A REVIEW OF SÖREN KIERKEGAARD’S PHILOSOPHICAL FRAGMENTS OR A FRAGMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

El Nido, Palawan, Philippines

What best defines man? We are used to the Aristotelian definition of man as a rational being. Does rationality totally capture the essence of man? It is true that what separates and distinguishes us from the other terrestrial creatures is our rationality. But why is it that man sometimes acts irrationally or lives like a beast? Rationality expresses a truth about the human being, but it does not totally encompass the true nature of man or exhaust it. Furthermore, Aristotle sustained that all men by nature desire to know.[1] Knowledge is a characteristic proper to man. Man is the only animal capable of knowledge of the first principles and the ultimate causes of beings. But why is it even the so-called wise men cannot find or accept the truth? So many human beings are wise but they do not live like true men. This is the paradox of man. Man is a paradox. It is difficult to understand or know who man is from mere earthly perspectives. It may be apt to define man as someone who searches for the truth. Rationality is incomprehensible if it does not have truth as the aim of its activity. Wisdom or knowledge is nonsense if it does not have truth as its goal. Man is a searcher of truth. But what is truth? How can man achieve or arrive at truth? 

Mactan Island, Cebu, Philippines

These are the questions that the Danish philosopher, Sören Kierkegaard wanted to answer in his seminal work Philosophical Fragments or a Fragment of Philosophy. However, he was not interested with the finite truth. He did not seek for the truth of the philosophers. What he wanted to know and arrive at is the Eternal Truth that philosophy could not achieve to acquire. So it is understandable that he used Christian vocabulary in his method in order to arrive at truth. But for him, the knowledge of truth and its subsequent acquisition is subjective, not objective. The way or method to the knowledge of truth does not employ the usual philosophical arguments because it involves with a leap. 

Calanggaman Island, Leyte, Philippines

How far does the Truth admit of being learned? He began his exposition with this question. The Truth is something necessary that man could not evade or ignore. Thus, he stated: “In so far as the Truth is conceived as something to be learned, its non-existence is evidently presupposed, so that in proposing to learn it one makes it the object of inquiry” (ch.1, 1). The Truth is the object of man’s learning. How do we learn or acquire knowledge of it? This is where he was interested with. But the acquisition of knowledge is itself a paradox: “One cannot seek for what he knows, and it seems equally impossible for him to seek for what he does not know. For what a man knows he cannot seek, since he knows it; and what he does not know he cannot seek, since he does not even know for what to seek” (ch.1, 1). Therefore Truth is not an object of search. Searching thus is an absurdity. But how can we arrive at the Truth if there is no need to search? We understand learning as acquisition of knowledge for we do not have a previous knowledge, like a child who does not have a previous knowledge of what numbers are before studying arithmetic. But for Kierkegaard, learning is not acquisition or search for the Truth. For him, learning is recollection: “One who is ignorant needs only a reminder to help him come to himself in the consciousness of what he knows” (ch.1, 1).

Sta. Cruz Island, Zamboanga City, Philippines

Aristotle opined that our mind is a tabula rasa prior to the acquisition of any knowledge. It means that we do not have innate ideas. But in Phaedo, Plato used recollection to prove the immortality of the soul, thus knowledge for him comes subjectively. It is in this Platonic thinking that Kierkegaard based his epistemology. Thus for the Danish philosopher, the knowledge of the Truth does not come from outside sources, nor to be sought outside of man for according to him, “the Truth is not introduced into the individual from without, but was within him” (ch.1, 1). All what man has to do is to remember, to recollect.  Man has already the truth implanted in him since his birth or existence. The presence of truth is innate in man. “My relation to Socrates or Prodicus cannot concern me with respect to my eternal happiness, for this is given me retrogressively through my possession of the Truth, which I had from the beginning without knowing it”(ch.1, 3). In short, man has an innate knowledge. This defines the epistemology of Kierkegaard. 

Samal Island, Davao del Norte, Philippines

But why does man err? Why is he lost? Why do men dispute each other? Kierkegaard pointed out ignorance as the culprit. In his ignorance, man veers away from the truth. But ignorance could not be accountable to God. “In so far as the learner exists he is already created, and hence God must have endowed him with the condition for understanding the Truth. For otherwise his earlier existence must have been merely brutish”(ch.1, 4). Rather ignorance of the Truth owes to one’s fault. It is man’s own deliberative action. Man wills to be in the state of Error (sin). Since he is in the state of Error, man could not remember anymore the Truth. 

