Kierkegaard Quotations for RS220

1.         ‘If Hegel had written the whole of his logic and then said, in the preface, that it was merely an experiment in thought in which he had even begged the question in many places, then he would certainly have been the greatest thinker who ever lived.  As it is he is merely comic.’ (Søren Kierkegaard, Journals).

2.         ‘In relation to their systems most systematizers are like a man who builds an enormous castle and lives in a shack close by; they do not live in their own enormous systematic buildings.’ (Søren Kierkegaard, Journals).

3.         ‘The method which begins by doubting in order to philosophize is just as suited to its purpose as making a soldier lie down in a heap in order to make him stand up straight.’ (Søren Kierkegaard, Journals).

4.         ‘What the philosophers say about Reality is often as disappointing as a sign you see in a shop window which reads: Pressing Done Here.  If you bring your clothes to be pressed, you would be fooled; for only the sign is for sale.’ (Søren Kierkegaard, Either / Or).

5.         ‘Each age has its own characteristic depravity.  Ours is perhaps not pleasure or indulgence or sensuality, but rather a dissolute pantheistic contempt for the individual.’ (Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript).

6.         ‘It’s quite true what philosophy says, that life must be understood backwards.  But one then forgets the other principle, that it must be lived forwards.  A principle which, the more one thinks it through, precisely leads to the conclusion that life in time can never be properly understood, just because no moment can acquire the complete stillness needed to orient oneself backwards.’ (Søren Kierkegaard, Papers).

7.         ‘The paradox in Christian truth is invariably due to the fact that it is truth as it exists for God.  The standard of measure and the end is superhuman; and there is only one relationship possible: faith.’ (Søren Kierkegaard, Journals).

8.            ‘Without risk there is no faith.  Faith is precisely the contradiction between the infinite passion of the individual’s inwardness and the objective uncertainty.  If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe.  If I wish to preserve myself in faith I must constantly be intent upon holding fast to the objective uncertainty, so as to remain out upon the deep, over seventy thousand fathoms of water, still preserving my faith.’ (Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript).

9.            ‘Subjectivity is the truth.  By virtue of the relationship subsisting between the eternal truth and the existing individual, the paradox came into being.  Let us now go further, let us suppose that the eternal essential truth is itself a paradox.  How does the paradox come into being?  By putting the eternal essential truth into juxtaposition with existence.  Hence when we posit such a conjunction within the truth itself, the truth becomes a paradox.  The eternal truth has come into being in time: this is the paradox.’ (Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript).

10.       ‘“The individual” is the category through which, in a religious respect, this age, all hisTORRy, the human race as a whole must pass.’ (Søren Kierkegaard, The Point of View for my work as an Author).

11.       ‘A crowd...in its very concept is the untruth, by reason of the fact that it renders the individual completely impenitent and irresponsible, or at least weakens his sense of responsibility by reducing it to a fraction.’ (Søren Kierkegaard, The Point of View for my work as an Author).

12.       ‘The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all.  No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss - an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. is sure to be noticed.’ (Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death).

13.       ‘It is subjectivity that Christianity is concerned with, and it is only in subjectivity that its truth exists, if it exists at all; objectively, Christianity has absolutely no existence.’ (Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript).