannot
quite be sure what it may lead to in the course of time. Many are afraid of
death in the same way, because they entertain obscure and confused ideas about
the soul passing over in death into another order of things, where laws and
customs prevail which are altogether different from those they have learnt to
recognize in this world. The reason for such a fear of death is the
individual's reluctance to be transparent to himself, for providing one is
willing it is easy to see the absurdity of this fear. Similarly with the
ethical; a person who fears transparency will always shun the ethical, for
really the ethical wants nothing else." (E/O, Hannay, P. 545)
#
"If the ethical appears
to lie outside one's personal being and to be in external relation to it, one
has given everything up; one has despaired. The aesthetic as such is despair,
the ethical is the abstract and as such incapable of bringing about the
slightest thing. So when occasionally one sees people with certain honest zeal
struggling and straining to realize the ethical, which like a shadow keeps
running away as they try to take hold of it, it is both comic and tragic." (E/O, Hannay, p. 546)
#
"The
ethical is the universal and as such the abstract. In its complete abstraction
the ethical is therefore always interdictory. The ethical thus presents itself
as law. As soon as the ethical specifies directives it already contains
something of the aesthetic. The Jews were the people of the Law. So they had an
excellent understanding of most of the commandments in the laws of Moses; but
the commandment they seemed not to have understood was the one with which
Christianity most closely associated itself: 'Thou shalt love God with all
thine heart.' Nor is this a negative commandment, and it is not abstract, it is
positive in the highest degree and concrete in the highest degree. When the
ethical becomes more concrete it passes over into the specification of moral
behaviour. But the reality of the ethical in this respect lies in the reality
of a popular identity, and here the ethical has already assumed an aesthetic
element. Nevertheless the ethical is still abstract and cannot be fully
realized because it lies outside the individual. Only when the individual
himself is the universal, only then can the ethical be realized. This is the
secret of conscience, it is the secret the individual life shares with itself,
that it is at one and the same time an individual life and also the universal,
if not as such in its immediacy, at least according to its possibility."
(E/O, Hannay, pp. 546-47)
#
"The
person who regards life ethically sees the universal, and the person who lives
ethically expresses his life in the universal; he makes himself into the
universal man, not by divesting himself of his concretion, for then he would be
nothing at all, but by clothing himself in it and permeating it with the
universal. For the universal man is not a phantom, everyone is the universal
man—that is to say, everyone is shown the path along which he becomes the
universal man. Someone who lives aesthetically is the accidental man, he thinks
he is the perfect man through being the only man." (E/O, Hannay, p. 547)
#
"Anyone
who chooses himself ethically has himself as a task, not as a possibility, not
as a plaything for his caprice to sport with. He can only choose himself
ethically when he chooses himself in continuity, and so he has himself as a
multiply specified task. He does not try to erase the multiplicity or to
disperse it; on the contrary, he repents himself firmly into it because this
multiplicity is himself, and only by repentantly steeping himself in it can he
come to himself, since he does not assume that the world begins with him or
that he creates himself." (E/O,
Hannay, p. 549)
#
"Now let us compare an
ethical and an aesthetic individual. The main difference, on which everything
turns, is that the ethical individual is transparent to himself and does not
live 'out in the blue' as does the aesthetic individual. From this difference
everything else follows. The person who lives ethically has seen himself, knows
himself, permeates his whole concretion with his consciousness, does not allow
vague thoughts to fuss around in him, nor tempting possibilities to distract
him with their legerdemain; he himself is not like a witch's letter which,
depending upon how you turn the pages, gives you first this image, then that.
He knows himself. The expression gnothi seauton is repeated often enough
and one has seen in it the aim of all human striving. Quite right too, but it
is equally certain that it cannot be the goal unless at the same time it is the
beginning." (E/O, Hannay, p. 549)
#
"The expression gnothi seauton is repeated often enough
and one has seen in it the aim of all human striving. Quite right, too, but it
is equally certain that it cannot be the goal unless at the same time it is the
beginning. The ethical individual knows himself, but this knowledge is not mere
contemplation, for then the individual would be specified in respect of his
necessity; it is a reflection on himself, which is itself an action, and that
is why I have been careful to use the expression 'to choose oneself' instead of
'to know oneself'. " (E/O, Hannay, p. 549)
#
"If I am shown the road
to the finite, it is gratuitous to remain stationary at any particular point.
On that road, then, one never arrives at the point of beginning, for in order
to begin one would have to have reached the end and that is impossible. When
personal being is the absolute it is itself the Archimedean point from which
one can lift the world. It is easy to see that being conscious of this cannot
lead the individual into wanting to cast off reality, for if that was how he
wanted to be the absolute he would be nothing at all, an abstraction. It is
only as the particular that he is the absolute, and his awareness of that will
save him from all revolutionary radicalism." (E/O, Hannay, pp. 555-56)
#
"It remains to show what
life looks like when regarded ethically. You and all aesthetics are quite
prepared to go shares, you admit the ethical has its importance, you say that
it is respectable for a man to live for his duties, that it is commendable,
indeed you even let fall some innuendos about its being right and proper that
there are people who live for their duties, that it is as well the majority do
that, and you sometimes run across men of duty good-natured enough to find
sense in this talk, in spite of the fact, of course, that like all skepticism
it is nonsense. You yourselves, on the other hand, have no wish to embark on
the ethical; that would deprive life of its meaning and all of its beauty. The
ethical is something quite different from the aesthetic, and once it emerges it
altogether destroys the latter." (E/O, Hannay, pp. 558-59)
#
"If I say now that the
individual has his teleology within him, this cannot be misunderstood as
implying that I take the individual to be the central thing, or that the
individual in an abstract sense is sufficient unto himself, for after all, if
he is grasped abstractly I get no movement. The individual has his own
teleology within him, has an inner teleology, is himself his own teleology, and
his self, then, is the goal for which he strives. This self of his is not,
however, an abstraction, but absolutely concrete. In the movement towards
himself he cannot relate himself negatively to the world around him, for his
self would then be an abstraction and remain such. He must open his self in
respect to his whole concretion, but to that concretion also belong those
factors specifically to do with taking an active part in the world. So his
movement will be from himself, through the world, to himself. Also, the
movement here is a real movement, for this movement is the work of freedom but
at the same time immanent teleology, and it is here, therefore, that there can
first be any question of beauty." (E/O, Hannay, pp. 561-62)
#
So, wanting to be in the wrong
expresses an infinite relationship, wanting to be in the right, or finding it
painful to be in the wrong, expresses a finite relationship! So the edifying,
then, is to always be in the wrong, for only the infinite edifies, the finite
does not." (E/O, Hannay, p. 603)
#
"It is an edifying
thought, then, that against God we are always in the wrong. If this conviction
did not have its source in your whole being, that is, in the love that is
within you, your reflection would have acquired a different appearance. You
would have recognized that God is always in the right, this you would have been
compelled to recognize; as a consequence of that, you would have been compelled
to recognize that you are always in the wrong. The latter would have already
caused difficulties, for although you can certainly be compelled to recognize
that God is always in the right, you cannot really be compelled to apply this
to yourself, to let your whole being appropriate this recognition." (E/O,
Hannay, p. 605)
#
"Ask
yourself, and keep on asking until you find the answer, for one can recognize a
thing many times and acknowledge it, one can want a thing many times and
attempt it, yet only the deep inner movement, only the indescribable motions of
the heart, only these convince you that what you have recognized 'belongs unto
you,' that no power can take it from you; for only the truth that edifies is
the truth for you." (E/O, Hannay, pp. 608-09)
Fear & Trembling:
"If
there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the foundation of all there
lay only a wildly seething power which writhing with obscure passion produced
everything that is great and everything that is insignificant, if a bottomless
void never satiated lay hidden beneath all—what then would life be but despair?"
(Fear & Trembling, Lowrie, p. 30; Hong, p. 15)
#
"The poet cannot do what
that other does, he can only admire, love and rejoice in the hero. Yet he too
is happy, and not less so, for the hero is as it were his better nature, with
which he is in love, rejoicing in the fact that this after all is not himself,
that his love can be admiration. He is the genius of recollection, can do
nothing except call to mind what has been done, do nothing but admire what has
been done; he contributes nothing of his own, but is jealous of the intrusted treasure. He follows the option of his heart, but when he has
found what he sought, he wanders before every man’s door with his song and with
his oration, that all may admire the hero as he does, be proud of the hero as
he is. This is his achievement, his humble work, this is his faithful service in the house of the
hero. If he thus remains true to his love, he strives day and night against the
cunning of oblivion which would trick him out of his hero, then he has
completed his work, then he is gathered to the hero, who has loved him just as
faithfully, for the poet is as it were the hero’s better nature, powerless it
may be as a memory is, but also transfigured as a memory is. Hence no one shall
be forgotten who was great, and though time tarries long, though a cloud’s of
misunderstanding takes the hero away, his lover comes nevertheless, and the
longer the time that has passed, the more faithfully will he cling to
him." (F&T, Lowrie, p. 30; Hong, pp. 15-16)
#
"Abraham I cannot
understand, in a certain sense there is nothing I can learn from him but
astonishment. If people fancy that by considering the outcome of this story
they might let themselves be moved to believe, they deceive themselves and want
to swindle God out of the first movement of faith, the infinite resignation.
They would suck worldly wisdom out of the paradox. Perhaps one or another may
succeed in that, for our age is not willing to stop with faith, with its
miracle of turning water into wine, it goes further, it turns wine into
water." (F&T, Lowrie, p. 48; Hong, p. 37)
#
"For
my part I can well describe the movements of faith, but I cannot make them.
When one would learn to make the motions of swimming one can let oneself by
hung by a swimming belt from the ceiling and go through the motions (describe
them, so to speak, as we speak of describing a circle), but one is not
swimming. In that way I can describe the movements of faith, but when I am
thrown into the water I swim, it is true (for I do not belong to the
beach-waders), but I make other movements, I make the movements of infinity,
whereas faith does the opposite: after having made the movement of infinity, it
makes those of finiteness." (F&T, Lowrie, p. 48; Hong, pp. 37-38)
#
"With infinite
resignation he has drained the cup of life's profound sadness, he knows the
bliss of the infinite, he senses the pain of renouncing everything, the dearest
things he possesses in the world, and yet finiteness tastes to him just as good
as to one who never knew anything higher…And yet, and yet the whole earthly for
he exhibits is a new creation by virtue of the absurd. He resigned everything
infinitely, and then he grasped everything again by virtue of the absurd. He
constantly makes the movements of infinity, but he does this with such
correctness and assurance that he constantly gets the finite out of it, and
there is not a second when one has a notion of anything else." (F7T,
Lowrie, p. 51; Hong, pp. 40-41)
#
"So for the first thing,
the knight will have power to concentrate the whole content of life and the
whole significance of reality in one single wish. If a man lacks this
concentration, this intensity, if his soul from the beginning is dispersed in
the multifarious, he never comes to the point of making the movement, he will
deal shrewdly in life like the capitalists who invest their money in all sorts
of securities, so as to gain on the one what they lose on the other–in short,
he is not a knight. In the next place the knight will have the power to
concentrate the whole result of the operations of thought in one act of
consciousness." (F&T, Lowrie, pp. 53-54; Hong, pp. 42-43)
#
"In infinite resignation
there is peace and rest and comfort in sorrow—that is, if the movement is made
normally. It would not be difficult for me, however, to write a whole book,
were I to examine the various misunderstandings, the preposterous attitudes,
the deceptive movements, which I have encountered in my brief practice."
(F&T, Lowrie, p. 56; Hong, p. 45)
#
"The infinite
resignation is the last stage prior to faith, so that one who has not made this
movement has not faith; for only in the infinite resignation do I become clear
to myself with respect to my eternal validity, and only then can there be any
question of grasping existence by virtue of faith." (F&T, Lowrie, p.
57; Hong, p. 46)
#
"Faith therefore is not
an aesthetic emotion but something far higher, precisely because it has
resignation as its presumption; it is not an immediate instinct of the heart,
but it is the paradox of life and existence." (F&T, Lowrie, p. 58;
Hong. P. 47)
#
"For the act of
resignation faith is not required, for what I gain by resignation is my eternal
consciousness, and this is a purely philosophical movement which I dare say I
am able to make if it is required, and which I can train myself to make, for
whenever any finiteness would get the mastery over me, I starve myself until I
can make the movement, for my eternal consciousness is my love to God, and for
me this is higher than everything. For the act of resignation faith is not
required, but it is needed when it is the case of acquiring the very least
thing more than my eternal consciousness, for this is the paradoxical. The
movements are frequently confounded, for it is said that one needs faith to
renounce the claim to everything, yea, a stranger thing than this may be heard,
when a man laments the loss of his faith, and when one looks at the scale to
see where he is, one sees, strangely enough, that he has only reached the point
where he should make the infinite movement of resignation. In resignation I
make renunciation of everything, this movement I make by myself, and if I do
not make it, it is because I am cowardly and effeminate and without enthusiasm
and do not feel the significance of the lofty dignity which is assigned to
every man, that of being his own censor, which is a far prouder title than that
of Censor General to the whole Roman Republic. This movement I make by myself,
and what I gain is myself in my eternal consciousness, in blissful agreement
with my love for the Eternal Being. By faith I make renunciation of nothing, on
the contrary, by faith I acquire everything, precisely in the sense in which it
is said that he who has faith like a grain of mustard can remove mountains. A
purely human courage is required to renounce the whole of the temporal to gain
the eternal; but this I gain, and to all eternity I cannot renounce it, that is
a self-contradiction; but a paradox enters in and a humble courage is required
to grasp the whole of the temporal by virtue of the absurd, and this is the
courage of faith." (F&T, Lowrie, p. 59: Hong, p. 48-49)
#
"The ethical as such is
the universal and as the universal it applies to everyone, which may be
expressed from another point of view by saying that it applies every instant.
It reposes immanently in itself, it has nothing without itself which is its
telos, but is itself telos for everything outside it, and when this is
incorporated by the ethical, it can go no further. Conceived immediately as
physical and psychical, the particular individual is the individual who has his
telos in the universal, and his ethical task is to express himself constantly
in it, to abolish his particularity in order to become the universal. As soon
as the individual would assert himself in his particularity over against the
universal he sins, and only by recognizing this can he again reconcile himself
with the universal. Whenever the individual after he has entered the universal
feels an impulse to assert himself as the particular, he is in temptation, and
he can labor himself out if this only by penitently abandoning himself as the
particular in the universal. If this be the highest thing that can be said of
man and of his existence, then the ethical has the same character as man's
eternal blessedness, which to all eternity and at every instant is his telos, since it would be a contradiction
to say that this might be abandoned (i.e., teleologically suspended), inasmuch
as this is no sooner suspended than it is forfeited, whereas in other cases
what is suspended is not forfeited but is preserved in that higher thing which
is its telos." (F&T, Lowrie,
pp. 64-65; Hong, p. 54 )
#
"For faith is this
paradox, that the particular is higher than the universal—yet in such a way, be
it observed, that the movement repeats itself, and that consequently the
individual, after having been in the universal, now as the particular isolates
himself as higher than the universal. If this is be not faith, then Abraham is
lost, then faith has never existed in the world … because it has always
existed." (F&T, Lowrie, p. 65; Hong, p. 55 )
#
"Faith is precisely this
paradox, that the individual as the particular is higher than the universal, is
justified over against it, is not subordinate but superior – yet in such a way,
be it observed, that it is the particular individual who, after he has been
subordinated as the particular to the universal, now through the universal
becomes the individual who as the particular is superior to the universal, for
the fact that the individual as the particular stands in an absolute relation
to the absolute." (F&T, Lowrie, p. 66; Hong, pp. 55-56 )
#
"Why then did Abraham do
it? For God’s sake, and (in complete identity with this) for his own sake. He
did it for God’s sake because God required this proof of his faith; for his own
sake he did it in order that he might furnish the proof. The unity of these two
points of view is perfectly expressed by the word which has always been used to
characterize this situation: it is a trial, a temptation (Fristelse). A
temptation – but what does that mean? What ordinarily tempts a man is that
which would keep him from doing his duty, but in this case the temptation is
itself the ethical . . . which would keep him from doing God’s will."
(F&T, Lowrie, p. 70; Hong, pp. 59-60)
#
"The ethical is the
universal, and as such it is again the divine. One has therefore the right to
say that fundamentally every duty is a duty toward God; but if one cannot say
more, then one affirms at the same time that properly I have no duty toward
God. Duty becomes duty by being referred to God, but in duty itself I do not
come into a relation with God." (F&T, Lowrie, p. 78, Hong, p. 68)
#
"In the ethical way of
regarding life it is therefore the task of the individual to divest himself of
the inward determinants and express them in an outward way. Whenever he shrinks
from this, whenever he is inclined to persist in or to slip back into the
inward determinants of feeling, mood, etc., he sins, he is in temptation. The paradox
of faith is this, that there is an inwardness which is incommensurable for the
outward, an inwardness, be it observed, which is not identical with the first,
but is a new inwardness. This must not be overlooked. Modern philosophy has
permitted itself without further ado to substitute in place of 'faith' the
immediate. When one does that it is ridiculous to deny that faith has existed
in all ages. In that way faith comes into rather simple company along with
feeling, mood, idiosyncrasy, vapors, etc. To this extent philosophy may be
right in saying that one ought not stop there. But there is nothing to justify
philosophy in using philosophy in using this phrase with regard to faith.
Before faith there goes a movement of infinity, and only then, necopinate
[unexpectedly], by virtue of the absurd, faith enters upon the scene."
(F&T, Lowrie, p. 79; Hong, p. 69)
#
"Before faith there goes
the movement of infinity, and only then, necopinate, by virtue of the absurd,
faith enters upon the scene. This I can well understand without maintaining on
that account that I have faith. If faith is nothing but what philosophy makes
it out to be, then Socrates went further, much further, whereas the contrary is
true, that he never reached it. In an intellectual respect he made the movement
of infinity. His ignorance is infinite resignation. This task in itself is a
match for human powers, even though people in our time disdain it; but only
after it is done, only when the individual has evacuated himself in the
infinite, only then is the point attained where faith can break forth."
(F&T, Lowrie, pp. 79-80; Hong, p. 69)
#
"The paradox of faith is
this, that the individual is higher than the universal, that the individual (to
recall a dogmatic distinction now rather seldom heard) determines his relation
to the universal by his relation to the absolute, not his relation to the
absolute by his relation to the universal. The paradox can also be expressed by
saying that there is an absolute duty toward God; for in this relationship of
duty the individual as an individual stands related absolutely to the absolute.
So when in this connection it is said that it is a duty to love God, something
different is said from that in the foregoing; for if this duty is absolute, the
ethical is reduced to a position of relativity. From this, however, it does not
follow that the ethical is to be abolished, but it acquires an entirely
different expression, the paradoxical expression–that, for example, love to God
may cause the knight of faith to give his love to his neighbor the opposite
expression to that which, ethically speaking, is required by duty. If such is
not the case, then faith has no proper place in existence, then faith is a
temptation (Anfechtung), and Abraham is lost, since he gave in to
it." (F&T, Lowrie, p. 80; Hong, p. 70)
#
"In the story of Abraham
we find such a paradox. His relation to Isaac, ethically expressed, is this,
that the father should love the son. This ethical relation is reduced to a
relative position in contrast with the absolute relation to God. To the
question, "Why?" Abraham has no answer except that it is a trial, a
temptation (Fristelse)–terms which, as was remarked above, express the
unity of the two points of view: that it is for God's sake and for his own
sake. In common usage these two ways of regarding the matter are mutually
exclusive. Thus when we see a man do something which does not comport with the
universal, we say that he scarcely can be doing it for God's sake, and by that
we imply that he does it for his own sake. The paradox of faith has lost the
intermediate term, i.e. the universal." (F&T, Lowrie, p.81; Hong, pp.
70-71)
#
"The ethical as such is
the universal, again, as the universal it is the manifest, the revealed. The
individual regarded as he is immediately, that is, as a physical and psychical
being, is the hidden, the concealed. So his ethical task is to develop out of
this concealment and to reveal himself in the universal. Hence whenever he wills to remain in
concealment he sins and lies in temptation (Anfectung), out of which he can
only come by revealing himself." (F&T, Lowrie, p.91; Hong, p. 82)
#
"For faith is not the
first immediacy but a subsequent immediacy. The first immediacy is the
aesthetical, and about this the Hegelian philosophy may be in the right. But
faith is not the aesthetical – or else faith has never existed because it has
always existed." (F&T, Lowrie, p. 92; Hong, p. 82)
#
"So by the help of the
demonical the merman desires to be the individual who as the individual is higher
than the universal. The demonical has the same characteristic as the divine
inasmuch as the individual can enter into an absolute relation to it. This is
the analogy, the counterpart, to that paradox of which we are talking. It has
therefore a certain resemblance which may deceive one." (F&T, Lowrie,
p. 106; Hong, p. 97)
#
"So the merman cannot
belong to Agnes unless, after having made the infinite movement, the movement
of repentance, he makes still one more movement by virtue of the
absurd." (F&T, Lowrie, p. 109;
Hong, p. 99)
#
Abraham keeps silent – but he
cannot speak. Therein lies the distress and anguish. For if I when I
speak am unable to make myself intelligible, then I am not speaking – even
though I were to talk uninterruptedly day and night. Such is the case with
Abraham. He is able to utter everything, but one thing he cannot say, i.e. say
it in such a way that another understands it, and so he is not speaking. The
relief of speech is that it translates me into the universal. (F&T, Lowrie, p. 122; Hong, p. 113)
#
"He who denies himself,
sacrifices himself out of duty, and gives up the finite in order to grasp the
infinite is safe enough, and he must always be understood within the universal,
for duty is the universal; but one who gives up duty in order to grasp
something still higher, if he is in error, what salvation is there for him?
–The terrifying thawing in the collision is this—that it is not a collision
between God's command and man's command but between God's command and God's
command." (F&T, Hong, Supplement, p. 248) (JP I 908 (Pap. IV B 67)
n.d. 1843)
For Self-Examination:
"In other words, when
you are reading God's Word, it is not the obscure passages that bind you but
what you understand, and with that you are to comply at once. If you understand
only one single passage in all of Holy Scripture, well, then you must do that
first of all, but you do not have to sit down and ponder the obscure passages.
God's Word is given in order that you shall act accordingly to it, not that you
should practice interpreting obscure passages." (FSE, Hong, p. 29)
#
"Yes,
the way is narrow from the very beginning, because he knows from the very
beginning that his work is to work against himself. The way certainly be narrow
when you are still allowed to use all your powers to push your way through when
the opposition is outside yourself, but when you must use your powers to work
against yourself, then it seems infinitely little to say that the way is
narrow—it is, instead, impassible, blocked, impossible, insane!" (FSE,
Hong, p. 61)
#
"My
listener, with regard to Christianity, there is nothing to which every person
is by nature more inclined than to take it in vain. Neither is there anything
that is at all Christian, not one single Christian qualification that by some
slight modification, by removing some more specific middle term, does not
become something entirely different, something about which one must say, 'This
has arisen in the heart of man'—and thus is taken in vain. On the other hand,
there is nothing against which Christianity has protected itself with greater
vigilance and zeal than against being taken in vain. There is not one, not one
Christian qualification into which Christianity does not first of all introduce
as the middle term: death, dying to [at afidøe]—in order to protect the
essentially Christian from being taken in vain. It is said that 'Christianity
is gentle comfort, is this doctrine of the grounds of gentle comfort.' Well it
can not be denied—that is, if you will first of all die, die to, but this is
not so gentle! Jesus Christ is presented; one says 'Hear his voice—how he calls
invitingly, all to himself, all those who suffer, and promises to give them
rest for their souls.' And truly this is so; God forbid that I should say anything
else, but yet, yet—before this for the soul falls to your lot, it is required
that you first of all die, die to (something the inviter also says, something
his whole life on earth is expressed single day and every single hour of every
day)—is this so inviting?" (FSE, Hong, pp. 75-76)
#
"Death
goes in between; this is what Christianity teaches, you must die to. The
life-giving Spirit is the very one who slays you; the first thing the
life-giving Spirit says is that you must enter death, that you must die to—it
is this way in order that you may not take Christianity in vain. A life-giving
Spirit—that is the invitation; who would not willingly take hold of it! But die
first—that is the halt." (FSE,
Hong, pp. 76-77)
#
"Therefore,
death first; you must first die to every merely earthly hope, to every merely
human confidence; you must die to your selfishness, or to the world, because it
is only through your selfishness that the world has power over you; if you are
dead to your selfishness, you are also dead to the world. But naturally there
is nothing a human being hangs on to so firmly—indeed, with his whole self!—as
to his selfishness." (FSE, Hong, p.77)
#
The
Spirit brings faith, the faith—that is, faith in the
strictest sense of the word, this gift of the Holy Spirit—only after death has
come in between. We human beings are not very precise with words; we often talk
about faith when in the Strictly Christian sense it is not faith. According to
the diversity of natural developments of natural endowments, we are all born
with a stronger or weaker immediacy; the strongest, the more vigorous [livskraftig] it is, the longer it can hold out against
resistance. And this endurance, this healthy [livsfrisk] confidence in
oneself, in the world, in mankind, and, along with this, in God, we call faith.
But in the stricter Christian understanding it is not faith. Faith is against
understanding, faith is on the other side of death. And when you have died or
died to yourself, to the world, then you also died to all immediacy in
yourself, also to your understanding. It
is when all confidence in yourself or in human support, and also in God in an
immediate way, is extinct, when every probability is extinct, when it is dark
as on a dark night—it is indeed death we are describing—then comes the
life-giving spirit and brings faith." (FSE, Hong, pp.81-82)
#
"And
the spirit next beings hope—hope in
the strictest Christian sense, which is hope against hope. In every human being
there is a spontaneous, immediate hope; it can be more robust [livsstærk] in one than in another, but in death (that is, when you die to) every
such hope dies and changes into hopelessness—it is indeed death we are
describing—comes the life-giving Spirit and brings hope, eternity's hope."
(FSE, Hong, p. 82)
#
"Not until you have died
to the selfishness in you and thereby to the world so that you do not love the
world or anything in the world, do not selfishly love even one single
person—not until you in your love of God have learned to hate yourself, not
until then can there be talk of the love that is Christian love." (FSE,
Hong, pp. 83-84)
#
"What I have understood
as the task of my authorship has been done. It is one idea from Either/Or to
Anti-Climacus, the idea of religiousness in reflection. The task has occupied
totally, for it has occupied me religiously; I have understood the completion
of this authorship as my duty, as a responsibility resting upon me. Whether
anyone has wanted to buy or to read has concerned me very little." (For
Self-Examination, Supplement, Hong, p. 224) (JP VI 6770)
#
"What
is Required in Order to Look at Oneself with the True Blessing in the Mirror of
the Word: (1) One must to a certain extent know oneself beforehand. He who does
not know himself cannot recognize himself, either; one is continually able to
recognize oneself only to the extent one knows oneself. A certain kind of
preparation, therefore, is required. It is also physically true that a person
who accidentally sees himself in a mirror, or if someone without his knowing places
a mirror where the image he sees is a reflected image and this image is
himself—he cannot recognize himself. Paganism required: Know yourself.
Christianity declares: No, that is provisional – know yourself – and then look
in the mirror of the Word in order to know yourself properly. No true
self-knowledge without God-knowledge or (without standing) before God."
(FS-E, Supplement, Hong, p. 234)
Johannes Climacus:
"To
the best of his knowledge, the Greeks taught that philosophy begins with wonder
[Forunding]. A principle such as that cannot give rise to any historical
consequence whatsoever. If a latter thinker made the same assumption, we would
be utterly justified in drawing the conclusion that he thought one should begin
with wonder over the fact that Plato and Aristotle had wondered. Wonder is
plainly an immediate category and involves no reflection upon itself. Doubt, on
the other hand, is a reflection-category." (JC, Hong, p. 145)
#
"But
every time a later philosopher repeats or says these words: Philosophy begins
with doubt—the continuity is broken, for doubt is precisely a polemic against
what went before." (JC, Hong, p. 145)
#
"Before
proceeding any further, he considered whether or not what he at this point called
consciousness was what usually called reflection. He formulated the
relevant definition as follows: Reflection is the possibility of the
relation; consciousness is the relation, the first form of which is
contradiction. As a result, he also noted reflection's categories are
always dichotomous. For example, ideality and reality, soul and body, to
know the true, to will the good, to love the beautiful, God and the world, etc.
are categories of reflection. In reflection, they touch each other in such a
way that a relation becomes possible. The categories of consciousness, however,
are trichotomous, as language also demonstrates, for when I say , I am
conscious of this sensory impression, I am expressing a triad.
