Concluding Unscientific Postscript

In this chapter Kierkegaard begins to define his concept of subjective thought and to contrast it with objective thought. Subjective thought takes as its starting point the fact that the inquirer is an existing being. Thus, the question of truth directly concerns the thinking subject insofar as they exist. Objective thought considers truth an object, something external to the thinking subject, and thus tends to ignore the thinking subject entirely. By contrast, subjective thought considers truth “a matter of appropriation, of inwardness, […] and thought must probe more and more deeply into the subject and his subjectivity” (171).

For Kierkegaard, there are problems with the objective theory of truth. In trying to be objective, a thinker tends to forget what inwardness is and what it means to exist. Not only is objective thought indifferent to the thinking subject, but it ultimately makes the truth a matter of indifference too by stifling a sense of one’s passionate involvement in the truth (173).

Speculative philosophy claims to enable the thinker to transcend themself and grasp truth objectively, but, Kierkegaard says, this is impossible. We are existing individuals who live in time and are thus in a constant state of becoming. Because this is the case, there cannot be an immediate identity between the knower and the thing known. We cannot grasp truth instantly and abstractly. Rather, we must constantly strive for the truth, and this striving consists not of abstract reasoning but “passionate inwardness.”

The ultimate subject of truth is God. An individual’s relationship to God cannot be objective but must be “driven by the infinite passion of his need for God” (179). Thus, “eternal truth is related to an existing individual” (180), and “knowledge has a relationship to the knower” (177). The fact that truth, which is eternal, has a relationship with a human subject, who is finite, constitutes its essential “paradox.” In Christian terms, God’s incarnation as Jesus Christ expresses this paradox: “[T]he eternal truth has come into being in time” (187).

The fact that we cannot grasp truth immediately and objectively means that uncertainty coexists with our search for truth. Thus, the subjective thinker takes a risk, or a leap of faith, and it’s in this risk that human greatness and the greatness of Christianity lie. Christian belief depends on the leap of faith because “without risk there is no faith” (188). One cannot have faith in something about which one has rational certainty. One can only have faith in something that has an element of uncertainty or even absurdity. If we require rational proofs for belief, we make belief as such impossible since one can only believe in something that seems improbable. Kierkegaard implies that the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation is an example of an objective absurdity about which the subjective thinker must make a leap of faith. Such absurdity constitutes a test for faith—even a type of “martyrdom” for the believer to undergo.

Paradox, mystery, and revelation thus define Christianity, inviting the thinking subject to have faith rather than achieve rational certainty. Kierkegaard stakes the claim that “Christianity is the absurd, held fast in the passion of the infinite” (192). The decision for faith has an infinite urgency because our eternal happiness hangs on it. The subjective thinker does not have time to pursue a leisurely objective inquiry into truth; they must make up their mind for faith now. They must take bold risks and be passionate, not lukewarm (206).

For Kierkegaard, faith has “two tasks”: “to discover the improbable, the paradox” and to “hold it fast with the passion of inwardness” (209). Paradox and passion exist in a tense relationship and cause the human being to live “in the extremity of existence” (206). In this way, the leap of faith gives life a “strenuosity” that contains more greatness than even the best classical philosophy could have imagined (188). Kierkegaard implies here that Christianity builds upon and surpasses the insights of Greek philosophy—e.g., Socrates, whom he holds up as a model throughout the book.

Throughout this chapter Kierkegaard emphasizes his opposition to speculative philosophy. He regards such philosophy as arrogant because it tries to place itself above or supplant Christianity and because it envisions human beings as passionless, godlike beings who can grasp absolute truth by means of a codified system. The way of faith, for Kierkegaard, is completely opposed to that of rationalist philosophy.

As in the previous chapter, Kierkegaard closes this chapter by recounting a personal incident that set him on his mission (210-16). At a gravesite, he witnessed an old man and his grandson grieving over the death of the boy’s father (the old man’s son). The old man also grieved for his son’s loss of faith—the result of speculative thought—and told his grandson to keep the faith. In a poetic passage, Kierkegaard, recalling the words of the old man, presents a metaphor for speculative thought. It is a “wisdom which [tries] to fly beyond faith” (213), gaining sight of a “wide stretch of country like the blue mountains” that seems to carry the thinker to “a certainty higher than that of faith” but is only “an illusion of eternity” (213).

The interaction between the old man and his grandson “deeply moved” Kierkegaard in its illustration of inwardness and perseverance, which are essential to Christianity. He came to reflect that an authentic relationship between human beings or between human beings and God is not an immediate relationship but an indirect one of reserve and mystery, like that of the old man and the child. This reflects how God reveals himself to us: God is not obviously visible or present, yet he is always around us and we find him when we turn to our “inner self” (218).

Based on this experience, Kierkegaard felt the call to help people by writing about “where the misunderstanding lies between speculative philosophy and Christianity” (216). His first step will be to discuss the relationship between two preliminary stages of consciousness, the aesthetic and the ethical. This conclusion effectively sets Kierkegaard’s program for the rest of the book.