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Philosophical Fragments (1844)

Philosophical Fragments (1844). By Johannes Climacus Edited by S. Kierkegaard Questions Can a historical point of departure be given for an eternal consciousness; how can such a point of departure be of more than historical interest; can an eternal happiness be built on historical knowledge?

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Philosophical Fragments (1844)

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  1. Philosophical Fragments (1844) • By Johannes Climacus • Edited by S. Kierkegaard • Questions • Can a historical point of departure be given for an eternal consciousness; how can such a point of departure be of more than historical interest; can an eternal happiness be built on historical knowledge? • I: Though-Project • Can the truth be Learned? (p. 117)

  2. What is Truth? • We’re asking about essential truth, i.e., truth that is essentially related to an existing human being. • This truth is ethical-religious truth. • What are the two different perspectives on the truth described in Philosophical Fragments?

  3. Socratic view Eternal Truth is innate Learning involves Recollection Teacher as midwife Any point of departure in time is accidental A Different View Eternal Truth comes into existence in time Learner is outside of the truth and lacks the condition for receiving the truth Teacher must transform learner and provide the condition, such a teacher is a savior The moment in time has decisive significance. Can the truth be learned?

  4. Is what is elaborated here thinkable? • a. The Preceding State: • Untruth: Sin • b. The Teacher: • God: Savior: Deliverer: Judge • c. The Follower • Conversion: Repentance: Rebirth

  5. “Faith begins where thinking leaves off.” • Who/What is God? • The Unknown: • The limit, frontier, border of reason, no distinguishing mark other than the absolutely different • The Absolute Paradox: • We cannot understand God because he is absolutely different, yet we understand him as absolutely different • The God-Man (Jesus Christ) • A “Leap of Faith” is required. (Note that this phrase comes from Kierkegaard)

  6. Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments (1845) • By Johannes Climacus • Edited by S. Kierkegaard • Goals • To make things more difficult • To clothe the issue in PF in its historical costume, i.e., Christianity • What is the central thesis of the reading? • “Truth is subjectivity.” • Thus, the issue is not about the truth of Christianity, but about how an individual relations to this doctrine

  7. Objective truth focuses on the What Involves approximation (getting closer) Reflection is directed outward, indifferent to subject Subjective truth focuses on the How Involves appropriation (making something one’s own, living what one believes) Reflection is directed inward, importance of subject On the Differences between Objective and Subjective Truth

  8. Climacus’s Definition of Truth • An objective uncertainty held fast in an appropriation-process of the most passionate inwardness is the truth (207). • This is equivalent to faith. • The “objective uncertainty” involves risk that keeps one “out upon the deep, over seventy thousand fathoms of water” (207).

  9. Other Issues and Problems • According to Climacus, where is there more truth…praying to the true God in a false spirit, or praying to a false God in the true spirit? (206) • Is Socrates a Christian? (207) • Is suicide the only practical consequence of objective thinking? (204) • Is subjectivity equivalent to madness? (202-3) • When you think about it, isn’t this notion of subjective truth really, really dangerous?

  10. Religiousness A (immanence) • May be found in any culture, universal religiosity in which humans are aware of the divine and strive to fulfill its promptings. May even be found in the godly pagan life. • Inward deepening, relation to God within oneself • The key assumption is that the individual can reach God within temporality and fulfill the ethical-religious demand through personal striving.

  11. Religiousness B (transcendence) • Christianity • Paradoxical and absurd in that God entered time as a human being • Relation to something outside oneself

  12. Works of Love • Some Christian Deliberations in the Form of Discourses • Preface: indirect communication? • A. You ShallLove • B. You Shall Love the Neighbor • C. YouShall Love the Neighbor • This is the essence of morality. • “Basically we all understand the highest.”

  13. Self-love Preferential love Spontaneous love Erotic love Friendship Self-denial’s love Unconditional love Eternal love The spirit’s love True love A work or action, not a mood or feeling Elskov and Kjerlighed

  14. Who is “the neighbor”? • The “nearest,” but not in the sense of preferential love • Conceptually, it is “a redoubling of one-self” • The other • “all people” • Self-love cannot endure “redoubling.” • To love your neighbor as yourself means that “you shall love yourself in the same way as you love your neighbor when you love him as yourself.” (p. 283)

  15. Who doesn’t love himself in the right way? • The bustler, the light-minded person, the depressed person, one surrendered to despair, the practitioner or self-mortification, one who attempts or commits suicide • You shall love • The duty to love is “a change of eternity” • This is original to Christianity and offensive.

  16. “You shall love.” Only when it is a duty to love, only then is love— • Eternally secured against every change, • Eternally made free in blessed independence, • Eternally and happily secured against despair. (p. 283-84)

  17. Our Duty to Love the People We See • Love is an essential human need. • Against fanaticism (to love the unseen God more than others). • This duty requires one to find the given, actual person lovable, not to find a lovable person. • “When it is a duty in loving to love the people we see, then in loving the actual individual person it is important that one does not substitute an imaginary idea of how we think or could wish that this person should be.” (p. 300)

  18. Love Builds Up • Language and Metaphor • “To build up” considered in ordinary speech • To build from the ground up, from a foundation • Love is the only absolute • “There is nothing, nothing at all, that cannot be done or said in such a way that it becomes upbuilding, but whatever it is, if it is upbuilding, then love is present. Thus the admonition, just where love itself admits the difficulty of giving a specific rule, says, “Do everything for upbuilding.” (pp. 305)

  19. In the spiritual sense love is the ground and foundation. • Therefore this work of love means: • Either, to implant love in another person’s heart, • Or, to presuppose that love is present in the other person’s heart, such that this presupposition builds up love in him/her. • Thus this work of love is about how the loving one upbuildingly controls himself.

  20. In presupposing that love is present in the other person one does something to oneself. Such self-control and self-denial is very difficult. • “It is more difficult to control one’s temper than to capture a city….” • “We can compare this upbuilding of love with the secret working of nature.”

  21. What, then, is love? • “Love is to presuppose love; to have love is to presuppose love in others; to be loving is to presuppose that others are loving.” • “Love is not a being-for-itself quality but a quality by which or in which you are for others.” (p. 310)

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