Philosophical Fragments
Encyclopedia
Philosophical Fragments (Danish
title: ) was a Christian philosophic work written by Danish
philosopher Søren Kierkegaard
in 1844. It was the first of three works written under the pseudonym
Johannes Climacus, the other two were Johannes Climacus, 1841 and Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments
, 1846.
Kierkegaardian scholars D. Anthony Storm and Walter Lowrie believe Kierkegaard could be referring to Johannes Climacus, a 7th century Christian monk, who believed that an individual is converted to Christianity by way of a ladder, one rung (virtue) at a time. Kierkegaard believes the individual comes to an understanding with Christ by a leap.
Kierkegaard scholar and translator David F. Swenson was the first to translate the book into English in 1936. He called it "Philosophical Chips" in an earlier biography of Kierkegaard published in 1921and another early translator, Lee Milton Hollander, called it "Philosophic Trifles" in his early translation of portions of Kierkegaard's works in 1923.
Kierkegaard hinted that he might write a "sequel in 17 pieces" in his preface. By February 22, 1846 he published a 600 page sequel to his 83 page Fragments. He devoted over 200 pages of Concluding Unscientific Postscript to an explanation of what he meant by Philosophical Fragments.
He referred to a quote by Plato
in his Postscript to Philosophical Fragments: "But I must ask you Socrates, what do you suppose is the upshot of all this? As I said a little while ago, it is the scrapings and shavings of argument, cut up into little bits." – Greater Hippias, 304a. He could have been thinking about this quote when he wrote this book. Plato was asking "What is beauty?" Kierkegaard asks, "What is Truth?" Kierkegaard had already asked about truth 9 days earlier when he published Three Upbuilding Discourses
. A mere 4 days from the publication of Philosophical Fragments he published The Concept of Anxiety.
Kierkegaard wrote his books in reaction to both Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
and Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel as well as the philosophic-historical use of speculation in regard to Christianity. Schelgel published a book bearing the same title as Kierkegaard's, Philosophical Fragments in 1799.
signed by the name of the pseudonymous author he was using. He began this practice with his unpublished book Johannes Climacus and continued it throughout his writing career. However, he added his own name as the person responsible for publication of Philosophical Fragments, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, The Sickness Unto Death and Practice in Christianity. He also wrote many discourse
s which he signed with his own name. He began that practice with the writing of Two Upbuilding Discourses
in 1843.
He divides his book into five major sections
is considered an authoritative voice in the philosophic community so Kierkegaard begins with his ideas. He developed the doctrine of recollection
which Kierkegaard makes use of in his explanation of Truth and ignorance
.
His aim is to advance beyond Socrates, who was interested in finite truth, to another Teacher who explained Eternal Truth. The Enlightenment
movement was intent on combining concepts of God, nature, knowledge and man into one world view. Kierkegaard was a counter-Enlightenment writer. He believed that knowledge of God was a "condition" that only "the God" can give and the "Moment" God gives the condition to the Learner has "decisive significance".
He uses the category
of the single individual to help those seeking to become Christians. He says, "I am he who himself has been educated to the point of becoming a Christian. In the fact that education is pressed upon me, and in the measure that it is pressed, I press in turn upon this age; but I am not a teacher, only a fellow student." And again, "Once and for all I must earnestly beg the kind reader always to bear in mente (in mind) that the thought behind the whole work is: what it means to become a Christian." He can only bring an individual to the point of becoming a Christian because the single individual must choose to become a Christian in freedom. Kierkegaard says, either believe or be offended. But choose.
Philosopher
s and Historian
s tend to try to prove Christianity rather than teach belief in Christ through faith. Kierkegaard says,
. Both of these sciences are based on questioning the patient, “Learner”, in the hope of jogging their memory about past events. The therapist could ask the right question and not realize he has received the answer he was looking for, this is known as Meno's paradox. Kierkegaard puts his paradox this way, “what a man knows he cannot seek, since he knows it; and what he does not know he cannot seek, since he does not even know for what to seek.”
