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We have been speaking about the thorn in the flesh; we have tried to explain the expression in a general sense, that is, in the general sense in which, by pertaining to one single individual, it pertains to all. We have not been particularly concerned about ferreting out what Paul may have particularly had in mind with this expression, and we have desired least of all to ask about it in the sense that someone might ask whether Paul was tall or short, handsome, and the like. We are especially unwilling to suggest the possible accidental something, the possible insignificant something, that may be the single individual’s thorn in the flesh.
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p. 346

 

Soren Aabye Kierkegaard

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The task of conducting the individual mind from its unscientific standpoint to that of science had to be taken in its general sense; we had to contemplate the formative development (Bildung) of the universal [or general] individual, of self-conscious spirit. As to the relation between these two [the particular and general individual], every moment, as it gains concrete form and its own proper shape and appearance, finds a place in the life of the universal individual. The particular individual is incomplete mind, a concrete shape in whose existence, taken as a whole, one determinate characteristic predominates, while the others are found only in blurred outline.

 

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

 

The very fact that the totality of our sense experience is such that by means of thinking (operations with concepts, and the creation and use of definite functional relations between them, and the coordination of sense experience to these concepts) it can be put in order, this fact is one which leaves us in awe, but which we shall never understand. One may say "the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility." . . . In speaking here concerning "comprehensibility," the expression is used in its most modest sense. It implies: the production of some sort of order among sense impressions, this order being produced by the creation of general concepts, relations between these concepts, and by relations between the concepts and sense experience, these relations being determined in any possible manner. It is in this sense that the world of our sense experience is comprehensible. The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle.

 

Albert Einstein

 

A person should not, if life is to have deeper meaning, become accustomed to understanding everything in general, should not be in a hurry to understand everything, but should patiently follow the pointer that continually points to himself. And even though in every other sense it is just a figurative expression to say that we see the finger of God in life, a person who is concerned about himself understands it quite literally, because all deeper and more inward self-knowledge sees the finger of God that points to him. To miss one letter confuses the whole world, and yet this confusion is nothing compared with the confusion that occurs when a person, in understanding life in its totality and the history of the human race, skips over one human being-himself-since the individual human being is, after all, not like a single letter, in itself a meaningless part of the word, but is the whole world. And yet this happens very frequently, and therefore very little is learned from life.

 

Soren Aabye Kierkegaard

 

The claim of the State Socialists, however, that this right would not be exercised in matters pertaining to the individual in the more intimate and private relations of his life is not borne out by the history of governments. It has ever been the tendency of power to add to itself, to enlarge its sphere, to encroach beyond the limits set for it; and where the habit of resisting such encroachment is not fostered, and the individual is not taught to be jealous of his rights, individuality gradually disappears and the government or State becomes the all-in-all. Control naturally accompanies responsibility. Under the system of State Socialism, therefore, which holds the community responsible for the health, wealth, and wisdom of the individual, it is evident that the community, through its majority expression, will insist more and more in prescribing the conditions of health, wealth, and wisdom, thus impairing and finally destroying individual independence and with it all sense of individual responsibility.

 

Benjamin Tucker

 

Since the importance of Holy Scripture is to be an interpreter of the divine to mankind, since its claim is to want to teach the believer everything from the beginning, it follows of itself that its language has shaped the discourse of the God-fearing about the divine, that its words and expressions resound again and again in the holy places, in every more solemn discourse about the divine, whether the speaker seeks to interpret the scriptural text by letting the text speak for itself or is using the scriptural expression in all its brevity as the clear and complete interpretation of the much he has said. But also in everyday and secular speech we sometimes hear a scriptural expression that has wandered from the sacred out into the world … One such biblical expression frequently encountered where least expected and at times put to a most inappropriate use is the phrase just read: the thorn in the flesh.

 

Soren Aabye Kierkegaard