Philosophical Fragments

Philosophical Fragments (Danish title: Philosophi-

ske Smuler eller En Smule Philosophi) is a Christian
philosophic work written by Danish philosopher Sren
Kierkegaard in 1844. It was the rst of three works writ-
ten under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus, the other
two were Johannes Climacus, 1841 and Concluding Un-
scientic Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, 1846.
Kierkegaardian scholars D. Anthony Storm
[nb 1]
and
Walter Lowrie believe Kierkegaard could be referring
to Johannes Climacus, a 7th-century Christian monk,
who believed that an individual is converted to Chris-
tianity by way of a ladder, one rung (virtue) at a time.
[1]
Kierkegaard believes the individual comes to an under-
standing with Christ by a leap.
Kierkegaard scholar and translator David F. Swenson
was the rst to translate the book into English in 1936.
He called it Philosophical Chips in an earlier biogra-
phy of Kierkegaard published in 1921
[nb 2]
and another
early translator, Lee Milton Hollander, called it Philo-
sophic Tries in his early translation of portions of
Kierkegaards works in 1923.
[nb 3]
Kierkegaard hinted that he might write a sequel in 17
pieces in his preface.
[2]
By February 22, 1846 he pub-
lished a 600 page sequel to his 83 page Fragments. He de-
voted over 200 pages of Concluding Unscientic Postscript
to an explanation of what he meant by Philosophical Frag-
ments.
[3]
He referred to a quote by Plato in his Postscript to Philo-
sophical 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?"
[4]
Kierkegaard had already asked
about truth 9 days earlier when he published Three Up-
building 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 spec-
ulation in regard to Christianity. Schlegel published a
book bearing the same title as Kierkegaards, Philosoph-
ical Fragments in 1799.
[nb 4]
1 Structure
Kierkegaard always wrote a preface signed by the name
of the pseudonymous author he was using. He began
this practice with his unpublished book Johannes Clima-
cus and continued it throughout his writing career. How-
ever, he added his own name as the person responsible for
publication of Philosophical Fragments, Concluding Un-
scientic Postscript, The Sickness Unto Death and Practice
in Christianity. He also wrote many discourses 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 ve major sections
A Project of Thought
The God as Teacher and Savior: An Essay of the
Imagination
The Absolute Paradox of the Oended Christian
Appendix: The Paradox and the Oended
Consciousness
The Case of the Contemporary Disciple
Interlude
The Disciple at Second Hand
2 Overview
Kierkegaard uses familiar Christian vocabulary to de-
velop his own method for arriving at Truth. He presents
two views, the Socratic and the religious. Socrates is con-
sidered an authoritative voice in the philosophic commu-
nity 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 inter-
ested in nite 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.
[5]
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 signicance.
[6]
He uses the category of the single individual to help those
seeking to become Christians. He says, I am he who
1
2 2 OVERVIEW
Socrates remained true to himself, through his manner of life giv-
ing artistic expression to what he had understood. Philosophical
Fragments p, 8
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.
[7]
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 be-
come a Christian.
[8]
He can only bring an individual
to the point of becoming a Christian because the single
individual must choose to become a Christian in free-
dom. Kierkegaard says, either believe or be oended.
But choose.
Philosophers and Historians tend to try to prove Chris-
tianity rather than teach belief in Christ through faith.
Kierkegaard says,
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 than
that I am engaged in proving it; but when I
let the proof go, the existence is there. (...)
unless we hold fast to the Socratic doctrine
of Recollection, and to his principle that ev-
ery individual man is Man, Sextus Empiricus
stands ready to make the transition involved
in teaching not only dicult but impossible;
and Protagoras will begin where Sextus Em-
piricus leaves o, maintaining that man is the
measure of all things, in the sense that the in-
dividual man is the measure for others, but by
no means in the Socratic sense that each man is
his own measure, neither more nor less. Philo-
sophical Fragments p. 29-30, 32
2.1 A Project of Thought
Kierkegaard uses the Doctrine of Recollection as an ex-
ample of how truth was found in Ancient Greek phi-
losophy and is still found in psychotherapy and modern
medicine. Both of these sciences are based on question-
ing 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 an-
swer he was looking for, this is known as Menos para-
dox. Kierkegaard puts his paradox this way, what a man
knows he cannot seek, since he knows it; and what he does
not knowhe cannot seek, since he does not even knowfor
what to seek.
[9]
The problemfor 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 nd 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
[note 1]
necessary for understanding the Truth.
[nb 5]
He explains
the whole process this way:
In so far as the learner is
in Error, but in consequence of his
own act (and in no other way can he
possibly be in this state, as we have
shown above), he might seem to be
free; for to be what one is by ones
own act is freedom. And yet he is
in reality unfree and bound and ex-
iled; for to be free from the Truth
is to be exiled from the Truth, and
to be exiled by ones own self is to
be bound. But since he is bound by
himself, may he not loose his bonds
and set himself free? For whatever
binds me, the same should be able
to set me free when it wills; and
since this power is here his own self,
he should be able to liberate him-
self. But rst at any rate he must
will it.
for he forges the chains of
his bondage with the strength of
his freedom, since he exists in it
without compulsion; and thus his
bonds grow strong, and all his pow-
ers unite to make him the slave of
2.1 A Project of Thought 3
sin. -- What now shall we call such
a Teacher, one who restores the lost
condition and gives the learner the
Truth? Let us call him Saviour,
for he saves the learner from his
bondage and from himself; let us
call him Redeemer, for he redeems
the learner from the captivity into
which he had plunged himself, and
no captivity is so terrible and so im-
possible to break, as that in which
the individual keeps himself. And
still we have not said all that is
necessary; for by his self-imposed
bondage the learner has brought
upon himself a burden of guilt, and
when the Teacher gives him the
condition and the Truth he consti-
tutes himself an Atonement, tak-
ing away the wrath impending upon
that of which the learner has made
himself guilty. Such a Teacher the
learner will never be able to forget.