Consciousness is mind [Aand], and it is remarkable that when one is divided in
the world of mind, there are three, never two. Consciousness, therefore,
presupposes reflection. If this were not the case, then it would be impossible
to explain doubt." (JC, Hong, pp. 168-69)
#
"Consciousness,
then, is the relation, a relation whose form is a contradiction. But how does
consciousness discover the contradiction? If that fallacy discussed above could
remain, that ideality and reality in all naiveté communicated with one another,
consciousness would never emerge, for consciousness emerges precisely through
the collision, just as it presupposes the collision. Immediately there is no
collision, but mediately it is present. As soon as the question of repetition
arises, the collision is present, for only a repetition of what has been before
is conceivable." (JC, Hong, p. 171)
#
"Descartes'
philosophy has a birthmark. Having eliminated everything in order to find
himself as a thinking being in such a way that this very thinking is myself, he
then finds that with the same necessity he thinks God. Then, however, his
system also calls for the rescue of the finite world in some way or other. The
development toward this end is as follows. God cannot deceive; he has implanted
all ideas within me, and therefore they are true. Incidentally, it is noteworthy
that Descartes, who himself in one of his meditations explains the possibility
of error by recalling that freedom in man is superior to thought, nevertheless
has construed thought, not freedom, as the absolute." (JC, Hong,
Supplement, p. 232-33) (JP III 2338 (Pap. IV C 11) n.d. 1842-43)
#
"Doubt
is produced EITHER by bringing reality into relation with ideality
this
is the act of cognition
insofar
as interest is involved, there is at most a
third
in which I am interested—for example, the truth.
OR
by bringing ideality into relation with reality
this
is the ethical.
That
in which I am interested in is myself.
It
is really Christianity that has brought this doubt into the world, for in
Christianity this self received its meaning. –Doubt is conquered not by the
system, but by faith, just as it is faith that has brought doubt into the
world. If the system is to set doubt at rest, then it is by standing higher
than both doubt and faith, but in that case doubt must first and foremost be
conquered by faith, for a leap over a middle link is not possible." (JC, Hong, Supplement, p.256) (JP I 891 (Pap.
IV B 13:18) n.d., 1842-43)
#
"He
realized that in doubt there had to be an act of will, for otherwise doubting
would become identical with being uncertain. (JC, Hong, Supplement, p. 259) (Pap.
IV B 5:8 n.d., 1842-43)
Journals:
"Everything depends upon
making the difference between quantitative and qualitative dialectic absolute.
The whole of logic is quantitative or modal dialectic, since everything is and
everything is one and the same. Qualitative dialectic is concerned with
existence." (J, Dru, p. 98, 1846)
#
"The paradox is not a
concession but a category, an ontological definition which expresses the
relation between an existing cognitive spirit and eternal truth." (J, Dru,
p. 118, 1847)
#
"The thing that grips me
more and more is my original, my first, my deepest, unaltered opinion that I
have honestly not chosen this life because it would be brilliant, but as a
penitential consolation in all my wretchedness. I have often enough explained
the dialectics of the paradox: it is not higher than the universal but beneath
it, and then again only a little higher. But the first, the pressure is so
great that the joy which comes from the last cannot be taken in vain. That is
the thorn in the flesh." (J, Dru, p. 122, 1847)
#
"Socrates, in my
opinion, is and remains the only reformer I know. The others I have read about
may have been enthusiastic and well-meaning but they were at the same time
decidedly narrow-minded." (J, Dru, p. 125, 1847)
#
"Oh, the sadness of
having understood something true—and then of only seeing oneself misunderstood.
Oh, sadness—for what is irony in the mystery of the heart but sadness. Sadness
means to be alone in having understood something true and as soon as one is in
the company with others, with those who misunderstand, that sadness becomes
irony." (J, Dru, p. 132, 1847)
#
"'The individual'; that
category has only been used once before and then by Socrates, in a dialectical
and decisive way, to disintegrate paganism. In Christianity it will be used
once again – in order to make men (the Christians) into Christians. (J, Dru, p.
135, 1847)
#
"That means to say, that
most people never attain to faith. For a long time they live on in
immediateness and finally they attain to a certain amount of reflection, and so
they die. The exceptions begin the other way round, from childhood up
dialectical, i.e., without immediateness, they begin with dialectics, with
reflection and in that way live on year after year (just about as long as
others live in the immediate) and then, at a ripe age, the possibility of faith
shows itself to them. For faith is immediateness after reflection. The
exceptions, naturally, have a very unhappy childhood and youth; for to be essentially
reflective at an age which is naturally immediate, is the depths of melancholy.
But they are recompensed; for most people do not succeed in becoming spirit,
and all of their fortunate years of their immediateness are, where spirit is
concerned, a loss and therefore they never attain to spirit. But the unhappy
childhood and youth of the exception is transfigured into spirit." (J,
Dru, p. 140, 1848)
#
"Faith is immediacy
after reflection." (J, Dru, p. 142, 1848)
#
"Here again is one of
the most important points regarding man's relation to God. If it were possible
to have a physical certainty that God would use one as an instrument (like a
king his minister)—how could it be possible not to submit willingly to every
sacrifice. But is it possible to have a real certainty, or a purely immediate
certainty of one's relation to God. For God is spirit. One can have a spiritual
relationship to a spirit; and a spiritual relationship is eo ipso
dialectical. (J, Dru, p. 142, 1848)
#
"It has constantly been
maintained that reflection inevitably destroys Christianity and is its natural
enemy. I hope, now, with God's help that it will be shown that a god fearing
reflection can once again tie the knot at which a superficial reflection has
been tugging for so long. The divine authority of the Bible and all that
belongs to it has been done away with; and it looks as though one had only to
wait for the last stage of reflection in order to have done with the whole
thing. But behold, reflection performs the opposite service by once more
bringing the springs of Christianity back into play, and in such a way that it
can stand up—against reflection. Christianity naturally remains completely
unaltered, not one iota has changed. But the struggle is a different one; up to
the present it has been between reflection and simple, immediate Christianity;
now it will be between reflection and simplicity armed with reflection."
J, Dru, p. 146, 1848)
#
"The truth that is
troubled is the truth which while itself eternally certain of being the truth,
is essentially concerned with communicating it with others, concerned that they
should accept it for their own good in spite of the fact that the truth does
not force itself upon them. This is the dialectical point. Mere dabblers,
half-men, desire to communicate simply in order to reassure themselves. The
purely intellectual effort is only concerned with discovering the truth. The
'troubled' truth is certain enough of being the truth but is concerned, or
'troubled' to communicate it. That is Christianity." (J, Dru, p. 169,
1849)
#
"The majority of men in
every generation, even those who, as it is described, devote themselves to
thinking (dons and the like), live and die under the impression that life is
simply a matter of understanding more and more, and if it were granted to them
to live long longer, that life would continue to be one long continuous growth
in understanding. How many of them ever experience the maturity of discovering
that there comes a critical moment where everything is reversed, after which
the point becomes to understand more and more that there is something which
cannot be understood. That is Socratic ignorance, and that is what the
philosophy of our times requires as a corrective.
As Johannes Climacus truly
observes, the majority of men turn aside precisely where the higher life should
begin for them, turn aside and become practical, 'Man, father, and champion
bowler'; and, as Anti-Climacus truly remarks, the majority of men never
experience the spiritual life; they never experience that qualitative encounter
with the divine. To them the divine is simply a rhetorically meaningless hiatic
superlative of the human: which explains their satisfaction with the idea of
being able to form ever clearer conceptions of it, so that if they had time,
did not go to the office or their club or talk to their wives, if they only had
time enough they would manage to understand the divine perfectly. Socratic
ignorance, but nota bene modified by the Christian spirit, is maturity,
is intellectually speaking what conversion is morally and religiously, is what
it means to become a child again. It is quite literally true that the law is:
increasing profundity is understanding more and more that one cannot
understand. And there once again comes in 'being like a child,' but raised to
the second power." (Journals, Dru, pp. 172-73, 1849)
#
"The moment I take
Christianity as a doctrine and so indulge my cleverness or profundity or my
eloquence or my imaginative powers in depicting it: people are very pleased; I
am looked upon as a serious Christian. The moment I begin to express
existentially what I say, and consequently bring Christianity into reality: it
is just as though I had exploded existence—the scandal is there at once."
(J. Dru, p. 174, 1849)
#
"It may truly be said
that there is something Socratic about me. Indirect communication was my
natural qualification. As a result of all I experienced, all I went through and
thought out last summer on the subject of direct communication, I have made a
direct communication (the thing with my literary work with its category: the
whole thing is my education) and at the same time acquired a deeper
understanding of indirect communication, the new pseudonymity. To me there is
something so inexplicably happy in the antithesis Climacus – Anti-Climacus, I
recognize myself, and my nature so entirely in it that if someone else had
discovered it I should have thought he had spied upon me. –The merit is not
mine, for I did not originally think of it" (J, Dru, pp. 174-75, 1849)
#
The category of my work is :
to make men aware of Christianity, and consequently, I always say: I am not an
example, for otherwise all would be confusion. My task is to deceive people, in
a true sense, into entering the sphere of religious obligation which they have
done away with; but I am without authority. Instead of authority I make use of
the very reverse, I say: the whole thing is my own education. That, once again,
is a truly Socratic discovery. Just as he was ignorant, in my case it is: instead
of being the teacher, being the one who is educated. (J, Dru, p. 175, 1849)
#
"In all that is usually
said about Johannes Climacus being purely subjective and so on, people have
forgotten, in addition to everything else concrete about him, that in one of
the last sections he shows that the curious thing is: that there is a 'how'
which has this quality, that if it is truly given, then the 'what' is
also given; and that it is the 'how' of 'faith.' Here, quite certainly, we have
inwardness at its maximum proving to be objectivity once again. And this is an
aspect of the principle of subjectivity which, so far as I know, has never
before been presented or worked out."
(J, Dru, pp. 177-78, 1849)
#
"The transformation
which really lies in changing from immediacy to spirituality, that
mortification is not serious, becomes in fact an illusion, a form of
experimentation if there is not some third and compelling factor, which is not
the individual himself." (J, Dru, pp. 182, 1850)
#
"It is clear that in my
writings I have given a further definition of the concept of faith, which did
not exist until now." (J, Dru, p. 201, 1850)
#
"I began with the
Socratic method; but I nevertheless recognized my inferiority profoundly, for I
had means and, to that extent, a great help towards independence from others.
In so far as I now strive to attract people more directly towards me or towards
the Idea, I look upon it as an abatement, in a sense an accommodation, but also
in the direction of Christianity. I do not talk nonsense and say that my method
is superior towards the Socratic method. No, no; besides, it does not tend
towards the Socratic method but towards proclaiming grace, though of course
infinitely lower than the apostolic." (J, Dru, p. 210)
#
"Imagination
is what providence uses in order to get men into reality, into existence, to
get them far enough out, or in, or down in existence. And when imagination has
helped them as far out as they are meant to go—that is where reality, properly
speaking, begins. (J, Dru, p. 243, 1854)
#
"The majority of men are
curtailed 'I's'; what was planned by nature as a possibility capable of being
sharpened into an I is soon dulled into a third person. It is very different
thing to have an objective relation to one's own subjectivity. Take Socrates!
He is not a third person in the sense that he avoids going into danger, avoids
staking his life, which one avoids doing if one is a third person—not an 'I.'
In no sense is that true. But actually in danger he has an objective attitude
to his own personality, and when he is about to be condemned to death speaks of
his condemnation like a third person. He is subjectivity raised to the second
power, his attitude is as objective as that of a true poet to his own poetic
works; he is just as objective to his own subjectivity. That is an achievement.
Otherwise one invariably gets one of two things, either an objective something,
an objective bit of furniture which is supposed to be a man, or else a
miscellaneous hodge-podge of accidents and spontaneity. But the task is to have
an objective attitude to one's own subjectivity. The maximum which anyone
achieves in this respect may serve as an infinitely weak analogy of how God is
infinitely subjective." (J, Dru, pp. 248-49)
Judge for Yourself:
"Here is the infinite
difference from the essentially Christian, since Christianly, indeed, even just
religiously, the person who never relinquished probability never became
involved with God. All religious, to say nothing of Christian, venturing is on
the other side of probability, is by the way of relinquishing
probability." (JY, Hong, pp. 99-100)
#
"To become sober is: to come to oneself in self-knowledge and
before God as nothing before him, yet infinitely, unconditionally engaged. To
come to oneself. Consequently, to go on living in complete ignorance of
oneself, or totally to misunderstand oneself, or to venture in blind confidence
in one's own powers and the like is not—in this we are in agreement with the
purely human point of view—this is not coming to oneself; it is being
intoxicated." (JY, Hong, p. 104)
#
"Consequently,
to go on living in complete ignorance of oneself, or to totally misunderstand
oneself, or to venture in blind confidence in one's own powers and the like is
not—in this we are in agreement with the purely human point of view—this is not
coming to oneself; it is being intoxicated." (JY, Hong, p. 104)
#
"To come to oneself in self- knowledge. In self-knowledge. In any other knowledge you are away from yourself,
you forget yourself, are absent from yourself. (JY, Hong, p. 105)
#
"There is only one kind
of knowing that brings a person completely to himself – self-knowledge; this is
what it means to be sober, sheer transparency." (JY, Hong, p. 105)
#
"To come to oneself in
self-knowledge and before God. If self-knowledge does not lead to
knowing oneself before God—well, then there is something to what purely
self-observation says, namely, that this self-knowledge leads to a certain
emptiness that produces dizziness. Only by being before God can one totally
come to oneself in the transparency of soberness." (JY, Hong, p.106)
#
"Thus it is indeed the
case that precisely the unconditioned is the only thing that can make a person
completely sober." (JY, Hong, p. 107)
#
"'But,' says the
sensible person, 'one must be careful about the direction one's knowing takes.
If my knowing turns inward, against me, if I do not take care to prevent this,
then knowing is the most intoxicating thing there is, the way to becoming
completely intoxicated, since there then occurs an intoxicating confusion
between the knowledge and the knower, so that the knower will himself resemble,
will be, that which is known. And this is intoxication. You will soon find out
that this is the case. If your knowing takes such a turn and you yield to it,
it will soon end with your tumbling like a drunk man into actuality, plunging
yourself recklessly into reckless action without giving the understanding and
sagacity the time to take into proper consideration what is prudent, what is
advantageous, what will pay. This is why we, the sober ones, warn you, not
against knowing or expanding your knowing, but against letting your knowing
take an inward direction, for then it is intoxicating.' This is thieves'
jargon. It says that it is one's knowledge that, by taking the inward direction
in this way, intoxicates, rather that in precisely this way it makes manifest
that one is intoxicated, intoxicated in one's attachment to this earthly life,
the temporal, the secular, and the selfish. And it is this that one fears, but
one blames the knowledge for being intoxicating. One fears that one's knowing,
turned inward toward oneself, will expose the state of intoxication there, will
expose that one prefers to remain in this state, will wrench one out of this
state and as a result of such a step will make it impossible for one to slip
back into that adored state, into intoxication." (JY, Hong, p. 118)
#
"Christianity, however,
declares that it is precisely the turning of one's knowing inward toward
oneself that makes one sober, that only the person whose understanding, whose
knowing, is action, is completely sober, that it therefore is by no means
necessary to spend so much on developing one's knowing if only one sees to it
that it takes an inward direction, that it is craftiness to direct all one's
attention and power on developing one's knowing, that someone with only a
slight capacity for knowledge, but turned inward and thus transformed into
action, is sober, and that someone with the greatest capacity for knowledge,
but turned in the opposite direction, is completely intoxicated." (JY,
Hong, p. 119)
#
"But to go back again to
the beginning of our discussion of this last point: the condition of our time
is precisely one of having made the infinite and the finite, the highest and
the lowest, blend in such a way that the condition is an impenetrable
ambiguity. Thus it is certainly necessary to become sober in order to come out
of this state of intoxication." (JY, Hong, p. 128)
#
Imitation, the following
of Christ, is really the point from
which the human race shrinks. The main difficulty lies here; here is where it
is really decided whether or not one is willing to accept Christianity."
(JY, Hong, p. 188)
#
"The matter is quite
simple. Every person who initiates an act of true self-denial will come to
suffer for it. If this were not so, true self-denial would be impossible, since
the self-denial that is profitable in an external way is indeed not true self
denial. This is why Governance kindly sees to it that if there is a more than
ordinarily honest person who want to deny himself, his self-denial can then
become true self-denial. On the other hand, false self-denial is marked by
this, that it looks like self-denial at first but turns out to be profitable in
some other external way, so that basically it is sagacious calculation."
(JY, Hong, p. 205)
#
"Through the conceiving
of Christianity as doctrine, the situation in Christendom has become utter
confusion, and the definition of what it is to be a Christian has become almost
indistinguishable. Therefore Christ as the prototype must be advanced,
but not in order to alarm – yet it is perhaps an altogether superfluous concern
that anyone could be alarmed by Christianity nowadays – but in any case not in
order to alarm; we ought to learn that from the experience of earlier times.
No, the prototype must be advanced in order at least to procure some respect
for Christianity, to make somewhat distinguishable what it means to be a
Christian, to get Christianity moved out of scientific scholarship and doubt
and nonsense (objective) and into the realm of the subjective, where it belongs
just as surely as the Savior of the world, our Lord Jesus Christ, did not bring
any doctrine into the world and never delivered lectures, but as the prototype
required imitation, yet by his reconciliation expels, if
possible, all anxiety from a person's soul." (JY, Hong, p. 209)
Papers:
"The matter is quite
simple. In order to have faith, there must first be existence, an existential
qualification. This is what I am able to emphasize – that to have faith, before
there can be any question of having faith, there must be the situation.
And this situation must be brought about by an existential step on the part of
the individual (JP II 20)
#
"The only fundamental basis for understanding is that
one understands only in proportion to becoming himself that which he
understands." (Papers, V B 40)
#
"It is clear that in my
writings I have supplied a more radical characterization of the concept faith
than there has been up until this time." (JP VI 6698)
#
"Here is the real
solution to the problem of predestination. When it is said that they are chosen
Quos vocavit, they are chosen to salvation or are damned, for what else
does the expression quos vocavit mean than those in whose consciousness
Christianity emerged, and thus this view can be united with Schliermacher's
relative predestination, for those who have lived in the this world but to whom
no call came are obviously predestined (since they are not called); nor is it
enough to be able to say anyone is called but only the person in whose
consciousness Christianity has emerged in relation to the rest of his life
views." (Papers, I 295, Dec. 1, 1836)
#
"Dialectical truth is
'raised to the second power' in lived action." (P&J 3:908)
#
"The danger of being a
Christian is a double one. First of all the sufferings of inwardness involved
in becoming a Christian; parting with one's understanding and being crucified
upon the paradox—here belongs the Final Postscript, which presents this
as ideally as possible." (Papers IX A414)
#
"The
relation between esthetics and ethics – the transition – pathos filled, not
dialectical – there a qualitatively different dialectic begins. (JP I 371)
#
"'Johannes Climacus' was
actually a contemplative piece, for when I wrote it I was contemplating the
possibility of not letting myself be taken over by Christianity, even if it was
my most honest intention to devote my whole life and daily diligence to the
cause of Christianity, to do nothing else but to expound and interpret it, even
though I were to become like, be like the legendary Wandering Jew—myself not a
Christian in the final and most decisive sense of the word, yet leading others
to Christianity." (JP VI 6523 n.d., 1849) (pap. X² A 163) P&J
#
"The most terrible fight
is not when there is one opinion against another, the most terrible is when two
men say the same thing – and fight about the interpretation, and this
interpretation involves a difference of quality." The Journals of Søren
Kierkegaard: A Selection, no. 1057, 1850 entry. (Ed. By Alexander Dru, 1938)
#
"If
an Arab in the desert were suddenly to discover a spring in his tent, and so
would always be able to have water in abundance, how fortunate he would consider
himself – so too, when a man whose qua
physical being is always turned toward the outside, thinking that his happiness
lies outside him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within
him; not to mention his discovering that the source is his relation to
God."
(Alexander
Dm, ed. and trams.. The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard (London: Oxford
University Press, 1938), p. 341.
#
"Can there be a
transition from quantitative qualification to a qualitative one without a leap?
And does not the whole of life rest in that?" (JP I 110) P&J
#
"Christianity holds that
the central issue is a qualitative transformation, a total character
transformation in time (just as qualitative as the change from not being to
being which is birth). Anything which is merely a development of what man is
originally is not essentially Christian."
(JP III, 416)
Papers & Journals:
"The way I have tried to
show it in the preceding pages is how these matters actually appeared to me.
But when I try now to come to an understanding with myself about my life,
things look different. Just as a child takes time to learn to distinguish
itself from objects and for quite a while so little distinguishes itself from its surrounding
that, keeping the stress on the passive side, it says things like 'me hit the
horse,' so too the same phenomenon repeats itself in a higher sphere. Therefore
I thought I might gain more peace of mind by taking up a new line of study,
directing my energies towards some other goal. I might even have managed to for
a while in that way to banish a certain restlessness, though no doubt it would
have returned with greater effect like a fever after the relief of a cool
drink. What I really need is to be clear about what I am to do, not what I am to know, except in the way knowledge
must precede all action. It is a question of understanding my destiny, of
seeing what the Deity really wants me
to do; the thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for
which I am willing to live and die. (P&J, Hannay, p. 32) (1 August 35 I
A 75)
#
"What did I find? Not my
‘I’, for that is what I was trying in that way to find (I imagined, if I may
put it so, my soul shut up in a box with a spring lock in front, which the
outside surroundings would release by pressing the spring). – So the first
thing to be resolved was this search for and discovery of the Kingdom of
Heaven. A person would no more want to decide the externals first and the
fundamentals afterwards than a heavenly body about to form itself would decide
first of all about its surface, about which bodies it should turn its light
side to and to which its dark side, without first letting the harmony of
centrifugal and centripetal forces bring it into being and letting the rest
develop by itself. One must first learn to know oneself before knowing anything
else. (gnothi seauton). Only when the person has inwardly understood and
then sees the course forward from the path he is to take, does his life acquire
repose and meaning; only then is he free of that irksome, fateful traveling
companion – that life’s irony which appears in the sphere of knowledge and bids
true knowing begin with a not-knowing (Socrates), just as God created the world
from nothing.” (P&J, Hannay, pp. 34-35) (1 August 35 I A 75)
#
"It is the path we must
all take – over the bridge of Sighs into eternity." (P&J, Hannay, p.
71)
#
"One thought succeeds
another; no sooner have I thought it and about to write it down than there is a
new one – hold it, grasp it – madness – insanity!" (P&J, Hannay, p.
71) (36-7 A 336)
#
"A remarkable transition
occurs when one begins to study the grammar of the indicative and the
subjunctive, because here for the first time one becomes conscious that
everything depends on how it is thought, accordingly how thinking in its
absolute follows upon a seeming reality." (P&J, Hannay, pp. 90-91) (4
September 37 II A 155)
#
"The indicative thinks
something as actual (the identity of thinking and the actual). The subjunctive
thinks something as thinkable." (P&J, Hannay, p. 91) (37 II A 156)
#
"Fixed idea are like
cramp, for instance in the foot – yet the best remedy is to step on them."
(P&J, Hannay, p. 97) (6 July 38 II A 230)
^^
#
"Longing is the
umbilical cord of the higher life." (P&J, Hannay, p. 100) (39 II A
343)
#
"All in all, one must
say that modern philosophy, even in its most grandiose form, is still really
just an introduction to making philosophizing possible. Certainly, Hegel is a
conclusion, but only of the development that began with Kant and was directed
at cognition. We have arrived through Hegel, in a deeper form, at the result
which previous philosophers took as their immediate point of departure, i.e.,
that there is any substance to thinking at all. But all the thinking which from
this immediate viewpoint of departure (or, as now, happy in that result) enters
into a proper anthropological contemplation, that is something that has not
been begun." (P&J, Hannay, p. 128) (5 July 40 III A 3)
#
"When the individual,
having given up all efforts to find himself in life outside himself, in
relation to his surroundings, turns now after this shipwreck towards the
highest, then after this emptiness the absolute rises not only in its fullness
before him but also in the responsibility he feels is his." (P&J, Hannay,
p. 132) (July 40 III A 26)
#
That
philosophy must begin with a presumption must be seen not as a defeat but as a blessing,
which is why this an sich is a curse of which it can never be quit. This
is the dispute between consciousness as the empty form and as the fixed image
of the transient object, a problem which has its counterpart in freedom; about
how the countless free-will which, like a scales, has nothing to do with the
content, but in its infinite abstract elasticity remains victorious and indifferent
in all eternity – how this can become positive freedom. Here, too, we meet a
presupposition, because this free-will is never really to be found but is
already given in the world's very existence." (P&J, Hannay, p. 132-33)
(July 40 III A 48)
#
"The
heath must be peculiarly suited to developing spiritual strength; here
everything lies naked and unveiled before God, no place here for all those
distractions, those odd nooks and crannies in which consciousness can take
cover and where seriousness often has difficulty catching up with distracted
thoughts. Here consciousness has to take a firm and precise grip on itself.
Here on the heath one could truthfully say, 'Whither shall I flee from thy
presence?'" (P&J, Hannay, p. 136) (40 III A 78)
#
"If a person has one
thought, but an infinite one, he can be borne along by it through his entire
life, lightly and on wings, just as the Hyperborean, Abaris, traversed the
whole world borne by an arrow." (P&J, Hannay, p.152) (42-43 IV A 6)
#
"Consciousness
presupposes itself, and asking about its origin is an idle and just a
sophistical a question as that old one, 'What came first, the fruit tree or the
stone?' Wasn't there a stone out of which came the first fruit-tree? Wasn't
there a fruit-tree from which came the first stone?" (P&J, Hannay,
p.154) (43 IV A 49)
#
"It is quite true what
philosophy says: that life must be understood backwards. But then one forgets
the other principle: that it must be lived forwards. Which principle, the more
one thinks it through, ends exactly with the thought that temporal life can
never properly be understood precisely because I can at no instant find
complete rest in which to adopt the position: backwards." (Papers &
Journals, Hannay, p. 161) (43 IV A 164)
#
"If freedom (in
repetition as a religious movement) now discovers an obstacle, then this must
lie in freedom itself. Freedom now manifests itself in man not in its
perfection but as a disturbance. This disturbance, however, must be posited by
freedom itself, for otherwise there would be no freedom at all or the
disturbance would be a fate which freedom could remove. The disturbance which
is supplied by freedom itself is sin. If it is allowed to take charge, then
freedom scatters and is never in a position to realize repetition. Then freedom
despairs of itself yet never forgets repetition, and freedom takes on a
religious expression through which repetition takes the form of atonement,
which is repetition sensui eminentiori
(in the stricter, more eminent sense) and something other than mediation, which
always merely describes the nodes of oscillation in the progress of
immanence." (P&J, Hannay, p.173) (43-4 IV B 118:1)
#
"Can the transition from
a quantitative to a qualitative determination occur without a leap? And doesn't
all life lie in this? (P&J, Hannay, p. 177) (42-3 IV C 87)
#
The relation between the
aesthetic and the ethical – the transition – pathos filled , not
dialectical – and which starts a qualitatively different dialectic."
(P&J, Hannay, p. 178) (42-3 IV C 105)
#
"If a person does not
become what he can understand, then he does not really understand it."
(P&J, Hannay, p. 212) (46 VII I A 72)
#
The spirit sometimes ventures
too far ahead; the thing then is to grab it in a hurry, enclose it in a coffin
and put it on paper, to throw oneself upon it as if it were a felled quarry,
bind it, imprison it, deprive it of its element, with cunning, with might,
forcibly – it resists – unsparing treatment is permitted. Into secure boxes,
books with it!" (P&J, Hannay, pp. 252-53) (46-7 VII 2 B 237:121)
#
"What fortifies me more
and more is my original, my first, my deepest, my unchanged view that I truly
haven't chosen this life because it would be brilliant but as a penitential
comfort in all my wretchedness. I have explained the dialectic of the paradox
often enough: it is not higher than the universal but precisely poorer, and
only after that a little higher. But the former, the pressure, is too strong
for joy in the latter to be taken in vain. It is the thorn in the flesh.
(P&J, Hannay, p. 262) (47 VIII I A 119)
#
"Most people are
subjective towards themselves and objective towards everyone else, sometimes
frightfully objective – but the task is precisely to be objective to themselves
and subjective towards all others. (P&J, Hannay, p. 264) (47 VIII I A 165)
#
"In relation to
Christianity generally, there are these two crucial misunderstandings:
1. Christianity is no doctrine (then there
arose all the nuisance about orthodoxy, with quarrels about this and that,
while life itself remains quite unchanged, and they dispute what is Christian
just as they do what is Platonic philosophy and all that kind of thing) but an
existential communication. That is why each generation must start on it anew;
all this erudition about the preceding generation is essentially superfluous,
yet not be scorned if it understands itself and its limits, utterly dangerous
if it does not.
