Truth

- Soren Kierkegaard -

 

Truth is not something you can appropriate easily and quickly. You certainly cannot sleep or dream yourself into the truth. No, you must be tried, do battle, and suffer if you are to acquire truth for yourself. It is a sheer illusion to think that in relation to truth there is an abridgment, a short cut that dispenses with the necessity of struggling for it. With respect to acquiring truth to live by, every generation and every individual essentially begin from the beginning.

 

To merely "know" the truth is insufficient it is an untruth. For knowing the truth is something that follows as a matter of course from being in the truth, not the other way around. Nobody knows more of the truth than what he is of the truth. To properly know the truth is to be in the truth; it is to have the truth for one s life. This always costs a struggle. Any other kind of knowledge is a falsification.

 

The truth is lived before it is understood.  It must be fought for, tested, and appropriated. Truth is the way. And when the truth is the way, then the way cannot be shortened or drop out unless the truth itself is distorted or drops out. Is this not too difficult to understand? Anyone will easily understand it if he just gives himself to it.

 

There are two ways of reflection. For objective reflection, truth becomes an object, and the point is to disregard  the knowing subject (the individual). By contrast, in subjective reflection truth becomes personal appropriation, a life, inwardness, and the point is to immerse oneself in this subjectivity.

Now, then, which of the ways is the way of truth that matters for an existing person?

The way of objective reflection turns the individual into something accidental, and thus turns existence into an indifferent, vanishing something. The way of objective truth turns away from the knowing subject. The subject and subjectivity become unimportant, and correspondingly, the truth is a matter of indifference. Objective validity is paramount. Any personal interest is subjectivity. For this reason the objective way is convinced that it possesses a security that the subjective way does not have. It is of the opinion that it avoids the danger that lies in wait for the subjective way, and at its extreme this danger is madness.   In its view, a solely subjective definition of truth make lunacy and truth indistinguishable. But by staying objective one avoids becoming a lunatic. However, is not the absence of inwardness also lunacy?

It is true that subjective reflection turns inward, but in this inward deepening there is truth. Lest we forget, the subject, the individual, is an existing self, and existing is a process of becoming.  Therefore truth as the identity of thought and being is an illusion of the abstract. The knower is first and foremost an existing person. In other words, thinking and being are not automatically one and the same. If the existing person could actually be outside himself, the truth would then be something concluded for him. However, for the truly existing person, passion, not thought, is existence at its very highest: true knowing pertains essentially to existence, to a life of decision and responsibility.

Only ethical and ethical-religious knowing is essential knowing. Only truth that matters to me, to you, is of significance.

Let me clarify the difference between objective and subjective reflection. True inwardness in an existing subject involves passion, and truth as a paradox corresponds to passion. In forgetting that one is an existing subject, one loses passion, and in turn, truth ceases to be a paradox. If truth is the comprehensible, the knowing subject shifts from being human to being an abstract thinker, and truth becomes an abstract, comprehensible object for his knowing. When the question about truth is asked objectively, what is reflected upon is not the relation but the what of the relation. As long as what one relates oneself to is the truth, the subject is supposedly in the truth. But when the question about truth is asked subjectively, the individual s relation to the truth is what matters. If only the how (not the what) of this relation is in truth, then the individual is in truth, even if he in this way were to relate himself to untruth.

When approached objectively, the question of truth is only about categories of thought. Approached subjectively, however, truth is about inwardness. At its maximum, the how of inwardness is the passion of the infinite, and the passion of the infinite is the essential truth. Decision exists only in subjectivity. Thus the passion of the infinite, not its content, is the deciding factor, for its content is precisely itself. In this way the subjective how and subjectivity, not the objective what and objectivity, are the truth.

Let us take the knowledge of God as an example. The way of objectivity concerns itself with what is reflected upon, of whether this is the true God. In the way of subjectivity, however, the individual relates to God in such a way that this relation is in truth a God-relation. Now, on which side is the truth? Is it on neither side? Or, better yet, does it lie somewhere in between?  But how can this be? An existing person cannot be in two places at once. He cannot exist as a subject-object. God is a subject to be related to, not an object to be studied or mediated on. He exists only for subjective inwardness.