For the moment he forgets him he
sinks back again into himself, just
as one who while in original pos-
session of the condition forgot that
God exists, and thereby sank into
bondage. Philosophical Fragments,
Swenson p. 12-13
The conversion of Saint Paul by Andrea Meldolla 1510-1553
Now he owes everything to his Teacher but is sad-
dened that it took so long to nd out that he forgot
his soul belonged to God and not to the world, and
he Repents.
[11]
The Moment
[12]
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-being to being. He calls this
change Conversion.
[13]
He says, When one who has
experienced birth thinks of himself as born, he conceives
this transition from non-being to being. The same princi-
ple must also hold in the case of the new birth. Or is the
diculty increased by the fact that the non-being which
precedes the new birth contains more being than the non-
being which preceded the rst birth? But who then may
be expected to think the newbirth?"
[14]
This is a paradox.
When the seed of the oak is planted in
earthen vessels, they break asunder; when new
wine is poured in old leather bottles, they
burst; what must happen when the God im-
plants 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 understandinghow 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 in-
deed 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 Gods concern precisely to have it so.
Philosophical Fragments p. 27
How many an individual has not asked,
What is truth? and at bottom hoped that it
would be a long time before the truth would
come so close to him that in the same instant it
would determine what it was his duty to do at
that moment. When the Pharisee, in order to
justify himself, asked, Who is my neighbor?
he presumably thought that this might develop
into a very protracted inquiry, so that it would
perhaps take a very long time and then per-
haps end with the admission that it was impos-
sible to dene the concept neighbor with ab-
solute accuracy for this very reason he asked
the question, to nd an escape, to waste time,
and to justify himself. But God catches the
wise in their foolishness, and Christ impris-
oned the questioner in the answer that con-
tained the task. So it is with all Christs an-
swers. Sren Kierkegaard, Works of Love p.
96-97
The 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 be-
comes a life in me. Therefore Christ compares
truth to food and appropriating it to eating, just
as, physically, food by being appropriated (as-
similated) becomes the life sustenance, so also,
spiritually, truth is both the giver of life and the
sustenance of life, is life. Practice in Christian-
ity, Hong 1991 p. 206
4 2 OVERVIEW
But Kierkegaard went deeply into the choice in his rst
book, Either/Or:
Let me make a little psychological obser-
vation. We frequently hear people vent their
dissatisfaction in a complaint about life; often
enough we hear them wishing. Imagine a poor
wretch like that; let us skip over the wishes that
shed no light here because they involve the ut-
terly accidental. He wishes: Would that I had
that mans intellect, or that mans talent etc. In-
deed, to go to the extreme: Would that I had
that mans steadfastness. Wishes of that sort
are frequently heard, but have you ever heard
a person earnestly wish that he could be some-
one else? It is so far from being the case that
it is particularly characteristic of people called
unfortunate individualities that they cling most
of all to themselves, that despite all their suf-
ferings they still would not wish to be any-
body else for all the world. That is because
such people are very close to the truth, and
they feel the eternal validity of the personal-
ity not in its blessing but in its torment, even if
they have retained this totally abstract expres-
sion for the joy in it; that they prefer to go on
being themselves. But the person with many
wishes is nevertheless continually of the opin-
ion that he would be himself even if everything
were changed. Consequently, there is some-
thing within him that in relation to everything
else is absolute, something whereby he is who
he is even if the change he achieved by his wish
were the greatest possible. That he is mistaken,
I shall show later, but at this point I merely
want to nd the most abstract expression for
this self that makes him who he is. And this
is nothing other than freedom. By this route
it is actually possible to present a very plausi-
ble demonstration of the eternal validity of the
personality. Indeed, even a suicide does not
actually will to do away with his self; he, too,
wishes-he wishes another form of his self, and
this is why we certainly nd a suicide who is
very convinced of the immortality of the soul,
but whose whole being was so ensnared that he
believed he would by this step nd the absolute
formfor his spirit. The reason, however, it may
seem to an individual as if he could be changed
continually and yet remain the same, as if his
innermost being were an algebraic symbol that
could signify anything whatever it is assumed
to be, is that he is in a wrong position, that he
has not chosen himself, does not have a concept
of it, and yet there is in his folly an acknowl-
edgment of the eternal validity of his person-
ality. But for him who is in a proper posi-
tion things take another course. He chooses
himself-not in a nite sense, for then this "self"
would indeed be something nite that would
fall among all the other nite things-but in the
absolute sense, and yet he does choose him-
self and not someone else. This self that he
chooses in this way is innitely concrete, for it
is he himself, and yet it is absolutely dierent
from his former self, for he has chosen it ab-
solutely. This self has not existed before, be-
cause it came into existence through a choice,
and yet it has existed, for it was indeed him-
self. The choice here makes two dialectical
movements simultaneous-that which is chosen
does not exist and comes into existence through
the choice-and that which is chosen exists; oth-
erwise it was not a choice. In other words, if
what I chose did not exist but came into exis-
tence absolutely through the choice, then I did
not choose-then I created. But I do not create
myself-I choose myself. Therefore, whereas
nature is created from nothing, whereas I my-
self as immediate personality am created from
nothing, I as free spirit am born out of the
principle of contradiction and am born through
choosing myself.
Sren Kierkegaard, Either/Or Part II,
Hong p. 215-216
2.2 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 circum-
stances constitute an occasion for an individual to be-
come 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 Hes teaching some-
thing 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 ef-
fected, 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.
[15]
Gods 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 misunderstand-
ing. God could showhimself to the learner and cause him
to forget his Error while contemplating Gods presence.
Both options are rejected on the basis of equality. How
can God make himself equal to man? Only by becoming
man himself, but not a king, or a leader of an established
2.3 The Disciple and the Disciple at Second Hand 5
order, no, for equalitys sake he must become one of the
humblest, a servant.
[16]
But God can't make himself understood because hes
completely unlike every other human being. God has not
sinned, whereas every human being has. This is a para-
dox 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 for-
giveness of sins.