2. In respect of Christianity (since it is no
doctrine) it is therefore not a matter of indifference who presents it, as it is
who presents it, as it is with a doctrine, so long as the presenter says
(objectively) the right thing. No, Christ did not appoint professors but
followers. When Christianity (precisely because it is not a doctrine) is not
duplicated in the life of the person presenting it, it is not Christianity he
presents, for Christianity is an existential communication and can only be
presented by its existing. Indeed, living in it, expressing it existentially,
etc., is what it means in general to reduplicate." (P&J, Hannay, pp.
322-23) (48 IX A 207)
#
"To reduplicate is to be
what one says." (P&J, Hannay, p. 323) (48 IX A 208)
#
"Climacus and
Anti-Climacus
A dialectical Discovery
by
Anti-Climacus
(postscript)
I Antichlimacus, who have
written this little book, just a wretched individual, a mere human being like
most other people, was born in Copenhagen and am about, indeed am exactly, the
same age as Johannes Climachus, with whom, in one respect I have much, indeed
everything, in common, but from whom in another respect, I am nevertheless
infinitely different. For he says of himself that he is not a Christian, which
is outrageous. I, too, have been outraged by it, so much so that if only
someone would trick me into it I would say the exact opposite, or because I say
the exact opposite about myself I could be outraged at what he says about
himself. For what I say is that I am an extraordinary Christian such as never
existed, but please note that I am that in hidden inwardness. I can assure you
I shall see to it that no one, no one, notices anything, not the slightest
thing. But to give assurance is something I can do, and I can assure (though not really assure, for then I
would be violating the hiding place) that in hidden inwardness I am , as I say,
an extraordinary Christian such as never lived.
The reader who besides being
my friend is also a friend of understanding will readily see, moreover, that
despite my extraordinary Christianity there is something malicious in me. For
it is clear enough that I have taken this position simply to quibble with
Johannes. Had I come first I would have said of myself what he now says of
himself, and then he would have been forced to say of me what I say of myself.
For we are related to each
other; but we are not twins, we are opposites. Between us there is a deep,
fundamental relation, but despite the most desperate efforts on both sides we
never get any further, any closer than a repelling contact. There is a
point and an instant at which we touch, but the same instant we rush from each
other with the speed of infinity. Like two eagles plunging from the top of the
mountains toward one point, or like an eagle down from a cliff-top and a
rapacious fish aiming upwards from the ocean's depth towards the surface, we
both seek the same point; there is contact and the same instant we dart from
each other, each to his extremity.
The point we are seeking is
this: to be a true Christian plainly and simply. There is contact but at that
very instant we rush away from each other: Johannes says that he is not a
Christian and I say that I am an extraordinary Christian such as has never
lived, but please note, in hidden inwardness.
If we should happen at the
moment of contact to exchange identities, so that I said of myself what Johannes
says of himself and conversely, it would make no difference.. There is just one
impossibility – that we should both say the same about ourselves. On the other
hand it is possible that we might both vanish.
We do not really exist, but
the person who comes to be a true Christian and in simplicity will be able, as
the sailor tells of the twins by which he steers, to tell of us two brothers –
the opposites. And as the sailor tells of the fantastic things he has seen, so
also the person who has come to be a true Christian plainly and in simplicity
will be able to recount the fantastic things he has seen. The sailor may
perhaps lie in what he tells – this will not be the case with what the true
Christian tells of us, for it is true that we two brothers are fantastic
figures, but it is also true that he has seen us.
Anti_C" (P&J, Hannay; pp. 348-49) (49 X 6 B 48)
#
"As for The Point of View, etc., the thing is
that it was written entirely in a state in which I did not expect to live to
see its publication. It's like a dying man's confession." (P&J,
Hannay, p. 366)(49 X I A 117)
#
"This was my task: to
pose this riddle of awakening: an aesthetic and religious corpus in equilibrium, at the same time. That had
been achieved. There is even an equilibrium in quantity. Concluding Postscript is the mid-point. (P&J., Hannay, p.366)
(49 X I A 118)
#
"Understanding the
totality of my work as an author, the maieutic purpose, etc. also means
understanding my personal existence as an author, what I have done qua
author in my personal life to give it support, throw light on it, conceal it,
give it direction, etc.: something even more wide ranging than, and just as
interesting as, the whole authorship itself. And in a more ideal sense it all
leads back to 'the single individual', who is not myself in an empirical sense
but the author." (P&J, Hannay, p. 372) (49 X I A 146)
#
"That there is a
difference between the absurd in /Fear and Trembling/ and the paradox in
/Concluding Postscript/ is quite correct. The former is the purely personal
specification of existential faith – the other is faith in relation to a
doctrine. […] The absurd is the negative criterion of that which is higher than
human understanding and human knowledge. The process of understanding is to see
it as such – and then to leave it to the individual whether to believe it […]
Moreover, it is one thing to believe on the strength of the absurd (the formula
simply for the passion of faith) and another to believe the absurd. Joh. de
Silencio sees the former expression, Joh. Climacus the latter." (P&J, Hannay, p. 460) (50 X 6 B 80)
#
"The objection that
there is a conflict between the absurd in Jos. De silentio and in Jos. Climacus
is a misunderstanding. Thus Abraham is also called the father of faith in the
new Testament, yet it is clear that the content of his faith cannot be the
Christian's, that Jesus Christ has existed. But Abraham's faith is the formal
specification of faith. Similarly with the absurd." (P&J, Hannay, p. 460) (50 X 6 B 81)
#
"The condition for a
person's salvation is the faith that there is, everywhere and at every moment,
an absolute beginning. When someone who has egotistically indulged
himself in the service of illusions is to start upon a purer striving, the
crucial point is that he believes absolutely in the new beginning, because
otherwise he muddles the passage into the old. Similarly, with the conversion
in the stricter sense: faith in the possibility of the new, the absolute
beginning, for otherwise it remains essentially the old. It is this infinite
intensiveness in faith's anticipation which has the confident courage to
believe in it, to transform the old into the completely forgotten – and then
believe absolutely in the beginning.
Yet in other respects the
criterion of the truth of this faith will be the confidence which, in the
opposite direction, has the courage profoundly to comprehend one's earlier
wretchedness. A person who does not sense this profoundly and have the courage
cannot properly make the new beginning , and the reason for his not sensing it
profoundly is precisely that he secretly harbours the thought that, if he
considered it properly, it would be too bad for there to be any new beginning
for him. Therefore to make it look a little better and be more certain of achieving
a new beginning, he does not look too closely – and for this very reason he
does not make the new beginning. A beginning always has a double momentum:
towards the past and towards the new; it pushes off in the direction of the old
as much as it begins the new." (P&J, Hannay, pp. 463-64) (50 X 2 A
371)
#
Angst
is really nothing but impatience." (P&J, Hannay, p.464) (50 X 2 A 384)
#
"A COMMENT ON SOMETHING
IN FEAR AND TREMBLING
Johannes de silentio rightly
says that to show the various psychological points of view requires passionate
concentration. Similarly with the decision whether or not to assume that this
and that is humanly speaking impossible for me. I am not thinking here of the
higher clashes where what is expected is in total conflict with the order of
nature (e.g. that Sarah gets a child though far beyond natural child-bearing
age). Which is why Johannes de silentio reiterates that he cannot understand
Abraham, since here the clash is at such a height that the ethical itself is a
spiritual trial.
No, on a more modest scale,
there are many, surely by far the majority, who are able to live without having
consciousness really penetrate their lives. For them it is surely possible
never to come to a decision in passionate concentration on whether to cling
expectantly to this possibility or give it up. Thus they live on in unclarity.
Not so with those
individualities whose nature is consciousness. They could quite well give up
this and that, even if it is their dearest wish, but they must have clarity about
whether they expect it or not. It is forever impossible to get immediate or
half-reflective natures to grasp this. So they never really get as far as
distinguishing between resignation and faith.
This is precisely what
Johannes de silentio has urged again and again. Everything depends upon
passionate concentration. So if someone comes along and wants to correct him by
bringing the matter back into ordinary intellectual unclarity (which is
undeniably the common state of man) – then, yes, of course he manages to be
understood by many. That's how it always is when what a real thinker has put a
fine point on is corrected with the help of what 'he rejected even before he
began'." (P&J, Hannay, pp. 483-84) (50 X 2 A 594) ^^
#
"The Conflict Between
'Understanding' and Faith Purely Psychologically
Understanding never touches
on the absolute.
Take an example. I am indeed
responsible for my understanding. Good, now take someone who wants to break
some deeply ingrained habit. He says, You have been putting it off, saying
'tomorrow', for long enough – start today! So he starts, and the assault on his
habit is an extremely violent one. Understanding then says: This is too
frantic, you must proceed with a little caution, we have cases of people
destroying themselves in this way; so relax a little and put it off until
tomorrow.
But in the highest ethical
sense a man has no responsibility for what happens to him when he fights evil;
he must put his everything into it, put responsibility on God, that is to say,
believe, and let himself say that this danger – of destroying himself – is a
spiritual temptation, just a new piece of trickery on the part of the old
habit." (P&J, Hannay, p. 489) (50 X 2 A 624)
#
"Anti-Climacus is not in
direct communication since there is a forward by myself. The indirect is to put
together dialectical opposites – with not one word about the personal
understanding. The milder quality in the more direct communication is among
other things that there is a need in the communicator to be personally
understood, a fear of being misunderstood. The indirect is sheer tension."
(P&J, Hannay, p.510) (50 X 3 A 625)
#
"PREFACE (To
Self-Examination)
What I have seen as the task
of my authorship has been achieved. There is one idea, this continuity from Either/Or to Anti-Climacus, the idea of
religiousness in reflection. The task has occupied me infinitely because it has
occupied me religiously; I have understood it as my duty to have done with the
authorship, as a responsibility placed on me. Whether anyone wanted to buy or
read it has been infinitely unimportant…" (P&J, Hannay, p. 532) (51 X
6 B 4)
#
"THE NIGHT OF THE
UNCONDITIONED
Man has a natural dread of
walking in the dark – so no wonder he naturally shrinks from the unconditioned,
from involving himself with the unconditioned, of which it is true that no
night and 'no darkness is half so black' as this darkness, and this night in
which all relative goals (the ordinary
milestones and signposts), in which even the most sensitive and warmest
feelings of devotion are extinguished, for otherwise it is not unconditionally
the unconditioned." (P&J, Hannay, p. 574; 54 XI I A 95)
#
"Imitation: Christ comes
into the world as the prototype, constantly insisting: Follow my example.
People soon turned the relation around, they preferred to worship the
prototype; and finally in Protestantism it became presumption to want to
emulate the prototype – the prototype is only the redeemer." (P&J,
Hannay, p. 585) (54 XI I A 158)
#
"The truth is a trap:
you can not get it without it getting you; you cannot get the truth by
capturing it, only by it capturing you." (P&J, Hannay, p. 600) (54 XI
I A 355)
#
"Primitivity is part of
every human being's constitution, since primitivity is the possibility of
'spirit' – God, who has made it so, knows this best. All earthly, temporal,
worldly wisdom relates to killing one's primitivity. Kill your primitivity, and
in all probability you will get along very nicely in the world, perhaps even be
a success—but the eternal does not honor you. Follow primitivity and you will
be shipwrecked in the temporal, but the eternal accepts you." (P&J,
Hannay, p. 603) (54 XI I A 385)
#
"Tempting Thought: When
I say it is not truly Christian explanation that the suffering associated with
being a Christian comes from the devil, but that the suffering comes from the
God-relation itself, this must of course be understood with the addendum that
the suffering also in one sense comes from the individual himself, from his
subjectivity being unable to surrender itself immediately and wholly to God.
[…] No religious person, not the purest, is a subjectivity so cleansed and
undefiled, a pure transparency in willing as God wills, that there is no
residue of his original subjectivity, something still not altogether
penetrated, still not altogether conquered, and perhaps still not really even
discovered in the depths of his soul: this is where the reactions come
from." (P&J, Hannay, p. 626) (54 XI 2 A 132)
Philosophical Fragments:
"Is an historical point
of departure possible for an eternal consciousness; how can such a point of
departure have any other than a merely historical interest; is it possible to
base an eternal happiness upon historical knowledge?" (PF, Swenson/Hong, Title Page)
#
"The temporal point of
departure is nothing; for as soon as I discover that I have known the Truth
from eternity without being aware of it, the same instant this moment of
occasion is hidden in the Eternal, and so incorporated with it that I cannot
even find it so to speak, even if I sought it; because in my
eternal consciousness there is neither here nor there, but only an ubique
et nusquam." (PF, Swenson/Hong, pp. 15-16)
#
"Now if things are to be
otherwise, the Moment in time must have a decisive significance, so that I will
never be able to forget it either in time or eternity; because the Eternal,
which hitherto did not exist, came into existence in this moment. Under this
presupposition let us now proceed to consider the consequences for the problem
of how far it is possible to acquire a knowledge of the Truth." (PF,
Swenson/Hong, p. 16)
#
"If the Teacher serves
as an occasion by means of which the learner is reminded, he cannot help the
learner to recall that he really knows the Truth; for the learner is in a state
of Error. What the Teacher can give him occasion to remember is, that he is in
Error. But in this consciousness the learner is excluded from the Truth even
more decisively than before, when he lived in ignorance of his Error. In this
manner the Teacher thrusts the learner away from him, precisely by serving as a
reminder; only that the learner, in thus being thrust back upon himself, does
not discover that he knew the Truth already, but discovers his Error; with
respect to which act of consciousness the Socratic principle holds, that the
Teacher is merely an occasion whoever he may be, even if he is a God. For my
own Error is something I can discover only by myself, since it is only when I
have discovered it that it is discovered, even if the whole world knew of it
before. (Under the presupposition we have adopted concerning the moment, this
remains the only analogy to the Socratic order of things.)" (PF, Swenson/Hong, p. 17
#
"The teacher is then the
God himself, who in acting as an occasion prompts the learner to recall that he
is in Error, and that by reason of his own guilt. But this state, the being in
Error by reason of one's own guilt, what shall we call it? Let us call it Sin."
(PF, Swenson/Hong, p. 19)
#
"And now the moment.
Such a moment has a peculiar character. It is brief and temporal indeed, like
every moment; it is transient as all moments are; it is past, like every moment
in the next moment. And yet it is decisive,
and filled with the Eternal. Such a moment ought to have a distinctive
name; let us call it the Fullness of Time. (PF, Swenson/Hong, p. 22)
#
"When the disciple is in
a state of Error (and otherwise we return to Socrates) but is none the less a
human being, and now receives the condition and the Truth, he does not become a
human being for the first time, since he was a man already. But he becomes
another man; not in the frivolous sense of becoming another individual of the
same quality as before, but in the sense of becoming a man of different
quality, or as we may call him: a new creature. (PF, Swenson/Hong, p.
22-23)
#
"In so far as he was in
Error he was constantly in the act of departing from the Truth. In consequence
of receiving the condition in the moment the course of his life has been given
an opposite direction, so that he is now turned about. Let us call this change Conversion,
even though this word be one not hitherto used; but that is precisely the
reason for choosing it, in order to avoid confusion, for it is as if expressly
coined for such a change we have in mind." (PF, Swenson/Hong, p. 23)
#
"In so far as the
learner was in Error by reason of his own guilt, this conversion cannot take
place without being taken up in his consciousness, or without his becoming
aware that his former state was the consequence of his guilt. With this
consciousness he will then take leave of his former state. But what
leave-taking is without the sense of sadness? The sadness in this case,
however, is on the account of his having so long remained in his former state.
Let us call such grief Repentance; for what is repentance but a kind of
leave-taking. Looking backward indeed, but yet in such a way as precisely to
quicken the steps toward that which lies before?" (PF, Swenson,/Hong, p.
23)
#
"In so far as the
learner was in Error, and now receives the Truth and with it the condition for
understanding it, a change takes place within him like the change from
non-being to being. But this transition from non-being to being is the
transition we call birth. Now one who exists cannot be born; nevertheless the
disciple is born. Let us call this transition the New Birth, in
consequence of which the disciple enters the world quite as at the first birth,
an individual human being knowing nothing as yet about the world into which he
has been born, whether there are other human beings in it besides himself; for
while it is possible to be baptized en masse, it is not possible to be
born anew en masse. (PF, Swenson/Hong, pp. 23-24)
#
"Just as one who has
begotten himself by the aid of the Socratic midwifery now forgets everything
else in the world, and in a deeper sense owes no man anything, so the disciple
who is born anew owes nothing to any man, but everything to his divine Teacher.
And just as the former forgets the world in his discovery of himself, so the
latter forgets himself in the discovery of his Teacher. Hence if the Moment is
to have decisive significance -- and if not we speak Socratically whatever we
may say, even if through not even understanding ourselves we imagine that we
have advanced far beyond that simple man of wisdom who divided judgment
incorruptibly between the God and man and himself, a judge more just than
Minos, Aeacus and Rhadamanthus -- if the Moment has decisive significance the
breach is made, and man cannot return. He will take no pleasure in remembering
what Recollection brings to his mind; still less will he be able in his own
strength to bring the God anew over to his side." (PF, Swenson/Hong, p. 24)
#
"But is the hypothesis
here expounded thinkable? Let us not be in haste to reply; for not only one
whose deliberation is unduly prolonged may fail to produce an answer, but also
one who while he exhibits a marvelous promptitude in replying, does not show
the desirable degree of slowness in considering the difficulty before
explaining it. Before we reply, let us ask ourselves from whom we may expect an
answer to our question. The being born, is this fact thinkable? Certainly, why
not. But for whom is it thinkable, for the one who is born, or for the one who
is not born? This latter supposition is an absurdity which could never have
entered anyone's head; for one who is born could scarcely have conceived the
notion. When one who has experienced birth thinks of himself as born, he
conceives this transition from non-being to being. The same principle must hold
in the case of the new birth. Or is the difficulty increased by the fact that
the non-being which preceded the new birth contains more being than the
non-being that preceded the first birth? But who then may be expected to think
the new birth? Surely the man who has himself been born anew, since it would of
course be absurd to imagine that one not so born should think it. Would it not
be the height of the ridiculous for such an individual to entertain this
notion?" (PF, Swenson/Hong, pp.
24-25)
#
"If a human being is
originally in possession of the condition for understanding the Truth, he
thinks that God exists in and with his own existence. But if he is in Error he
must comprehend this fact in his thinking, and Recollection will not be able to
help him further than to think just this, Whether he is to advance beyond this
point the Moment must decide (although it was already active in giving
him an insight into his Error). If he does not understand this we must refer
him to Socrates, though through being obsessed with the idea that he has
advanced far beyond this wise man he may cause him many a vexation, like those
who were so incensed with Socrates for taking away from them one or another
stupid notion that they actually wanted to bite him (Theaetetus, 151).
In the Moment man becomes conscious that he is born; for his
antecedent state, to which he may not cling, was one of non-being. In the Moment
man also becomes conscious of the new birth, for his antecedent state was
one of non-being. Had his preceding state in either instance been one of being,
the moment would not have received decisive significance for him, as has been
shown above. While then the pathos of the Greek consciousness concentrates
itself upon Recollection, the pathos of our project is concentrated upon the
Moment. And what wonder, for is it not a most pathetic thing to come into
existence from non-being?" (PF, Swenson/Hong, pp. 25-26)
#
"Is it not strange that
there should be something such in existence, in relation to which everyone who
knows it knows also that he has not invented it, and that this 'pass-me-by'
neither stops nor can be stopped even if we ask all men in turn? This strange
fact deeply impresses me, and casts over me a spell; for it constitutes a test
of the hypothesis and proves its truth. It would certainly be absurd to expect
of a man that he should of his own accord discover that he did not exist. But
this is precisely the transition of the new birth, from non-being to being.
That he may come to understand it afterwards can make no difference; for
because a man knows how to use gunpowder and can resolve it into its
constituent elements, it does not follow that he has invented it. Be then angry
with me and with whoever else pretends to the authorship of the thought; but
that is no reason why you should be angry with the thought itself." (PF,
Swenson/Hong, p. 27)
#
"In
spite of the fact that Socrates studied with all diligence to acquire a
knowledge of human nature and to understand himself, and in spite of the fame
accorded him through the centuries as one who beyond all other men had an
insight into the human heart, he has himself admitted that the reason for his
shrinking from reflection upon the nature of such beings as Pegasus and the
Gorgons was that he, the lifelong student of human nature, had not yet been
able to make up his mind whether he was a stranger monster than Typhon, or a
creature of a gentler and simpler sort, partaking of something divine. However,
one should not think slightingly of the paradoxical; for the paradox is the
source of the thinker's passion, and the thinker without a paradox is like a
lover without feeling: a paltry mediocrity. But the highest pitch of every
passion is always to will its own downfall; and it is also the supreme passion
of the Reason to seek a collision, though this collision must in one way or the
other prove its undoing. The supreme paradox for all thought is the attempt to
discover something that thought cannot think. This passion is at bottom present
in all thinking, even in the thinking of the individual, in so far as in
thinking he participates in something transcending himself." (PF,
Swenson/Hong, p. 46)
#
"But what is this
unknown something with which Reason collides when inspired by its paradoxical
passion, with the result of unsettling even man's knowledge of himself? It is
the Unknown. It is not a human being, in so far as we know what man is; nor is
it any other known thing. So let us call this unknown something: the God. It is nothing more than a name
we assign it. The idea of demonstrating that this unknown something (the God)
exists, could scarcely suggest itself to the Reason. For if the God does not
exist it would of course be impossible to prove it, and if he does exist it
would be folly to attempt it." (PF, Swenson/Hong, p.49)
#
"But from such an order
of things I will surely not attempt to prove God's existence; and even if I
began I would never finish, and would in addition would have to live constantly
in suspense, lest something so terrible should suddenly happen that my bit of
proof would be demolished. From what works then do I propose to derive the
proof? From the works as apprehended through an ideal interpretation, i.e.,
such as they do not immediately reveal themselves. But in that case it is not
from the works that I make the proof; I merely develop the ideality I have
proposed, and because of my confidence in this I make so bold as to defy
all objections, even those that have not yet been made. In beginning my proof I
presuppose the ideal interpretation, and also that I will be successful in
carrying it through; but what else is this but to presuppose that the God
exists, so that I really begin by virtue of confidence in him.
And how does God's existence
emerge from the proof? Does it follow straightway, without any breach of
continuity? Or have not here an analogy to the behavior of the little Cartesian
dolls? As soon as I let go of the doll it stands on its head,. As soon as I let
it go—I must therefore let it go. So also with the proof. As long as I keep my
hold on the proof, i.e., continue to demonstrate, the existence does not come
out, if for no other reason that that I am engaged in proving it; but when I
let the proof go, the existence is there. But this act of letting go is surely
also something; it is indeed a contribution of mine. Must not this also be
taken into account, this little moment, brief as it may be—it need not be long,
for it is a leap. (PF, Swenson/Hong,
pp. 52-53)
#
"What then is the
Unknown? It is the limit to which the Reason repeatedly comes, and in so far,
substituting a static form of conception for the dynamic, it is different, the
absolutely different. But because it is absolutely different, there is no mark
by which it could be distinguished. When qualified as absolutely different it
seems on the verge of disclosure, but this is not the case; for the Reason
cannot even conceive an absolute unlikeness. The Reason cannot negate itself
absolutely, but uses itself for the purpose, and thus conceives only such an unlikeness
within itself as it can conceive by means of itself, it cannot absolutely
transcend itself, and hence conceives only such a superiority over itself as it
can conceive by means of itself. Unless the Unknown (the God) remains a mere
limiting conception, the single idea of difference will be thrown into a state
of confusion, and become many ideas of many differences. The Unknown is then a
condition of dispersion and the Reason may choose at pleasure from what it has
at hand and the imagination may suggest (the monstrous, the ludicrous,
etc.)." (PF, Swenson/Hong, pp. 55-56)
#
"Now perhaps someone
will say: 'You are certainly a Crotchetier, as I know very well. But you surely
do not believe that I would pay attention to such a crotchet, so strange or so
ridiculous that it has doubtless ever occurred to anyone, and above all so
absurd that I must exclude from my consciousness everything that I have in it
in order to hit upon it.'—and so indeed you must." (PF, Swenson/Hong, p.
57)
#
"But how does the
learner come to realize an understanding with this Paradox? We do not ask that
he understand the Paradox but only that this is the Paradox. How this takes
place we have already shown. It comes to pass when the Reason and the Paradox
encounter one another happily in the Moment, when the Reason sets itself aside
and the Paradox bestows itself. The third entity in which this union is
realized (for it is not realized in the Reason, since it is set aside; not in
the Paradox, which bestows itself –hence it is realized in something) is that
happy passion to which we will now assign a name, thought it is not the name
that so much matters. We shall call this passion: Faith." (PF,
Swenson/Hong, pp. 72-73),
#
"It is easy to see,
though it scarcely needs to be pointed out, since it is involved in the fact
that the Reason is set aside, that Faith is not an act of will; for all human
volition has its capacity within the scope of the underlying condition. Thus if
I have the courage to will the understanding, I am able to understand the
Socratic principle, i.e., to understand myself, because from the Socratic point
of view I have the condition, and so have the power to will this understanding.
But if I do not have the condition (and this is our assumption, in order not to
be forced back on the Socratic order of things) all my willing is of no avail;
although as soon as the condition is given, the Socratic principle will again
apply." (PF, Swenson/Hong, pp. 77-78)
#
"How
does the learner then become a believer or disciple? When reason is set aside
and he receives the condition. When does he receive the condition? In the
Moment. What does this condition condition? The understanding of the Eternal.
But such a condition must be an eternal condition. –He receives accordingly the
eternal condition in the Moment, and is aware that he received it.; for
otherwise he merely comes to himself in the consciousness that he had it from
eternity. It is in the Moment that he receives it, and from the Teacher
himself." (PF, Swenson/Hong, p. 79)
#
"The
immediate contemporaneity can serve only as an occasion. (a) it can serve as
occasion for the acquirement of historical knowledge. In this respect a
contemporary of the emperor's marriage feast is far more fortunately situated
than a contemporary of the Teacher for
the latter merely gets an opportunity to see the servant-form, and at most one
or another mysterious deed, in relation to which he must remain uncertain
whether to admire or to resent being made a fool of, since he will presumably
not even wish to persuade the Teacher to do it over again, as a juggler does,
in order to give the spectators a better opportunity to see how the trick is
turned. (b) It may serve as an occasion
for the contemporary to acquire a Socratic deepening of his self-knowledge, in
which case the contemporaneity vanishes as nothing in comparison with the
Eternal which he discovers within himself. (c) Finally (and this is our
assumption, lest we be thrown back on Socrates), it may serve as an occasion by
means of which the contemporary, as one who is in Error, receives the condition
from God, and so beholds his glory with the eyes of faith. Aye, happy such a
contemporary! But such a contemporary is not in the immediate sense an
eye-witness; he is contemporary as a believer, in the autopsy of Faith"
(PF, Swenson/Hong, pp. 86-87)
#
"MORAL
The projected hypothesis
indisputably makes an advance upon Socrates, which is apparent at every point.
Whether it is therefore more true than the Socratic doctrine is an entirely
different question, which cannot be decided in the same breath, since we have
here assumed a new organ: Faith; a new presupposition: the consciousness of
Sin; a new decision: the Moment; and a new Teacher: the God in Time. Without
these I certainly never would have dared present myself for inspection before
that master of Irony, admired through the centuries, whom I approach with a
palpitating enthusiasm that yields to none. But to make an advance upon
Socrates and yet say essentially the same things as he, only not nearly so well
-- that at least is not Socratic." (PF,, Hong, p. 139)
#
"How
do I obtain a historical point of departure for my eternal consciousness, and
how can such a point of departure be more than historical interest for me; how
can I build my happiness on historical knowledge?" (PF, Hong, p. 182)(Pap,
V B 1:1 n.d. 1844)
#
"Whereas
in Socratic thought recollection became the proof of the immortality of the
soul, forgetting will now be the beginning of the soul's eternal happiness ;
whereas Socrates had eternity behind him, in the second case one has eternity
ahead." (PF, Hong, p. 188)(Pap. V B 3:13 n.d. 1844)
Point of View:
"And this is also (in reflection,
as it in fact was originally) the Christian movement. Christianly, one
does not proceed from the simple in order then to become interesting, witty,
profound, a poet, a philosopher, etc. No, it is just the opposite; here
one begins and then becomes more and more simple, arrives at the simple. This,
in "Christendom," is Christianly the movement of reflection; one
does not reflect oneself into Christianity but reflects oneself out of
something else and becomes more and more simple, a Christian." (PV, Hong, p. 7) (On My Work as an
Author)
#
"But just as that which
has been communicated (the idea of the religious) has been cast completely into
reflection and in turn taken back out of reflection, so also the communication has been decisively marked
by reflection, or the form of
communication used is that of reflection. 'Direct communication' is: to
communicate the truth directly; 'communication in reflection' is: to deceive
into the truth. But since the movement is to arrive at the simple, the
communication in turn must sooner of later end in direct communication. It
began maieutically with esthetic production,* and all the pseudonymous
writings are maieutic in nature.
