Concluding Unscientific Postscript

Section I: “Existence and Reality”

The problem with abstract thought, Kierkegaard contends, is that it tends to forget the individual existing human being. The abstract thinker “moves in the pure being of abstract thought” (268), but in their own life they are more concerned with material concerns (like their university salary) and matters of “differential talent” (like who is smarter than someone else) than with human existence as such. The abstract thinker is close to being a “stunted, crippled creature” (269). Although they may proclaim noble ideals in their philosophy, their own life does not reflect those ideals.

Kierkegaard brings out the irony of such a situation in a passage of invective:

It is professed that thought is higher than feeling and imagination,

and this is professed by a thinker who lacks pathos and passion. Thought is higher than irony and humor—this is professed by a thinker who is wholly lacking in a sense for the comical. How comical! (269).

One way in which Hegelianism has abandoned human existence lies in the fact that it denies the principle of contradiction, or “either-or.” For Kierkegaard the phrase “either-or” symbolizes the fact of human choice or decision. In their emphasis on eternity, Hegelians implicitly deny the importance of human choices made in time. Kierkegaard fears that this distortion in thought will have dire consequences, leading to “the loss of the ethical and the religious” (272). We human beings are not capable of dwelling in eternity while we exist in time and are subject to a constant process of becoming. Rather, “eternity” in our present condition means the future, which we attain through our choices and decisions (272). We must face these decisions head on and not ignore them by pretending to live in abstract contemplation of eternal truth.

Kierkegaard contrasts the present-day abstract thinker with the philosophers of ancient Greece or the Christian believers of the Middle Ages, who had genuine passion in their thought and “the courage to be human” (274). Kierkegaard employs allegory to illustrate the passion we must have in life: Eternity is like a strong, winged horse; time is like a worn-out broken-down horse; and the human being is like the driver who must keep these horses moving together. In this way, “all idealizing passion is an anticipation of the eternal in existence functioning so as to help the individual to exist” (277). Looking forward to eternity provides continuity to our lives, preventing them from disintegrating into disconnected moments. Eternity is our telos, or goal, and existence is our means of reaching it.

Section II: “Possibility as Higher Than Reality—Reality as Higher Than Possibility—Poetic and Intellectual Ideality—Ethical Ideality”

This section comprises short fragments on various topics. Despite being less dense, it is one of the more abstruse sections of the book. The subject matter is metaphysical, having to do with fundamental reality and how we interpret it.

The section heading considers two pairs of opposing postulates or ideas:

1. Possibility is higher than reality

2. Reality is higher than possibility

1. Poetic and intellectual ideality

2. Ethical ideality

Kierkegaard comments on the disappearance of the “ethical” from modern thought and life. This disappearance reflects a loss of the sense of individual existence and an emphasis on abstractions, such as the claim to consider the problems of a general “humanity.”

Kierkegaard argues that we can only ethically understand our own existence, not that of others. This is because each of us is our own self and cannot enter the consciousness of another. At most, we can perceive the reality of another person “as a possibility” (286). Thus, “[T]here is no immediate relationship, ethically, between subject and subject” (285). We cannot judge others ethically since one’s ethical reality “cannot be observed by an outsider” (284). This explains why, when people claim to judge another, they are often merely judging themselves or projecting themselves onto the other person. For Kierkegaard, “the individual stands alone” (287).

(At this point Kierkegaard is still talking about the ethical stage of existence. Later he will define the next stage, the religious, where the believer is indeed “interested in another’s reality” [290].)

The aesthetic and intellectual realms have to do with what is possible, not with what is real. Poetry, for example, holds up an imaginary event as a higher ideal than what actually exists in the real world. Likewise, the intellect occupies itself with conceiving ideas that are possibly true. Ethics, by contrast, has to do with reality, not possibility. When we talk about ethical matters, we are talking about the real state of one’s soul and about one’s actions. Thus, while for art and intellect the possible is higher than the real (and this is the ideality proper to the poetic and intellectual), for ethics the real is higher than the possible (and this is the ideality proper to ethics). Kierkegaard insists we must get these categories straight so that we do not, for example, treat religion aesthetically or poetry as if it were religion. Kierkegaard sees such intellectual confusion as increasingly common; he will give examples of it later in the book.