[17]
Kierkegaard is saying that the Mo-
ment the individual comes in contact with the Paradox
is of utmost importance because this is where the deci-
sion is made. This is his Either/Or. Either believe or
be oended.
[18]
Reason is attempting to understand the
Paradox but comes to its own limit and can't understand
what it knows nothing about.
how should the Reason be able to under-
stand what is absolutely dierent from itself?
If this is not immediately evident, it will be-
come clearer in the light of the consequences;
for if the God is absolutely unlike man, then
man is absolutely unlike the God; but how
could the Reason be expected to understand
this? Here we seem to be confronted with a
paradox. Merely to obtain the knowledge that
the God is unlike him, man needs the help of
the God; and now he learns that the God is ab-
solutely dierent from himself. But if the God
and man are absolutely dierent, this cannot
be accounted for on the basis of what man de-
rives from the God, for in so far they are akin.
Their unlikeness must therefore be explained
by what man derives from himself, or by what
he has brought upon his own head. Philosoph-
ical Fragments, Swenson p. 34 (see 31-34)
Kierkegaard says Reason collides with the knowledge
of the Unknown. If Reason and God have a happy en-
counter the individual comes to be a believer. If the
collision results in an unhappy encounter the Reason is
Oended. The Reason says that the Paradox is absurd
and can get no meaning from the encounter. But when
Reason yielded itself while the Paradox bestowed it-
self, and the understanding is consummated in that happy
passion, the individual is happy and asks for nothing
more.
[19][nb 6]
Kierkegaard says Christ oers every sin-
gle individual the invitation.
[nb 7]
2.3 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 him-
self to be born and wrapped in swaddling-clothes. A con-
temporary 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.
[20]
The immediate contem-
porary can serve as an occasion for the acquirement of
historical knowledge, an occasion to help the individual
understand himself in the Socratic sense, or the contem-
porary could have received the condition from God and
become a believer.
[21]
The condition comes into existence. Kierkegaard says
the coming-into-existence is a kind of change, but is not
a change in essence but in being and is a transition from
not existing to existing. But this non-being which the sub-
ject of coming into existence leaves behind must itself
have some sort of being. He asks his reader to consider
whether the necessary can come into existence or if the
necessary Is, since everything that comes into existence
is historical. But for Kierkegaard all coming into exis-
tence takes place in freedom. The disciple freely chooses
to follow Christ when the Holy Spirit convinces him that
hes a sinner.
He nally discloses what this condition the Moment
brings to the individual. He says, faith
[nb 8]
has precisely
the required character; for in the certainty of belief there
is always present a negated uncertainty, in every way cor-
responding to the uncertainty of coming into existence.
Faith believes what it does not see...
[23]
6 2 OVERVIEW
Through the objective uncertainty and ig-
norance the paradox thrusts away in the in-
wardness of the existing person. But since the
paradox is not in itself the paradox, it does not
thrust away intensely enough. For without risk,
no faith; the more risk, the more faith. The
more objective reliability, the less inwardness
(since inwardness is subjectivity). The less ob-
jective reliability, the deeper is the possible in-
wardness. When the paradox itself is the para-
dox, it thrusts away by virtue of the absurd,
and the corresponding passion of inwardness
is faith. When Socrates believed that God is,
he held fast the objective uncertainty with the
entire passion of inwardness, and faith is pre-
cisely in this contradiction, in this risk. Now
it is otherwise. Instead of the objective uncer-
tainty, there is here the certainty that, viewed
objectively, it is the absurd, and this absur-
dity, held fast in the passion of inwardness, is
faith. 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, has come into ex-
istence exactly as an individual human being,
indistinguishable from any other human be-
ing. Concluding Unscientic Postscript, Hong
p. 209-210
An individual can know what Christianity is without
being a Christian. Kierkegaard says, By Baptism
Christianity gives him a name, and he is a Christian de
nomine (by name); but in the decision
[note 2]
he becomes
a Christian and gives Christianity his name.
[24]
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?"
[25][nb 9] [nb 10][nb 11]
Belief is not a form of knowledge, but a free act, an
expression of will, its not having a relationship with a
doctrine but having a relationship with God. Kierkegaard
says Faith, self-active, relates itself to the improbable
and the paradox, is self-active in discovering it and in
holding it fast at every moment-in order to be able to
believe.
[26][nb 12][nb 13]
From the God himself everyone receives
the condition who by virtue of the condition
becomes the disciple. (..) For whoever has
what he has from the God himself clearly has
it at rst hand; and he who does not have it
from the God himself is not a disciple. (...) if
the contemporary disciple gives the condition
to the successor, the latter will come to believe
in him. He receives the condition from him,
and thus the contemporary becomes the object
of Faith for the successor; for whoever gives
the individual this condition is eo ipso (in fact)
the object of Faith, and the God. Philosophical
Fragments p. 60-61
Kierkegaard mentioned Johann Georg Hamann (1730-
1788) in his book Repetition p. 149 (1843) and this book,
Philosophical Fragments (p. 38, Swenson), and what
Kierkegaard writes is written also by Hamann in his book,
Socratic Memorabilia, in this way:
Johann Hamann
The opinion of Socrates can be summa-
rized in these blunt words, when he said to the
Sophists, the learned men of his time, I know
nothing. Therefore these words were a thorn
in their eyes and a scourge on their backs. All
of Socrates ideas, which were nothing more
than expectorations and secretions of his igno-
rance, seemed as frightful to them as the hair
of Medusas head, the knob of the Aegis. The
ignorance of Socrates was sensibility. But be-
tween sensibility and a theoretical proposition
is a greater dierence than between a living an-
imal and its anatomical skeleton. The ancient
and modern sceptics may wrap themselves ever
so much in the lion skin of Socratic ignorance;
nevertheless they betray themselves by their
voices and ears. If they know nothing, why
does the world need a learned demonstration
of it? Their hypocrisy is ridiculous and inso-
lent. Whoever needs so much acumen and elo-
quence to convince himself of his ignorance,
however, must cherish in his heart a powerful
repugnance for the truth of it. Our own ex-
istence and the existence of all things outside
7
us must be believed, and cannot be determined
in any other way. What is more certain than
the end of man, and of what truth is there a
more general and better attested knowledge?