Therefore this writing was also pseudonymous, whereas the directly
religious—which from the beginning was present in the gleam of an
indication—carried my name.
*The maieutic lies in the
relation between the esthetic writing as the beginning and the religious as the
telos [goal]. It begins with the
esthetic, in which possibly most people have their lives, and now the religious
is introduced so quickly that those who, moved by the esthetic, decide to follow
along are suddenly standing right in the middle of the decisive qualifications
of the essentially Christian, are at least prompted to become aware." (PV, Hong, p. 7) (On My
Work as an Author)
#
"The situation
(becoming a Christian in Christendom, where consequently one is a
Christian)—the situation, which, as every dialectician sees, casts everything
into reflection, also makes an indirect method necessary, because the task here
must be to take measures against the illusion: calling oneself a Christian,
perhaps deluding oneself into thinking one is that without being that.
Therefore, the one who introduced the issue did not directly define
himself as being Christian and the others as not being that; no, just the reverse—he
denies being that and concedes it to the others. This Johannes Climacus does.
–In relation to pure receptivity, like the empty jar that is to be filled, direct
communication is appropriate, but when illusion is involved, consequently
something that must first be removed, direct communication is
inappropriate." (PV, Hong, p, 8 fn) (On My Work as an Author)
#
"Perhaps nobody paid
much attention to the category "that single individual" the first
time I used it, nor was much notice paid to its being repeated unchanged in the
preface to every volume of upbuilding
discourses. When I the second time or in the second potency repeated the
message and stood by my first message, everything was done that I was able to
do to make the whole weight of emphasis fall upon this category. Here again the
movement is: to arrive at the simple; the movement is: from the public to "the
single individual." In other words, there is in a religious sense
no public, but only individuals, because the religious is earnestness, and
earnestness is: the single individual; yet every human being, unconditionally
every human being, which one indeed is, can be, yes, should be—the single
individual." (PV, Hong, p.10) (On My Work as an Author)
#
"Oh, to what degree
human beings would become—human and lovable beings—if they would become single
individuals before God!" (PV, Hong, p. 11) (On My Work as an Author)
#
"Never
have I fought in such a way that I have said: I am the true Christian; the
others are not Christians, or probably even hypocrites and the like. No, I have
fought in this way: I know what
Christianity is; I myself acknowledge my defects as a Christian – but I do
know what Christianity is. And to come to know this thoroughly seems to me to
be in the interest of every human being, whether one is now a Christian or a
non-Christian, whether one's intention is to accept Christianity or to abandon
it. But I have attacked no one, saying that he is not a Christian; I have
passed judgment on no one. Indeed, the pseudonymous writer Johannes Climacus,
who poses the issue of 'becoming a Christian,' does even the opposite, denies
being a Christian and accords this to the others – surely the greatest possible
distance from passing judgment on others! And I myself have from the start
enjoined and again and again repeated stereotypically: I am 'without
authority.'" (PV, Hong, p.15) (On My Work as an Author)
#
"To live only in the
unconditional, to breath only the unconditional—the human being cannot do this;
he perishes like the fish that must live in the air. But on the other hand a
human being cannot in the deeper sense live
without relating himself to the unconditional; he expires, that is, perhaps
goes on living, but spiritlessly. If—to stick to my subject, the religious—if
the generation, or a great number of individuals in the generation, has
outgrown the childishness that another human being is the one who represents
the unconditional for them—well, nevertheless one cannot thereby do without the
unconditional; rather, one can all the less do without it. Thus the single individual
must personally relate himself to the unconditional. This is what I to the
best of my ability and with maximum effort and much sacrifice have fought for,
fighting against every tyranny, also tyranny of the numerical. This endeavor of
mine has incurred opprobrium as enormous pride and arrogance—I believed, and I
do believe, that this is Christianity and love for 'the neighbor.'" (PV,
Hong, p. 20) (On My Work as an
Author)
#
"That I have understood
the truth I am presenting—of that I am absolutely convinced. I am just as
convinced that my contemporaries, insofar as they do not understand the same
thing, will be forced by fair or foul means to understand it when in eternity
they have been freed from many of the disturbing worries and hardships from
which I have been freed and in eternity they have found the stillness of
earnestness, solitude, and time enough to think." (PV, Hong, p.25)
#
"And then just one more
thing. It is self-evident that I cannot present completely an explanation of my
work as an author, that is, with the purely personal inwardness in which I
possess the explanation. In part it is because I cannot make my
God-relationship public in this way, since it is neither more nor less than the
universally human inwardness, which every human being can have without special
call, which it would be a crime to suppress and a duty to stress, and to which
I could not lay claim or make an appeal. In part it is because I cannot wish
(and no one, I am sure, could desire that I do so) to press upon anyone
something that pertains solely to my private character, which of course for me
contains much of the explanation of my author-character." (PV, Hong, pp.
25-26)
#
“The first division of books
is esthetic writing; the last division of books is exclusively religious
writing—between these lies Concluding Postscript as the turning point.
This work deals with and poses the issue, the issue of the entire work
as an author: becoming a Christian. Then in turn it calls attention to the
pseudonymous writing along with the interlaced 18 discourses and shows all this
as serving to illuminate the issue, yet .without stating that that this was the
object of the prior writing—which could not be done, since it is a pseudonymous
writer interpreting other pseudonymous writers, that is, a third party who
could know nothing about the object of writings unfamiliar with him." (PV,
Hong, p.31)
#
"So also with a
dialectical redoubling, and the dialectical redoubling is that the
equivocalness is maintained. Once the requisite earnestness takes hold, it can
also solve it, but always only in such a way that the earnestness itself
vouches for the correctness. Just as a woman's demureness relates to the true
lover, and then, but only then yields, so also a dialectical redoubling relates
to true earnestness. Therefore the explanation cannot be communicated to a less
earnest person, since the elasticity of the dialectical doubleness is too great
for him to manage; it takes the explanation away from him again and makes it
dubious for him whether it is indeed the explanation." (PV, Hong, p.
34)
#
"Here lies
Either/Or. It was a poetical emptying, which did not, however, go further than
the ethical. I was far from tranquilly wanting to summon existence back to
marriage, I who religiously was already in the monastery—an idea concealed in
the pseudonym Victor—Eremita [the
Hermit]" (PV, Hong, p. 35)
#
"No, an illusion can
never be removed directly, and basically only indirectly. If it is an illusion
that all are Christians, and if something is to be done, it must be done
indirectly, not by someone who loudly declares himself to be an extraordinary
Christian, but by someone who, better informed, even declares himself not to be
a Christian.*[…] If then, according to the assumption, most people in
Christendom are Christians only in imagination, in what categories do they
live? They live in esthetic or, at most, esthetic-ethical categories.
*One recalls Concluding
Unscientific Postscript, whose author, Johannes Climacus, directly declares
that he himself is not a Christian." (PV, Hong, p.43)
#
"If one
is truly to succeed in leading a person to a specific place, one must first and
foremost take care to find him where he is and begin there.
This is the secret in the entire art of helping. Anyone who cannot do this is
himself under a delusion if he thinks he is able to help someone else. In order
truly to help someone else, I must understand more than he—but certainly first
and foremost understand what he understands. If I do not do that, then my
greater understanding does not help him at all. If I nevertheless want to
assert my greater understanding, then it is because I am vain or proud, then
basically instead of benefiting him I really want to be admired by him."
(PV, Hong, p. 45)
#
"But from the total point of view of my whole work as an author, the
esthetic writing is a deception, and herein is the deeper significance of the pseudonymity. But a deception, that is
indeed something rather ugly. To that I would answer: Do not be deceived by the
word deception. One can deceive a
person out of what is true, and—to recall old Socrates—one can deceive a person
into what is true. Yes, in only this way can a deluded person actually be
brought into what is true—by deceiving him. […] What, then, does it mean 'to
deceive'? It means that one does not begin directly
with what one wishes to communicate but begins by taking the other's delusion
at face value. Thus one does not begin (to hold to what essentially is the
theme of this book) in this way: I am a Christian, you are not a Christian—but
this way: You are a Christian, I am not a Christian. Or one does not begin this
way: It is Christianity that I am proclaiming, and you are living in purely
esthetic categories. No, one begins this way: let us talk about the esthetic.
The deception consists in one's speaking this way precisely in order to arrive
at the religious. But according to the assumption the other person is in fact
under the delusion that the esthetic is essentially Christian, since he thinks
he is a Christian and yet he is living in esthetic categories. " (PV,
Hong, pp.53-54 )
#
"Now, on the assumption
that someone is under a delusion and consequently the first step, properly
understood, is to remove the delusion—if I do not begin by deceiving, I begin
with direct communication. But direct communication presupposes that the
recipients ability to receive is entirely in order, but here that is simply not
the case—indeed, here a delusion is an obstacle. That means a corrosive must
first be used, but this corrosive is the negative, but the negative in
connection with communicating is precisely to deceive." (PV, Hong, p.54)
#
"Even if ever so many
pastors will find it indefensible, even if equally as many will be incapable of
getting it into their heads—although all of them otherwise, according to their
own statements, are accustomed to using the Socratic method—in this respect I
calmly stick to Socrates. True, he was no Christian, that I know, although I
also definitely remain convinced that he has become one. But he was a
dialectician and understood everything in reflection. And the question here is
purely dialectical—it is the question of the use of reflection in Christendom.
Qualitatively two altogether different magnitudes are involved here, but
formally I can very well call Socrates my teacher—whereas I have believed and
believe in only one, the Lord Jesus Christ." PV, Hong, pp. 54-55)
#
"Concluding Postscript
forms, to repeat again, the turning point in the whole authorship. It poses the
issue: becoming a Christian. After first having appropriated all the
pseudonymous esthetic writings as a description of one way along which one may
go in becoming a Christian—back from the esthetic to becoming a
Christian, the book describes the second way—back from the system, the
speculative, etc. to becoming a Christian." (PV, Hong, p.55)
#
"And
what does all of this mean when the reader now gathers together the elements
developed in the various sections? It means: this is an authorship of which the
total thought is the task of becoming a Christian. But it is an authorship that
from the beginning has understood, with dialectical consistency has pursued,
what the implications of this are that the situation is Christendom, which is
the category of reflection, and therefore has cast all the Christian
relationships into reflection. In Christendom—to become a Christian is either
to become what one is (the inwardness of reflection or the reflection of inward
deepening), or it is first of all to be wrested out of a delusion, which again
is a category of reflection. Here there is no vacillation, no ambiguity of the
usual sort, that one does not know and cannot ascertain whether the situation
is in paganism, whether the pastor is in this sense a missionary, or where one
is. Here one does not lack what is usually lacking, a decisive categorical
expression and a decisive expression for the situation: To proclaim
Christianity—in Christendom. Everything is cast into reflection. The
communication is in reflection—therefore is indirect communication. The
communicator is defined in reflection, therefore negatively, not one who claims
to be an extraordinary Christian or ever claims t o have revelations (all of
which is commensurate with immediacy and direct communication) but the
opposite, one who even claims not to be a Christian—in other words, the
communicator is in the background, helping negatively, since whether he
succeeds in helping someone is indeed something else. The issue itself is one
belonging to reflection: to become a Christian when in a way one is a
Christian." (PV, Hong, pp. 55-56)
#
"Here one does not lack
what is usually lacking, a decisive categorical definition and a decisive
expression for the situation to proclaim Christianity—in Christendom.
Everything is cast into reflection. The communication is in
reflection—therefore is indirect communication." (PV, Hong, p. 56)
#
"Just one more thing. When
someday my lover comes, he will readily see that when I was being regarded as
being the ironic one the irony was by no means consisted in what a highly
cultured public thought it did—and of course my lover cannot possibly be so
famous that he assume the public can be the judge of irony, which is just as
impossible as being the single individual en masse. He will see that the
irony consisted in just this, that in this esthetic author and under this Erscheinung
[appearance] of worldliness the religious author concealed himself, a religious
author who at that very time and for his own upbuilding perhaps consumed as
much religiousness as a whole household ordinarily does." (PV, Hong, pp.
69-70)
#
"That I have needed and
how I continuously needed God's assistance day after day , year after year—in
order to turn my mind to that, in order to be able to state it accurately, I do
not need the help of memory or recollection, or of journals and diaries, or to
compare these with another—I am living it again so vividly, so presently, at
this moment." (PV, Hong, p. 72)
#
"But then, when I pick
up my pen, for a time I cannot—just as one speaks of not being able to move a
foot—move my pen; in that state not a line about this relationship is put down
on paper. I seem to hear a voice that says to me: Obtuse fellow, what does he
think he is; does he not know that obedience is dearer to God that the fat of
rams? Do the whole thing as a work assignment. Then I become completely calm;
then there is a time to write every letter, almost meticulously, with my slower
pen. And if that poet passion awakens in me again for the moment, I seem to
hear a voice speak to me as a teacher to a boy: Now, just hold the pen properly
and write each letter exactly. Then I can do it, then I dare not do anything
else, then I write each word, each line, almost unaware of the next word and
the next line. Then, when I read it through later, I find an entirely different
satisfaction in it. Even though some glowing expressions perhaps did elude me, what
has been produced is something else—it is not the work of the poet passion or
of a thinker passion, but of a devotion to God, and for me a divine
worship." (PV, Hong, p. 73)
#
"Thus, time and time
again, I have had more joy from my relationship of obedience to God than from
the thoughts I produced. –This obviously signifies, as is easily seen, that I
do not have an immediate-God-relationship to appeal to, nor so I dare to say
that it God who directly contributes the thoughts to me, but that my relationship
to God is a relationship of reflection, inwardness in reflection, since
reflection is the predominant quality of my individuality; this is also why in
praying my strength is in giving thanks." (PV, Hong, p. 74)
#
"But in this accounting
I must in an even more precise sense bring out Governance's part in the
authorship. If, for example, I were to go ahead and say that I had an overview
of the whole dialectical structure from the very beginning of the whole work as
an author or that at every moment I had in advance exhausted in reflection,
step by step, the possibilities in such a way that reflection did not teach me
something later, at times something else, that what I had done was surely the
right thing but that nevertheless only now did I myself properly understand
it—if I were to do that, it would be a denial and an unfairness to God. No, in
honesty I must say: I cannot understand the whole simply because I can
understand the whole right down to the slightest detail; but what I cannot
understand is that I can now understand it and yet by no means dare to say that
I understood it so accurately at the beginning—and yet I certainly am the one
who has done it and with reflection has taken every step. In garrulous talk
this could be explained easily be saying, as some have also said about me
without having any idea of the totality of my authorship, that I was a genius
of reflection. But just because I acknowledge the correctness of attributing
reflection to me—I truly am too reflective not to see that this compounding of
reflection and genius explains nothing, because insofar as someone has genius,
he does not have reflection, and vice versa, since reflection is the very
negation of immediacy." (PV, Hong, pp. 76-77)
#
"If I were now to state
as categorically definitely as possible Governance's part in the whole work as
an author, I know of no expression more descriptive or more decisive than this:
It is Governance that has brought me up, and the upbringing is reflected in the
writing process. To that extent, then, what was developed earlier, that all the
esthetic writing is a deception, proves to be in one sense not entirely true,
since this expression conceded a little too much along the line of
consciousness. Yet it is not entirely untrue, because I have been conscious
during the upbringing, and from the beginning. The process is this: a poetic
and philosophical nature is set aside in order to become a Christian. But the
unusual thing is that the movement begins concurrently and therefore is a
conscious process; one gets to see how it happens; the other does not commence
after a separation of some years from the first. Thus the esthetic writing is
surely a deception, yet in another sense a necessary emptying. The religious is
decisively present already from the first moment, has decisive predominance,
but for a little while waits patiently so that the poet is allowed to talk
himself out, yet watching with Argus eyes lest the poet trick it and it all
becomes a poet." (PV, Hong, p. 77)
#
"Prior to the real beginning
of my work as an author, there was an event, or rather a fact; an event most
likely would not have been enough; it was a fact—I myself had to be an acting
agent. I cannot give further particulars about that fact, its nature, how
frightfully complex it was dialectically even though in another sense quite
simple, and where the collision actually lay, but only ask the reader not to
think of revelations and the like, since with me everything is dialectical. I
will, however, present the result of the fact insofar as it serves to throw
light on the authorship. It was a double fact. However much I have lived in
another sense, I had really leaped over, humanly speaking, childhood and youth.
This presumably had to be retrieved (that no doubt was the view of Governance)—instead
of having been young, I became a poet, which is youth a second time. I became a
poet, but with my religiously oriented background, indeed, with my definite
religiousness, the same fact became for me a religious awakening also.
So in the most decisive sense
I came to understand myself in the religious, in the religiousness to which I
had, however, related myself to as a possibility. The fact made me a poet. If I
had not been the one that I was, and the event on the other hand, and acted as
I did act—that would have been the end of it; I would have remained a poet and
then after many years perhaps come into a relation to the religious. But just
because I was as religiously developed as I was, the fact gripped me far more
deeply and in religious impatience annihilated in a certain sense what I had
become, a poet—annihilated it, or in any case I began concurrently, at the very
same time, in two places, yet in such a way that to be a poet was actually no
concern of mine, was what I had become through something else: on the other
hand, the religious awakening did not occur through myself but occurred in
conformity with myself, that is, in a deeper sense I did not recognize myself
in being a poet but did indeed recognize myself in the religious awakening.
Here the reader readily
perceives the explanation of the duplexity of the whole authorship, except that
this duplexity was also assimilated in the author's consciousness. What was to
be done? Well, the poetic element had to be emptied out—for me there was no
other possibility. But the entire esthetic production was taken into custody by
the religious; the religious put up with this emptying out of the poetic but
continually pressed on, as if to say, "aren't you finished with
that?" While the poet-productions were being written, the author was
living in decisive religious categories.*
*Here one will see the
significance of the pseudonyms, why I
had to be pseudonymous in connection with the esthetic productions, because I
had my own life in altogether different categories and from the very beginning
understood this writing as something temporary, a deception, a necessary
emptying out." (PV, Hong, pp. 85-86)
#
"In immediacy to become
a Christian is very direct, but the criterion for the truth and inwardness
of the reflective expression with regard to becoming a Christian is precisely
how valuable that is which is discarded in reflection. One does not become a
Christian through reflection, but in
reflection to become a
Christian means that there is something else to discard. A person does not
reflect himself into being a Christian but out of something else in order to
become a Christian, especially when the situation is Christendom, where one
must reflect oneself out of the appearance of being a Christian. The nature of
the something else determines how deep, how significant the movement of
reflection is. The reflection-qualification is specifically this: that one
comes from a distance, and from what distance one comes to become a Christian.
The reflection-qualification is the difficulty, which is greater in proportion
to the value and significance of what is left behind." (PV, Hong, p. 93)
#
"This is how I think
that I have served the cause of Christianity, while I myself was being brought
up in the process. The one who was regarded with amazement as nearly the most
clever (and this was achieved by Either/Or), the one who was readily
granted position as "the interesting" (and this was achieved by Either/Or)—he
was the very one who was duty-bound in the service of Christianity, who had
dedicated himself to it from the first moment when he began that pseudonymous
work as an author; he was the very one who struggled within himself and as an
author in order to set forth this simple matter: becoming a Christian. The
movement is not from the simple to the interesting, but from the interesting to
the simple—becoming a Christian—where Concluding Postscript is located, the
turning point in the whole work as an author, which poses "the
issue" and then itself in turn, by means of indirect fencing and Socratic
dialect, mortally wounds "the system"—from behind, fighting against
the system, and speculative thought, lest the way be from the simple to
the system and speculative thought instead of from the system and speculative
thought back to the simple, becoming a Christian, therefore fighting and
cutting through in order to find a way back." (PV, Hong, pp. 93-94)
#
"Thus he completed the
task of reflection—to cast Christianity, becoming a Christian, wholly and fully
into reflection. The purity of his heart was to will only one thing." (PV,
Hong, p. 97)
#
"But the imposing
undertaking did not beguile him; while he qua author dialectically maintained
supervision over the whole, he Christianly understood that for him the whole
understanding meant that he himself was being brought up in Christianity. The
dialectical structure he completed, the parts of which are previous separate
works, he could not attribute to any human being, even less attribute it to
himself. If he had attributed it to anyone, it would have been to Governance,
to whom it was attributed day after day, year after year, by the author, who
historically died of a mortal disease but poetically died of a longing for
eternity in order unceasingly to do nothing else than to thank God." (PV,
Hong, p. 97)
#
“It
is absolutely right—a pseudonym had to be used. When the demands of ideality
are to be presented at their maximum, then one must take extreme care not to be
confused with them himself, as if he himself were the ideal. Protestations
could be used to avoid this. But the only sure way is this redoubling. The
difference between the earlier pseudonyms is simply but essentially this, that
I do not retract the whole thing humorously but identify myself as the one who
is striving. (PV, Hong, Supplement, p. 203)
–JP VI 6446 (Pap. X¹ A 548) n.d., 1849
#
"As soon as the category
'the single individual' goes out, Christianity is abolished. Then the
individual will relate himself to God through the human race, through an
abstraction, through a third party—and then Christianity is eo ipso
abolished. If this happens, then the God-man is a phantom instead of an actual
prototype." (PV, Hong, Supplement, p. 205) (JP II 1781 n.d., 1849)
#
"My task was to cast
Christianity into reflection, not poetically to idealize (for the essentially
Christian, after all, is itself the ideal) but with poetic fervor to present
the total ideality at its most ideal—always ending with: I am not that, but I
strive. If the latter
does not prove correct and is not true about me, then everything is cast in
intellectual form and falls short." (PV, Hong, p. 212-13)
#
"'Johannes Climacus' was
actually a contemplative piece, for when I wrote it I was contemplating the
possibility of not letting myself be taken over by Christianity, even if it was
my most honest intention to devote my whole life and daily diligence to the
cause of Christianity, to do everything, to do nothing else but to expound and
interpret it, even though I were to become like, be like the legendary
Wandering Jew—myself not a Christian in the final and most decisive sense of
the word, yet leading others to Christianity." (PV, Hong, Supplement, p.
221) (JP VI 6523 (Pap. X² A 163) n.d., 1849)
#
The New Pseudonym (Anti-Climacus)
"The fact that there is
a pseudonym is the qualitative expression that there is a
poet-communication, that it is not I who speaks but another, that it is
addressed to me just as much as to others; it is as if the spirit speaks, while
I get the inconvenience of being the editor." PV, Hong, Supplement, p.
227)
#
"It is clear in my
writings I have supplied a more radical characterization of the concept of
faith than there has been up until this time." (PV, Hong, Supplement, p.
253) (–JP VI 6698 n.d. 1850)
#
"Perhaps someone is
amazed when he has read these books, but no one more that I when I turn around
now (after having been an author for approximately seven years and just as if
in one breath) and look at what has been accomplished and with almost a shiver
of amazement see that the whole thing is actually only one thought, something I
quite clearly understand now, although in the beginning I had not expected to
go on being an author for so many years, nor did I have such a grand objective.
Philosophically, this is a movement of reflection that is described backward
and is first understood when it is accomplished." PV, Hong, Supplement,
pp. 254-55) (Pap. X 5 B 207, 1850)
#
"My dear reader, I have wanted to and
believed that I ought to say this to you, and at this very time when I am about
to meet my first work: the second edition of Either/Or, which I was
unwilling to have published earlier. Direct communication, that is, by me
personally concerning and about my authorship, its comprehensive
plan, its objective, the placing of each individual work in the whole, and
every individual part in each individual work, etc., is in a way, even where it
is not a plain impossibility, against my nature, my personality – and against
my work as an author, all of which is dialectics from first to last, and all of
which until now at least from one side, has hitherto considered itself to be
religiously committed to silence. Lest these few direct words about myself
personally and about my authorship might in any way be a breach of, a weakness
in relation to, what I myself have hitherto understood, namely, that I was
committed to silence concerning myself personally and concerning direct
communication about my authorship. If in this regard everything is in order and
proper, even the little I have here communicated directly, and to you, I have
not communicated, although from one side, without concern, without the concern
that from this side unconditionally preoccupies me most – that I in some way
might have said too much about myself and too little about Governance.
In one sense my explanation
of my work as an author has a special coherence. My explaining is not like that
of an author who says: This and this I
have done – and then by inspecting the books is convinced that this is exactly
what he has not done. No, what I explain is always something factual, is
factual for the reader just as for me, is printed in the books, or if I
consider the arrangement of the books, then this, too, is something factual,
something anyone can verify whenever he wishes – in what order the actually
books came out. Nor is my thought this, which is indeed only a simple and
natural development, that in the process of working out something I gradually
was better satisfied with my effort or what I want generally. This is the
position taken by Johannes Climacus, who in a survey of the pseudonymous works
together with my upbuilding discourses expressly states that he, who as reader
kept abreast of the books, every time he had read such a published work, understood
better what it was that he had wanted, he who from the beginning had himself
wanted to carry out the very thing that was carried out in this authorship. No,
in my case what I myself have planned, carried out, and said – I myself
sometimes understand only afterward how correct it was, that there was
something far deeper in it than I thought at first – and yet I am the one who
is the author. Here in my thoughts is an inexplicable something suggesting that
I was, as it were, helped by someone else, that I have come to work out and say
something whose deeper meaning I myself sometimes understand only afterward.
This, in my view, is quite simply and God-fearingly the cooperation of
Governance in such a way as everyone ought and should be able to speak of this.
In other words, if the
discussion of it is to be only scholarly and philosophical, it should be
titled: The Relation between Immediacy and Reflection within Reflection, or The
Process of Development that within Reflection Is the Transposing of Immediacy
into Reflection, here Reflected in the
Work of an Author and in the Author's corresponding Supporting Existence. The
individuality in whom the same happens, if he has religiousness, and to the
same degree that he has religiousness, must religiously, and to the same degree
religiously attribute it to God, and all the more fervently and gratefully to
the same degree as he perhaps otherwise feels unhappy and sad and, seen from an
other side, humble before God, feels not at all worthy or feels unworthy to have
this happiness be granted to him in particular. But this can be truly said only in the silence of
inwardness – that is, it cannot be communicated.
If I myself religiously
understand that I have been helped by another, what wonder, then, that I am uneasy
about speaking personally about my
work as an author and that I, when I have said only the very least thing in the
first person, immediately have a great concern about having said too much about
myself and too little about Governance! And, my dear reader, the difficulty
involved here in speaking returns in another way: that when I personally, in
the first person, make myself if possible into nothing, which in one sense I
would like to do – and really let the pathos-filled emphasis of humility fall
so that everything is due to Governance – then of course I run into another
danger, which makes me shudder even more, that in someone's conception of me I
would be raised so high up into the extraordinary, as if in some way I had an
immediate relationship with God, which, if possible, would be even more untrue
and for me more appalling than if I were categorically to attribute
unconditionally everything to myself, I who indeed am like an epitome of
reflection.
It is difficult to speak
personally here, to say in the first person what is developed there, what is in
the books in their actual sequence to each other etc. This is something any
third person can do without the slightest trouble at all. And what I myself as
a third person can so very easily do, indeed have shown that I can do [In
margin: Note: For example, Johannes Climacus's report on the pseudonymous
writers (see Concluding Postscript, pp. 187-227[pp. 251-300, KW XII.1;
SV VII 212-57]) by me as third person by a third person.]—since my case differs
from that of most authors in that it is easiest for them to speak in the first
person about their endeavor. For me it is very easy to talk about it in the
third person. So it is difficult to speak, but being silent also has its
difficulty. By unconditionally attributing everything to myself I can defraud
Governance of what I religiously and personally must call its share. [In
margin: Note: To give just one example of what I mean. It would be
untrue if I were unconditionally to claim the whole authorship as my intention
from the beginning, because it is also the possibility of my author-nature that
has come into existence but it has not been conscious (deleted: from the
very beginning). It would be untrue to say unconditionally that I used the
esthetic productivity as maieutic from the very beginning, but for the reader
the whole authorship actually will still be maieutic in relation to the
religious, which in me was most basic] But I can also defraud Governance by
being silent, since in that case my reader would straightway be prompted to
trace everything to me, as if I myself had envisioned everything this way from
the beginning.
This is why I have chosen to
say the little that I have said here. In my own innermost being on my own
responsibility I understand everything easily—in my own innermost being, where
before God I have my personal life, its cunning, its nevertheless God-fearing
cunning in relation to my work as an author and its objective—in my own
innermost being before God, where, as a beneficial tempering and correcting
middle term in relation to whatever extraordinariness may possibly have been
granted me, I have my personal life, its pain and sufferings, and above all its
errors and sins and the consequences, its repentance and regret. But to speak about
myself as someone who is dead, I cannot do or, rather, I cannot defend doing it
as long as I am a living person.
Just one thing more: the
little that is said in this little book about my work as an author is about the
past, about what has been accomplished—something that obviously is implied in
the subject itself, and something you yourself will surely become aware of
during your reading, even just from the tenses that are used. With regard to
the future—whether I will continue to be an author for a time, a longer or
shorter time, and as before, or whether I will begin to be a different kind of
author, or whether I will simply cease to be an author now—about that
absolutely nothing is known, not even by me. I, who by nature am also a born
dialectician and sheer reflection, have with much fear and trembling learned
quite accurately, literally, and earnestly to understand that I cannot ever
know whether the talents and qualifications I have possessed so far , the good
fortune that has followed me so far, etc., whether all of this may be taken
from me in the next moment, perhaps before I have finished this sentence. Do
not think that this is a depression of the kind that renders one unproductive.
Under the weight of this mood—and perhaps it weighed upon me even more heavily
then than it does now, since in the course of time I have become more practiced
in it—I began as an author, and under the weight of this mood I have
written—shall I now say the few pages I have written." (PV, Hong, Supplement, pp. 290-94) (Pap.
X 5 B 168 n.d., 1849)
Practice in Christianity:
“In relation to the absolute,
there is only one time, the present; for the person who is not contemporary
with the absolute, it does not exist at all. And since Christ is the absolute
it is easy to see that in relation to him there is only one situation, the
situation of contemporaneity; the three, the seven, the fifteen, the seventeen,
the eighteen hundred years make no
difference at all; they do not change him, but neither do they reveal who he was,
for he is revealed only to faith.” (PC, Hong, p. 63)
#
"The God-man is not the
union of God and man—such terminology is a profound optical illusion. The
God-man is the unity of God and the individual human being. That the human race
is or is supposed to be in kinship with God is ancient paganism; but that
an individual human being is God is Christianity, and this particular human
being is the God-man. Humanly speaking, there is no possibility of a crazier
composite than this either in heaven or on earth or in the abyss or in the most
fantastic aberrations of thought. So it appears in the situation of
contemporaneity; and no relation to the God-man is possible without beginning
with the situation of contemporaneity." (PC, Hong, p. 82)
#
"In the first period of
Christendom, when even aberrations bore an unmistakable mark of one's
nevertheless knowing what the issue was, the fallacy with respect to the
God-man was either that in one way or another the term 'God' was taken away
(Ebionitism and the like) or the term 'man' was taken away (Gnosticism). In the
entire modern age, which so unmistakably bears the mark that it does not even
know what the issue is, the confusion is something different and far more
dangerous. By way of didacticism, the God-man has been made into that
speculative unity of God and man sub specie aeterni (under the aspect of
eternity) or made visible in that nowhere-to-be-found medium of pure being,
rather than that the God-man is the unity of being God and an individual human
being in a historically actual situation. Or Christ has been abolished
altogether, thrown out and his teachings taken over, and finally he is almost
regarded as one regards an anonymous writer: the teaching is the principle
thing, is everything." (PC, Hong, p. 123)
#
"The opposite of direct
communication is indirect communication. The latter can be produced in two
ways. Indirect communication can be the art of communication in redoubling the
communication; the art consists in making oneself, the communicator, into a nobody,
purely objective, and then continually placing the qualitative opposites in a
unity. This is what the pseudonymous writers are accustomed to calling the
double-reflection of the communication. For example, it is indirect
communication to place jest and earnestness together in such a way that the
composite is a dialectical knot—and then to be nobody oneself." (PC, Hong,
p. 133)
#
"But here is an example
of indirect communication or communication in double-reflection. One presents
faith in the eminent sense and represents it in such a way that the most
orthodox see it as a defense of the faith and the atheist sees it as an attack,
while the communicator is a zero, a nonperson, an objective something—yet he
perhaps is an ingenious secret agent who with the aid of this communication
finds out which is which, who is the believer, who is the atheist, because this
is disclosed when they form a judgment about what is presented, which is
neither attack nor defense." (PC, Hong, 133-34)
#
"But indirect
communication can also appear in another way, through the relation between the
communication and the communicator. The communicator is present here, whereas
in the first instance he was left out, yet, please note, by way of a negative
reflection. But our age knows no other kind of communication than that mediocre
method of didacticizing. What it means to exist has been completely forgotten.
Any communication concerning existing requires a communicator; in other words,
the communicator is the reduplication of the communication; to exist in what
one understands is to reduplicate. But this communication still cannot be
called indirect communication just because there is a communicator who himself
exists in what he communicates. If, however, the communicator himself is dialectically
defined and his own being is based on reflection, then all direct communication
is impossible." (PC, Hong, p. 134)
#
"If someone says
directly: I am God; the Father and I are one, this is direct communication. But
if the person who says it, the communicator, is this individual human being, an
individual human being just like the others, then this communication is not
quite entirely direct because it is not entirely direct that an individual
human being should be God—whereas what he says is entirely direct. Because of
the communicator the communication contains a contradiction, it becomes
indirect communication; it confronts you with a choice: whether you will
believe him or not." (PC, Hong, p. 134)
#
"But the essentially
Christian is confused in every way. Christ is made into a speculative unity of
God and man, or Christ is thrown out altogether and his teaching is taken, or
Christ is made into an idol. Spirit is the denial of direct immediacy. If
Christ is true God, then he must also be unrecognizable, attired in
unrecognizability, which is the denial of all straightforwardness. Direct
recognizability is specifically characteristic of the idol. But this is what
people make Christ into, and this is supposed to be earnestness." (PC,
Hong, p. 136)
#
"What modern philosophy
understands by faith is really what is called having an opinion or what in
everyday language some people call 'to believe.' Christianity is made into a
teaching; this teaching is then proclaimed to a person, and he believes that
this is what the teaching says. Then the next stage is to 'comprehend' this
teaching, and this philosophy does. All of this would be entirely proper if
Christianity were a teaching, but since it is not, all of this is totally
wrong. Faith in a significant sense is related to the God-man. But the God-man,
the sign of a contradiction, denies direct communication—and calls for
faith." (PC, Hong, p. 141)
#
"It goes without saying
that if from on high he is to be able to draw the Christian to himself, there
is much that must be forgotten, much that must be disregarded, much that must
be died to. How can this be done? If in concern, perhaps concern about your
future, your success, you have ever really wished to forget something—a
disappointed expectation, a crushed hope, a bitter and embittering
recollection, or if, in concern about your soul's salvation, you have very
fervently wished to be able to forget something—anxiety of sin that continually
confronted you, a terrifying thought that would not leave you—then you yourself
certainly have experienced how empty it is the advice the world gives you when
it says, "Try to forget it!" If in concern you anxiously ask,
"How shall I go about forgetting?" and the reply is, "You must
try to forget," this is nothing but empty mockery—if it is anything at
all. No, if there is something you want to forget, then try to find something
else to remember; then you will certainly succeed. Therefore, if Christianity
requires of the Christian that he must forget a great deal, and in a certain
sense everything, namely, the multiplicity, then it also recommend the means:
to remember something else, to call to remembrance one thing, the Lord Jesus
Christ. Then if you perceive that the pleasures of the world captivate you, and
you wish to forget; if you perceive that life's busyness is carrying you away
as the current carries away the swimmer, and you wish to forget; if the
anxieties of temptation pursue you and you fervently wish to be able to
forget—then remember him, the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will certainly
succeed." (PC, Hong, pp. 152-53)
#
Moreover, what
it truly means, more precisely understood, to draw to itself depends upon the
nature of what is to be drawn. If this is in itself a self, then to draw to
itself cannot truly mean merely to draw it from being itself, to draw it to
itself in such a way that it has now lost all its own existence [Bestaaen]
by being drawn into that which drew it to itself. No, with regard to what is
truly a self, to be drawn in this manner would again be to be deceived. This
would certainly be the last to come to light, the deception, but this last is
what should be said first and promptly: it deceives. No, when that which is to
be drawn is in itself a self, then truly to draw to itself means first to help
it truly to become itself in order then to draw it to itself, or it means in
and through drawing it to itself to help it become itself. –Therefore, truly to
draw to itself means something twofold—first to make the self, which is to be
drawn to itself, to be itself, in order then to draw it to itself." (PC, Hong, p. 159)
#
"So,
the, what truly can be said to draw to itself must be something in itself or
something that is in itself. So it is when truth draws to itself, for truth is
in itself, is in and for itself—and Christ is the truth. It must be the higher
that draws the lower to itself—just as when Christ, the infinitely highest one,
true God and true man, from on high will draw all to himself. But the human
being of whom this discourse speaks is in himself a self. Therefore Christ also
first and foremost wants to help every human being to become a self, requires
this of him first and foremost, requires that he, by repenting become a self,
in order to draw him to himself. He wants to draw the human being to himself,
but in order truly to draw him to himself he wants to draw him only as a free
being to himself, that is, through a choice. (PC, Hong, p. 159-160)
#
"Thus
Christ is the truth in the sense that to be the truth is the only true
explanation of what the truth is. […] And therefore, Christianly understood,
truth is obviously not to know but to be the truth. […] For knowing the truth
is something that entirely of itself accompanies being the truth, not the other
way around. And that is why it becomes untruth when knowing the truth is
separated from being the truth or when knowing the truth is made identical with
being it, since it is related the other way. Being the truth is identical with
knowing the truth, and Christ would never have known the truth if he had not
been it, and nobody knows more of the truth
than what he is of the truth." (PC, Hong, pp. 205-06)
#
"And there stands
Christianity with its requirements for self-denial: Deny yourself—and then
suffer because you deny yourself." (PC, Hong, p. 213)
#
"Magister Kierkegaard
has shown (at the end of Part One of Works of Love) what is to be
understood by Christian Self-denial, that there is Christian self-denial only
when there is double-danger, that the second danger, the danger of suffering
because one denies oneself, is the decisive qualification." (PC, Hong, p.
222)
#
"This is easy top
understand. The first condition for becoming a Christian is to become
unconditionally turned inward. Infinitely turned inward in this way, the
inwardly turned has nothing to do with anyone else—this is earnestness, and it
applies more rigorously than when the schoolteacher orders that each pupil keep
his eyes to himself and not look at the others at all. Turned inward in this
way, the learner understands, or learns to understand, what the task is: to
become and be a Christian—every moment he is turned outward is wasted, and if
these moments become numerous, then all is lost." (PC, Hong, p. 225)
#
"Christ is the prototype. If he had come into the
world in earthly and temporal loftiness, this would have given rise to the
greatest possible lie. Instead of becoming the prototype for the whole human
race and every individual in the human race, he would have become a general
excuse and escape for the whole human race and every individual in the whole
human race." (Practice in Christianity, Hong, pp. 239-40)
Present Age:
"A
passionate tumultuous age will overthrow everything, pull everything down;
but a revolutionary age, that is at the same time reflective and passionless,
transforms that expression of strength into a feat of dialectics: it leaves
everything standing but cunningly empties it of significance. Instead of
culminating in a rebellion it reduces the inward reality of all relationships
to a reflective tension which leaves everything standing but makes the whole of
life ambiguous: so that everything continues to exist factually whilst by a
dialectical deceit, privatissime, it supplies a secret interpretation – that it
does not exist." (PA, Dru, p. 42)
#
"Morality
is character, character is that which is engraved; but the sand and the sea
have no character and neither has abstract intelligence, for character is
really inwardness." (PA, Dru, p. 43)
#
The
springs of life, which are only what they are because of the qualitative
differentiating power of passion, lose their elasticity. The difference
separating a thing from its opposite in quality no longer regulates the inward
relation of things. All inwardness is lost, and to that extent the relation no
longer exists, or else forms a colorless cohesion. The negative law is this:
opposites are unable to dispense with each other and unable to hold together.
The positive law is that they are able to dispense with each other and are able
to hold together or, stated positively: opposites are unable to dispense with
each other because of the connection between them." (PA, Dru, pp. 43-44)
#
"The
present age is essentially one of understanding lacking in passion, and has
therefore abolished the principle of
contradiction. By comparison with a passionate age, as age without passion
gains in scope what it loses in intensity. But this scope may once again become
the condition of a still higher form, if a corresponding intensity assumes
control of the extended field of activity which is put at its disposal. The
abolition of the principle of contradiction, expressed in terms of existence,
means to live in contradiction with oneself." (PA, Dru, p. 68)
#
"What is reasoning?
It is the result of doing away with the vital distinction which separates
subjectivity and objectivity. As a form of abstract thought reasoning is not
profoundly dialectical enough; as an opinion and a conviction it lacks
full-blooded individuality. But where mere scope is concerned, reasoning has
all the apparent advantage; for a thinker can encompass his science, a man can
have an opinion upon a particular subject and conviction as a result of a
certain view of life, but one can reason about anything." (Present Age,
Dru, p. 76)
#
"What,
exactly, have the errors of exegesis and philosophy done in order to confuse
Christianity, and how they have confused Christianity? Quite briefly and
categorically, they have simply forced back the sphere of paradox-religion into
the sphere of the aesthetics, and in consequence have succeeded in bringing
Christian terminology to such a pass that terms which, so long as they remain
within their sphere, are qualitative categories, can be put to almost any use
as clever expressions. If the sphere of paradox-religion is abolished, or explained
away in aesthetics, an Apostle becomes neither more of less than a genius, and
then – good night, Christianity! Esprit and the Spirit, revelation and
originality, a call from God and genius, all end by meaning more or less the
same thing." (G/A, Dru, p. 89)
#
"A genius and an Apostle
are qualitatively different, they are definitions which each belong in their
own spheres: the sphere of immanence, and the sphere of transcendence:
(1) Genius may, therefore, have something new to bring forth, but what it brings
forth disappears again as it becomes assimilated by the human race, just as the
difference 'genius' disappears as soon as one thinks of eternity; the Apostle
has, paradoxically, something new to
bring, the newness of which, precisely because it is essentially paradoxical,
and not an anticipation in relation to the development of the race, always
remains, just as an Apostle remains an Apostle in all eternity , and no eternal
immanence puts him on the same level as other men, because he is essentially,
paradoxically different. (2) Genius is what it is of itself, i.e.
through that which it is in itself; an Apostle is what he is by his divine
authority. (3) Genius has only an immanent teleology; the Apostle is
placed as absolute paradoxical teleology." (G/A, Dru, pp. 90-91)
Purity of Heart:
"Although this little book (it can be called an
occasional address, yet without having the occasion which produces the speaker
and gives him authority, or the occasion which produces the reader and makes
him eager to learn) is like a fantasy, like a dream by day as it confronts the
relationships of actuality: yet it is not without assurance and not without
hope of accomplishing its object. It is in search of that solitary
"individual," to whom it wholly abandons itself, by whom it wishes to
be received as if it had arisen within his own heart; that solitary
"individual" whom with joy and gratitude I call my reader; that
solitary "individual" who reads willingly and slowly, who reads over
and over again, and who reads aloud -- for his own sake. If it finds
him, then in the distance of the separation the understanding is perfect, if he
retains for himself both the distance and the understanding in the inwardness
of appropriation." (PH, Steele, p.
23)
#
"Father in heaven! What
is a man without Thee! What is all that he knows, vast accumulation though it
be, but a chipped fragment if he does not know Thee! What is all his striving,
could it even encompass a world, but a half-finished work if he does not know
Thee: Thee the One, who art one thing and who art all! So may Thou give to the
intellect, wisdom to comprehend that one thing; to the heart, sincerity to
receive this understanding; to the will, purity that wills only one
thing." (PH, Steele, p. 31)
#
"Only the Eternal is
always appropriate and always present, is always true. Only the Eternal applies
to each human being, whatever his age may be." (PH, Steere, p. 33)
#
"If there is, then, something
eternal in man, it must be able to exist and to be grasped within every change.
Nor can it be wisdom to say, indiscriminately, that this something eternal has
its time like the perishable, that it makes its circle like the wind that never
gets further; that it has its course like the river that never fills up the
sea. Nor can it be wisdom to talk of this eternal element in the same vein as
if one were talking of the past, as if it is past and past in the sense that it
can never, not even in repentance, relate to a present person but only to an
absent one. For repentance is precisely the relation between something past and
someone who has his life in the present time." (PH, Steere, p. 36)
#
"For in relation to the
eternal, a man ages neither in the sense of time nor in the sense of an
accumulation of past events." (PH, Steere, p. 38)
#
"But repentance and
remorse know how to make use of time in fear and trembling. When remorse
awakens concern, whether it be in the youth, or in the old man, it awakens it
always at the eleventh hour. It does not have much time at its disposal, for it
is at the eleventh hour. It is not deceived by a false notion of a long life,
for it is at the eleventh hour. And in the eleventh hour one understands life
in a wholly different way than in the days of youth or in the busy time of
manhood or in the final moment of old age. He who repents at any other hour of
the day repents in the temporal sense. He fortifies himself by a false and
hasty conception of the insignificance of his guilt. He braces himself with a
false and hasty notion of life’s length. His remorse is not in true inwardness
of spirit." (PH, Steere, pp. 41-42)
#
"So repentance must have
its time if all is not to be confused. For there are two guides. The one
beckons forward. The other calls back. But repentance shall not have its time
in a temporal sense. It will not belong to a certain section of life as fun and
play belong to childhood, or as the excitement of love belongs to youth. It
will not come and disappear as a whim or as a surprise. " (PH, Steere, p.
42)
#
"Remorse should be an
action with a collected mind, so that it may be spoken of to the edification of
the hearer so that new life may be born of it, so that it does not become an
event whose sorrowful heritage is a feeling of sadness." (PH, Steere, p.
42)
#
"For it is indeed the
case that guilt must be alive for a man if he is honestly to repent. But just
for that reason, precipitate repentance is false and is never to be sought
after. For it may not be the inner anxiety of heart but only the momentary
feeling that presents the guilt so actively. This kind of repentance is
selfish, a matter of the senses, sensually powerful for the moment, excited in
expression, impatient in the most diverse exaggerations – and, just on this
account, is not real repentance." (PH, Steere, p. 44)
#
"So, then, repentance
should not merely have its time, but even its time of preparation. Although it
should be a silent daily concern, it should also be able to collect
itself and be well prepared for the solemn occasion. One such an occasion is
the office of Confession, the holy act for which preparation should be made in
advance. As a man changes his raiment for a feast, so is a man changed in his
heart who prepares himself for the holy act of confession. It is indeed like a
changing of raiment to lay off manyness, in order rightly to center down upon
one thing; to interrupt the busy course of activity, in order to put on the
quiet of contemplation and be at one with oneself. And this being at one with
oneself is the simple festival garment of the feast that is the condition of
admittance. The manyness, one may see with a dispersed mind, see something of
it, see it in passing, see it with half-closed eyes, with a divided mind, see
it and indeed not see it." (PH,
Steere, p. 47)
#
"In the rush of
busyness, one may be anxious over many things, begin many things, do many
things at once, and only half do them all. But one cannot confess without this
at-oneness with oneself. He that is not truly at one with himself during the
hours of the office of confession is merely dispersed. If he remains silent, he
is not collected; if he speaks, it is only in a chatty vein, not in confession.
But he that in truth becomes at one with himself, he is in the silence. And
this is indeed like a changing of raiment: to strip oneself of all that is full
of noise as it is empty, in order to be hidden in the silence, to become
open." (PH, Steere, pp. 47-48)
#
"The all-knowing One
does not get to know something about the maker of the confession, rather the
maker of confession gets to know about himself. Therefore, do not raise the
objection against the confession that there is no point in confiding to the
all-knowing One that which He already knows. Reply first to the question
whether it is not conferring a benefit when a man gets to know something about
himself which he did not know before." (PH, Steere, p.51)
#
"To will only one thing:
but will this not inevitably become a long-drawn-out affair? If one should
consider this matter properly must he not first consider, one by one, each goal
in life that a man could conceivably set up for himself, mentioning separately
all of the many things that a man might will? And not only this; since each of these
considerations readily becomes too abstract in character, is he not obliged to
go the next step to attempt to will, one after the other, each of these goals
in order to find out what is the single thing he is to will, if it is a matter
of willing only one thing? Yes, if someone should begin in this fashion, then
he would never come to an end. Or more accurately, how could he ever arrive at
the end since at the outset he took the wrong way and then continued to go on
further and further along this false way?" (PH, Steere, pp. 53-54)
#
"The person who wills
one thing that is not the Good, he does not truly will one thing. It is a
delusion, an illusion, a deception, a self-deception that he wills only one
thing. For in his innermost being he is, he is bound to be,
double-minded." (PH, Steere, p. 55)
#
"For
such a man wills first one thing then immediately wills the opposite, because
the oneness of pleasure is a snare and a delusion. It is the diversity of
pleasure that he wills. So when the man of whom we are speaking had gratified
himself up to the point of disgust, he became weary and sated. Even if he still
desired one thing—what was it he desired? He desired new pleasures; his
enfeebled soul raged so that no ingenuity was sufficient to discover something
new—something new! It was change he cried out for as pleasure served him,
change! Change! And it was change that he cried out for as he came to
pleasure's limit, as his servants were worn out—change! Change!" (PH,
Steere, p.57)
#
Now, willing one thing does
not mean to commit the grave mistake of a brazen, unholy enthusiasm, namely, to
will the big, no matter whether it be good or bad. Also, one who wills in this
fashion no matter how desperately he does it, is indeed double-minded. Is not
despair simply double-mindedness? For what is despairing other than to have two
wills? For whether the weakling despairs over not being able to wrench himself
away from the bad, or whether the brazen one despairs over not being able to
tear himself completely away from the Good: they are both double-minded, they
both have two wills. Neither of them honestly wills one thing, however
desperately they may seem to will it. Whether it was a woman whom desire
brought to desperation, or whether it was a man who despaired in defiance;
whether a man despaired because he got his will, or despaired because he did
not get his will: each one in despairing has two wills, one that he fruitlessly
tries wholly to follow and one that he fruitlessly tries wholly to avoid. (PH, Steere, p.
61)
#
"To will one thing
cannot, then, mean to will what in its essence is not one thing, but only seems
to be so by means of a horrible falsehood. Only through a lie is it one thing.
Now just as he who wills this one thing is a liar, so he that conjures up this
one thing is the father of lies. That dryness and emptiness is not in truth one
thing, but is in truth nothing at all. And it is destruction for the man who
only wills that one. If, on the contrary, a man should in truth will only one
thing, then this thing must, in the truth of its innermost being, be one thing.
It must, by its eternal separation, cut off the heterogeneous from itself in
order that it may in truth continue to be one and the same thing and thereby
fashion that man who only wills one thing into conformity with itself. (PH,
Steere, p. 65-66)
#
"In truth to will one
thing, then, can only mean to will the Good, because every other object is
not a unity; and the will that only wills that object, therefore, must become
double-minded. For as the coveted object is, so becomes the coveter. Or would
it be possible that a man by willing the evil could will one thing, provided
that it was possible for a man so to harden himself as to will nothing but the
evil? Is not this evil, like evil persons, in disagreement with itself, divided
against itself? (PH, Steere, p.66)
#
"For the wish to judge others
instead of one's self would also be double-mindedness." (PH, Steere, p.
68)
#
"The double-minded one
stands at a parting of the ways. Two visions appear: the Good and the reward.
It is not in his power to bring them into agreement, for they are fundamentally
different from each other. Only that reward which God for all eternity adds to
the Good in the inner realm, only that is in truth homogeneous with the Good.
So he stands pondering and reflecting. If he is wholly absorbed in his
pondering, then he continues to stand—a symbol of double-mindedness. But
suppose he should tear himself free from the deliberation and should now go
forward. Along which way? Ah, do not ask him about that. Perhaps he is able to
answer learned questions and to betray extensive knowledge. But one thing he
cannot do, one and only one thing he is not able to do: he cannot answer the
question about which of the two ways he is taking. By repeated thoughtful
pondering in an attempt to see the heterogeneous together, he has somewhat
confused his sight. He believes he has found that there is a third way and that
it is this third way along which he is going. This third way has no name. For
it does not really exist, and so it is obvious that he, if he is sincere,
cannot say which way he is taking. If he is sincere, for otherwise he would
indeed declare that he is going along the way of the Good, it may even be
important to convince men of that—in order that they may honor him. For honor
belongs to the reward which he is seeking after. The third way is the secret
which he keeps to himself. And now how does he go along this third way which is
narrower than any rope-dancer’s rope, for it simply does not exist? Does he go
steadily and firmly like one that has a definite goal before his eyes; like one
that scarcely looks at anything around him in order not to be disturbed; like
one that looks for one thing alone—for the goal? No, only a person upon the
path of the Good walks in this fashion with only the Good before his
eyes." (PH, Steere, pp. 74-75)
#
"And yet eternity is not
like a new world, so that one who had lived in time according to the ways of
the time world and of the press of busyness, if he were to make a happy landing
in eternity itself, could now try his luck in adopting the customs and
practices of eternity. Alas, the temporal order and the press of busyness
believe, that eternity is so far away. And yet not even the foremost
professional theatrical producer has ever had all in such readiness for the
stage and for the change of scenes, as eternity has all in readiness for time:
all—even to the least detail, even to the most insignificant word that is
spoken; has all in readiness in each instant—although eternity delays."
(PH, Steere, pp. 106-07)
#
"The immediate feeling
is indeed—primary. It is the élan vital out of which life flows, just as
it is said that the heart is the source of life. But then this feeling must be
'kept,' understood in the sense that one says, 'Keep thy heart with all
diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.' it must be cleansed of
selfishness, kept from selfishness. It must not be delivered up to its own
devices. On the other hand, that which will be kept must always put its trust
in a higher power that will keep it; hence, even the loving mother begs God to
keep her child." (PH, Steere, p. 113)
#
"In the recognition,
that contemplation and reflection are the distance of eternity away from time
and actuality, there is indeed a truth: the knower can understand that truth,
but he cannot understand himself. It is certain that without this recognition a
man's life is more of less thoughtless. But it is also certain, that this
recognition, because it is in a spurious eternity before the imagination,
develops double-mindedness, if it is not slowly and honestly earned." (PH,
Steere, pp. 116-17)
#
It is obvious, then, that the
temporal order cannot be the transparent medium of the Eternal. In its given
reality the temporal order is in conflict with the Eternal. This makes the
determination to accomplish something less plain. The more active the Eternal
is toward the witness, the stronger is the cleavage. The more the striver,
instead of willing the Eternal, is linked with temporal existence, the more he
accomplishes in the sense of the temporal existence. So it is in many ways or
in all possible ways in the temporal order.
(PH, Steere, p. 136)
#
"Therefore, the sufferer
must be willing to suffer all. All; but now how at this point shall the talk be
conducted? For alas, even now the sight and the knowledge of suffering can
easily rob anyone of composure. How shall the talk be briefly formulated? For
the sufferings are able to be so different, and of such long duration. Here,
once again, let us not multiply distractions but rather let us simplify that
which is really important. Let us center all the talk about suffering upon the
wish. For the wish is the sufferer’s connection with a happier temporal
existence (faith and hope are related to the Eternal through the will); and at
the same time the wish is the sore spot where the suffering pains, the sore
spot which the suffering continually touches. Even if suffering could still be
spoken of where there is no longer any wish, it is an animal-like suffering,
not suffering that befits a man. It is a kind of spiritual suicide to will to
put the wish to death. For we are not talking about wishes, but rather about the
wish with the real emphasis of distinction, just as we also are not talking
about passing sufferings, but of the real sufferer. The wish is not the cure.