The problem for the “Learner” is that he is in “Error”, and is ignorant of his Error. He had the truth from birth, he knew who his creator was, but forgot. Kierkegaard calls this Error "Sin". How can he find out that he had vested his life in outer goods rather than the inner goods of the Spirit? A Teacher must bring him the “condition” necessary for understanding the Truth. He explains the whole process this way:
Danish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
title: ) was a Christian philosophic work written by Danish
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
philosopher Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was a Danish Christian philosopher, theologian and religious author. He was a critic of idealist intellectuals and philosophers of his time, such as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel...
in 1844. It was the first of three works written under the pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
Johannes Climacus, the other two were Johannes Climacus, 1841 and Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments
Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments
Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments is a major work by Søren Kierkegaard. The work is a poignant attack against Hegelianism, the philosophy of G. W. F. Hegel. The work is also famous for its dictum, Subjectivity is Truth...
, 1846.
Kierkegaardian scholars D. Anthony Storm and Walter Lowrie believe Kierkegaard could be referring to Johannes Climacus, a 7th century Christian monk, who believed that an individual is converted to Christianity by way of a ladder, one rung (virtue) at a time. Kierkegaard believes the individual comes to an understanding with Christ by a leap.
Kierkegaard scholar and translator David F. Swenson was the first to translate the book into English in 1936. He called it "Philosophical Chips" in an earlier biography of Kierkegaard published in 1921and another early translator, Lee Milton Hollander, called it "Philosophic Trifles" in his early translation of portions of Kierkegaard's works in 1923.
Kierkegaard hinted that he might write a "sequel in 17 pieces" in his preface. By February 22, 1846 he published a 600 page sequel to his 83 page Fragments. He devoted over 200 pages of Concluding Unscientific Postscript to an explanation of what he meant by Philosophical Fragments.
He referred to a quote by Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
in his Postscript to Philosophical Fragments: "But I must ask you Socrates, what do you suppose is the upshot of all this? As I said a little while ago, it is the scrapings and shavings of argument, cut up into little bits." – Greater Hippias, 304a. He could have been thinking about this quote when he wrote this book. Plato was asking "What is beauty?" Kierkegaard asks, "What is Truth?" Kierkegaard had already asked about truth 9 days earlier when he published Three Upbuilding Discourses
Three Upbuilding Discourses, 1844
Soren Kierkegaard published his Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses throughout the years 1843 and 1844. He followed the Socratic Method by publishing his own view of life under his own name and different views of life under pseudonyms...
. A mere 4 days from the publication of Philosophical Fragments he published The Concept of Anxiety.
Kierkegaard wrote his books in reaction to both Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Philosophy of history
The term philosophy of history refers to the theoretical aspect of history, in two senses. It is customary to distinguish critical philosophy of history from speculative philosophy of history...
and Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel as well as the philosophic-historical use of speculation in regard to Christianity. Schelgel published a book bearing the same title as Kierkegaard's, Philosophical Fragments in 1799.
Structure
Kierkegaard always wrote a prefacePreface
A preface is an introduction to a book or other literary work written by the work's author. An introductory essay written by a different person is a foreword and precedes an author's preface...
signed by the name of the pseudonymous author he was using. He began this practice with his unpublished book Johannes Climacus and continued it throughout his writing career. However, he added his own name as the person responsible for publication of Philosophical Fragments, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, The Sickness Unto Death and Practice in Christianity. He also wrote many discourse
Discourse
Discourse generally refers to "written or spoken communication". The following are three more specific definitions:...
s which he signed with his own name. He began that practice with the writing of Two Upbuilding Discourses
Two Upbuilding Discourses, 1843
Soren Kierkegaard published Two Upbuilding Discourses three months after the publication of his big book, Either/Or, which ended without a conclusion to the argument between A, the aesthete and B, the ethicist, as to which is the best way to live one's life. Kierkegaard hoped the book would...
in 1843.
He divides his book into five major sections
- A Project of Thought
- The God as Teacher and Savior: An Essay of the Imagination
- The Absolute Paradox of the Offended Christian
- Appendix: The Paradox and the Offended Consciousness
- The Case of the Contemporary Disciple
- Interlude
- The Disciple at Second Hand
Overview
Kierkegaard uses familiar Christian vocabulary to develop his own method for arriving at Truth He presents two views, the Socratic and the religious. SocratesSocrates
Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...
is considered an authoritative voice in the philosophic community so Kierkegaard begins with his ideas. He developed the doctrine of recollection
Anamnesis (philosophy)
In philosophy, anamnesis is a concept in Plato's epistemological and psychological theory that he develops in his dialogues Meno and Phaedo, and alludes to it in his Phaedrus.-Meno:...
which Kierkegaard makes use of in his explanation of Truth and ignorance
I know that I know nothing
"I know one thing, that I know nothing" is a well-known saying that is derived from Plato's account of the Greek philosopher Socrates...