Unnamed & uninhabited islands, Sulu, Philippines

In this epistemological explanation of Kierkegaard about truth and ignorance, we can draw out also his anthropological point of view. John Paul II defined man as a searcher of the Truth.[2] Man is incomprehensible without the Truth. Man is totally doomed without the Truth. Precisely the abuses committed against man are perpetrated out of simple ignorance or willful rejection of the true dignity of man. In the same way for Kierkegaard, man is incomprehensible without the Truth, since he was created with the Truth embedded in his very nature. Without it, man could not be man. But the act of searching signifies that the Truth is not within himself, but rather outside. What the encyclical tries to convey is that man could not be the arbiter of truth. If man is the arbiter of truth, then Truth is relative. Rather, due to sin, man has lost his connection with the Truth though not totally. Man is endowed with intelligence and will, faculties that were not lost, that will help him reconnect with the Truth. Thus even Aristotle affirmed this when he began his work Metaphysics with the phrase: All men by nature want to know. In Kierkegaard, however, man does not need to search for the Truth for it is within him: “For the Truth in which I rest was within me, and came to light through myself” (ch.1, 3). A seeker is someone who does not have the possession of what he seeks for or what he lacks. Thus he seeks it for he needs it. The very act of searching implies the absence of the object. But for Kierkegaard, the Truth is not absolutely absent in man. He thus stated: “The seeker must be destitute of the Truth up to the very moment of his learning it” (ch.1, 3). Man could not be therefore described or considered as a seeker. 

Apo Island, Palawan, Philippines

Who is man for Kierkegaard then? Man thus for him is a holder or bearer of Truth. He averred: “Since it appears that at the bottom every human being is in possession of the Truth” (ch.1, 3). Kierkegaard however did not say that man is the owner of the Truth for it would contradict his whole stance. Why then man needs to learn or re-learn the Truth if he has it in his possession ever since? Ignoring the truth or departing from it, that is, willfully rejecting it is what leads man to the state of Error. Ignoring the truth is not the same as ignorance of the Truth. In the act of ignoring, one is conscious of his act. It is a deliberative act. Thus Kierkegaard stated: “For my own Error is something I can discover only by myself, since it is only when I have discovered it that it is discovered, even if the whole world knew of it before” (ch.1, 4). The greatest problem of man, the “learner”, is that he is in the state of Error and he is not aware of his own ignorance of his error. It means that man is ignorant of his ignoring the Truth. And man cannot redeem himself from his own error. He needs someone to remind him that he is in the state of Error. It seems that Kierkegaard had criticized his contemporary philosophers for complicating and debasing the Truth with their absurd philosophies. 

Caramoan, Camarines Sur, Philippines

Here, Kierkegaard appealed to a figure of the Teacher. No learner could take himself out from the state of Error unless someone will remind him of his miserable condition. But no one could be a teacher to himself since he could not teach what he is ignorant of. The role of the teacher, according to Kierkegaard, is to remind the learner that he is in the state of Error, not precisely to take him out from that state: “The teacher is merely an occasion whoever he may be, even if he is a God” (ch.1, 4). It seems that the Teacher has a passive role. It is understandable because Kierkegaard wanted to be coherent with his epistemology in line with Plato: that man knows already everything and that the task of the teacher is to draw it out. But Kierkegaard went beyond this Platonic thinking because for him, the problem is that man must find the Teacher who will remind him of his error and provide him the means to know again the Truth. Unlike Plato however, Kierkegaard believed that no mere man could take up the role of the Teacher because the Teacher does not only give the learner the requisite condition, but the Teacher himself is the Truth (cf. ch.1, 5): “The Teacher is then God himself, who in acting as an occasion prompts the learner to recall that he is in Error.” This Teacher is also the original creator of his human nature who gave him the Truth and with it the condition (cf. ch.1, 4). 

Siargao Islands, Surigao del Norte, Philippines

However since God is the Unknown, He could not be a Teacher to man since God is totally different from him, therefore God could not make himself be understood by man. He asked: “What then is the Unknown?” And then he answered it immediately: “It is the limit to which the Reason repeatedly comes…, it is the absolutely different. But because it is absolutely different, there is no mark by which it could be distinguished”(cf. ch.3, 5). He maintained that Reason can never obtain the knowledge of the Unknown. Reason could never understand God, “for if God is absolutely unlike man, then man is absolutely unlike the God; but how could the Reason be expected to understand this?” (ch.3, 6) This is an indication of the aversion of Kierkegaard to natural theology or theodicy. This is also a denunciation of the German Idealists’ pantheism and idealism. Kierkegaard might also have Hegel in mind, denouncing his rationalization of God and of the Christian mysteries. For him, we cannot prove the existence of God by mere Reason: “The paradoxical passion of the Reason thus comes repeatedly into collision with this Unknown, which does indeed exist, but is unknown, and in so far does not exist. The Reason cannot advance beyond this point, and yet it cannot refrain in its paradoxicalness from arriving at this limit and occupying itself therewith” (ch.3, 4). Kierkegaard believed that God’s existence does not need any proof: “His existence does indeed explain his deeds, but the deeds do not prove his existence” (ch.3, 3). 