In this section Kierkegaard makes some definite statements about Christian faith. He states that the Christian’s object of faith is not a doctrine, but the real existence of a person—namely God, who existed in time as Jesus Christ. It is a mistake to transfer Christianity into the sphere of the intellectual by making it into a series of doctrines. Rather, faith “constitutes a sphere all by itself” apart from the world of the intellectual (291).

Kierkegaard stakes a claim about how philosophers should present their ideas. He advocates returning to the Platonic dialogue form instead of the Hegelian thinkers’ treatise form, in which the philosopher essentially tells the reader what to think. Kierkegaard believes that the dialogue form, in which ideas are exchanged and tested, would expose many flaws in Hegelianism (291).

Kierkegaard also deals in this chapter with the question of which is more real: existence or thought. René Descartes famously argued that he deduced that he existed from the fact that he was thinking. Kierkegaard makes the opposite claim: “Because I exist and because I think, therefore I think that I exist” (294). For Kierkegaard, existence is the one thing that cannot properly be thought; it can only be lived. Further, “existence is always something particular, the abstract does not exist” (294). This implies that philosophical abstractions can help us understand existence but do not themselves exist. For this reason, Kierkegaard rejects the Hegelian idea that thought and being are the same thing; this doctrine is a sign that modern philosophy “has deserted existence altogether” (295). On the contrary, thought and being are opposite; thinking about something cannot cause it to be or not to be. Thus, being is higher than thought, and existence is a sort of intermediary state between the two (296).

For these reasons, Kierkegaard rejects abstract thought (which ignores the thinker) in favor of “concrete thought,” or “thought with a relation to a thinker, and to a definite particular something which is thought, existence giving to the existing thinker thought, time, and place” (296).

Finally, Kierkegaard considers how thought and existence play into moral action. Thought precedes action, effecting a transition from possibility to reality. Thought belongs to the realm of the objective, while action belongs to the subjective. Kierkegaard claims that the real ethical content of an action resides in the decision rather than the action itself. In fact, the “internal” decision constitutes the “real action” because through it the individual “puts an end to the mere possibility and identifies himself with the content of his thought in order to exist in it” (302). The decisive aspect of moral choice is that the subject’s interest becomes definitely involved in the object of their decision. From the moment the individual commits to a course of action and excludes every contrary possibility, they have essentially acted. This decision constitutes a definite existential leap.

Thus, Kierkegaard argues that it is inner intention, not outer action, that is important in an ethical sense. He illustrates this with reference to the New Testament parable of the Good Samaritan. If the Levite in the story had failed to reach the wounded man in time, he still would have acted, even if he had no opportunity to act “in the external sense” (304). Hegelianism treats thought as equivalent to action. However, Kierkegaard argues that this tends to excuse one from acting at all, because it treats thought (knowledge) as being just as good as action.

Kierkegaard concludes the section with a statement that has become the most famous sentence in the Postscript. It sums up much of what he has been discussing in the section as well as the existential emphasis of his philosophy as a whole: “Subjectivity is truth, subjectivity is reality” (306). An earlier claim in the section complements this: “The ethical reality of the individual is the only reality” (291).

Section III: “The Simultaneity of the Individual Factors of Subjectivity in the Existing Subject—the Contrast Between This Simultaneity and the Speculative Process”

Kierkegaard returns to social criticism. Philosophy has too hastily concluded that thought is the highest stage of human development. In doing so, it has moved farther and farther away from questions of existence and experience. The consequence is that modern culture prizes knowing about things more than experiencing or doing things, and life “is reduced to a shadow existence” (308).

However, Kierkegaard rejects the notion that people with “imagination and feeling” no longer exist (308). In this respect humanity is not like the animal kingdom, in which each animal simply reflects the evolution of the species as a whole. Human beings are unique individuals, all sinners yet all capable of redemption. Yet Hegelianism proceeds from the assumption that human beings are simply members of a herd and subject to an inevitable spiritual destiny. Kierkegaard labels as “ethically abominable” the idea that “spirit” is a quality belonging to the race instead of to the individual. For Kierkegaard, the effect of Hegelianism is to lose the individual human being in the mass of collective humanity.

Kierkegaard argues that “spiritual development is self-activity” (309). A person in any generation may attain spiritual greatness—or remain “mediocre and cowardly” (309). It all depends on their choice. It is the individual human being that matters, not abstract theories about the human race; this follows from Kierkegaard’s previously stated thesis that existence is higher than thought.