.
His aim is to advance beyond Socrates, who was interested in finite truth, to another Teacher who explained Eternal Truth. The Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
movement was intent on combining concepts of God, nature, knowledge and man into one world view. Kierkegaard was a counter-Enlightenment writer. He believed that knowledge of God was a "condition" that only "the God" can give and the "Moment" God gives the condition to the Learner has "decisive significance".
Category (Kant)
In Kant's philosophy, a category is a pure concept of the understanding. A Kantian category is a characteristic of the appearance of any object in general, before it has been experienced...
of the single individual to help those seeking to become Christians. He says, "I am he who himself has been educated to the point of becoming a Christian. In the fact that education is pressed upon me, and in the measure that it is pressed, I press in turn upon this age; but I am not a teacher, only a fellow student." And again, "Once and for all I must earnestly beg the kind reader always to bear in mente (in mind) that the thought behind the whole work is: what it means to become a Christian." He can only bring an individual to the point of becoming a Christian because the single individual must choose to become a Christian in freedom. Kierkegaard says, either believe or be offended. But choose.
Philosopher
Philosophy of religion
Philosophy of religion is a branch of philosophy concerned with questions regarding religion, including the nature and existence of God, the examination of religious experience, analysis of religious language and texts, and the relationship of religion and science...
s and Historian
Historicity of Jesus
The historicity of Jesus concerns how much of what is written about Jesus of Nazareth is historically reliable, and whether the evidence supports the existence of such an historical figure...
s tend to try to prove Christianity rather than teach belief in Christ through faith. Kierkegaard says,
A Project of Thought
Kierkegaard uses the Doctrine of Recollection as an example of how truth was found in Ancient Greek philosophy and is still found in psychotherapy and modern medicineMedical history
The medical history or anamnesis of a patient is information gained by a physician by asking specific questions, either of the patient or of other people who know the person and can give suitable information , with the aim of obtaining information useful in formulating a diagnosis and providing...
. Both of these sciences are based on questioning the patient, “Learner”, in the hope of jogging their memory about past events. The therapist could ask the right question and not realize he has received the answer he was looking for, this is known as Meno's paradox. Kierkegaard puts his paradox this way, “what a man knows he cannot seek, since he knows it; and what he does not know he cannot seek, since he does not even know for what to seek.”
The problem for the “Learner” is that he is in “Error”, and is ignorant of his Error. He had the truth from birth, he knew who his creator was, but forgot. Kierkegaard calls this Error "Sin". How can he find out that he had vested his life in outer goods rather than the inner goods of the Spirit? A Teacher must bring him the “condition” necessary for understanding the Truth. He explains the whole process this way:
Now he owes everything to his Teacher but is saddened that it took so long to find out that he forgot his soul belonged to God and not to the world, and he "Repents". The "Moment" the Teacher brings the condition the learner experiences a "New Birth". Kierkegaard says a "change has taken place within him like the change from non-beingNothingNothing is no thing, denoting the absence of something. Nothing is a pronoun associated with nothingness, is also an adjective, and an object as a concept in the Frege-Church ontology....
to beingBeingBeing , is an English word used for conceptualizing subjective and objective aspects of reality, including those fundamental to the self —related to and somewhat interchangeable with terms like "existence" and "living".In its objective usage —as in "a being," or "[a] human being" —it...
. He calls this change "Conversion". He says, "When one who has experienced birth thinks of himself as born, he conceives this transition from non-being to being. The same principle must also hold in the case of the new birth. Or is the difficulty increased by the fact that the non-being which precedes the new birth contains more being than the non-being which preceded the first birth? But who then may be expected to think the new birth?" This is a ParadoxParadoxSimilar to Circular reasoning, A paradox is a seemingly true statement or group of statements that lead to a contradiction or a situation which seems to defy logic or intuition...