Nevertheless, no one is wise enough to believe
it except the one who, as Moses makes clear,
is taught by God himself to number his days.
What one believes does not, therefore, have
to be proved, and a proposition can be ever
so incontrovertibly proven without on that ac-
count being believed. There are proofs of truth
which are of as little value as the application
which can be made of the truths themselves;
indeed, one can believe the proof of the propo-
sition without giving approval to the proposi-
tion itself. The reasons of a Hume may be
ever so cogent, and the refutations of themonly
assumptions and doubts; thus faith gains and
loses equally with the cleverest pettifogger and
most honorable attorney. Faith is not the work
of reason, because faith arises just as little from
reason as tasting and seeing does. Hamanns
Socratic Memorabilia, (Compiled for the Bore-
dom of the Public by a Lover of Boredom),
A translation and commentary by James C.
OFlaherty, 1967 Johns Hopkins Press p. 167-
169
Only one who receives the condition from
the God is a believer. (This corresponds ex-
actly to the requirement that man must re-
nounce his reason, and on the other hand dis-
closes the only form of authority that corre-
sponds to Faith.) If anyone proposes to believe,
i.e., imagines himself to believe, because many
good and upright people living here on the hill
have believed, i.e., have said that they believed
(for no man can control the profession of an-
other further than this; even if the other has
endured, borne, suered all for the Faith, an
outsider cannot get beyond what he says about
himself, for a lie can be stretched precisely as
far as the truthin the eyes of men, but not in
the sight of God), then he is a fool, and it is
essentially indierent whether he believes on
account of his own and perhaps a widely held
opinion about what good and upright people
believe, or believes a Mnchausen. If the cred-
ibility of a contemporary is to have any inter-
est for himand alas! one may be sure that
this will create a tremendous sensation, and
give occasion for the writing of folios; for this
counterfeit earnestness, which asks whether so-
and-so is trustworthy instead of whether the in-
quirer himself has faith, is an excellent mask
for spiritual indolence, and for town gossip on
a European scaleif the credibility of such a
witness is to have any signicance it must be
with respect to the historical fact. But what his-
torical fact? Philosophical Fragments p. 77
if it is the misfortune of the age that it
has come to know too much, has forgotten
what it means to exist and what inwardness
is, then it was important that sin not be con-
ceived 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 psy-
chological inquiry, which in itself makes clear
that sin cannot nd a place in the system, pre-
sumably just like immortality, faith, the para-
dox, and other such concepts that essentially
related to existing, just what systematic think-
ing 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 per-
sons state of mind in that desperate exemp-
tion from fullling the ethical. When truth is
subjective, the inwardness of sin as anxiety in
the existing individuality is the greatest possi-
ble distance and the most painful distance from
the truth. Concluding Unscientic Postscript p.
269
3 Reviews and assessments
Kierkegaard was criticized by his former teacher and
pastor Hans Lassen Martensen, he concludes from
Kierkegaards writing, here and in Concluding Unscien-
tic Postscript, that hes saying an individual can be saved
without the help of the Church. Martensen believed
19th century Socialism would destroy individuality, but
regarded Kierkegaards emphasis on the single individ-
ual as too one-sided.
[27]
Kierkegaard was responding to
Hegelian writers such as Ludwig Feuerbach and David
Strauss who emphasized the objective nature of God.
God is just mans idea.
Man is an object to God, before God per-
ceptibly imparts himself to man; he thinks of
man; he determines his action in accordance
with the nature of man and his needs. God is
indeed free in will; he can reveal himself or not;
but he is not free as to the understanding; he
cannot reveal to man whatever he will, but only
what is adapted to man, what is commensurate
with his nature such as it actually is; he reveals
what he must reveal, if his revelation is to be
a revelation for man, and not for some other
kind of being. Now what God thinks in rela-
tion to man is determined by the idea of man
8 3 REVIEWS AND ASSESSMENTS
it has arisen out of reection on human na-
ture. God puts himself in the place of man, and
thinks of himself as this other being can and
should think of him; he thinks of himself, not
with his own thinking power, but with mans.
In the scheme of his revelation God must have
reference not to himself, but to mans power of
comprehension. That which comes from God
to man, comes to man only from man in God,
that is, only from the ideal nature of man to
the phenomenal man, from the species to the
individual. Thus, between the divine revela-
tion and the so-called human reason or nature,
there is no other than an illusory distinction;
the contents of the divine revelation are of hu-
man origin, for they have proceeded not from
God as God, but from God as determined by
human reason, human wants, that is, directly
from human reason and human wants. And so
in revelation man goes out of himself, in order,
by a circuitous path, to return to himself! Here
we have a striking conrmation of the position
that the secret of theology is nothing else than
anthropology the knowledge of God nothing
else than a knowledge of man! The Essence of
Christianity, Ludwig Feuerbach, 1841
[28]
Otto Peiderer wrote an assessment of Kierkegaards
views in 1877.
[29]
He called his work "ascetic
individualistic mysticism.
[30]
Robert L Perkins wrote a book about Kierkegaards
books which used Johannes Climacus as a pseudonym.
[31]
and Kierkegaardian biographer, Alastair Hannay, dis-
cusses Philosophical Fragments 36 times in Sren
Kierkegaard, A Biography.
[32]
Jyrki Kivel wonders
if Kierkegaards Paradox is David Hume's miracle.
[32]
Which comes rst existence or essence? Richard
Gravil tries to explain it in his book Existentialism.
[32]
Kierkegaard says God comes into existence again and
again for each single individual. He didn't just come once
for all.