Sohuton Lagoons, Surigao del Norte, Philippines

To the question how can God be the Teacher to man, thus Kierkegaard answered, “in order to be man’s Teacher, (the) God proposed to make himself like the individual man, so that he (man) might fully understand him (God/ Truth)” (ch.3, 6). And for Kierkegaard, this is the Absolute Paradox. Christian doctrine is full of paradoxical tenets: Jesus Christ as true God and true man; life after death; manifestation of love through death. The Absolute Paradox will forever remain a headache to Reason. Reason could never reconcile with it. Thus Kierkegaard mentioned another form of knowledge that could transcend the boundaries that limit Reason: Faith. For him, only the knowledge of Faith could understand the Absolute Paradox. Only through faith that man could re-learn the truth.

Hamilo Coast, Bataan, Philippines

Here Kierkegaard transports us from a philosophical epistemology to theological epistemology. He believed that since God/ Truth/ the Unknown is beyond our comprehension, this Truth appears to us in the form of a paradox. Reason could never understand contradictions though a paradox itself is not a contradiction. But for reason, it is a contradiction. Only Faith could reconcile “contradictions”. In the thought of Kierkegaard, the object of Faith is the Paradox. Thus he insisted: “No knowledge can have for its object the absurdity that the Eternal is the historical” (ch.4, 5). This Paradox incites offense in the non-believer because he cannot understand what he tries to understand. Since reason cannot transcend itself or go beyond its limit, thus it considers everything beyond its scope as absurdity. With the image of the French Revolution fresh in his mind, Kierkegaard seemed to criticize those who exalt the primacy of reason and retorted with an argument that it is the Paradox that makes Reason absurd: “Since the Paradox has made the Reason absurd, the regard of the Reason is no reliable criterion” (ch.3, 9). 

With this declaration of the defeat of the Reason by the Paradox, Kierkegaard emphasized that the only way to approach the Paradox is through Faith. Any way or type of knowledge is ridiculous. Thus only the knowledge through Faith that one can know or grasp the Paradox since by its nature it is unreachable by rational knowledge. Here we can detect the influence of Fideism or the Lutheran tenet sola fide in Kierkegaard.

Camiguin, Philippines

With the status of Faith well in placed, Kierkegaard, this time, equated Faith or belief with new existence, alluding to the Christian doctrine of faith as new birth or a rebirth. Thus he stated: “Belief is a sense for coming into existence” (Interlude, 8). And here we detect the transcendental existentialism in Kierkegaard: “For belief and coming into existence correspond to one another, and are concerned with the two negative determinations of being, namely the past and the future, and with the present in so far as it is conceived from the point of view of a negative determination of being, namely as having come into existence” (Interlude, 9). Faith has always the ever present as its time. Kierkegaard concluded: “For Faith does not have to do with essence, but with being [historical existence], and the assumption that the God determines him eternally and not historically (Interlude, 10). 

Boracay Island, Aklan, Philippines

There is also an influence of Hegel in Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard distanced himself from the Platonic belief that the individual has an existence prior to his coming into being, thus his nature is determined in continuity with itself. Instead, he aligned himself with Hegel with this statement: “But in our project, on the contrary, everything is forward-looking and historical, so that the notion of being born with faith is as plausible as the notion of being born twenty-four years old” (ch.5, 5). Kierkegaard followed Hegel’s historicism but with his unique characteristic, paradoxical. We may call it transcendental historicism. Kierkegaard considered faith as a birth within a birth (ch.5, 6). It is through faith that man transcends history as he is born again, but he remains at the same time historical, a product of his time. Thus he stated: “The absolute fact is an historical fact, and as such it is the object of Faith (ch.5, 7). A person with faith is always a contemporary whether he was born 1500 years ago or 15 years ago.

CONCLUSION

Kierkegaard was a product of his time. He was influenced by his Idealist precursors and contemporaries, but at the same, he tried to break free from being associated with them. He distinguished himself from the predominantly pantheistic and atheistic atmosphere of his time. Kierkegaard wanted to know the truth of human existence, but for him it could not be totally answered by purely human reasoning. His work can also be considered as a reaction against Hegel’s intention to demystify the Christian revelation and eventually, rationalize the Christian faith. Kierkegaard subtly criticized the philosophers and historians who tried to prove Christianity through empty reasoning. Thus for Kierkegaard, there are only two choices: either believe or be offended.

Sören Kierkegaard

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[1] Aristotle, Metaphysics, I, 1.

[2] John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, nos. 28, 31, & 33.