.When the seed of the oak is planted in earthen vessels, they break asunder; when new wine is poured in old leathern bottles, they burst; what must happen when the God implants himself in human weakness, unless man becomes a new vessel and a new creature! But this becoming, what labors will attend the change, how convulsed with birth-pangs! And the understanding -- how precarious, and how close each moment to misunderstanding, when the anguish of guilt seeks to disturb the peace of love! And how rapt in fear; for it is indeed less terrible to fall to the ground when the mountains tremble at the voice of the God, than to sit at table with him as an equal; and yet it is the God’s concern precisely to have it so. Philosophical Fragments p. 27The truth is within me, that is, when I am truly within myself (not untruthfully outside myself), the truth, if it is there, is a being, a life. Therefore it says, “This is eternal life, to know the only true God and the one whom he sent, the truth.” (John 14:6 The Bible) That is, only then do I in truth know the truth, when it becomes a life in me. Therefore Christ compares truth to food and appropriating it to eating, just as, physically, food by being appropriated (assimilated) becomes the life sustenance, so also, spiritually, truth is both the giver of life and the sustenance of life, is life. Practice in Christianity, Hong 1991 p. 206
The God as Teacher, Saviour and the Paradox
Kierkegaard leads his reader to consider how a teacher might become a teacher. He says life and its circumstances constitute an occasion for an individual to become a teacher and he in turn becomes an occasion for the learner to learn something. Socrates was such a teacher as this. But what about God? What would be the occasion that moved him to become a Teacher? God is moved by love but his love is unhappy. He wants to make himself understood just like a teacher but He's teaching something that doesn't come to an individual from the known world but from a world that is Unknown. “His love is a love of the learner, and his aim is to win him. For it is only in love that the unequal can be made equal, and it is only in equality or unity that an understanding can be effected, and without a perfect understanding the Teacher is not the God, unless the obstacle comes wholly from the side of the learner, in his refusing to realize that which had been made possible for him.”
God's goal is to make himself understood and, according to Kierkegaard, he has three options. He could elevate the learner to help the learner forget the misunderstanding. God could show himself to the learner and cause him to forget his Error while contemplating God's presence. Both options are rejected on the basis of equalityIdentity (philosophy)In philosophy, identity, from , is the relation each thing bears just to itself. According to Leibniz's law two things sharing every attribute are not only similar, but are the same thing. The concept of sameness has given rise to the general concept of identity, as in personal identity and...
. How can God make himself equal to man? Only by becomingPotentiality and actualityIn philosophy, Potentiality and Actuality are principles of a dichotomy which Aristotle used throughout his philosophical works to analyze motion, causality, ethics, and physiology in his Physics, Metaphysics, Ethics and De Anima .The concept of potentiality, in this context, generally refers to...
man himself, but not a king, or a leader of an established order, no, for equality's sake he must become one of the humblest, a servant.
But God can't make himself understood because he's completely unlike every other human being. God has not sinned, whereas every human being has. This is a paradox but the ultimate paradox is that a single individual who looks just like everyone else is God. "The thesis that God has existed in human form, was born, grew up; is certainly the paradox in the strictest sense, the absolute paradox." Christianity is also a paradox as well as the forgiveness of sins. Kierkegaard is saying that the "Moment" the individual comes in contact with the Paradox is of utmost importance because this is where the decision is made. This is his Either/OrEither/OrPublished in two volumes in 1843, Either/Or is an influential book written by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, exploring the aesthetic and ethical "phases" or "stages" of existence....
. Either believe or be offended. Reason is attempting to understand the Paradox but comes to its own limit and can't understand what it knows nothing about.
Kierkegaard says ReasonReasonReason is a term that refers to the capacity human beings have to make sense of things, to establish and verify facts, and to change or justify practices, institutions, and beliefs. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, language, ...
"collides" with the knowledge of the UnknownNoumenonThe noumenon is a posited object or event that is known without the use of the senses.The term is generally used in contrast with, or in relation to "phenomenon", which refers to anything that appears to, or is an object of, the senses...
. If Reason and God have a happy encounter the individual comes to be a believer. If the collision results in an unhappy encounter the Reason is Offended. The Reason says that the Paradox is absurdAbsurdismIn philosophy, "The Absurd" refers to the conflict between the human tendency to seek value and meaning in life and the human inability to find any...
and can get no meaning from the encounter. But when "Reason yielded itself while the Paradox bestowed itself, and the understanding is consummated in that happy passion, the individual is happy and asks for nothing more." Kierkegaard says Christ offers every single individual the "invitation."
The Disciple and the Disciple at Second Hand
Kierkegaard explores how a contemporary of Christ and succeeding generations receive the “condition” necessary to understand the Paradox that God has permitted himself to be born and wrapped in swaddling-clothes. A contemporary could have been living abroad and in that case the contemporary would have to hear the story from eye witnesses. How reliable would they be? The only thing they saw was a lowly servant. The immediate contemporary can “serve as an occasion for the acquirement of historical knowledge”, an occasion to help the individual understandUnderstandUnderstand is a commercial static code analysis software tool produced by SciTools. It is mostly used to reverse engineer, automatically document, and calculate code metrics for projects with large code-bases....
himself in the Socratic sense, or the contemporary could have received the condition from God and become a believer.