3.1 Existential point of view
An early existentialist, Miguel de Unamuno, discussed
the relation between faith and reason in relation to
Kierkegaards Postscript to this book.
just as there is logical truth, opposed to
error, and moral truth, opposed to falsehood,
so there is also aesthetic truth or verisimili-
tude, which is opposed to extravagance, and
religious truth or hope, which is opposed to
the inquietude of absolute despair. For esthetic
verisimilitude, the expression of which is sen-
sible, diers from logical truth, the demonstra-
tion of which is rational; and religious truth, the
The Descent of the Modernists
truth of faith, the substance of things hoped for,
is not equivalent to moral truth, but superim-
poses itself upon it. He who arms a faith built
upon a basis of uncertainty does not and cannot
lie. And not only do we not believe with reason,
nor yet above reason nor below reason, but we
believe against reason. Religious faith, it must
be repeated yet again, is not only irrational, it
is contra-rational. Kierkegaard says: Poetry
is illusion before knowledge; religion illusion
after knowledge. Between poetry and religion
the worldly wisdom of living plays its comedy.
Every individual who does not live either poet-
ically or religiously is a fool (Afsluttende uv-
idenskabelig Efterskrift, chap, iv., sect. 2a, 2,
Concluding Unscientic Postscript to the Philo-
sophical Fragments). The same writer tells us
that Christianity is a desperate sortie (salida).
Even so, but it is only by the very desperateness
of this sortie that we can win through to hope,
to that hope whose vitalizing illusion is of more
force than all rational knowledge, and which
assures us that there is always something that
cannot be reduced to reason. And of reason the
same may be said as was said of Christ: that he
who is not with it is against it. That which is not
rational is contra-rational; and such is hope. By
this circuitous route we always arrive at hope in
the end.
[33]
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 gurative thought"? It is
a faith without icons, images, stories, and
3.1 Existential point of view 9
myths, without miracles, without a resurrec-
tion, without a nativity, without Chartres and
Fra Angelico, without wine and wafers, with-
out heaven and hell, without God as judge and
without judgment. With philosophical concep-
tualization, the Trinity is reduced to Kant's cat-
egories of Universality (God the father) Partic-
ularity (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 philosoph-
ical conceptualization of religion? To the or-
thodox Christian, nothing is left, save some ter-
minology which has been emptied of its tradi-
tional signicance. From Hegels gutted Chris-
tianity to Heine and Nietzsche's aesthetic athe-
ismis a very short distance indeed. FromHegel
to Existentialism, By Robert C. Solomon, Ox-
ford University Press US, 1989 p. 61
[34]
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 passion. 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
systematic scheme for arrangement in paragraphs, all of
which is relevant only to objective science, but irrelevant
to existential thought. From Socrates he has learned to
confront the reader with a question, to picture the ideal
as a possibility. From Socrates he has learned to keep the
reader at a distance, to throw him back on his individ-
ual responsibility, to compel him to nd 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.
[35]
Jean-Paul Sartre vehemently disagreed with
Kierkegaards subjective ideas. He was Hegelian
and had no room in his system for faith. Kierkegaard
seemed to rely on faith at the expense of the intellect.
He developed the idea of bad faith. His idea is relative
to Kierkegaards idea of the Moment. If a situation
(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 Kierkegaards view that God can only
be approached subjectively.
Compared with Hegel, Kierkegaard
scarcely seems to count. He is certainly not
a philosopher; moreover, he himself refused
this title. In fact, he is a Christian who is not
willing to let himself be enclosed in the system
and who, against Hegels "intellectualism,
asserts unrelentingly the irreducibility and
the specicity of what is lived. There is
no doubt, as Jean Wahl has remarked, that
a Hegelian would have assimilated this ro-
mantic and obstinate consciousness to the
unhappy consciousness, a moment which
had already been surpassed and known in its
essential characteristics. But it is precisely
this objective knowledge which Kierkegaard
challenges. For him the surpassing of the
unhappy consciousness remains purely verbal.
The existing man cannot be assimilated by a
system of ideas. Whatever one may say or
think about suering, it escapes knowledge
to the extent that it is suered in itself, for
itself, and to the degree that knowledge
remains powerless to transform it. The
philosopher constructs a palace of ideas and
lives in a hovel. Of course, it is religion which
Kierkegaard wants to defend. Hegel was not
willing for Christianity to be surpassed, but
for this very reason he made it the highest
moment of human existence. Kierkegaard,
on the contrary, insists on the transcendence
of the Divine; between man and God he
puts an innite distance. The existence of
the Omnipotent cannot be the object of an
objective knowledge; it becomes the aim of a
subjective faith. And this faith, in turn, with its
strength and its spontaneous armation, will
never be reduced to a moment which can be
surpassed and classied, to a knowing. Thus
Kierkegaard is led to champion the cause of
pure, unique subjectivity against the objective
universality of essence, the narrow, passionate
intransigence of the immediate life against the
tranquil mediation of all reality, faith, which
stubbornly asserts itself, against scientic
evidence despite the scandal. Existentialism
from Dostoyevsky
Dostoyevsky to Sartre; The Search for
Method (1st part). Introduction to Critique of
Dialectical Reason, I. Marxism & Existential-
ism, Jean-Paul Sartre 1960
[36]
Time Magazine summed up Sartre and Camus' interpre-
tation of Kierkegaard in this way,
Modern existentialists, like Sartre and
Camus, have kidnapped Kierkegaards absur-
dity, stripped it of all religious signicance,
and beaten it into insensibility, using it merely
as a dummy to dramatize what they consider
the futility of any way of life.
[37]
10 5 NOTES
3.2 Christian point of view
Paul Tillich and Neo-orthodox theologians were inu-
enced by Sren Kierkegaard. Tillichs book The New
Being
[38]
is similar to Kierkegaards idea of the New
Birth. Hes more of a Christian existentialist than an
Existentialist. Many of the 20th century Theologians at-
tempt to answer all the questions of Christianity for the
individual, like who Jesus was as a person. Kierkegaards
idea was dierent. He believed each single individual
comes to Christ in his or her unique way.
