Yquotes.com

 

There is a story about the inhabitants of Mols, that upon seeing a tree leaning over the water and prompted by the thought that the tree was thirsty, they resolved to help it. To that end, the first Molbo grabbed the tree, the next one grabbed his legs, and in this way, with the common purpose of helping the tree, they formed a chain-all on the presupposition that the first one would hold fast, because the first one was the presupposition. But what happens? Suddenly he lets go in order to spit on his hands so he can get an even better grip-and what then? Then all the Molboer fall into the water-and why? Because the presupposition was abandoned. To speculate within a presupposition in such a way that finally one also speculates the presupposition is exactly the same feat as to think, within a hypothetical “if”, something so evident that it acquires the power to transform into actuality the hypothesis within which it has its power. In so-called Christian speculative thought, what other presupposition can there be at all than that Christianity is the very opposite of speculative thought, that it is the miraculous, the absurd, with the requirement that the individual is to exist in it and is not to waste time on speculatively understanding. If there is speculative thinking within this presupposition, then the speculative thought will instead have as its task a concentration on the impossibility of speculatively understanding Christianity, something that was described earlier as the task of the simple wise person.
--
Concluding Postscript, Hong p. 378
--
Concluding Postscript, Hong p. 420-421

 

Soren Aabye Kierkegaard

» Soren Aabye Kierkegaard - all quotes »

Similar quotes

 

"Is changingness indeed a stronger power than changelessness, and who is the stronger, the one who says, “If you will not love me, then I will hate you,” or the one who says, “If you hate me, I will still continue to love you”?" "The one who loves presupposes that love is in the other person’s heart and by this very presupposition builds up love in him – from the ground up, provided, of course, that in love he presupposes its presence in the ground." "There is nothing, no ‘thus and so,’ that can unconditionally be said to demonstrate unconditionally the presence of love or to demonstrate unconditionally its absence..." "Thus even giving to charity, visiting the widow, and clothing the naked do not truly demonstrate or make known a person’s love, inasmuch as one can do works of love in an unloving way, yes, even in a self-loving way." "The self-deceived person may even think he is able to console others who became victims of perfidious deception, but what insanity when someone who himself has lost the eternal wants to heal the person who is extremely sick unto death!" "Just as the quiet lake originates deep down in hidden springs no eye has seen, so also does a person’s love originate even more deeply in God’s love." ... So a human being’s love originates mysteriously in God’s love." Every human being by his life, by his conduct, by his behavior in everyday affairs, by his association with his peers, by his words, his remarks, should and could build up and would do it if love were really present in him." "Only the unloving person fancies that he should build up by controlling the other; the one who loves presupposes continually that love is present and in just that way he builds up." "The one who loves builds up by controlling himself." "It is God, the Creator, who must implant love in each human being, he who himself is Love. Thus it is specifically unloving and not at all upbuilding if someone arrogantly deludes himself into believing that he wants and is able to create love in another person." "Truly, love is to be known by its fruit, but still it does not follow from this that you are to take it upon yourself to be the expert knower. " "If it is usually difficult to begin without presuppositions, it is truly most difficult of all to begin to build up with the presupposition that love is present and to end with the same presupposition." Works of Love Hong 1995 Princeton University Press p. 34, 216-217, 13-14, 7-10, 213-217, 15, 218

 

Soren Aabye Kierkegaard

 

In every age and every generation, men have envisioned a promised land. Some may have envisioned it with the wrong ideology, with the wrong philosophical presupposition. But men in every generation thought in terms of some promised land.

 

Martin Luther King

 

The necessary precondition for the birth of science as we know it is, it would seem, the diffusion through society of the belief that the universe is both rational and contingent. Such a belief is the presupposition of modern science and cannot by any conceivable argument be a product of science. One has to ask: Upon what is this belief founded?

 

Lesslie Newbigin

 

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

 

Thought depends on the habitual exercise of the speculative faculties; action, on the determination of the will. The one assigns reasons for things, the other puts causes into act. ... Such is the effeminacy of the speculative and philosophical temperament, compared with the promptness and vigour of the practical! ... Reasoners in general are undecided, wavering, and sceptical, or yield at last to the weakest motive as most congenial to their feeble habit of soul.

 

William Hazlitt