The “condition” comes into existenceExistenceIn common usage, existence is the world we are aware of through our senses, and that persists independently without them. In academic philosophy the word has a more specialized meaning, being contrasted with essence, which specifies different forms of existence as well as different identity...
. Kierkegaard says the “coming-into-existence is a kind of change, but is not a change in essenceEssenceIn philosophy, essence is the attribute or set of attributes that make an object or substance what it fundamentally is, and which it has by necessity, and without which it loses its identity. Essence is contrasted with accident: a property that the object or substance has contingently, without...
but in beingOntologyOntology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality as such, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations...
and is a transition from not existing to existing. But this non-being which the subject of coming into existence leaves behind must itself have some sort of being. He asks his reader to consider whether the necessaryLogical possibilityA logically possible proposition is one that can be asserted without implying a logical contradiction. This is to say that a proposition is logically possible if there is some coherent way for the world to be, under which the proposition would be true...
can come into existence or if the necessary "Is", since everything that comes into existence is historicalHistoricismHistoricism is a mode of thinking that assigns a central and basic significance to a specific context, such as historical period, geographical place and local culture. As such it is in contrast to individualist theories of knowledges such as empiricism and rationalism, which neglect the role of...
. But for Kierkegaard “all coming into existence takes place in freedomFree will"To make my own decisions whether I am successful or not due to uncontrollable forces" -Troy MorrisonA pragmatic definition of free willFree will is the ability of agents to make choices free from certain kinds of constraints. The existence of free will and its exact nature and definition have long...
.” The discipleDisciple (Christianity)In Christianity, the disciples were the students of Jesus during his ministry. While Jesus attracted a large following, the term disciple is commonly used to refer specifically to "the Twelve", an inner circle of men whose number perhaps represented the twelve tribes of Israel...
freely choosesLibertyLiberty is a moral and political principle, or Right, that identifies the condition in which human beings are able to govern themselves, to behave according to their own free will, and take responsibility for their actions...
to follow Christ when the Holy Spirit convinces him that he's a sinner.
He finally discloses what this “condition” the "Moment" brings to the individual. He says, “faith has precisely the required character; for in the certaintyCertaintyCertainty can be defined as either:# perfect knowledge that has total security from error, or# the mental state of being without doubtObjectively defined, certainty is total continuity and validity of all foundational inquiry, to the highest degree of precision. Something is certain only if no...
of belief there is always present a negatedNegationIn logic and mathematics, negation, also called logical complement, is an operation on propositions, truth values, or semantic values more generally. Intuitively, the negation of a proposition is true when that proposition is false, and vice versa. In classical logic negation is normally identified...
uncertaintyUncertaintyUncertainty is a term used in subtly different ways in a number of fields, including physics, philosophy, statistics, economics, finance, insurance, psychology, sociology, engineering, and information science...
, in every way corresponding to the uncertainty of coming into existence. FaithSola fideSola fide , also historically known as the doctrine of justification by faith alone, is a Christian theological doctrine that distinguishes most Protestant denominations from Catholicism, Eastern Christianity, and some in the Restoration Movement.The doctrine of sola fide or "by faith alone"...
believes what it does not see...”
An individual can know what Christianity is without being a Christian. Kierkegaard says, "By BaptismBaptismIn Christianity, baptism is for the majority the rite of admission , almost invariably with the use of water, into the Christian Church generally and also membership of a particular church tradition...
ChristianityChristianityChristianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
gives him a name, and he is a Christian de nomine (by name); but in the decisionDecision makingDecision making can be regarded as the mental processes resulting in the selection of a course of action among several alternative scenarios. Every decision making process produces a final choice. The output can be an action or an opinion of choice.- Overview :Human performance in decision terms...
he becomes a Christian and gives Christianity his name. It would indeed be a ludicrous contradiction if an existing person asked what Christianity is in terms of existence and then spent his whole life deliberating on that-for in that case when should he exist in it?"
Belief is not a form of knowledge, but a free act, an expression of willWill (philosophy)Will, in philosophical discussions, consonant with a common English usage, refers to a property of the mind, and an attribute of acts intentionally performed. Actions made according to a person's will are called "willing" or "voluntary" and sometimes pejoratively "willful"...