The person who chooses the subjective way immediately grasps the difficulty of trying to find God objectively. He understands that to know God means to resort to God, not by virtue of objective deliberation, but by virtue of the infinite passion of inwardness. Whereas objective knowledge goes along leisurely on the long road of deliberation, subjective knowledge considers every delay of decision a deadly peril. Knowing subjectively considers decision so important that it is immediately urgent, as if the delayed  opportunity had already passed by unused.

Now, if the problem is to determine where there is more truth, whether on the side of the person who only objectively seeks the true God and the approximating truth of the God idea or on the side of the person who is infinitely concerned that he in truth relate himself to God with the passion of his need, then there can be no doubt about the answer. If someone lives in the midst of Christianity and enters, with knowledge of the true idea of God, the house of God, the house of the true  God, and prays, but prays in untruth, and if someone lives in an idolatrous land but prays with all the passion of infinity, although his eyes are resting upon the image of an idol where, then, is there more truth?  The one prays in truth to God although he is worshipping an idol; the other prays in untruth to the true God and is therefore in truth worshipping an idol. The distance between objective reflection and subjectivity is indeed an infinite one.

 

In order to swim you must take off all your clothes. In order to aspire to the truth you must undress in a far more inward sense, divest yourself of all your inward clothes, of thoughts, conceptions, selfishness. Only then are you sufficiently naked.

 

Truth is the work of freedom and in such a way that freedom constantly brings forth truth. What I am referring to is very plain and simple, namely, that truth exists for a particular individual only as he himself produces it in action. If the individual prevents the truth from being for him in that way, we have a phenomenon of the demonic. Truth has always had many loud proclaimers, but the question is whether a person will in the deepest sense acknowledge the truth, allow it to permeate his whole being, accept all its consequences, and not have an emergency hiding place for himself and a Judas kiss for the consequence.

There is a lot of talk about truth. But the task before us is to indicate certitude and inwardness, not in abstraction but in an entirely concrete sense. Certitude and inwardness determine whether or not the individual is in the truth. It is not a lack of content that gives rise to arbitrariness, unbelief, mockery of religion, but lack of certitude. Whenever inwardness and appropriation are lacking, the individual is unfree in relation to the truth, even though he otherwise "possesses" the whole truth. He is unfree because there is something that makes him anxious, namely, the good.

It is not my desire to use big words in speaking about the Age as a whole. However, you can hardly deny that the reason for its anxiety and unrest is because in one direction, "truth" increases in scope and in quantity via science and technology while in the other, certainty and confidence steadily decline. Our age is a master in developing truths while being wholly indifferent to certitude. It lacks confidence in the good.

Take the thought of immortality, for example. The person who knows how to prove the immortality of the soul but who is not himself convinced by it, and does not live by it will always be anxious. Despite all his proofs, he shrinks from the truth of immortality. He deceives both himself and others by pretending that the proof is enough. In the process of trying to prove immortality he forgets immortality, since immortality is precisely what he fears. He remains anxious and is thus forced to seek yet a further understanding of what it means to believe in the soul s immortality.

 

Whereas objective thinking is indifferent to the thinking subject and his existence, the subjective thinker is essentially interested in his own thinking, is existing in it. Whereas objective thinking invests everything in the result and assists all humankind to cheat by copying and reeling off the results and answers, subjective thinking invests everything in the process of becoming and omits the result. The subjective thinker is continually in the process of becoming. The objective thinker has already arrived.

 

The subjective thinker is continually striving, is always in the process of becoming. How far the subjective thinker might be along that road, whether a long way or a short, makes no essential difference (it is, after all, just a finitely relative comparison); as long as he is existing, he is in the process of becoming.

 

How shall we understand the truth in terms of subjectivity? Here is a definition: The truth is an objective uncertainty held fast through personal appropriation with the most passionate inwardness. This is the highest truth there can be for an existing person. At the point where the road divides, objective knowledge is suspended, and one has only uncertainty, but this is precisely what intensifies the infinite passion of inwardness. Subjective truth is precisely the daring venture of choosing the objective uncertainty with the passion of the infinite.