[39]
He was
against all speculation regarding whether or not an indi-
vidual accepts the prompting of the Holy Spirit. A New
Birth doesn't come about through historical or philosoph-
ical 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 dis-
cover merely the possibility of oence. There-
fore, I thank you for requiring only faith and I
pray you will continue to increase it. When
love forgives the miracle of faith happens
[40]
Thomas Merton, a Trappist Monk was inuenced
by Philosophical Fragments and other works by
Kierkegaard.
[41]
He wrote a book about the new birth
in 1961.
[42]
Merton says we come to an understanding
with God because he gives us free speech, Parrhesia.
[43]
Kierkegaard and Merton both point more to under-
standing than to reason as the motivating factor in
belief.
Julie Watkin, fromthe University of Tasmania, Australia,
wrote the following about this book: Philosophical Frag-
ments () investigates in somewhat abstract philosoph-
ical 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 sur-
face, 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 imme-
diately recognizable, there is the element of the paradox.
The individual must set aside objections of the under-
standing 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.
[44]
Was Kierkegaard a Monergist or a Synergist? Gods 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
eected, and without a perfect understanding
the Teacher is not the God, unless the obsta-
cle 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 dif-
ference between them! It may seem a small
matter for the God to make himself under-
stood, but this is not so easy of accomplishment
if he is to refrain from annihilating the unlike-
ness that exists between them. Philosophical
Fragments p. 20
4 See also
The New life of Dante Alighieri (The Vita Nuova of
Dante)
Selected sermons of Schleiermacher, Chapter IV:
The Necessity of the New Birth
Faith and Knowledge, by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel, 1802-Google Books
Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, The Everlasting
Yea or No
19th Cent. Philosophy: Soren Kierkegaard Gregory
B. Sadler, has a whole video series about Philosoph-
ical Fragments on YouTube.
5 Notes
[1] Kierkegaard started talking about the condition in Ei-
ther/Or
Every human being, no matter how
slightly gifted he is, however subordinate his
position in life may be, has a natural need
to formulate a life-view, a conception of the
meaning of life and of its purpose. The per-
son who lives esthetically also does that, and
the popular expression heard in all ages and
from various stages is this: One must enjoy
life. There are, of course, many variations of
11
this, depending on dierences in the concep-
tions of enjoyment, but all are agreed that we
are to enjoy life. But the person who says that
he wants to enjoy life always posits a condi-
tion that either lies outside the individual or
is within the individual in such a way that it
is not there by virtue of the individual him-
self. I beg you to keep rather xed the phrases
of this last sentence, for they have been care-
fully chosen. Either/Or II p. 180 see also
Fear and Trembling p. 98-100 and Eighteen
Upbuilding Discourses p. 27, 132-139
[2] Kierkegaard devoted his rst book Either/Or to making a
decision and choosing either God or the world. He wrote,
If a man esthetically ponders a host of life
tasks, then he does not readily have one
Either/Or but a great multiplicity, because
the self-determining aspect of the choice has
not been ethically stressed and because, if
one does not choose absolutely, one chooses
only for the moment and for that reason
can choose something else the next moment.
What is important in choosing is not so much
to choose the right thing as the energy, the
earnestness, and the pathos with which one
chooses. In the choosing the personality de-
clares itself in its inner innity and in turn
the personality is thereby consolidated. Ei-
ther/Or II Part II p. 167
His self is, so to speak, outside him, and it
has to be acquired, and repentance is his love
for it, because he chooses it absolutely from
the hand of God. What I have expressed here
is not academic wisdom; it is something every
person can express if he wants to, something
every person can will if he so wills. This,
you see, is why it is so hard for individuals
to choose themselves, because the absolute
isolation here is identical with the most pro-
found continuity, because as long as one has
not chosen oneself there seems to be a pos-
sibility of one way or another of becoming
something dierent. So here you have my
humble view of what it is to choose and to
repent. It is improper to love a young girl as
if she were ones mother or ones mother as
if she were a young girl; every love has its
distinctiveness; love of God has its absolute
distinctiveness, and its expression is repen-
tance. () The Either/Or I erected between
living esthetically and living ethically is not
an unqualied dilemma, because it actually
is a matter of only one choice. Through this
choice, I actually choose between good and
evil, but I choose the good, I choose eo ipso
the choice between good and evil. The orig-
inal choice is forever present in every suc-
ceeding choice. I as free spirit am born out
of the principle of contradiction and am born
through choosing myself. Either/Or Part II p.
217-219
[1] Storm says Johannes Climacus (Kierkegaard) is not a
Christian but is explaining how one would become a
Christian if one was interested in becoming that. See
his commentary on Kierkegaards unpublished book Jo-
hannes Climacus 1841-42 http://sorenkierkegaard.org/
johannes-climacus.html
[2] Refer to Sren Kierkegaard, Scandinavian studies and
notes, Volume 6 No. 7 August 1921 Editor George
T Flom University of Illinois Published in Menasha,
Wisconsin p. 24 http://www.archive.org/stream/
scandinavianstu06sociuoft#page/24/mode/1up
[3] Hollander provides more insight Selections from
the writings of Kierkegaard 1923, Hollander, Lee
Milton, 18801972 http://www.archive.org/stream/
selectionsfromwr00kieruoft#page/26/mode/2up
[4] Schlegels book was bits of philosophy cut up into
little fragments http://books.google.com/books?
id=M49TbSqbzyAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=
friedrich+von+schlegel&hl=en&ei=A9nuTe_
qC66r0AGDta3yDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=
result&resnum=8&ved=0CFEQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&
q&f=false Friedrich Schlegels Lucinde and the
Fragments, By Friedrich von Schlegelb University
of Minnesota Press, 1971 He also wrote The Phi-
losophy of History, this link takes you to Lecture
X - On the Christian Point of View in the Philos-
ophy of History http://www.archive.org/stream/
philosophyofhist00schlrich#page/274
[5] He forgot about Jobs lessons. His soul belonged to the
world as its illegitimate possession; it belonged to God as
his legitimate possession; it belonged to Kierkegaard as
his possession, as a possession that is to be gained.