Kierkegaard stakes a claim about how existence relates to the faculties of the human soul. Contrary to Hegelianism, there is no need to exalt one human faculty at the expense of another—e.g., thought above feeling. All must be integrated in harmony, and all are unified by the medium of existence. In existence we do not experience truth as an abstract system but live it day to day and moment to moment with all our faculties participating. This is what Kierkegaard means by the “simultaneity” of existence, as contrasted with the sequential process of abstract thought.

To abrogate any one of the human faculties is to become “one-sided”—less than a full human being. What makes Hegelianism pernicious, Kierkegaard argues, is that it gives the illusion that the “evolved” thinker has “transcended” other mediums of experience (such as poetry, imagination, or faith) when actually they have simply skipped over them.

Kierkegaard ends the section by stating his whole position succinctly:

The true is not higher than the good and the beautiful, but the true and the good and the beautiful belong essentially to every human existence, and are unified for an existing individual not in thought but in existence.

Section IV: “The Subjective Thinker—His Task, His Form, His Style”

The discussion of subjective versus objective thought in Book 2, Part 2 culminates in this section. Kierkegaard outlines in concrete terms what the kind of thinker he is advocating is like.

The subjective thinker is a complete thinker and a complete human being. They incorporate the aesthetic, the ethical, and the dialectic (rational or logical) into their life in perfect harmony; thought, imagination, and feeling are coequal. The subjective thinker is “an existing individual and a thinker at once and the same time” (314). While thinking about various life problems, they always keep in mind that they are an existing individual and never lapse into abstraction. They treat existence as a continuous project, not a finished system.

To illustrate the last point, Kierkegaard draws the metaphor of a court jester versus a witty author. The court jester is funnier on average than the witty author because his existence depends on having “wit at his disposal every moment of the day” (314), whereas the author is only witty when inspiration strikes him. The subjective thinker is like the court jester in that their thought intertwines with their continuing existence.

Whereas the objective thinker seeks to understand concrete things abstractly, the subjective thinker seeks to understand abstract things concretely. An objective thinker will try to understand individuals in terms of an abstract concept of humanity; a subjective thinker will try to understand humanity in terms of this particular human being (315).

For Kierkegaard, the ancient Greek thinkers embodied this existential approach to thought. They sought to understand first themselves and then the world around them in terms of their own existence. For modern Christian believers, thinking is more difficult because Christians have the paradoxical concepts of sin and the Incarnation to deal with. While thinking about these ideas and mysteries, we must find a way to exist in them, not seek to remove the paradox through abstract thought.

Indeed, subjective thought includes the ability to reconcile opposites and paradoxes. The subjective thinker can see the comic and the tragic in the same thing at the same time, for instance. The Christian believer can be “crushed in spirit” by what happens in their life, yet at the same time be “free from care” because they trust in God and draw inspiration from the sufferings of Christ (317). Whereas objective thought tries to remove the contradiction by showing that it is not real, the subjective thinker embraces the contradiction in the context of their own existence.

In short, the subjective thinker’s job in society is to “transform himself into an instrument that clearly and definitely expresses in existence whatever is essentially human” (318). Subjective thinkers must oppose the contemporary trend toward collectivism, or identifying oneself with the spirit of the age or some other abstract idea.

In a side point, Kierkegaard stresses that our commitment to live existentially should not be “differential” or “comparative”; we should not compare ourselves to others in terms of talent, skill, etc. Rather, we should recognize that the ability to live existentially is available to all human beings equally. This is important in that Kierkegaard implies that subjective thought should not lead to pride or egotism, which close one off from other people.

Finally, Kierkegaard discusses the “style” of the existential thinker: their particular way of expressing themself and communicating with others. In expressing their thought, the subjective thinker will express their own nature and personality; their thought will be like a “sketch” of themself. Here also, Kierkegaard’s statement about differential achievements comes into play. The subjective thinker should treat virtue as an ethical requirement rather than as an exceptional feat worthy of admiration. Thus, they will understand virtue as a possibility—something to aspire to—rather than as an actual fact to passively admire and applaud. In this way, we will not be discouraged from acting virtuously because we think we could never achieve what other virtuous people have done. We will perceive virtue as a challenge—a “question directed to me” (321), an ethical choice that we must make. Here Kierkegaard’s statements have an implied application to the moral instruction of youth.