Suppose that Christianity does not at all want to be understood; suppose that, in order to express this and to prevent anyone, misguided, from taking the road of objectivity, it has proclaimed itself to be the paradox. Suppose that it wants to be only for existing persons and essentially for persons existing in inwardness, in the inwardness of faith, which cannot be expressed more definitely than this: it is the absurd, adhered to firmly with the passion of the infinite. Suppose that Christianity does not want to be understood and that the maximum of any eventual understanding is to understand that it cannot be understood. Suppose that it so decisively accentuates existing that the single individual becomes a sinner, Christianity the paradox, and existence the time of decision. Suppose that speculating is a temptation, the most precarious of all. Suppose that the speculator is not the prodigal son but a naughty child who refuses to stay where existing human being belong, in the children’s nursery and the education room of existence where one becomes adult only though inwardness in existing, but who instead wants to enter God’s council, continually screaming that, from the point of view of the eternal, the divine, the theocentric, there is no paradox. Suppose that the speculative thinker is the restless resident who, although it is obvious that he is a renter, yet in view of the abstract truth that, eternally and divinely perceived, all property is in common, wants to be the owner, so that there is nothing to do except to send for a police officer, who would presumably say, just as the subpoena servers say to Gert Westphaler: We are sorry to have to come on this errand.
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Concluding Postscript, Hong p. 214Soren Aabye Kierkegaard
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Suppose that someone wanted to communicate the following conviction: truth is inwardness; objectively there is no truth, but the approximation of the truth. Suppose he had enough zeal and enthusiasm to get it said, because when people heard it they would be saved. Suppose he proclaimed this truth to all people. … The main point was to become understood, and the inwardness of the understanding would indeed be that the single individual would understand this by himself. Now he has even gone so far as to obtain barkers, and a barker of inwardness is a creature worth seeing. Actually to communicate such a conviction would require art and self-control; enough self-control to comprehend inwardly that the God-relationship of the individual human being is the main point, the meddling busyness of a third person is a lack of inwardness.
Soren Aabye Kierkegaard
Here is such a definition of truth: An objective uncertainty, held fast through appropriation with the most passionate inwardness, is the truth, the highest truth there is for an existing person. At the point where the road swings off (and where that is cannot be stated objectively, since it is precisely subjectivity), objective knowledge is suspended. Objectively he then has only uncertainty, but this is precisely what intensifies the infinite passion of inwardness, and truth is precisely the daring venture of choosing the objective uncertainty with the passion of the infinite. I observe nature in order to find God, and I do indeed see omnipotence and wisdom, but I also see much that troubles and disturbs. The sum total of this is an objective uncertainty, but the inwardness is so very great, precisely because it grasps this objective uncertainty with all the passion of the infinite. In a mathematical proposition, for example, the objectivity is given, but therefore its truth is also an indifferent truth.
Soren Aabye Kierkegaard
Suppose all of the syllabi and curricula and textbooks in the schools disappeared. Suppose all of the standardized tests — city-wide, state-wide, and national — were lost. In other words, suppose that the most common material impeding innovation in the schools simply did not exist. Then suppose that you decided to turn this "catastrophe" into an opportunity to increase the relevance of schools. What would you do? We have a possibility for you to consider: suppose that you decide to have the entire "curriculum" consist of questions. These questions would have to be worth seeking answers to not only from your point of view but, more importantly, from the point of view of the students. In order to get still closer to reality, add the requirement that the questions must help the students to develop and internalize concepts that will help them to survive in the rapidly changing world of the present and future. ...What questions would you have on your list? Take a pencil and list your questions...
Neil Postman
Abstraction does not care about whether a particular existing human being is immortal, and just that is the difficulty. It is disinterested, but the difficulty of existence is the existing person’s interest, and the existing person is infinitely interested in existing. Thus abstract thinking helps me with my immortality by killing me as a particular existing individual and then making me immortal and therefore helps somewhat as in Holberg the doctor took the patient’s life with his medicine, but drove out the fever. Therefore, when one considers an abstract thinker who is unwilling to make clear to himself and to admit the relation his abstract thinking has to his being an existing person, he makes a comic impression, even if he is ever so distinguished, because he is about to cease to be a human being. Whereas an actual human being, composed of the infinite and the finite and infinitely interested in existing, has his actuality precisely in holding these together, such an abstract thinker is a double creature, a fantastic creature who lives in the pure being of abstraction, and an at times pitiful professorial figure which that abstract creature sets down just as one sets down a cane.
Soren Aabye Kierkegaard
There is nothing so new in Christianity that it may not appear to have been in the world before, and yet everything is new. Now, if someone uses the name of Christianity and Christ’s name, but the categories are anything but Christian, is this, then Christianity? The mark of Christianity is the paradox, the absolute paradox. As soon as a so called speculative cancels the paradox and makes this qualification into an element, all the spheres are confused.
Soren Aabye Kierkegaard
Kierkegaard, Soren Aabye
Kiernan, Caitlin R.
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