[10]
See Four Upbuilding Discourses, 1843
[6] Dr. Stephen Hicks, Professor of Philosophy at
Rockford College created a YouTube video explaining
Kierkegaards view about faith and reason http://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=jdby3iip69k
[7] Kierkegaard explained this further in his book Training in
Christianity, which is now translated Practice in Christian-
ity.
[8] "Tro is translated here and in the following three pages
as belief or faith"--- Josiah Thompson says the following
about Kierkegaards use of the word Tro,
In Fragments Climacus makes clear that
he means to give the Danish term for belief,
Tro, a double sense. In the most eminent
sense it will refer to the Christians faith, his
capacity to believe against reason and the aw-
ful paradox of Gods entry into time through
Christ. As the mental act that somehowholds
together oppositions of incalculable severity,
Tro, in this sense is the category of de-
spair. But there is another direct and ordi-
nary sense of Tro that refers not to the re-
lationship of mind to the Christian paradox,
but to the relationship of the mind to the his-
torical. In this second sense of belief, Tro is
the category of doubt. In both senses Tro is
12 5 NOTES
founded on opposition, ultimately on the op-
position which is consciousness itself. Also
in both senses, Tro is seen as a mental act
that respects yet defeats the opposition which
upon which it is founded. Defeat may be
too strong a word, for uncertainty is never re-
ally defeated by Tro, but only ignored, uncou-
pled, put out of circuit. Thus Climacus ar-
gues that in the certainty of belief there is al-
ways a negated uncertainty, in every way cor-
responding to the becoming of existence. Be-
lief believes what it does not see; it sees that
the star is there, but what it believes is that the
star has come into existence.
[22]
The essen-
tial claim, then, is that the existence of any-
thing cannot be known, but must be believed.
Kierkegaard, by Josiah Thompson, Alfred A.
Knopf, 1973, p. 173 (See p. 170-180))
see also Martin Buber I and Thou for his explanation of
the same concept
[9] Kierkegaard repeats the same message in The Concept of
Anxiety: When a man of rigid orthodoxy applies all his
diligence and learning to prove that every word in the New
Testament derives from the respective apostle, inwardness
will gradually disappear, and he nally comes to under-
stand something quite dierent from what he wished to
understand. When a freethinker applies all his acumen to
prove the New Testament was not written until the 2nd
century, it is precisely inwardness he is afraid of, and
therefore he must have the New Testament placed in the
same class with other books. p. 142-143
[10] He says thinking about life or death in an academic
way is contemplation but contemplation should lead to a
conclusion at some point.
Indeed, from what does that confusion of
thoughtlessness come but from this, that the
individuals thought ventures, observing, out
into life, wants to survey the whole of exis-
tence, that play of forces that only God in
heaven can viewcalmly, because in his provi-
dence he governs it with wise and omniscient
purpose, but which weakens a human be-
ings mind and makes himmentally deranged,
causes him misplaced care, and strengthens
with regrettable consolation. Misplaced care,
namely in mood, because he worries about
so much; regrettable consolation, namely in
slack lethargy, when his contemplation has
so many entrances and exits that it eventually
wanders. And when death comes it still de-
ceives the contemplator, because all his con-
templation did not come a single step closer
to the explanation but only deceived him out
of life. Three Discourses on Imagined Occa-
sions p. 93
93
[11] He repeated the same thing another way in Concluding
Unscientic Postscript to Philosophical Fragments: In the
animal world, the particular animal is related directly as
specimen to species, participates as a matter of course in
the development of the species, if one wants to talk about
such a thing. When a breed of sheep is improved, im-
proved sheep are born because the specimen merely ex-
presses the species. But surely it is dierent when an in-
dividual, who is qualied as spirit, relates himself to a
generation. Or is it assumed that Christian parents give
birth to Christian children as a matter of course? At least
Christianity does not assume it; on the contrary, it as-
sumes that sinful children are born of Christian parents
just as in paganism. Or will anyone assume that by being
born of Christian parents one has come a single step closer
to Christianity than the person born of pagan parents if,
please note, he also is brought up in Christianity? And
yet it is of this confusion that modern speculative thought
is, if not directly the cause, nevertheless often enough the
occasion so that the individual is regarded as related to
the development of the human spirit as a matter of course
(just as the animal specimen is related to the species), as if
development of spirit were something one generation can
dispose of by a will in favor of another, as if the generation
and not individuals were qualied as spirit, which is both
a self-contradiction and an ethical abomination. Devel-
opment of spirit is self-activity; the spiritually developed
individual takes his spiritual development along with him
in death. If a succeeding individual is to attain it, it must
occur through self-activity; therefore he must skip noth-
ing. Now, of course it is easier and simpler and cheaper to
bellow about being born in the speculative 19th century.
p. 345
[12] Fragments attempted to show that contemporaneity does
not help at all, because there is in all eternity no direct tran-
sition which also would indeed have been an unbounded
injustice toward all those who come later, an injustice and
a distinction that would be much worse than that between
Jew and Greek, circumcised and uncircumcised, which
Christianity has canceled. Lessing has himself consoli-
dated this issue in the following words, which he has in
boldface: contingent truths of history can never be-
come the demonstrations of necessary truths of rea-
son. ... Everything that becomes historical is contingent,
inasmuch as precisely by coming into existence, by be-
coming historical, it has its element of contingency, inas-
much as contingency is precisely the one factor in all com-
ing into existence. and therein lies again the incommen-
surability between a historical truth and an eternal deci-
sion. It is a leap, and this is the word that Lessing has
employed, within the accidental limitation that is charac-
terized by an illusory distinction between contemporane-
ity and non-contemporaneity. His words read as follows:
That, that is the ugly broad ditch that I cannot cross, how-
ever often and however earnestly I have tried to make the
leap. to have been very close to making the leap is
nothing whatever, precisely because the leap is the cat-
egory of decision. Concluding Unscientic Postscript p.