This happens only by the action of the Eternal. The wish is, on the contrary,
the life in suffering, the health in suffering. It is the perseverance in
suffering, for it is as one thinker has said, "The comfort of temporal
existence is a precarious affair. It lets the wound grow together, although it
is not yet healed, and yet the physician knows that the cure depends upon
keeping the wound open." In the wish, the wound is kept open, in order
that the Eternal may heal it. If the wound grows together, the wish is wiped
out and then eternity cannot heal, then temporal existence has in truth bungled
the illness." (PH, Steere, 148-49)
#
"When the sufferer
actually takes his suffering to heart, then he receives help from the Eternal
toward his decision. Because to take one's suffering to heart is to be weaned
from the temporal order, and from cleverness, and from excuses, and from clever
men and women and from anecdotes about this and that, in order to find rest in
the blessed trustworthiness of the eternal." (PH, Steere, p. 166)
#
"In relation to the
sufferer, all double-mindedness has its ground in and is marked by the
double-minded one’s unwillingness to let go of the things of this world. In the
same way the double-minded talk that is from time to time addressed to the
sufferer may be recognized by the fact that it puts its trust in the things of
this world." (PH, Steere, p. 168)
#
"One knows well enough
that when the true sufferer has whined himself through time and by all kinds of
imaginings has managed to pass away the time or to kill time: still eternity
stands open to him. Alas, no, the true sufferer must also answer for the manner
in which he has used his time, answer for whether or not he has used the
earthly misery to allow himself eternally to be healed. But cleverness asserts,
"still, one should never give up hope." "You hypocrite,"
answers the Eternal, "why do you speak so equivocally? You know well
enough that there is a hope that should be put to death; that there is a lust
and a desire and a longing that should be slain. Earthly hope should be put to
death, for in just this way did man first come to be saved by the true
hope." Therefore the sufferer should never be willing to "accept
deliverance" (Hebrews 11:15) on this world’s terms." (PH,
Steere, p. 169)
#
"But the sufferer who sincerely wills the Good, uses this cleverness to
cut off evasions and hence to launch himself into the commitment and to
escape the disillusionments of choosing the temporal way. He does not fear the
mark of the commitment that, as it were, draws the suffering over him; for he
knows that this mark is the breaking through of the Eternal. He knows that in
the Commitment the nerve of the temporal order is being cut, even though pain
continues in the wish. There is no doubt that what often makes a sufferer
impatient is that he takes upon himself in advance the suffering of a whole
lifetime and now quails before what would be lighter to bear if he were to take
each day’s burden as it comes." (PH, Steere, p. 170)
#
"The commitment should not
Concentrate sufferings in this way. For the error is just this, that in spite
of all his advance acceptance of suffering, the sufferer wins nothing that is
eternal but only becomes terrified in a temporal sense. Because of the
uncertainty of the temporal order, it is also true that over a period of many
years a sufferer may talk himself out of the original impression of the
commitment. And this is a calamity. On that account the sufferer who sincerely
wills the Good knows that cleverness is a treacherous friend, and that only the
commitment is fully trustworthy." (PH, Steere, p. 170)
#
"On the other hand (and
this is what we must primarily consider, for we are speaking of the true
sufferer), the sufferer can voluntarily accept that suffering which in one
sense is forced upon him, in so far as he does not have it in his power to get
rid of it. Can anyone but one who is free of suffering, say, 'Put me in chains,
I am not afraid'? Can even a prisoner say, 'Of my own free will I accept my
imprisonment'—the very imprisonment which is already his condition? Here again
the opinion of most men is that such a thing is impossible, and that therefore
the condition of the sufferer is one of sighing despondency. But what then is
patience? Is patience not precisely that courage which voluntarily accepts
unavoidable suffering? The unavoidable is just the thing which will shatter
courage. There is a treacherous opposition in the sufferer himself that is in
league with the dread of inevitability, and together they wish to crush him.
But in spite of this, patience submits to suffering and by just this submission
finds itself free in the midst of unavoidable suffering. Thus patience, if one
may put it in this way, performs an even greater miracle than courage. Courage
voluntarily chooses suffering that may be avoided; but patience achieves
freedom in unavoidable suffering. By his courage, the free one voluntarily lets
himself be caught, but by his patience the prisoner effects his
freedom—although not in the sense that need make the jailer anxious or
fearful." (PH, Steere, p. 173)
#
The outward impossibility of
ridding oneself of suffering does not hinder the inward possibility of being
able really to emancipate oneself within suffering—of one’s own free will
accepting suffering, as the patient one gives his consent by willing to accept
suffering. For one can be forced into the narrow prison, one can be forced into
lifelong sufferings, and necessity is the tyrant; but one cannot be forced into
patience. If the tyrant necessity presses upon a soul which neither possesses
nor wills to possess the elasticity of freedom, then the soul becomes
depressed, but it does not become patient. Patience is the counterpressure of
resiliency, whereby the coerced ones are set free from restraint." (PH,
Steere, pp. 173-74)
#
"Purity of heart: it is a
figure of speech that compares the heart to the sea, and why just to this?
Simply for the reason that the depth of the sea determines its purity and its
purity determines its transparency. Since the sea is pure only when it is deep,
and is transparent only when it is pure, as soon as it is impure it is no
longer deep but only surface water, and as soon as it is only surface water it
is not transparent. When, on the contrary, it is deeply and transparently pure,
then it is all of one consistency, no matter how long one looks at it; then its
purity is this constancy of depth and transparency. On this account we compare
the heart with the sea, because the purity of the sea lies in this consistency
in depth and transparency. No storm may perturb it; no sudden gust of wind may
stir its surface, no drowsy fog may sprawl out over it; no doubtful movement
may stir within it; no swift moving cloud may darken it; rather it must lie
calm, transparent to its depths." (PH, Steele, p. 176)
#
"As it has proceeded,
the talk, holding tenaciously to the demand—to will one thing—has taught
how to recognize many errors, disappointments, deceptions, and self-deceptions.
It has striven to track down double-mindedness into its hidden ways, and to
ferret out its secret. By striving at every possible point to make itself
intelligible, the talk has sought to bring these things within the reach of
each listener. But the intelligibility of the talk, and the listener's
understanding of it, are still not the talk's true aim. This by no means gives
the meditation its proper emphasis. For in order to achieve its proper emphasis
the talk must unequivocally demand something of the listener. It must demand
not merely what has been previously been requested, that the reader should
share in the work with the speaker—now the talk must unconditionally demand the
reader's own decisive activity, and all depends upon this." (PH, Steere,
PP. 177-78)
#
"As soon as God is
present, each man in the presence of God
has the task of paying attention to himself. The speaker must see that during
the address he pays attention to himself, to what he says; the listener, that
during that address he pays attention to himself, to how he listens, and
whether during that address he, in his inner self, secretly talks with
God." (PH, Steele, p. 181)
#
“The talk assumes, then, that
you will the good and asks you now, what kind of life you live, whether or not
you truthfully will only one thing. It does not ask inquisitively about your
calling in life, about the number of workers you employ, or about how many you
have under you in your office, or if you happen to be in the service of the
state. No, the talk is not inquisitive. It asks you above all else, it asks you
first and foremost, whether you live in such a way that the question truthfully
exists for you. Because in order to be able earnestly to answer that serious
question, a man must already have made a choice in life, he must have chosen
the invisible, chosen that which is within. He must have lived so that he has
hours and times in which he collects his mind, so that his life can win the
transparency that is a condition for being able to put the question to himself
and for being able to answer it—if, of course, it is legitimate to demand that
a man shall know whereof he speaks. To put such a question to the man that is
so busy in his earthly work, and outside of this in joining the crowd in its
noisemaking, would be folly that would lead only to fresh folly—through the
answer.” (PH, Steele, pp. 183-84)
#
The talk asks you, then, whether
you live in such a way that you are conscious of being an ' individual.' The question is not of the inquisitive
sort, as if one asked about that 'individua1' in some special sense, about the
one whom admiration and envy unite in pointing out. No, it is the serious
question, of what each man really is according to his eternal vocation, so that
he himself shall be conscious that he is following it; and what is even more
serious, to ask it as if he were considering his life before God. This
consciousness is the fundamental condition for truthfully willing only one
thing. For he who is not himself a unity is never really anything wholly and
decisively; he only exists in an external sense—as long as he lives as a
numeral within the crowd, a fraction within the earthly conglomeration. Alas,
how indeed should such a one decide to busy himself with the thought:
truthfully to will only one thing! (PH, Steere, p. 184)
#
"Indeed it is precisely
this consciousness that must be asked for. Just as if the talk could not ask in
generalities, but rather asks you as an individual. Or, better still, my
listener, if you would ask yourself, whether you have this consciousness,
whether you are actively contemplating the occasion of this talk. For in the
outside world, the crowd is busy making a noise. The one makes a noise because
he heads the crowd, the many because they are members of the crowd. But the
all-knowing One, who in spite of anyone is able to observe it all, does not
desire the crowd. He desires the individual; He will deal only with the
individual, quite unconcerned as to whether the individual be of high or low
station, whether he be distinguished or wretched." (PH. Steere, pp.
184-85)
#
"For, after all, what is
eternity’s accounting other than that the voice of conscience is forever
installed with its eternal right to be the exclusive voice? What is it other
than that throughout eternity an infinite stillness reigns wherein the
conscience may talk with the individual about what he, as an individual, of
what he has done of Good or of evil, and about the fact that during his life he
did not wish to be an individual? What is it other than that within eternity
there is infinite space so that each person, as an individual, is apart with
his conscience? For in eternity there is no mob pressure, no crowd, no hiding
place in the crowd, as little as there are riots or street fights! Here in the
temporal order conscience is prepared to make each person into an
individual." (PH, Steere, p. 186)
#
"But in eternity,
conscience is the only voice that is heard. It must be heard by the individual,
for the individual has become the eternal echo of this voice. It must be heard.
There is no place to flee from it. For in the infinite there is no place, the
individual is himself the place." (PH, Steere, p. 186)
#
Do you now live so that you
are conscious of yourself as an individual; that in each of your relations in
which you come into touch with the outside world, you are conscious of
yourself, and that at the same time you are related to yourself as an
individual? Even in these relations which we men so beautifully style the most
intimate of all, do you remember that you have a still more intimate relation,
namely, that in which you as an individual are related to yourself before God?
If you are bound to another human being by the holy bond of matrimony do you
consider in this intimate relation that still more intimate relation in which
you as an individual are related to yourself before God? The talk does not ask
you whether you now love your wife: it hopes so; nor whether she is the
apple of your eye and the desire of your heart: it wishes you this. It does not
ask what you have done to make your wife happy, about how you both have
arranged your household life, about what good advice you have been able to get
from others, or what harmful influence others have had upon you. It does not
ask whether your marital life is more commendable than that of many others, or
whether it perhaps might be looked upon by some as a worthy example. No, the
talk asks about none of these things. It asks you neither in congratulation,
nor inquisitively, nor watchfully, nor apologetically, nor comparatively. It
asks you only about the ultimate thing: whether you yourself are conscious of
that most intimate relation to yourself as an individual." (PH, Steere, p.187)
#
"Eternity does not ask
concerning how far you brought up your children in the way that you saw others
do it. It simply asks you as an individual, how you brought up your children.
It does not talk with you in the manner that you would talk with a friend in
confidence. For alas, even this confidence can all too easily accustom you to
evasions. For even the most trustworthy friend still speaks as a third person.
And by much of such confidence, one easily gets used to speaking of himself as
if he were a third person. But in eternity, you are the individual, and
conscience when it talks to you is no third person, any more than you are a third
person when you talk with conscience. For you and conscience are one."
(PH, Steele, pp. 188-89)
#
"In eternity there are
chambers enough so that each may be placed alone in one. For wherever
conscience is present, and it is and shall be present in each person, there
exists in eternity a lonely prison, or the blessed chamber of salvation. On
that account this consciousness of being an individual is the primary
consciousness in a man, which is his eternal consciousness."(PH, Steere,
p. 193)
#
"The one who is
conscious of himself as an individual has his vision trained to look upon
everything as inverted. His sense becomes familiar with eternity’s true
thought: that everything in this life appears in inverted form. The purely
momentary, in the next moment, to say nothing of eternity, becomes nonsense and
vanity: the fiery moment of lust (and what is so strong for the moment as
lust!) is loathsome in memory; the fiery moment of anger, revenge, and passion
whose gratification seems an irresistible impulse is horrible to remember. For
the angry one, the vengeful one, the passionate one, thinks in the moment of
passion that he revenges himself. But in the moment of remembrance, when the
act of revenge comes back to him, he loathes himself, for he sees that precisely
in that moment of revenge he lost himself. The purely momentary seems to be
profitable. Yet in the next moment its deception becomes apparent and,
eternally understood, calls for repentance. So it is with all things of the
moment, and hence with the crowd’s opinion or with membership in the crowd in
so far as this opinion and this membership is a thing of the moment. (PH,
Steere, p. 194-95)
#
"My listeners, do you at
present live in such a way that you see yourself clearly and eternally
conscious of being an individual. This was the question the address was to ask, or rather that you
are to ask yourself, if you actively consider this occasion. This was the
question the address was to ask, or rather that you are to ask yourself, if you
actively consider this occasion. The talk should not tell you only that which
will disturb you, even though many are of the conviction that a man ought ever
to live in such an aroused state of consciousness. Nor is it concerned how many
or how few hold that conviction." (PH, Steere, p. 195)
#
"The talk will not go
into this further. It will only ask you again and again, do you now live so
that you are conscious of being an individual and thereby that you are
conscious of your eternal responsibility before God? Do you live in such a way
that this consciousness is able to secure the time and quiet and liberty of
action to penetrate every relation of your life? This does not demand that you
withdraw from life, from an honorable calling, from a happy domestic life. On
the contrary, it is precisely that consciousness which will sustain and clarify
and illuminate what you are to do in the relations of life." PH, Steere,
p. 197)
#
"Eternally speaking,
there is only one means and there is only one end: the means and the end are one
and the same thing. There is only one end: the genuine Good; and only one
means: this, to be willing only to use these means which genuinely are good—but
the genuine Good is precisely the end. In time and on earth one distinguishes
between the two and considers that the end is more important than the means.
One thinks that the end is the main thing and demands of one who is striving
that he reach the end. He need not be so particular about the means. Yet this
is not so, and to gain an end in this fashion is an unholy act of impatience.
In the judgment of eternity the relation between the end and the means is
rather the reverse of this." (PH, Steere, p. 202)
#
"But the purpose of the
office of Confession is certainly not to make a man conscious of himself as an
individual at the moment of its celebration, and then for the rest of the time
to allow him to live outside this consciousness. On the contrary, in the moment
of confession itself he should give account as to how he has lived as an
individual. If the same consciousness were not demanded of him for daily use,
then the demand of the office of Confession is a self-contradiction. It is as
if one now and then demanded of a humble man that he should render account to
himself and to God of how he had lived as a king—he that had never been a king.
And so it is to ask of a man that he shall render account of his life as an
individual when one allows him to lead his life outside this
consciousness." (PH, Steere, p. 215)
#
"My listener! Do you
remember now, how this talk began? Let me call it back to your remembrance. It
is true that the temporal order has its time; but the Eternal shall always have
time. If this should not happen within a man’s life, then the Eternal comes
again under another name, and once again shall always have time. This is
repentance. And since at present no man’s life is lived in perfection, but each
one in frailty, so Providence has given man two companions for his journey, the
one calls him forward, the other calls him back. But the call of repentance is
always at the eleventh hour. Therefore confession is always at the eleventh
hour, but not in the sense of being precipitate. For confession is a holy act,
which calls for a collected mind. A collected mind is a mind that has collected
itself from every distraction, from every relation, in order to center itself
upon this relation to itself as an individual who is responsible to God. It is
a mind that has collected itself from every distraction, and therefore also
from all comparison. For comparison may either tempt a man to an earthly and
fortuitous despondency because the one who compares must admit to himself that
he is behind many others, or it may tempt him to pride because, humanly
speaking, he seems to be ahead of many others." (PH, Steere, pp. 215-16)
#
A new expression of the true
extremity of the eleventh hour comes when the penitent has withdrawn himself
from every relation in order to center himself upon his relation to himself as
an individual. By this he becomes responsible for every relation in which he
ordinarily stands, and he is outside of any comparison. The more use one makes
of comparison, the more it seems that there is still plenty of time. The more a
man makes use of comparison, the more indolent and the more wretched his life
becomes. But when all comparison is relinquished forever then a man confesses
as an individual before God -- and he is outside any comparison, just as the
demand which purity of heart lays upon him is outside of comparison.
#
"Only the individual can
truthfully will the Good, and even though the penitent toils heavily not merely
in the eleventh hour of confession, with all the questions standing as
accusations of himself, but also in their daily use in repentance, yet the way
is the right one. For he is in touch with the demand that calls for purity of
heart by willing only one thing." (PH, Steere, p. 217)
#
"But what it profit a
man if he goes further and further and it must be said of him: he never stops
going further; when it must also be said of him: there was nothing that made
him pause? For pausing is not a sluggish repose. Pausing is also a movement. It
is the inward movement of the heart. To pause is to deepen oneself in
inwardness. But merely going further is to go straight in the direction of superficiality.
By that way one does not come to will only one thing. Only if at some time he
decisively stopped going further and then again came to a pause, as he went
further, only then could he will one thing. For purity of heart is to will one
thing." (PH, Steere, pp. 217-18)
Repetition:
"Hope is a new garment,
stiff and starched and lustrous, but it has never been tried on, and therefore
one does not know how becoming it will be or how it will fit. Recollection is a
discarded garment that does not fit, however beautiful it is, for one has
outgrown it. Repetition is an indestructible garment that fits closely and
tenderly, neither binds nor sags." (R, Hong, p. 132)
#
"The dialectic of
repetition is easy, for that which is repeated has been—otherwise it could not
be repeated—but the very fact that it has been makes repetition into something
new. When the Greeks said that all knowing is recollecting, they said that all
existence that is, has been; when one says that life is a repetition, one says:
actuality, which has been, now comes into existence. If one does not have the
category of recollection or of repetition, all life dissolves into an empty,
meaningless noise. Recollection is the ethnical view of life, repetition the
modern; repetition is the interest [Interesse]
of metaphysics, and also the interest upon which metaphysics comes to grief;
repetition is the watchword [Løsnet] in every ethical view; repetition is the conditio
sine qua non [the indispensable condition] for every issue of dogmatics."
(R, Hong, p. 149)
#
"Modern
philosophy makes no movement; as a rule it makes only a commotion, and if it
makes any movement at all, it is always within immanence, whereas repetition is
and remains a transcendence." (R, Hong, p. 186)
#
"I
am at the end of my rope. I am nauseated by life; it is insipid—without salt
and meaning. If I were hungrier than Pierrot I would not choose to eat the
explanation people offer. One sticks a finger into the ground to smell what
country one is in; I stick my finger into the world—it has no smell. Where am
I? What does it mean to say: the world? What is the meaning of that word? Who
tricked me into this whole thing and leaves me standing here? Who am I? How did
I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it, why was I not informed of
the rules and regulations but just thrust into the ranks as if I had been
bought from a peddling shanghaier of human beings? How did I get involved in
this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn’t it a
matter of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where is the manager—I
have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my
complaint? (Repetition, Hong, p. 200)
#
"My silent
Confidant: I am inside. With clean hands—as the thieves usually say—or at the
King's pleasure? I do not know. All I know is that I am inside here and that I
do not stir from the spot. Here I stand. On my head or on my feet? I do not
know. All I know is that I am standing ad have been standing suspenso gradu [immobilized] for a whole
month, without moving a foot or making one single movement.
I am waiting
for a thunderstorm—and for repetition. And yet I would be happy and
indescribably blessed if the thunderstorm would only come, even if my sentence
were that no repetition is possible.
What will be
the effect of this thunderstorm? It will make me fit to be a husband. It will
shatter my whole personality—I am prepared. It will render me almost
unrecognizable to myself—I am unwavering even though I am standing on one foot.
My honor will be saved, my pride will be restored, and no matter how it
transforms me, I nevertheless hope that the recollection of it will remain with
me as an unfailing consolation, will remain when I have experienced what I a
certain sense dread more than suicide, because it will play havoc with me on
quite another scale. If the thunderstorm does not come, then I will become
crafty. I will not die, not at all, but I will pretend to be dead so that my
relatives and friends may bury me. When they lay me in my coffin, I will in all
secrecy hide my expectancy. No one get to know it, for people would take care
not to bury someone in whom there is still some life." (R, Hong, p.214)
#
"I am myself again. This
'self' that someone else would not pick up off the street I have once again.
The split that was in my being is healed; I am unified again. The anxieties of
sympathy that were sustained and nourished by my pride are no longer there to
disintegrate and disrupt. Is there not, then, a repetition? Did I not get
everything double? Did I not get myself again and precisely in such a way that
I might have a double sense of its meaning? Compared with such a repetition,
what is a repetition of worldly possessions, which is indifferent toward the
qualification of spirit." (R, Hong, pp. 220-21; Lowrie, p. 121)
#
"I
am myself again; the machinery has been set in motion. The inveiglements in
which I was trapped have been rent asunder; the magic formula that hexed me so
that I could not come back to myself has been broken. There is no longer anyone
who raises his hand against me. My emancipation is assured; I am born to
myself, for as long as Ilithyia folds her hands, the one who is in labor cannot
give birth. It is over, my skiff is afloat. In a minute I shall be there where
my soul longs to be, there where ideas spume with elemental fury, where
thoughts arise uproariously with elemental fury, there where at other times
there is a stillness like the deep silence of the Pacific Ocean, a stillness in
which one hears oneself speak even though the movement takes place only in
one's interior being, there where each moment one is staking one's life, each
moment losing it and finding it again." (R, Hong, p. 221)
#
"The
beaker of inebriation is again offered to me, and already I am inhaling its
fragrance, already I am aware of its bubbling music—but first a libation to her
who saved a soul who sat in the solitude of despair: Praised be feminine
generosity! Three cheers for the flight of thought, three cheers for the perils
of life in service to the idea, three cheers for the festive jubilation of
victory, three cheers for the dance in the vortex of the infinite, three cheers
for the cresting waves that hide me in the abyss, three cheers for the cresting
waves that fling me above the stars!" (R, Hong, pp. 221-22)
#
"He
explains the universal as repetition, and yet he himself understands repetition
in another way, for although actuality becomes the repetition, for him the
repetition is the raising of his consciousness to the second power. (R, Hong,
p. 229)
#
"When
applied in the sphere of individual freedom, the concept of repetition has a
history., insomuch as freedom passes through several stages in order to attain
itself. (a) Freedom is first qualified as desire [Lyst] or as being in desire.
What it now fears is repetition, for it seems as if repetition has a magic
power to keep freedom captive once it has tricked it into its power. But
despite all of desire's ingenuity, repetition appears. Freedom in desire
despairs. Simultaneously freedom appears in a higher form. (b) Freedom
qualified as sagacity. As yet, freedom has only a finite relation to its object
and is qualified only esthetically ambiguously. Repetition is assumed to exist,
but freedom's task in sagacity is continually to gain a new aspect of
repetition. This stage has been given expression in—to mention a more recent
work—"Rotation of Crops" (in Either/Or). "Rotation
of Crops" was a part of Either/Or, and therefore this view also appears in
its unwarrentability. People who in freedom do not stand in any higher relation
to the idea usually embellish this standpoint as the highest wisdom. But since freedom qualified as sagacity is
only finitely qualified, repetition must appear again, namely, repetition of
the trickery by which sagacity wants to fool repetition and make it something
else. Sagacity despairs. (c) Now freedom breaks forth in its highest form, in
which it is qualified in relation to itself. Here everything is reversed, and
the very opposite of the first standpoint appears. Now freedom's supreme
interest is precisely to bring about repetition, and its only fear is that
variation would have the power to disturb its eternal nature. Here emerges the
issue: Is repetition possible? Freedom itself is now the
repetition." (R, Hong, Supplement, pp. 301-02) (Pap. IV B 112)
#
"But
for the sake of order I have already quoted some passages to which I refer
anyone who may have forgotten the total and definitive aim of Repetition,
which is much more that a few stray remarks. In the explanatory letter it says
, 'The young man explains it as the raising of his consciousness to the second
power.' This certainly ought to be the most definitive expression of the fact
that I conceive of repetition as a development, for consciousness raised to its
second power is indeed no meaningless repetition, but a repetition of such a
nature that the new has absolute significance in relation to what has gone
before, is qualitatively different from it." (R, Hong, Supplement, p. 307)
(Pap. IV B 117 n.d., 1843-44)
#
"1.
If freedom here (in repetition as a religious movement) now discovers an
obstacle (Anstød), then it must lie in freedom itself. Freedom now shows
itself not to be in its perfection in man but to be disturbed. This
disturbance, however, must be attributed to freedom itself, for otherwise there
would be no freedom at all, or the disturbance would be a matter of chance that
freedom could remove. The disturbance that is attributed to freedom itself is
sin. If it gets the right to rule, then freedom disperses itself and is never
in the position to realize repetition. Then freedom despairs of itself but
still never forgets repetition. But in the moment of despair a change takes
place with regard to repetition, and freedom takes on a religious expression,
by which repetition appears as atonement, which is repetition sensu
eminentiori (in the highest sense) and something different from
mediation, which always merely describes
the nodal points of oscillation in the progress of immanence." (R, Hong,
Supplement, p. 320) (Pap. IV B 118 n.d., 1843-44)
#
"My
dear Reader:
Repetition
was insignificant, without any philosophical pretension, a droll little book,
dashed off as an oddity, and curiously enough, written in such a way that, if
possible, the heretic would not be able to understand it. That repetition not
only is for contemplation but that it
is a task for freedom, that it signifies freedom itself, consciousness raised
to the second power, that it is the interest
of metaphysics and also the interest upon which metaphysics comes to grief, the
watchword in every ethical view, conditio
sine qua non (the indispensable condition) for every issue of dogmatics,
that the true repetition is eternity; however, that repetition (by being
psychologically pursued so far that it vanishes for psychology as transcendent,
as a religious issue by virtue of the absurd, which commences when a person has
come to the border of the wondrous), as soon as the issue is posed
dogmatically, will come to mean atonement, which cannot be qualified by
mediation borrowed from immanence any more than a religious movement, which is
still dialectical only with regard to fate and providence—all this and
everything related to this, my dear reader, are misunderstandings that can
occur only to a person who did not know the interpretation of repetition that
we owe to Prof. H., and that is just as profound as it is original. Your Const. Const." (R, Hong,
Supplement, p. 324) (Pap., IV B 120 n.d., 1843)
#
"'Repetition'
is and remains a religious category. Constantin Constantius therefore cannot
proceed further. He is clever, an ironist, battles the interesting—but is not
aware that he himself is caught in it. The first form of the interesting is to
love change; the second is to want repetition, but still in Selbstgenugsamkeit (self-sufficiency),
with no suffering—therefore Constantin is wrecked on what he himself has
discovered, and the young man goes further." (R, Hong, Supplement, p. 326)
(Pap. IV A 169)
#
"From
notes for Concluding Unscientific Postscript:
(2) (a) Objectivity stresses: what is said, the summary of thought-determinants.
(b) Subjectivity stresses: how it is said; infinite passion is crucial,
not its content, for its content is in fact itself." (R, Supplement, p.
327) (Pap. VI B 17, 18)
Sickness Unto Death:
"Just one more comment,
no doubt unnecessary, but nevertheless I will make it: once and for all may I
point out that in the whole book, as the title indeed declares, despair is
interpreted as a sickness, not as a cure. Despair is indeed that dialectical.
Thus also in Christian terminology death is indeed the expression for the state
of deepest spiritual wretchedness, and yet the cure is simply to die, to die to
the world." (SUD, Hong, p. 6; Lowrie, p. 143)
#
"A human being is
spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self
is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation's relating
itself to itself in the relation; the self is not the relation but is the
relations relating itself to itself. A human being is a synthesis of the
infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and
necessity, in short, a synthesis. A synthesis is a relation between the two.
Considered this way, a human being is still not a self." (SUD, Hong, p. 13)
#
"The formula that
describes the state of self when despair is completely rooted out is this: In
relating itself to itself and in willing to be itself, the self rests
transparently in the power that established it." (SUD, Hong, p.14; Lowrie,
p. 147)
#
"Is despair an
excellence or a defect? Purely dialectically, it is both. If only the abstract
idea of despair is considered, without the thought of someone in despair, it
must be regarded as a surpassing excellence. The possibility of this sickness
is man's superiority over the animal, and this superiority distinguishes him in
quite another way than does his erect walk, for it indicates infinite erectness
of sublimity, that he is spirit. The possibility of this sickness is man's superiority
over the animal; to be aware of this sickness is the Christian's superiority
over the natural man; to be cured of this sickness is the Christian's
blessedness. Consequently, to be able to despair is an infinite advantage, and
yet to be in despair is not only the worst misfortune and misery—no, it is
ruination." (SUD, Hong, pp. 14-15; Lowrie, pp. 147-48)
#
"Despair is the
misrelation in the relation of a synthesis that relates itself to itself. But
the synthesis is not the misrelation; it is merely the possibility, or in the
synthesis lies the possibility of the misrelation. If the synthesis were the
misrelation, then despair would not exist at all, then despair would be
something that lies in human nature as such. That is, it would not be despair;
it would be something that happens to a man, something he suffers, like a
disease to which he succumbs, or like death, which is everyone's fate. No, no,
despairing lies in man himself. If he were not a synthesis, he could not
despair at all; nor could he despair if the synthesis in its original state
from the hand of God were not in the proper relationship." (SUD, Hong, pp.