, its not having a relationship with a doctrineDoctrineDoctrine is a codification of beliefs or a body of teachings or instructions, taught principles or positions, as the body of teachings in a branch of knowledge or belief system...
but having a relationship with God. Kierkegaard says "Faith, self-active, relates itself to the improbable and the paradox, is self-activeSelf-determination (philosophy)Self-determination is the idea of a positive freedom, a freedom for actions that we originate, actions that are "up to us." Such acts constitute the essence of free will. This is Mortimer Adler's term, translating ideas from Aristotle and Aquinas...
in discovering it and in holding it fast at every moment-in order to be able to believe."
Reviews and assessments
Kierkegaard was criticized by his former teacher and pastor Hans Lassen MartensenHans Lassen MartensenHans Lassen Martensen was a Danish bishop and academic.- Early life :Martensen was born in a middle-class Lutheran family in Flensburg, Duchy of Schleswig , as their only son. At that time Schleswig was a duchy between Holstein and Denmark...
, he concludes from Kierkegaard's writing, here and in Concluding Unscientific Postscript, that he's saying an individual can be saved without the help of the Church. Martensen believed Nineteenth Century SocialismSocialismSocialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
would destroy individualIndividualAn individual is a person or any specific object or thing in a collection. Individuality is the state or quality of being an individual; a person separate from other persons and possessing his or her own needs, goals, and desires. Being self expressive...
ity, but regarded Kierkegaard's emphasis on the single individual as too one-sided. Kierkegaard was responding to Hegelian writers such as Ludwig Feuerbach and David StraussDavid StraussDavid Friedrich Strauss was a German theologian and writer. He scandalized Christian Europe with his portrayal of the "historical Jesus," whose divine nature he denied...
who emphasized the objective nature of God. God is just man's idea.
Robert L Perkins wrote a book about Kierkegaard's books which used Johannes Climacus as a pseudonym. and Kierkegaardian biographer, Alastair Hannay, discusses Philosophical Fragments 36 times in Soren Kierkegaard, A Biography. Jyrki Kivelä wonders if Kiekegaard's Paradox is David HumeDavid HumeDavid Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
's miracleOf Miracles"Of Miracles" is the title of Section X of David Hume's An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding .-The text:In the 19th-century edition of Hume's Enquiry , sections X and XI were omitted, appearing in an Appendix with the misleading explanation that they were normally left out of popular editions...
. Which comes first existence or essenceExistence precedes essenceThe proposition that existence precedes essence is a central claim of existentialism, which reverses the traditional philosophical view that the essence or nature of a thing is more fundamental and immutable than its existence...
? Richard Gravil tries to explain it in his book Existentialism. Kierkegaard says God comes into existence again and again for each single individual. He didn't just come once for all.
Existential point of view
Hegel and his followers accepted Christianity without miracles or any other supernaturalism. Robert Solomon puts it this way:“What is Christianity, “revealed religion,” divested of its “figurative thought”? It is a faith without icons, images, stories, and myths, without miracles, without a resurrection, without a nativity, without Chartres and Fra AngelicoFra AngelicoFra Angelico , born Guido di Pietro, was an Early Italian Renaissance painter described by Vasari in his Lives of the Artists as having "a rare and perfect talent"...
, without wine and wafers, without heaven and hell, without God as judge and without judgment. With philosophical conceptualization, the Trinity is reduced to Kant’s categories of Universality (God the father) Particularity (Christ the Son) and Individuality (The Holy Spirit). The incarnation no longer refers to Christ alone, but only to the philosophical thesis that there is no God other than humanity. Spirit, that is, humanity made absolute, is God, which is to say that there is nothing other than humanity … What is left after the philosophical conceptualization of religion? To the orthodox Christian, nothing is left, save some terminology which has been emptied of its traditional significance. From Hegel’s gutted Christianity to HeineHeinrich HeineChristian Johann Heinrich Heine was one of the most significant German poets of the 19th century. He was also a journalist, essayist, and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of Lieder by composers such as Robert Schumann...
and NietzscheFriedrich NietzscheFriedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
’s aesthetic atheism is a very short distance indeed. From Hegel to Existentialism, By Robert C. SolomonRobert C. SolomonRobert C. Solomon was a professor of continental philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin in the USA.-Early life:...
