3rd Page: 5. Subjective knowledge requires personal appropriation. In subjection, truth becomes appropriation, inwardness, or subjectivity. In fact, the only reality which an existing being can know otherwise than through some abstract knowledge is his own existence. Here it is necessary that the existing subject should plunge itself into its own subjectivity. 6. Only ethical and religious knowledge is therefore essential knowledge; they alone are essentially related to the fact that the knowing subject exists; they alone are in contact with reality. In them alone truth and existence coincide. 7. The essential truth is subjective or internal; or "truth is subjectivity". This amounts not only to a complete revaluation of human knowledge, or a reaction against Hegel, but a reaction against modern science in general as it becomes more and more abstract. He substitutes for the old distinction between truths of reason and truths of fact, the existential dualism of objective or inessential truth and subjective or essential truth. "He wishes to return from abstract inessential knowledge to concrete essential knowledge, from the exterior to the interior, from the objective to the subjective, from possibilities to reality." Kierkegaard's existential thought is dialectical and paradoxical. Since the existing subject is occupied in existing, it follows that he is in the process of becoming one. And just as the form of his communication ought to be in essential conformity with his mode of existence, so his thought must correspond to the structure of existence. Thus it is dialectical. Objective truth is certain or approaches certainty, we are told. Subjective truth, however, we are told, becomes a paradox; and this fact is true because of the relationship with an existing subject. Subjectively something is true because the person passionately believes in it, has appropriated it, and assimilated it with his whole existence, even if or rather because the object of his belief is a paradox and an absurdity. Truth to Kierkegaard means "true to oneself", i.e. "true to one's eternal self" and therefore true to God. Truth is not a quality of propositions but of human beings. Throughout the thought Kierkegaard runs the master category of the individual. He writes: "I marked my writings to which I attached my name with the category of the individual from the beginning, and it continued like a formula to be repeated in stereotyped fashion so that the individual is not a later invention of mine but has been there from the beginning. "Hiin Enkelte" really means "that solitary individual". He means the individual as separated from the rest, in his aloneness and solitude, face to face with his destiny, with the Eternal, with God Himself and with the awful responsibility of decision and choice. In the core of the I is a center from which choice springs, from which responsibility for one's acts springs, from which the ultimate sense of uneasiness with anything that falls short of the highest of all in reality ultimately issues, from which remorse and repentance arises. He had keen distaste for the crowd and the mass which could serve as the hiding place of the individual, who seeks to sacrifice his true quest for inward intensity and responsibility. How is Kierkegaard's thought to be evaluated as s philosophy and as a religious viewpoint? His dissatisfaction with abstract science, which moves in mere possibilities; his search for the concrete and reality; his insistence that choice and decision transcend the relativity of knowledge and introduce something unconditional; all this is very much alive today. But, in his emphasis on subjective reflection he has underrated objective reflection. His subjectivity can easily lead to introspective confusion and pathological egocentricity. Religion on the other hand cannot be purely subjective. It requires objective evidence for its beliefs. "Subjectivity is truth" is an overstatement. It can lead either to the erroneous conclusion that an existential logic is possible or to relativism and irrationalism. Edward J. Carnell criticizes Kierkegaard on two accounts and with this I could agree: (1) Passion should be guided by the seriousness and truth of the object, and not by its rational offensiveness. (2) Worthy faith should be aroused by a joint cooperation between the nature of the object and the sufficiency of the evidences that support it. May 12, 1959
- Read the two attached images and its third page in text form, and analyze, understand and express what you have read.
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