15-16; Lowrie, p. 148)
#
"Once the misrelation,
despair, has come about, does it continue as a matter of fact? No, it does not
continue as a matter of course, if the misrelation continues, it is not
attributable to the misrelation but to the relation that relates itself to
itself. That is, every time the misrelation manifests itself and every moment
it exists, it must be traced back to the relation. For example, we say that
someone catches a sickness, perhaps through carelessness. The sickness sets in
and from then on is in force, and is an actuality whose origin recedes
more and more into the past." (SUD,
Hong, p. 16; Lowrie, p. 149)
#
"To despair, however, is
a different matter. Every actual moment of despair is traceable to possibility;
every moment he is in despair he is bringing it upon himself. It is always in
the present tense; in relation to the actuality there is no pastness of the past; in every actual moment of despair the
person in despair bears all the past as a present in possibility. The
reason for this is that to despair is a qualification of the spirit and relates
to the eternal in man. But he cannot rid himself of the eternal—no, never in
all eternity. He cannot throw it away once and for all, nothing is more
impossible; at any moment that he does not have it, he must have thrown it or
is throwing it away—but it comes again, that is, every moment he is in despair
he is bringing his despair upon himself. For despair is not attributable to the
misrelation but the relation that relates that relates itself to itself. A
person cannot rid himself of the relation to himself any more than he can rid
himself of his self, which, after all, is one and the same thing, since the
self is the relation to oneself." (SUD, Hong, p. 17; Lowrie, p. 149)
#
"But in another sense
despair is even more definitely the sickness unto death. Literally speaking,
there is not the slightest possibility that anyone will die from this sickness
or that it will end in physical death. On the contrary, the torment of despair
is precisely this inability to die. Thus it has more in common with the
situation of a mortally ill person when he lies struggling with death and yet
cannot die. Thus to be sick unto
death is to be unable to die, yet not as if there were hope of life; no, the
hopelessness is that there is not even the ultimate hope, death. When death is
the greatest danger, we hope for life; but when we know the even greater
danger, we hope for death. When the danger is so great that death becomes the
hope, then despair is the hopelessness of not even being able to die."
(SUD, Hong, 17-18; Lowrie, pp.150-51)
#
"To despair over
oneself, in despair to will to be rid of oneself—this is the formula for all
despair. Therefore, the other form of despair, in despair to will to be
oneself, can be traced back to the first, in despair not to will to be oneself,
just as we previously resolved the form, in despair not to will to be oneself,
into the form, in despair to will to be oneself (see A). A person in despair
despairingly wills to be himself. But if he despairingly wills to be himself,
he certainly does not want to be rid of himself. Well, so it seems, but upon
closer examination it is clear that the contradiction is the same. The self
that he despairingly wants to be is a self that he is not (for to will to be
the self that he is in truth is the very opposite of despair), that is, he
wants to tear himself away from the power that established it. (SUD, Hong, p.
20)
"To despair over
oneself, in despair to will to be rid of oneself, is the formula for all
despair, and hence the second form of despair (in despair at willing to be
oneself) can be followed back to the first (in despair at not willing to be
oneself), just as in the foregoing we resolved the first into the second (cf.
I). A despairing man wants despairingly
to be himself. But if he despairingly wants to be himself, he will not want to
get rid of himself. Yes, so it seems; but if one inspects more closely, one
perceives that after all the contradiction is the same. That self which he
despairingly wills to be is a self which he is not (for to will to be that self
which one truly is, is indeed the opposite of despair): what he really wills is
to tear his self away from the Power which constituted it." (SUD, Lowrie,
p. 153)
#
"Despite its illusory
security and tranquility, all immediacy is anxiety and thus, quite
consistently, is the most anxious about nothing. The most gruesome description
of something most terrible does not make immediacy as anxious as a subtle,
almost carelessly, and yet deliberately and calculatingly dropped allusion to
some indefinite something—in fact, immediacy is made most anxious by a subtle implication
that it knows very well what is being talked about. Immediacy probably does not
know it, but reflection never snares so unfailingly as when it fashions its
snare out of nothing, and reflection is never so much itself as when it is –
nothing. It requires extraordinary reflection, or, more correctly, it requires
great faith to be able to endure reflection upon nothing – that is, infinite
reflection." (SUD, Hong, pp. 25-26; Lowrie, p. 158)
#
"However, despair must
be considered primarily within the category of consciousness, whether despair
is conscious or not constitutes the qualitative distinction between despair and
despair. Granted, all despair regarded in terms of the concept is conscious,
but this does not mean that the person, who, according to the concept, may
appropriately be said to in despair is conscious of it himself. Thus,
consciousness is decisive. Generally speaking, consciousness—that is,
self-consciousness—is decisive with regard to the self. The more consciousness,
the more self; the more consciousness, the more will; the more will, the more
self-consciousness he has also" (SUD, Hong, p. 29; Lowrie, p. 163)
#
"The self is reflection,
and the imagination is reflection, is the rendition of the self as the self's
possibility. The imagination is the possibility of any and all reflection, and
the intensity of this medium is the possibility of the intensity of the
self. (SUD, Hong, p. 31; Lowrie, p.164)
#
"Not to venture is
prudent. And yet, precisely by not venturing it is so terribly easy to lose
what would be hard to lose, however much one lost by risking, and in any case
never this way, so easily, so completely, as if it were nothing at all—namely,
oneself. If I have ventured wrongly, well, then life helps me by punishing me.
But if I have not ventured at all, who helps me then? Moreover, what if by not
venturing at all in the highest sense (and to venture in the highest sense is
precisely to become aware of oneself) I cowardly gain all earthly
advantages—and lose myself!" (SUD, Hong, pp. 34-35; Lowrie, p. 167)
#
"So it is with
finitude's despair. Because a man is in this kind of despair, he can very well
live on in temporality, indeed, actually all the better, can appear to be a
man, be publicly acclaimed, honored, and esteemed, be absorbed in all the
temporal goals. In fact, what is called the secular mentality consists simply
of such men, who, so to speak, mortgage themselves to the world. They use their
capacities, amass money, carry on in secular enterprises, calculate shrewdly, etc.,
perhaps make a name in history, but themselves they are not; spiritually
speaking, they have no self, no self for whose sake they could venture
everything, no self before God—however self-seeking they are otherwise. (SUD,
Hong, p. 35; Lowrie, p. 168)
#
"In possibility
everything is possible. For this reason, it is possible to become lost in
possibility in all sorts of ways, but primarily in two. The one takes the form
of desiring, craving; the other takes the form of the melancholy-imaginary
(hope/fear or anxiety)." (SUD, Hong, p. 37; Lowrie, p. 170)
#
"What is decisive is
that with God everything is possible. This is eternally true and consequently
true at every moment. This is indeed a generally recognized truth, which is
commonly expressed in this way, but the critical decision does not come until a
person is brought to his extremity, when, humanly speaking, there is no
possibility. Then the question is whether he will believe that for God
everything is possible, that is, whether he will /believe/." (SUD, Hong,
p. 38.; Lowrie, p. 171)
#
"The ever increasing
intensity of despair depends upon the degree of consciousness or is
proportionate to its increase: The greater degree of consciousness, the more
intensive the despair. This is everywhere apparent, most clearly in despair as
its maximum and minimum. The devil's despair is the most intensive despair, for
the devil is sheer spirit and hence unqualified consciousness and transparency;
there is obscurity in the devil that could serve as a mitigating excuse.
Therefore his despair is the most absolute defiance." (SUD, Hong, p. 42;
Lowrie, p. 175)
#
"The individual is
farthest from being conscious of himself as spirit when he is ignorant of being
in despair. But precisely this—not to be conscious of oneself as spirit—is
despair, which is spiritlessness, whether the state is a thoroughgoing
moribundity, a merely vegetative state, or an intense, energetic life, the
secret of which is still despair." (SUD, Hong, pp. 44-45)
#
"Every human existence
that is not conscious of itself as spirit or conscious of itself before God as
spirit, every human existence that does not rest transparently in God but
vaguely rests in and merges in some abstract universality (state, nation, etc.)
or, in the dark about his self, regards his capacities merely as powers to
produce without becoming deeply aware of their source, regards his self, if it
is to have intrinsic meaning, as an indefinable something—every such existence,
whatever it achieves, be it most amazing, whatever it explains, be it the whole
of existence, however intensively it enjoys life esthetically—every such
existence is nevertheless despair." (SUD, Hong, p. 46, Lowrie, p. 179)
#
"This is pure immediacy
or immediacy containing a quantitative reflection. —Here there is no infinite
consciousness of the self, of what despair is, or of the condition as one of
despair. The despair is only a suffering, a succumbing to the pressure of
external factors; in no way does it come from within as an act. The appearance
of such words as "the self" and "despair" in the language
of immediacy is due, if you will, to an innocent abuse of language, a playing
with words, like the children's game of playing soldier. The man of immediacy is only psychically
qualified (insofar as there can be immediacy without any reflection at all):
his self, he himself, is an accompanying something within the dimensions of
temporality and secularity, in immediate connection with "the other,"
and has but an illusory appearance of having anything eternal in it. The self
is bound up in immediacy with the other in desiring, craving, enjoying, etc.,
yet passively; in its craving, this self is dative, like the "me" of
a child. It's dialectic is: the pleasant and the unpleasant; its concepts are:
good luck, bad luck, fate." (SUD, Hong, pp. 50-51, Lowrie, p. 184)
#
"This form of despair
is: in despair not to will to be oneself. Or even lower: in despair not to will
to be a self. Or lowest of all: in despair to will to be someone else, to wish
for a new self. Immediacy actually has no self, it does not know itself; thus
it can not recognize itself and therefore generally ends in fantasy. When
immediacy despairs, it does not even have enough self to wish or dream that it
had become that which it has not become. The man of immediacy helps himself in
another way: he wishes to be someone else. This is easily verifiable by
observing immediate persons; when they are in despair, there is nothing they
desire more than to become someone else." (SUD, Hong, pp. 52-53, Lowrie, p.
186)
#
"So he despairs. In
contrast to the despair of self-assertion, his despair is despair in weakness,
a suffering of the self; but with the aid of the relative reflection that he
has, he attempts to sustain his self, and this constitutes another difference from
the purely immediate man. He perceives that abandoning the self is a
transaction, and thus he does not become apoplectic when the blow falls, as the
immediate person does; reflection helps him to understand that there is much he
can lose without losing the self. He makes concessions; he is able to do so –
and why? Because to a certain degree he has separated his self from
externalities, because he has a dim idea that there may even be something
eternal in the self. Nevertheless, his
struggles are in vain; the difficulty he has run up against requires a total
break with immediacy, and he does not have the self-reflection or the ethical
reflection for that. He has no consciousness of a self that is won by infinite
abstraction from every externality, this naked abstract self, which, compared
with immediacy's fully dressed self, is the first form of the infinite self and
the advancing impetus in the whole process by which a self infinitely becomes
responsible for its actual self with all of its difficulties and
advantages." (SUD, Hong, pp. 54-55; Lowrie, p. 185)
#
Despair over
the earthly or over something earthly is in reality also despair of the eternal
and over oneself, insofar as it is despair, for this is indeed the formula for
all despair*
*And therefore
it is linguistically correct to say: to despair over the earthly (the
occasion), of the eternal , but over oneself. For this again is
another expression for the occasion of despair, which, according to the
concept, is always of the eternal, whereas that which is despaired
over can be very diverse. We despair over that which binds us in
despair—over a misfortune, over the earthly, over a capital loss, etc.—but we
despair of that which, rightly understood, releases us from despair: of
the eternal, of salvation, of our own strength, etc. With respect to the self,
we say both: to despair over and of oneself, because the self is
doubly dialectical. And the haziness, particularly in all the lower forms of
despair and in almost every person in despair, is that he so passionately and
clearly sees and knows over what he
despairs, but of what he despairs
evades him. The condition for healing is always this repenting of, and, purely
philosophically, it could be a subtle question whether it is possible for one
to be in despair and be fully aware of that of
which one despairs." (SUD,
Hong, pp. 61-62; Lowry, p. 194)
#
"If someone were to say
to him, 'This is a curious entanglement, a curious kind of knot, for the whole
trouble is really the way your thinking twists around; otherwise it is even
normal, in fact, this is precisely the course you have to take: you must go
through the despair of the self to the self. You are quite right about the
weakness, but that is not what you are to despair over; the self must be broken
in order to become itself, but quit despairing over that.'—if someone were to
speak to him in that way, he would understand it in a dispassionate moment, but
his passion would soon see mistakenly again, and then once more he would make a
wrong turn—into despair." (SUD, Hong, p.65; Lowrie, p. 199)
#
"First
comes despair over the earthly or over something earthly, then despair of the
eternal, over oneself. Then comes defiance, which is really despair through the
aid of the eternal, the despairing misuse of the eternal within the self to
will in despair to be oneself. But just because it is despair through the aid
of the eternal, in a certain sense it is very close to the truth; and just
because it lies very close to the truth, it is infinitely far away. The despair
that is the thoroughfare to faith comes also through the aid of the eternal;
through the aid of the eternal the self has the courage to lose itself in order
to win itself. Here, however, it is unwilling to begin with losing itself but
wills to be itself" (SUD, Hong, p.
67; Lowrie, p. 201)
#
"In order to despair to
will to be oneself, there must be consciousness of the infinite self. This
infinite self, however, is really only the most abstract form, the most
abstract possibility of the self. And this is the self that the person in
despair wills to be, severing the self from
any relation to a power that has established it, or severing it from the
idea that there is such a power. With the help of this infinite form, the self
in despair wants to be master of itself or to create itself, to make itself
into the self he wants to be, to determine what he will have or not have in his
concrete self." (SUD, Hong, pp.
67-68; Lowrie, pp. 201-02)
#
"If the self in despair
is an acting self, it constantly relates
itself to itself only by way of imaginary constructions, no matter what it
undertakes, however vast, however amazing, however perseveringly pursued. It
recognizes no power over itself; therefore it basically lacks earnestness and
can conjure forth only an appearance of earnestness, even when it gives its
utmost attention to its imaginary constructions. (SUD, Hong, p. 68; Lowrie, p.
202)
#
"The more consciousness
there is in such a sufferer who in despair wills to be himself, the more his
despair intensifies and becomes demonic. It usually originates as follows. A
self that in despair wills to be itself is pained in some distress or other
that does not allow itself to be taken away from or separated from his concrete
self. So now he makes precisely this torment the object of his passion, and it
finally becomes demonic rage." (SUD, Hong, pp. 71-72; Lowrie, p. 205)
#
"We began in α(1)
with the lowest form of despair: in despair not to will to be oneself. Demonic despair is the most intensive form of
despair: in despair to will to be oneself. It is not even in stoic self-infatuation
and self apotheosis that this despair wills to be itself; it does not will to
be itself as that does which, mendaciously to be sure, yet in a certain sense,
wills it according to its perfection. No, in hatred toward existence, it wills
to be itself, wills to be itself in accordance with its misery." (SUD,
Hong, p. 73; Lowrie, p. 207)
#
"Figuratively speaking,
it is as if an error slipped into an author's writing and the error became
conscious of itself as an error—perhaps it actually was not a mistake but in a
much higher sense an essential part of the whole production—and now this error
wants to mutiny against the author, out of hatred toward him, forbidding him to
correct it and in maniacal defiance saying to him: No, I refuse to be erased; I
will stand as a witness against you, a witness that you are a second-rate
author." (SUD, Hong, p.74) (Lowrie, p. 207)
#
"This whole deliberation
must now dialectically take an new direction. The point is that the previously
considered gradation in the consciousness of self is within the category of the
human self, or the self whose criterion is man. But this self takes on a new
quality and qualification by being a self directly before God. This self is no
longer the merely human self but is what I, hoping not to be misinterpreted,
would call the theological self, the self directly before God. And what
infinite reality the self gains by being conscious of existing before God, by
becoming a human being whose criterion
is God." (SUD, Hong, p.79; Lowrie, p. 210)
#
"No, the older dogmatic
was right in maintaining that because sin is against God it is infinitely
magnified. The error consisted in considering God as some externality and in
seeming to assume that only occasionally did one sin before God. But God is not
some externality in the sense that a policeman is. The point must be observed
is that the self has a conception of God and yet does not will as he wills, and
thus is disobedient. Nor does one only occasionally sin before God, or, more
correctly, what really makes human guilt into sin is that the guilty one has
the consciousness of existing before God." (SUD, Hong, p. 80; Lowrie, p.
211)
#
"The main point here is
simply that the definition, like a net embraces all forms. And this it does, as
can be seen if it is tested by posing its opposite: faith, by which I steer in
this whole book as by a trustworthy navigation guide. Faith is: that the self
in being itself and in willing to be itself rests transparently in God. …And
this is one of the most decisive definitions for all Christianity—that the
opposite of sin is not virtue but faith." (SUD, Hong, p. 82; Lowrie, p.
213)
#
"It is specifically the
concept of sin, the teaching about sin, that most decisively differentiates
Christianity qualitatively from paganism, and this is why Christianity very
consistently assumes that neither paganism nor the natural man knows what sin
is; in fact, it assumes that there has to be a revelation from God to show what
sin is. The qualitative distinction between paganism and Christianity is not,
as a superficial consideration assumes, the doctrine of Atonement. No, the
beginning must start far deeper, with sin, with the doctrine of sin—as
Christianity in fact does. What a dangerous objection it would be against
Christianity if paganism had a definition of sin that Christianity would have
to acknowledge as correct." (SUD, Hong, p. 89-90; Lowrie, p. 220)
#
"To understand/and to
understand are therefore two things? Certainly they are; and he who understands
this (but not, be it noted, in the first sort of understanding) is initiated
into all the secret mysteries of irony." (SUD, Hong, p. 90; Lowrie, p.
221)
#
"There is properly no
profound comic in the fact that people once lived who assumed that the earth
stands still—when nobody knew any better. The same thing will presumably befall
our age in contrast with an age that knows more physical law. The contradiction
is one between two different ages, there is lacking a deeper point of
coincidence; such a contradiction is not essential, and hence neither is it
essentially comic. No, but that a man stands up and says the right thing . . .
and so has understood it, and then when he has to act does the wrong thing . .
. and so shows that he has not understood it—yes, that is comic." (SUD,
Hong, 90-91; Lowrie, p. 221-22)
#
"But wherein is the
definition defective? Its defect is something the Socratic principle itself
realizes and remedies, but only to a certain degree: it lacks a dialectical
determinant appropriate to the transition from having understood something to
doing it. In this transition, Christianity begins; by taking this path, it
shows that sin is rooted in willing and arrives at the concept of defiance, and
then, to fasten the end very firmly, it adds the doctrine of hereditary
sin—alas, for speculation's secret in comprehending is simply to sew without
fastening the end and without knotting the thread, and that is why, it can go
on sewing and sewing, that is, pulling the thread through. Christianity, on the
other hand, fastens the end by means of the paradox." (SUD, Hong, p. 93;
Lowrie, p. 224)
#
"Here again is the mark
of offense. The possibility of offense lies in this: there must be a revelation
from God to teach man what sin is and how deeply it is rooted. …Therefore the
definition of sin given in the previous section still needs to be completed as
follows: sin is—after being taught by a revelation from God what sin is—before
God in despair not to will to be oneself or in despair to will to be
oneself." (SUD, Hong, p. 96; Lowrie, p. 226)
#
"Sin is not a Negation
but a Position. That this is the case is something orthodox dogmatics and
orthodoxy on the whole have always contended, and they have rejected as
pantheistic any definition of sin that made it out of to be something merely
negative—weakness, sensuousness, finitude, ignorance, etc. Orthodoxy has
perceived very correctly that the battle must be fought here, or, as in the
preceding portion, here the end must be fastened very firmly, here it is a
matter of holding back: orthodoxy has correctly perceived that when sin is
defined negatively, all Christianity is flabby and spineless. That is why
orthodoxy emphasizes that there must be a revelation from God to teach fallen
man what sin is, a communication that, quite consistently, must be believed,
because it is a dogma." (SUD, Hong,
p. 96; Lowrie, p. 227)
#
"The secret of all
comprehending is that this comprehending is itself higher than any position it
posits; the concept establishes a position, but the comprehension of this is
its very negation." (SUD, Hong, p. 97; Lowrie, p. 227)
#
"To sin is: 'after being
taught by a revelation from God what sin is, before God in despair not to will
to be oneself or in despair to will to be oneself'—and indeed, seldom is there
a person who is so mature, so transparent to himself that this can apply to
him." (SUD, Hong, p. 101; Lowrie, p. 232)
#
"But how rare is the
person has continuity with regard to his consciousness of himself! As a rule,
men are conscious only momentarily, conscious in the midst of big decisions,
but they do not take the daily everyday into account at all; they are spirit of
sorts for an hour one day a week—which, of course, is a rather crude way to be
spirit. But eternity is the essential continuity and demands this of a person
or that he be conscious as spirit and have faith. The sinner, however, is so
much in the power of sin that he has no idea of its wholly encompassing nature,
that he is lost and on the way to destruction. He takes into account only each
particular new sin that seems to give him impetus on the road to destruction,
just as if he were not proceeding along that way the moment before with all the
impetus of his previous sins. Sin has become so natural to him, or sin has
become so much his second nature, that he finds the daily everyday to be
entirely in order, and he himself pauses only for a moment each time he
perceives new impetus, so to speak, from new sin. In his lostness, he is blind
to the fact that his life has the continuity of sin instead of the essential
continuity of the eternal through being before God in faith." (SUD, Hong,
p. 105; Lowrie, p. 236)
#
"'The continuity of
sin'—but is not sin specifically the discontinuous? So here it is again, this
view that sin is merely a negation, which like stolen goods can never be
legitimized—a negation, a powerless attempt to establish itself , which,
however, undergoing all the torment of powerlessness in despairing defiance, it
is incapable of doing. Yes, this is how it is speculatively, but Christianly
(this must be believed, since it is indeed the paradox that no man can
comprehend) sin is a position that on its own develops an increasingly
established continuity." SUD, Hong, pp. 105-06; Lowrie, p. 236)
#
"Most men probably live
with all too little consciousness of themselves to have any idea of what
consistency is; that is, they do not exist qua spirit." (SUD, Hong,
p. 107; Lowrie, p. 238)
#
"Only in the continuance
of sin is he himself, only in that does he live and have an impression of
himself. But what does this mean? It
means that the state of sin is what holds him together deep down where he has
sunk, profanely strengthening him with its consistency. It is not the
particular new sin that assists him (yes, this is dreadfully deranged!);
rather, the particular new sin is merely the expression for the state of sin,
which is actually the sin." (SUD, Hong, p. 108; Lowrie, p. 239
#
"Sin is despair; the
intensification is the new sin of despairing over one's sin. It is obvious, of
course, that this is the category of intensification; it is not a new sin in
the manner of one who steals a hundred dollars and steals a thousand the next
time. No, we are not talking about particular sins here; the state of sin is
the sin, and this is intensified in a new consciousness." (SUD, Hong, p. 109; Lowrie, p. 240)
#
"To despair over one's
sin indicates that sin has become or wants to become internally consistent. It
wants nothing to do with the good, does not want to be so weak as to listen
occasionally to other talk. No, it insists on listening only to itself, on
having dealings only with itself; it closes itself up within itself, indeed,
locks itself inside one more enclosure, and protects itself against every
attack or pursuit by the good by despairing over sin. It is aware of having
burned the bridge behind it and of thereby being inaccessible to the good and
of the good being inaccessible to it, so that if in a weak moment it should
itself will the good, that would still be impossible. Sin itself is severance
from the good, but despair over sin is the second severance." (SUD, Hong, p. 109; Lowrie, p. 240)
#
"To describe the
intensification in the relation between sin and despair over sin, the first may
be termed the break with the good and the second with repentance." (SUD,
Hong, p.109; Lowrie, pp. 240-41)
#
"Sin itself is the
struggle of despair; but then, when all the powers are deleted, there may be a
new intensification, a new demonic closing up within himself: this is despair
over sin. It is a step forward, a heightening of the demonic, and of course an
absorption in sin. It is an effort to give stability and interest to sin as a
power by deciding once and for all that one will refuse to hear anything about
repentance and grace. Nevertheless, despair over sin is conscious particularly
of its own emptiness, that it has nothing on which to live, not even the idea
of its own self." (SUD, Hong, p. 110; Lowrie, p. 241)
#
"If order is to be
maintained in existence—and God does want that, for he is not the God of
confusion—then the first thing to keep in mind is that every human being is an
individual human being and is to become conscious of being an individual human
being." (SUD, Hong, pp. 117-18; Lowrie, pp. 248-49)
#
"Sin is the
qualification of the single individual; it is irresponsibility and new sin to
pretend as if it were nothing to be an individual sinner—when one himself is
this individual sinner." (SUD,
Hong, p. 120; Lowrie; pp. 251)
#
“This contrast [sin/faith],
however, has been advanced throughout this entire book, which at the outset
introduced in Part I, A, a, the formula for the state in which there is no
despair at all: in relating itself to itself and in willing to be itself, the
self rests transparently in the power that established it. This formula in
turn, as has been frequently pointed out, is the definition of faith.” (SUD,
Hong, p. 131; Lowrie, p. 262)
#
". . . if he were not a
synthesis composed of the temporal and the eternal, he could not despair at
all; and if he were not properly composed originally of the temporal and the
eternal, he could not despair, either. Thus despair in man is a misrelation
between the temporal and the eternal, of which his nature is composed—but from
God's hand in the right relation. From what, then does the misrelation come?
From the man himself, who disturbs the relation, which is precisely to despair.
How is this possible? Quite simple. In the composite of the eternal and the
temporal, man is a relation, in this relation itself and relating itself to
itself. God made man a relation; to be a human being is to be a relation. But a
relation which, by the very fact that God, as it were, releases it from his
hand, or the same moment God, as it were, releases it, is itself, relates
itself to itself—this relation can become in the same moment a misrelation. To
despair is the misrelation taking place. (SUD, Hong, Supplement, pp. 143-44)—JP
I 68(Pap. VIII² B 168:5) n.d. 1848
#
"By
despairing (for this is the retracing of actuality to possibility), the person
is freely in the power of an alien force, is freely or in freedom slaving under
it, or he is freely-unfreely in his own power. If one calls the alien force the
master, then the person in despair is free in self-inflicted slaving for this
master. And if one says that he is unfree in his own hands, he consequently
slaves for himself, is his own slave. This is the misrelation. The true
relation of freedom is this: freely to be completely in the power of the good,
of freedom, or in the power of that whose power one can be only by being free
and through being in whose power one can become free." (SUD, Hong,
Supplement, p. 147) (Pap. VIII² B 170:6 n.d., 1848)
#
"In
conclusion, let us take still another little look at the person of inclosing
reserve, who in his enclosing reserve marks time on the spot. In inclosing
reserve and in despair he does not will to be himself. It was something
earthly, something in the composition of the self or the earthly—in short,
something finite over which he despaired; he concentrated all his passion on
that point, and he despaired. Perhaps it still could have been lifted
cautiously, perhaps, perhaps; in any case it should have been taken over by
faith. But he despaired. Yet only in the next moment does his despair become
manifest, for he despairs of the fact that he was weak enough to despair. This
he is unwilling to forget; he is unwilling to forget himself. Yes, it seems to
him that it cannot be done, even if he would, since his self has now incurred a
fundamental defect." (SUD, Hong, Supplement, p. 154) (Pap. VIII² B
158 n.d., 1848)
#
"N.B.
It is best to remove the allusions to the dogma of hereditary sin which are
found especially in chapter 2 (and anywhere else they are found). It would take
me too far out, or farther than is needed here or is useful. What is
appropriately stated about sin – that orthodoxy teaches that there must be a
revelation to show what sin is—is not said with respect to the doctrine of
hereditary sin." (SUD, Hong, Supplement, p. 156) (Pap. VIII² B 166,
n.d., 1848)
Stages:
"The recollection must
not only be accurate; it must also be happy. The bottling of the recollection
must have preserved the fragrance of the experience before it is sealed."
(S, Hong, p. 9)
#
"To recollect [erindre]
is by no means the same as to remember [huske]. (S, Hong, p. 9)
#
"What is recollected is
not inconsequential to recollecting in the way that what is remembered is
inconsequential to remembering. What is recollected can be thrown away, but
just like Thor's hammer, it returns, and not only that, like a dove it has a
longing for the recollection, yes, like a dove, however often it is sold, that
can never belong to anyone else because it always flies home. But no wonder,
for it was recollection itself that hatched out what was recollected, and this
hatching is hidden and secret, solitary, and thus immune to any profane
knowledge—in the same way the bird will not sit on its egg if some stranger has
touched it. Memory is immediate and assisted immediately, recollection only
reflectively. This is why it is an art to recollect." (S, Hong, p. 12)
#
"Memory is immediate and
is assisted immediately, recollection only reflectively. This is why it is an
art to recollect. Rather than remember, I along with Thermistocles, wish only
to be able to forget, but to recollect and to forget are not opposites. The art
of recollecting is not easy, because in the moment of preparation it can become
something different, whereas memory merely fluctuates between remembering
correctly and remembering incorrectly." (S, Hong, pp. 12-13)
#
"To conjure up the past
for oneself is not as difficult as to conjure away the present for the sake of
reflection. This is the essential art of recollection and is reflection to the
second power." (S, Hong, p. 13)
#
"When memory is
refreshed again and again, it enriches the soul with a mass of details that
distract recollection. Thus repentance is a recollection of guilt." (S,
Hong, p. 14)
#
"In parting, then, hail
to you, you lovely forest; hail to you, you unappreciated hour of the afternoon
who have no false pretensions, who, unlike the morning hours, unlike the
evening, unlike the night, do not want to be of some consequence but without
any claims are humble satisfied to be yourself, to be content with your rustic
smile! Just as the work of recollection is always blessed, it has also the
blessing that it itself becomes a new recollection that in turn captivates, for
anyone who has once understood what recollection is has been captured for all
eternity and is captured in it.; and anyone who possesses one recollection is
richer than if he possessed the whole world; and not only the one about to give
birth but above all the one who is recollecting is in blessed circumstances.
(S, Hong, p. 19)
#
"That the time of poetry
is over really means that immediacy is at an end. Immediacy is not entirely
without reflection; as poetry sees it, it has relative reflection by having its
opposition outside itself. But immediacy is not actually over until the
immediate infinity is grasped by an equally infinite reflection. At the same
moment, all tasks are transformed and made dialectical in themselves; no
immediacy is allowed to stand by itself or to be exposed to struggle only with
something else, since it must struggle with itself." (S, Hong, p. 412)
#
"In order to stick to
the task, one must constantly make double-movements. Anyone who cannot do it
with ease does not see the task at all, and he is lucky if he has not lost his
delight in poetry. But if he can do it, then he also knows that infinite
reflection is not something alien but is immediacy's transparency to itself."
(Stages, Hong, pp. 413-14)
#
"But to repent is not a
positive movement outwards or off to, but a negative movement inwards, not a
doing but by oneself letting something happen to oneself." (Stages, Hong,
p. 476)
"The ethical sphere is
only a transition sphere, and therefore its highest expression is repentance as
a negative action. The esthetic sphere is the sphere of immediacy, the ethical
sphere is the sphere of requirement (and this requirement is so infinite that
the individual always goes bankrupt), the religious the sphere of fulfillment,
but, please note, not a fulfillment such as when one fills an alms box or a
sack of gold, for repentance has specifically created a boundless space, and as
a consequence the religious condition: simultaneously to be out on 70,000
fathoms of water and yet be joyful." (Stages, Hong, pp. 476-77)
#
"Just as the ethical
sphere is a passageway—which one nevertheless does not pass through once and
for all – just as repentance is its expression, so repentance is the most dialectical.
No wonder, then, that one fears it, for if one gives it a finger it takes the
whole hand. Just as Jehovah in the Old Testament visits the iniquities of the
fathers upon the children unto the latest generation, so repentance goes
backwards, continually presupposing the object of its investigation. In
repentance there is the impulse of the motion, and therefore everything is
reversed. This impulse signifies precisely the difference between the esthetic
and the religious as the difference between the external and the
internal." (S, Hong, p. 477)
#
"An immediate
relationship between immediacy and the forgiveness of sins means that sin is
something particular, and this particular the forgiveness of sin then takes
away. But this is not forgiveness of sin. Thus a child does not know what
forgiveness of sin is, for a child, after all, considers himself to be
basically a fine child. If only that thing had not happened yesterday, and
forgiveness removes it and the child is a fine child. But if sin is supposed to
be radical (a discovery owed to repentance, which always precedes the
forgiveness), this is not valid, but if it is to be considered thus, then it
must be presumed to have been canceled."
(S, Hong, pp. 481-82)
#
The difficulty with the
forgiveness of sins, if it is not to be
decided on paper or to be decided by declarations of a living word, moved now
in joy, now in tears, is to become so transparent to oneself that one knows
that one does not exist at any point by virtue of immediacy, yes, so that one
has become another person, for otherwise forgiveness of sin is my point of
view: the unity of the comic and the tragic." (S, Hong, p. 483)
#
"Sophists can be grouped
in three classes. (1) Those who from the esthetic reach into an immediate
relation to the religious. Here religion becomes poetry, history; the sophist
himself is enthusiastic about the religious, but poetically enthusiastic; in
his enthusiasm he is willing to make any sacrifice, even lose his life for it,
but does not for that reason become a religious person. At the peak of his
prestige, he becomes confused and lets himself be confused with a prophet and
an apostle. (2) Those who from the immediate ethical enter into an immediate
relation to the religious. For them religion becomes a positive doctrine of
obligation, instead of repentance being the supreme task of the ethical and
expressively negative. The sophist remains untested in infinite reflection, a
paragon of positive epitomization. Here is the sphere of his enthusiasm, and
without guile he has joy in inspiring others to do the same. (3) Those who
place the metaphysical in an immediate relation to the religious. Here religion
becomes history, which is finished; the sophist is finished with religion and
at most becomes an inventor of the system." (S, Hong, p. 486)
Single Individual:
"There
is a view of life that holds that truth is where the crowd is, that truth
itself needs to have the crowd on its side.*
*Yet
it is most appropriate to mention once and for all something that is self-evident
and something I certainly have never denied—namely, that with regard to the
temporal, earthly, worldly goals, the crowd can have its validity, even its
validity as the decisive factor, that is, as the authority. But I am not
speaking about such matters , no more than I occupy myself with such things. I
am speaking about the ethical, the ethical-religious, about the truth, and I say that from the ethical-religious point of view the crowd is
untruth if it supposed to be valid as the authority for what truth is." (SI, Hong, Supplement,
p. 106)
#
"But
this doubleness is precisely the dialectic of the single individual. The
single individual can mean the most unique of all, and the single
individual can mean everyone. Now if one desires to stimulate attention
dialectically, one will always use the category of the single individual
in a double stroke. The pride in the one thought incites a few; the humility in
the other thought repels others, but the confusion in this doubleness
dialectically provokes attention, and as stated, this doubleness is precisely
the idea of the single individual." (SI, Hong, Supplement, p. 115)
#
"The single individual
is the category through which, in a religious sense, the age, history, the
human race must go. And the one who stood as Thermopylae was not as secure as I
, who have stood, in order at least to bring about an awareness of it, at this
narrow pass, the single individual. His particular task was to keep the hordes
from pressing through the narrow pass; if they pressed though, he would have
been lost. My task as least exposes me far less to the danger of being trampled
down, since it was as a lowly servant (but, as I have said from the beginning
and repeat again and again, without authority)
to prompt, if possible, to invite, to induce the many to press through this
narrow pass, the single individual,
through which, and please note, no one presses through except by becoming the
single individual; the opposite is indeed a categorical impossibility. –And
yet, yes, if I were to request an inscription on my grave, I request none other
than that single individual;
even if it is not understood now, it surely will be." (Single Individual, Hong, Supplement, p.
118)
#
"The single individual
is the category of spirit, of spiritual awakening, as diametrically opposite to
politics as possible." (SI, Hong, Supplement, p. 121)
Works of Love:
"Which is more
difficult, to awaken one who sleeps or to awaken one who, awake, dreams that he
is awake?" (WL, Hong, p. 23)
#
"To cheat oneself out of
love is the most terrible deception; it is an eternal loss for which there is
no reparation, either in time or in eternity. For usually, whatever variations
there may be, when there is talk about being deceived in love the one deceived
is still related to love, and the deception is simply that it is not present
where it was thought to be; but the one who is self-deceived has locked himself
out and continues to lock himself out from love. There is also talk about being
deceived by life or in life; but he who self-deceptively cheated himself out of
living—his loss is irredeemable. One who throughout his whole life has been
deceived by life—for him the eternal can treasure rich compensation; but the
person who has deceived himself has prevented himself from winning the
eternal." (WL, Hong, pp. 23-24)
#
Every
discourse, especially the opening portion, usually postulates something from
which it then proceeds. One who wishes to deliberate on a discourse or
assertion does well to find first this presupposition in order that he may
begin with it. Our quoted text also contains a presupposition which comes at
the end, to be sure, but it is nevertheless the beginning. When it is said
" 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself,' therein is contained what is
presupposed, that every man loves himself." (WL, Hong, p. 34)
#
"As Jacob limped after
having struggled with God, so shall self-love be broken if it has struggled
with this phrase, which nevertheless does not seek to teach a man not to love
himself but in fact rather seeks to teach him proper self-love. How remarkable!
What struggle is so protracted, so terrifying, so involved as self-love's war
to defend itself, and yet Christianity decides it all with a single blow." (WL, Hong, p. 35)
#
"The command reads thus,
"You shall love your neighbor as yourself," but if the command is
properly understood, it also says the opposite: 'You shall love yourself in
the right way.' If anyone therefore refuses to learn from Christianity how
to love himself in the right way, he cannot love his neighbor
either." (WL, Hong, p.39)
#
"Love has also existed
in paganism; but this obligation to love is an alteration by the eternal—and
all things are made new." (WL, Hong, p. 41)
#
"That which merely
exists, having undergone no change, is continually confronted by the
possibility of change; change can occur at any time; even in the last moment it
can happen, and only when life has come to an end can one say: change did not
take place—or perhaps it did. Whatever has undergone no change certainly has continuance,
but it does not have continuity; insofar as it has continuance, it
exists, but insofar as it has not won enduring continuity amid change, it
cannot become contemporaneous with itself and is either happily unconscious of
this misalignment or is disposed to sorrow. Only the eternal can be and become
and remain contemporaneous with every age; temporality, on the other hand,
divides within itself, and the present cannot become contemporary with the
future, or the future with the past, or the past with the present." (WL, Hong, p. 46-47)
#
"Of that which has won
continuity in undergoing change, one can not only say when it has existed, 'it
existed,' but one can say, 'It had continuity throughout its existence.' Just
this is the safeguard, and the relationship is entirely different from that of
happiness or good fortune. When love has undergone the transformation of the
eternal by being made duty, it has won continuity, and then it follows of
itself that it survives." (WL, Hong, p. 47)
#
"The love which simply
exists, however fortunate, however blissful, however satisfying , however
poetic it is, still must survive the test of the years. But the love which has
undergone the transformation of the eternal by becoming duty has won
continuity; it is sterling silver."
(WL, Hong, p. 47)
#
"—If, on the other hand,
love undergoes the transformation of the eternal by becoming duty, it does not
become characterized by habit; habit can never get power over it. To what is
said of eternal life, that there is no sighing and no tears, one can add: there
is no habit; certainly this is not saying anything less glorious. If you will
save your soul or your love from habit's cunning – yes, men believe there are
many ways of keeping oneself awake and secure, but there is really only one:
The eternal's 'You Shall.'" (WL,
Hong, p. 51)
#
"As soon as love, in
relation to its object, does not in that relationship relate just as much to
itself, although it still is entirely dependent, then it is dependent in a
false sense, then the law of its existence is outside itself, and therefore it
is in a contemptible sense, in an earthly, in a temporal sense, dependent. But
the love which has undergone the transformation of the eternal by becoming duty
and which loves because it shall love—this love is independent; it has
the law of its existence in the relationship of love itself to the eternal.
This love can never become dependant in a false sense, for the only thing it is
dependant upon is duty, and the duty alone makes for genuine freedom.
Spontaneous love makes a man free and in the next moment dependant. It is as
with man's existence. By coming into existence, by becoming a self*, he
becomes free, but in the next moment he is dependant upon this self. Duty, however,
makes a man dependant and at the same moment eternally independent." (WL, Hong, pp. 52-53)
*Translator's note: For an
extended consideration of to exist or to become a self as
contrasted qualitatively to simply being or subsisting, see Kierkegaard's Either-Or,
The Sickness Unto death (especially the crucial first two pages) and Concluding
Unscientific Postscript. The entire authorship, in its complexity of
substance and form, can properly be regarded as concerned with these same
interlocking questions: What is it to become a human being? What does it mean
to exist? What does it mean to become a self? What does it mean to become a
Christian?
#
"Despair is a
disrelationship in one's innermost being; no fate or event can penetrate so far
and so deep; events can only make manifest—that the disrelationship was there.
For this reason there is only assurance against despair: to undergo the
transformation of the eternal through 'you shall'; everyone who has not
undergone this transformation is in despair. For this reason there is only one
assurance against despair: to undergo the transformation of the eternal through
duty's "you shall"; everyone who has not undergone this
transformation is in despair."" (WL, Hong, p. 54)
#
"That which makes a man
despair is not misfortune, but it is this: that he lacks the eternal. Despair
is to lack the eternal; despair consists in not having undergone the
transformation of the eternal through duty's 'You shall.' Despair is not,
therefore, the loss of the beloved—that is misfortune, pain, and suffering; but
despair is lack of the eternal." (WL, Hong, p. 55)
#
"It is in fact
Christian love which discovers and knows that one's neighbor exists and that—it
is one and the same thing—everyone is one's neighbors. If it were not a duty to
love, then there would be no concept of neighbor at all. But only when one
loves his neighbor, only then is the selfishness of preferential love rooted
out and the equality of the eternal present." (WL, Hong p. 58)
#
"Christian love teaches
love of all men, unconditionally all. Just as decidedly as erotic love strains
in the direction of the one and only beloved, just as decidedly and powerfully
does Christian love press in the opposite direction. If in the context of
Christian love one wishes to make an exception of a single person whom he does
not want to love, such love is not 'also Christian love' but is decidedly not
Christian love." (WL, Hong, p. 63)
#
"The point at issue
between the poet and Christianity may be stated precisely this way: erotic
love and friendship are preferential and the passion of preference.
Christian love is self-renunciation's love and therefore trusts in this shall.
To exhaust these passions would make one's head swim. But the most passionate boundlessness of
preference in excluding others is to love the one and only; self-renunciation's
boundlessness in giving itself is not to exclude a single one." (WL, Hong, p. 65)
#
"Love of one's neighbor,
on the other hand, is self-renouncing love, and self-renunciation casts out all
preferential love just as it casts out all self-love—otherwise
self-renunciation would also make distinctions and would nourish preference for
preference." (WL, Hong, p. 67)
#
"Wherever Christianity
is, there is also self-renunciation, which is Christianity's essential form. In
order to be related to Christianity one must first and foremost become sober,
but self-renunciation is precisely the way by which a human being becomes sober
in an eternal sense. On the other hand, wherever Christianity is absent, the
intoxication of self-feeling is the most intense, and the height of this
intoxication is most admired. Love and friendship are the very height of
self-feeling, the I intoxicated in the other-I. The more securely the two I's
come together to become one I, the more this united I selfishly cuts itself off
from all others. At the peak of love and friendship the two really become one
self, one I. This is explainable only because in this exclusive love there are
natural determinates (tendencies, inclinations) and self-love, which can
selfishly unite the two in a new selfish self.
Spiritual love, on the other hand, takes away from myself all natural
determinants and all self-love. Therefore love for my neighbor cannot make me
one with the neighbor in a united self. Love to one's neighbor is love between
two individual beings, each eternally qualified as spirit. (WL, Hong, p. 68)
#
"To love one's neighbor
means, while remaining within the earthly distinctions allotted to one,
essentially to will to exist equally for every human being without exception.
To will to exist openly for other men only in the basis of the advantages of
one's earthly distinction is pride and arrogance, but the clever invention of
not willing to exist for others at all in order secretly to enjoy the advantage
of one's distinction in the company of
one's peers is cowardly pride. In both instances, there is discord. But he who
loves his neighbor is tranquil. He is made tranquil by being content with the
earthly distinction allotted to him, whether it be important or unimportant;
moreover, he lets every earthly distinction retain its significance and be
taken for what it is and ought to be worth in this life, for one should not
covet what is his neighbor's, neither his wife not his donkey, nor
consequently, the advantages granted him in life. If they are denied to you,
you shall rejoice that they are granted to him. Thus, he who loves his neighbor
is made tranquil." (WL, Hong, pp. 92- 93)
#
"Worldly wisdom
thinks that love is a relationship between man and man. Christianity teaches
that love is a relationship between:
man-God-man, that is, that God is the middle term." (WL, Hong,
pp. 112-13)
#
"If one were to indicate
and describe in one simple word the victory Christianity has won over the
world, or even more accurately, the victory in which it has more than overcome
the world, the infinite transformation which Christianity aims at (since
Christianity has never wanted to conquer in a worldly way), by which everything
indeed remains as it was (for Christianity has never been a friend of the
trumpery of novelty) and yet in the transformation of infinity becomes new—I
know of nothing briefer, but also nothing more decisive, than this: it has made
every human relation between man and man a relationship of conscience."
(WL, Hong, p. 136-37)
#
"Christianity wants
above all to make the infinite change (which is the hidden man of inwardness
towards the God-relationship and therein different from the inwardness which is
orientated outwards and away), and therefore wants to transform all love into a
matter of conscience." (WL, Hong, p. 140)
#
"When it is the duty to
love the men we see, then one must first
and foremost give up all fanciful and extravagant ideas about a dream-world
where the object of love is to be sought and found; that is, one must become
sober, win actuality and truth by finding and continuing in the world of
actuality as the task assigned to one. (WL, Hong, p. 159)
#
"Be sober then; come to
yourself. Understand that the mistake lies in your conception of love;
understand that it should be a demand, a
requirement most glorious when the whole of existence cannot satisfy it—any
more than you can prove your right to demand satisfaction. At the very moment
when you have changed your conception of love and have understood that it is
the very reverse of a requirement, that it is a debt to which God binds you—at
this very moment you have found actuality." (WL, Hong, p. 161)
#
"But what can take love
out of its element? As soon as love concentrates upon itself it is out of
its element. What does that mean, to concentrate upon itself? It means to
become an object for itself. But an object
is always a dangerous matter if one is to move forward; an object is like a finite fixed point, a boundary, a stopping place,
a dangerous thing for infinitude. Love can never infinitely become its own object; nor is there danger in that. For infinitely to become an object for
itself is to remain in infinitude and
thus, simply by existing or continuing to exist (since love is a reduplication
in itself) is as different from the particularity of natural life as is the
reduplication of the spirit. Consequently, if love concentrates upon itself, it must become an object for itself in
its individual expression, or another and separate love becomes its object,
love in this person and love in that person. When the object is thus finite,
love concentrates upon itself, for infinitely
to concentrate upon itself means precisely a becoming. But when love finitely concentrates
on itself, everything is lost. (WL, Hong, p.177)
#
"The purely human
conception of self-renunciation is this: give up your selfish desires,
longings, and plans—and then you will become appreciated and honoured and loves
as a righteous man and wise. One can easily see that this self-renunciation
does not approach God or the God-relationship; it remains secularly within the
relationship between man and man."
(WL, Hong, p. 188)
#
"It is human
self-renunciation when a man denies himself and the world opens up to him. But
it is Christian self-renunciation when a man denies himself and, because the
world precisely for this shuts itself up to him, he must as one thrust out by
the world seek God's confidence. The double-danger lies precisely in meeting
opposition there where he had expected to find support, and he has to turn
about twice; whereas the merely human self-resignation turns once." (WL,
Hong, p. 189)
#
"All human language
about the spiritual, yes, even the divine language of Holy Scriptures, is
essentially transferred or metaphorical language. This is quite in order or
corresponds to the order of things and of existence, since even though man is
spirit from the moment of birth he first becomes conscious as spirit later, and
therefore prior to this he has lived for a certain time within sensuous-psychic
categories. The first portion of life shall not, however, be cast aside when
the spirit awakens, any more than the awakening of spirit announces itself in
sensuous or sensuous-psychic modes in contrast to the sensuous or
sensuous-psychic. The first portion is taken over by spirit, and, thus used,
thus laid at the base, it becomes
transferred. Therefore the spiritual man and the sensuous-psychic man say
the same thing in a sense, and yet there remains an infinite difference between
what they say, since the latter does not suspect the secret of transferred
language, even though he uses the same words, but not metaphorically. There is
a world of difference between the two; the one has made a transition or has let
himself be led over to the other side; whereas the other has remained on this
side. Yet there is something binding which they have in common - they both use
the same language. One in whom the spirit is awakened does not therefore leave
the visible world. Although now conscious of himself as spirit, he is still
continually in the world of the visible and is himself sensuously visible;
likewise he also remains in the language, except that it is transferred.
Transferred language is, then, not a brand new language; it is rather the
language already at hand. Just as spirit is invisible, so also is its language
a secret, and the secret rests precisely in this that it uses the same language
as the simple man and the child but uses it as transferred. Thereby the spirit
denies (but not in a sensuous or sensuous-psychic manner) that it is the
sensuous or sensuous-psychic. The distinction is by no means directly apparent.
Therefore we quite rightly regard emphasis upon a directly apparent distinction
as a sign of false spirituality—which is mere sensuousness; whereas the
presence of spirit is the quiet, whispering secret of transferred language -
audible to him who has an ear to hear." (WL, Hong, pp. 199-200) x
#
"For only one deception
is possible in the infinite sense—self-deception." (WL, Hong, p.223)
#
"To hope is related to
the future, to possibility, which again, distinguished from actuality, is
always a duality, the possibilities of advancing or of retrogressing, of rising
up or of going under, of the good or of the evil. The eternal is, but when the eternal touches time or
is in time, they do not meet each other in the present, for then the present would itself be the eternal. The
present, the moment, is so quickly past, that it really is not present; it is
only the boundary and is therefore transitional; whereas the past is what was
present. Consequently if the eternal is in the temporal, it is in the future
(for the present can not get hold of it, and the past is indeed past) or in
possibility. The past is actuality; the future is possibility. Eternally, the
eternal is the eternal; in time the eternal is possibility, the future."
(WL, Hong, pp. 233-34)
#
"The temporal has three
times and therefore essentially never is
completely nor is completely in any one of the periods; the eternal is. A temporal object can have a
multiplicity of varied characteristics; in a certain sense it can be said to
have them simultaneously, in so far as in these definite characteristics it is
that which it is. But reduplication in itself never has a temporal object; as
the temporal disappears in time, so also it exists only in its characteristics.
If, on the other hand, the eternal is in a man, the eternal reduplicates itself
in him in such a way that at every moment it is in him it is in him in a double
mode: in an outward direction and in an inward direction back into itself, but
in such a way that it is one and the same, for otherwise it is not
reduplication. The eternal is not merely by virtue of its characteristics but
in itself is in its characteristics; it does not merely have characteristics
but exists in itself in having the characteristics." (WL, Hong, p. 261)
#
"If praising love is to
be done effectively, one must persevere for a long time in thinking one thought,
in maintaining it, spiritually understood, with the greatest abstemiousness
concerning everything heterogeneous, alien, irrelevant, disturbing, in
maintaining it with the most punctilious and dutiful renunciation of every
other thought. But this is very strenuous. By this route it is quite easy to
leave meaning, coherence, and understanding behind; and this will be the case
if the single thought which occupies one is a single finite conception, not an
infinite thought." WL, Hong, p. 331)
#
"It is one thing to
think in such a way that one's attentiveness is solely and constantly directed
towards an external object; it is something else to be turned in thought that
constantly at every moment one himself becomes conscious, in reflection,
conscious of one's own condition or how it is with oneself under reflection.
But only the latter is essentially what thinking is: it is, in fact,
transparency. The first is unclear thinking which suffers from a contradiction:
that which in thinking clarifies something else is itself basically unclear.
Such a thinker explains something else by his thought, and lo, he does not
understand himself; externally in the direction of the object he perhaps
utilizes his natural talents very penetratingly but in the direction of inwardness
he is very superficial, and therefore all his thought, however fundamental it
seems to be, is still basically superficial. But when the object of one's
thought is complicated in the external sense, or when one transforms what he is
thinking about into a scientific object, or when one moves from one object to
another, one does not discover this last discrepancy: that an unclearness
constitutes the basis for all its clarity—instead of discovering that true
clarity is only in transparency. When, on the other hand, a man thinks only one
thought, he does not have an external object, he has an inward direction
towards self-deepening, and he makes a discovery concerning his own inner
situation; and this discovery is at first very humbling.
Human spiritual powers are
not like physical powers. If one works beyond his physical capacity, well, he
is injured and nothing is gained thereby. But if one does not strain his
spiritual powers in their spirituality simply by choosing the inward direction,
he discovers nothing at all, or he does not discover in the deeper sense that
God is; and if this is the case, he has certainly lost the most important, or
the most important has essentially evaded him. In physical powers as such there
is indeed nothing selfish, but in the human spirit as such there lies a
selfishness which must be snapped if the God-relationship is to be won in
truth. One who thinks only one thought must experience this; he must experience
the occurrence of a halting wherein everything is, as it were, taken from him;
he must risk his life, a hazard which involves losing his life in order to win
it." (WL, Hong, pp. 331-32)
#
"When one thinks only
one thought, one must in relationship to this thinking discover
self-renunciation, and it is self-renunciation which discovers that God
is. Precisely this becomes the blessing,
disturbing contradiction: to have one all-powerful as co-worker. For one
all-powerful cannot be a co-worker with you, a human being, without its signifying
that you are able to do nothing at all; and on the other side, if he is your
support, you are able to do everything. The strenuousness lies in the
simultaneity of the contradiction so that you do not experience the one to-day
and the other to-morrow; the strenuousness lies in this that the contradiction
is not something you are conscious of once in a while but something you must be
conscious of every moment. In the same moment that you feel capable of
everything—and the selfish thought that it is you who are capable sneaks in—at
that moment you can lose everything; and at the same moment when the selfish
thought surrenders itself you can have everything again." (WL, Hong. p. 333)
#
"What
holds true for all love of truth in relationship to the present moment also
holds true of truly praising love. Before one seeks to win the approval of the
moment with his praise of love, one must first of all ascertain to what extent
the present moment has the true conception of love. Does the present moment
which now is or can the present moment ever have the true conception of what
love is? No, impossible. Love according to the understanding of the present
moment or the immediate is neither more nor less than self-love. Consequently
it is selfish to talk in this way about love and selfish to win this approval.
True love is self-renunciation's love. But what is self-renunciation? It is
precisely to give up the present moment and the immediate. But then it is
completely impossible to win the approval of the present moment by a true
discourse on the love which is love precisely by giving up the present moment.
It is impossible, so impossible that the speaker, if the truth is more
important to him than the approval of the present moment, should himself point
out the misunderstanding insofar as he might inadvertently win the approval of
the moment. From what has been developed here it is easily seen that the
conclusion is by no means correct which without qualification concluded: he who
praises love must himself be or become loved—in a world which crucified him who
was love, in a world which persecuted and liquidated so many witnesses to
love." (WL. Hong, p. 339)
#
"Consequently, in order
to praise love, there is need for inward self-denial and outward
sacrificial disinterestedness." (WL, Hong, p. 343.)
#
"In the foregoing
writing we have tried 'many times and in many ways' to praise love. As we thank
God that we have been able to complete the writing in the way intended, we
shall now conclude by introducing John the apostle saying: 'Beloved, let us
love one another.' These words, which consequently have apostolic authority,
also have, if you will consider them, a middle tone or middle mood with respect
to the contrasts in love itself, which has its basis in that they are said by
one who was perfected in love. You do not hear in these words the rigorousness
of duty; the apostle does not say, 'You shall love one another'; but
neither do you hear the intensity of inclination, of poet-passion. There is
something transfigured and blessed in these words, but also a sadness which
broods over life and is tempered by the eternal. It is as if the apostle said,
'Dear me, what is all this which would hinder you from loving; what is all this
you can win by self-love: the commandment is that you shall love but
when you understand life and yourself, then it is as if you should not need to
be commanded, because to love human beings is still the only thing worth living
for; without this love you really do not live; to love human beings is also the
only salutary consolation for both time and eternity, and to love human beings
is the only true sign that you are a Christian'—truly, a profession of faith is
not enough." (WL, Hong, p.344)