, Oxford University Press US, 1989 p. 61
Eduard Geismar gave a seminar about the religious thought of Kierkegaard in 1933. He said, "Kierkegaard develops the concept of an existential thinker. The task of such a thinker is to understand himself in his existence, with its uncertainty, its risk and its passionPathosPathos represents an appeal to the audience's emotions. Pathos is a communication technique used most often in rhetoric , and in literature, film and other narrative art....
. Socrates was such an existential thinker. … from Socrates he has learned his method of communication, the indirect method. From Socrates he has learned to abstain from giving the reader and objective result to memorize, a systematicSystematic theologyIn the context of Christianity, systematic theology is a discipline of Christian theology that attempts to formulate an orderly, rational, and coherent account of the Christian faith and beliefs...
scheme for arrangement in paragraphs, all of which is relevant only to objectiveObjectivity (philosophy)Objectivity is a central philosophical concept which has been variously defined by sources. A proposition is generally considered to be objectively true when its truth conditions are met and are "mind-independent"—that is, not met by the judgment of a conscious entity or subject.- Objectivism...
scienceScienceScience is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
, but irrelevant to existential thought. From Socrates he has learned to confront the reader with a question, to picture the ideal as a possibilityPossibilityPossibility is the condition or fact of being possible. The Latin origins of the word hint at ability. Possibility also refers to something that "could happen", that is not precluded by the facts, but usually not probable...
. From Socrates he has learned to keep the reader at a distance, to throw him back on his individual responsibility, to compel him to find his own way to a solution. Kierkegaard does not merely talk about self-reliance; his entire literary art is devoted to the promotion of self-reliance."
Jean Paul Sartre vehemently disagreed with Kierkegaard's subjective ideas. He was HegelianHegelianismHegelianism is a collective term for schools of thought following or referring to G. W. F. Hegel's philosophy which can be summed up by the dictum that "the rational alone is real", which means that all reality is capable of being expressed in rational categories...
and had no room in his system for faith. Kierkegaard seemed to rely on faith at the expense of the intellectSacrifice of the intellectThe sacrifice of the intellect is a concept associated with Christian devotion, particularly with the Jesuit order. It was the "third sacrifice" demanded by the founder of the Jesuits, St...
. He developed the idea of bad faithBad faith (existentialism)Bad faith is a philosophical concept used by existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre to describe the phenomenon where a human being under pressure from societal forces adopts false values and disowns their innate freedom to act authentically...
. His idea is relative to Kierkegaard's idea of the Moment. If a situationSituation (Sartre)One of the first times in which Jean-Paul Sartre discussed the concept of Situation was in his 1943 Being and Nothingness, where he famously said that...
(occasion for Kierkegaard) makes an individual aware of his authentic self and the individual fails to choose that self that constitutes bad faith.
Sartre was against Kierkegaard's view that God can only be approached subjectively.
Time Magazine summed up Sartre and CamusAlbert CamusAlbert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
' interpretation of Kierkegaard in this way,
Christian point of view
Paul TillichPaul TillichPaul Johannes Tillich was a German-American theologian and Christian existentialist philosopher. Tillich was one of the most influential Protestant theologians of the 20th century...
and Neo-orthodoxNeo-orthodoxyNeo-orthodoxy, in Europe also known as theology of crisis and dialectical theology,is an approach to theology in Protestantism that was developed in the aftermath of the First World War...
theologians were influenced by Soren Kierkegaard. Tillich's book The New Being is similar to Kierkegaard's idea of the "New Birth". He's more of a Christian existentialistChristian existentialismChristian existentialism describes a group of writings that take a philosophically existentialist approach to Christian theology. The school of thought is often traced back to the work of the Danish philosopher and theologian considered the father of existentialism, Søren Kierkegaard...
than an Existentialist. Many of the 20th century Theologians attempt to answer all the questions of Christianity for the individual, like who Jesus wasQuest for the Historical JesusThe quest for the historical Jesus is the attempt to use historical rather than religious methods to construct a verifiable biography of Jesus. As originally defined by Albert Schweitzer, the quest began in the 18th century with Hermann Samuel Reimarus, up to William Wrede in the 19th century...
as a personPersonA person is a human being, or an entity that has certain capacities or attributes strongly associated with being human , for example in a particular moral or legal context...