97-98 See Stages on Lifes Way, Hong p. 443-445
[13] And he explains it again in Preparation for a Christian Life
Preparation for a Christian Life (Practice in Christianity)
13
6 References
[1] A Short Life of Kierkegaard, by Walter Lowrie, 1942,
1970, Princeton University p. 166-167
[2] Philosophical Fragments p. 5 http://www.religion-online.
org/showchapter.asp?title=2512&C=2378
[3] See Concluding Unscientic Postscript Chapter IV p 361
[4] Concluding Postscript title page
[5] Kierkegaard within your grasp, by Shelley O'Hara, Wiley
Publishing inc. p. 10 http://books.google.com/books?
id=kC6UFe633GAC&dq=Kierkegaard%20within%
20your%20grasp&source=gbs_similarbooks
[6] Philosophical Fragments, Swenson p. 11-14
[7] Point of View, Lowrie p. 75
[8] Point of View, Lowrie, note p. 22
[9] Philosophical Fragments, Swenson p. 9
[10] Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses p. 167
[11] Philosophical Fragments p. 13
[12] Kierkegaard wrote about the nite moment in Either/Or
I, Swenson An ecstatic lecture p. 37-38 and Part II, Hong
p. 21-22, 83-85 now hes writing about the Eternal Mo-
ment. http://www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?
title=2512&C=2380
[13] Philosophical Fragments, Swenson p. 11-15
[14] Philosophical Fragments, Swenson p. 15
[15] Philosophical Fragments p. 20
[16] Read it here from his book: http://www.religion-online.
org/showchapter.asp?title=2512&C=2380
[17] Concluding Unscientic Postscript p. 217 (read p.202-
217) also see Philosophical Fragments p.31-35 and The
Sickness Unto Death p. 132-133 Hannay
[18] Kierkegaard wrote about this in Either/Or p. 213-219 as
well as his discourses but states it most clearly in Upbuild-
ing Discourses in Various Spirits, Hong 1993, p.203-212|
[19] Philosophical Fragments, Swenson p. 35-38, Either/Or
Part II, Hong p. 349-352, Concluding Unscientic
Postscript p. 199-222
[20] Philosophic Fragments p. 42-46
[21] Philosophic Fragments p. 52
[22] Philosophical Fragments P. 60
[23] Philosophic Fragments p. 55-56
[24] Concluding Unscientic Postscript p. 272-273
[25] Concluding Unscientic Postscript p. 270
[26] Concluding Unscientic Postscript p. 233
[27] http://www.archive.org/stream/christianethicsg00mart#
page/202/mode/2up Read Section 63-71
[28] Chapter XXI. The Contradiction in the Revelation of God
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/feuerbach/
works/essence/ec21.htm
[29] That review is listed in Secondary Sources below.
[30] Peiderer p. 307-308 see Secondary Sources for more
[31] A free peek from Google Books can be found in Sec-
ondary Sources
[32] (See link in Secondary Sources)
[33] THE TRAGIC SENSE OF LIFE INMENANDINPEOPLES
(1921) Unamuno, Miguel de, 1864-1936 p. 198
[34] (See pages 59-68) as well as Chapter 5
Kierkegaard and Subjective Truth p. 72
http://books.google.com/books?id=3JA3vyj4slsC&
pg=PA59&dq=faith+and+knowledge+hegel&hl=en&
ei=jZ3ATfuYAY_rgQfIlcDUBQ&sa=X&oi=book_
result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CEQQ6AEwBQ#
v=onepage&q&f=false
[35] Lectures on the Religious Thought of Sren Kierkegaard,
by Eduard Geismar, Given at Princeton Theological Sem-
inary in March 1936 p. 47-48
[36] See the link to this article in Primary sources below
[37] Time Magazine, Religion: Great Dane December
16, 1946 http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,
9171,934769-1,00.html
[38] http://www.religion-online.org/showbook.asp?title=375
[39] Here is a YouTube recording of C. S. Lewis writing
about the New Man in the 1940s http://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=Dvcx6ATLYiI&feature=related
[40] Sickness Unto Death, 1989 Hannay p.165, 162 (note),
Works of Love, p. 295
[41] See Run to the mountain: the story of a vocation, By
Thomas Merton in secondary links below
[42] Read The New Man http://books.google.
com/books?id=fIAzq6xvnbgC&printsec=
frontcover&dq=the+new+man+merton&hl=en&ei=
4BiDToznH6XG0AGkyrWjAQ&sa=X&oi=book_
result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#
v=onepage&q=62&f=false
[43] The New Man, By Thomas Merton p. 62
[44] Historical Dictionary of Kierkegaards Philosophy, By
Julie Watkin, Scarecrow Press, 2001 p. 193-194
7 Sources
7.1 Primary sources
Online English text of the Fragments
14 8 EXTERNAL LINKS
Philosophical fragments Google Books (it has the
historical introduction to the book)
Concluding Unscientic Postscript to Philosophical
Fragments Volume I, by Johannes Climacus, edited
by Sren Kierkegaard, Copyright 1846 Edited and
Translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong
1992 Princeton University Press
7.2 Secondary sources
The Philosophy of Religion: On the Basis of Its His-
tory, by Otto Peiderer 1887 p. 209-213, 307-308
Philosophical fragments and Johannes Climacus by
Robert L. Perkins, Mercer University Press, 1994
Kierkegaard: a biography by Alastair Hannay, Cam-
bridge University Press, 2003 p. 222
Is Kierkegaards Absolute Paradox Humes Miracle?
By Jyrki Kivel
Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre; The
Search for Method (1st part). Introduction to Cri-
tique of Dialectical Reason, I. Marxism & Existen-
tialism, 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
8 External links
Quotations related to Philosophical Fragments at
Wikiquote
15
9 Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses
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