. Kierkegaard's idea was different. He believed each single individual comes to Christ in his or her unique way. He was against all speculation regarding whether or not an individual accepts the prompting of the Holy Spirit. A New Birth doesn't come about through historical or philosophical ponderings. He wrote,"There is a prayer which especially in our times would be so apt: ‘God in heaven, I thank you for not requiring a person to comprehend Christianity, for if it were required, then I would be of all men the most miserable. The more I seek to comprehend it, the more I discover merely the possibility of offence. Therefore, I thank you for requiring only faith and I pray you will continue to increase it." "When love forgives the miracleTheological virtuesTheological virtues - in theology and Christian philosophy, are the character qualities associated with salvation, resulting from the grace of God, which enlightens human mind.- In the Bible :The three theological virtues are:...
of faith happens"
Thomas MertonThomas MertonThomas Merton, O.C.S.O. was a 20th century Anglo-American Catholic writer and mystic. A Trappist monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani, Kentucky, he was a poet, social activist, and student of comparative religion...
, a Trappist Monk was influenced by Philosophical Fragments and other works by Kierkegaard. He wrote a book about the new birth in 1961. Merton says we come to an understanding with God because he gives us free speech, ParrhesiaParrhesiaIn rhetoric, parrhesia is a figure of speech described as: to speak candidly or to ask forgiveness for so speaking. The term is borrowed from the Greek παρρησία meaning literally "to speak everything" and by extension "to speak freely," "to speak boldly," or "boldness." It implies not only...
. Kierkegaard and Merton both point more to understanding than to reason as the motivating factor in belief.
Julie Watkin, from the University of TasmaniaUniversity of TasmaniaThe University of Tasmania is a medium-sized public Australian university based in Tasmania, Australia. Officially founded on 1 January 1890, it was the fourth university to be established in nineteenth-century Australia...
, Australia, wrote the following about this book: Philosophical Fragments (…) “investigates in somewhat abstract philosophical language the Platonic-Socratic idea of recollection of truth before considering how truth is brought about in Christianity. The distinction made here is that with the former, the individual possesses the truth and so the teacher merely has to provoke it maieutically to the surface, so to speak, and is not vitally important, since any teacher would do. Where Christianity is concerned, the individual is like a blind person, needing the restoration of sight before he or she can see. The individual had the condition for seeing initially but is to blame for the loss of sight. The individual in Christianity thus needs the God and Savior to provide the condition for learning the truth that the individual is in untruth (i.e., sin). Since the God appears in the form of a lowly human and is not immediately recognizable, there is the element of the paradox. The individual must set aside objections of the understanding so that the paradoxical savior (who is the vitally important object of faith rather than the teaching) can give him-or herself to the individual in the moment along with the condition of faith."
Was Kierkegaard a MonergistMonergismMonergism describes the position in Christian theology of those who believe that God, through the Holy Spirit, works to bring about effectually the salvation of individuals through spiritual regeneration without cooperation from the individual...
or a Synergist? God's love moves everything.Moved by love, the God is thus eternally resolved to reveal himself. But as love is the motive so love must also be the end; for it would be a contradiction for the God to have a motive and an end which did not correspond. His love is a love of the learner, and his aim is to win him. For it is only in love that the unequal can be made equal, and it is only in equality or unity that an understanding can be effected, and without a perfect understanding the Teacher is not the God, unless the obstacle comes wholly from the side of the learner, in his refusing to realize that which had been made possible for him. But this love is through and through unhappy, for how great is the difference between them! It may seem a small matter for the God to make himself understood, but this is not so easy of accomplishment if he is to refrain from annihilating the unlikeness that exists between them. Philosophical Fragments p. 21
Primary sources
- Online English text of the Fragments
- Philosophical fragments Google Books (it has the historical introduction to the book)
- Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments Volume I, by Johannes Climacus, edited by Soren Kierkegaard, Copyright 1846 – Edited and Translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong 1992 Princeton University Press
Secondary sources
- Philosophical fragments and Johannes Climacus, By Robert L. Perkins, Mercer University Press, 1994
- Kierkegaard: a biography, By Alastair Hannay, Cambridge University Press, 2003 p. 222ff
- Is Kierkegaard's Absolute Paradox Hume's Miracle? By Jyrki Kivelä,
- Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre; The Search for Method (1st part). Introduction to Critique of Dialectical Reason, I. Marxism & Existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre 1960
- Existentialism, By Richard Gravil, Humanities-Ebooks
- Run to the mountain: the story of a vocation, By Thomas Merton, Patrick Hart, HarperCollins, 1995