I observe nature in order to find God, and I do indeed see omnipotence and wisdom. However, I also see much that is troubling and unsettling. The sum total of this is that God s existence is an objective uncertainty, but the inwardness, the certainty of his existence, is still so very great, precisely because of this objective uncertainty. In a mathematical proposition absolute objectivity is given, but for that reason its truth is also an indifferent truth and concerns me very little.

Now the definition of truth stated above is actually a paraphrasing of faith. No uncertainty, no risk. No risk, no faith. Faith is the contradiction between the infinite passion of inwardness and objective uncertainty. In other words, if I apprehend God objectively, I do not have faith; but because I cannot do this, I must have faith.

 If I want to keep myself in faith, I must continually see to it that I hold fast the objective uncertainty. I must see to it that in the objective uncertainty I am "out on 70,000 fathoms of water" and still have faith. This is not all. Truth as subjectivity, when it is in highest intensity, holds fast to more than objective uncertainty. When subjectivity or inwardness is truth, then truth, objectively defined, is a paradox. Paradox shows precisely that subjectivity is truth, for objectivity s repulsion, the paradox, is the resilience and barometer of inwardness.

Socrates great merit is precisely in being an existing thinker, not a speculative thinker who forgets what it means to exist.  And this is indeed admirable. But let us now go further; let us assume that the eternal, essential truth is itself the paradox. How does the paradox emerge? By placing the eternal, essential truth together with existing. The eternal truth itself has come into existence in time. That is the paradox, and the highest truth for an existing person.

Again, without risk, no faith; the more risk, the more faith.   Therefore, the more objective reliability, the less inwardness (inwardness is subjectivity); the less objective reliability, the deeper the possible inwardness. Hence, when the paradox is the object of faith it thrusts away by virtue of the absurd, and the corresponding passion of inwardness is faith.

 

Christianity is subjective; the inwardness of faith in the believer is the truth s eternal decision. Objectively there is no truth "out there" for existing beings, but only approximations, whereas subjectively truth lies in inwardness, because the decision of truth is in subjectivity. For how can decision be an approximation or only to a certain degree? What could it possibly mean to assert or to assume that decision is like approximation, is only to a certain degree? I will tell you what it means. It means to deny decision. The decision of faith, unlike speculation, is designed specifically to put an end to that perpetual prattle of "to a certain degree."

For an existing individual, therefore, there is no objective truth "out there." An objective knowledge about the truth or the truths of Christianity is precisely untruth. To know a creed by rote is, quite simply, paganism. This is because Christianity is inwardness. Christianity is paradox, and paradox requires but one thing: the passion of faith.

 

It is as if Christ it is not my fault that I say  it had been a professor and as if the apostles had formed a little professional society of thinkers. The passion of inwardness and objective deliberation are at complete odds with each other. There is no way of getting around it. To become objective, to become preoccupied with the "what" of Christianity, instead of with the "how" of being Christian, is nothing but a retrogression.

 

Since Descartes, sceptics don t dare express anything definite with regards to knowledge. Yet they dare to act, and in this respect are satisfied with probability. What an enormous contradiction! As if it were not far more dreadful to do something about which one is doubtful (thereby incurring responsibility) than to assert an idea. Or is it because the ethical is in itself certain?  But then there is something that doubt cannot reach!

 

The method of beginning with doubt in order to philosophize seems as appropriate as having a soldier slouch in order to get him to stand erect.

 

No one can be the truth; only the God-man is the truth. Then comes the next: the ones whose lives express what they proclaim. These are witnesses to the truth. Then come those who disclose what truth is and what it demands but admit that their lives do not express it, but to that extent still are striving. There it ends.

Now comes the sophistry. First of all come those who teach the truth but do not live it. Then come those who even alter the truth, its requirement, cut it down, make omissions in order that their lives can correspond to the requirement.   These are the real deceivers.

 

God cannot be an object of study, since God is subject. For this very reason, when you deny God, you do not harm God but destroy yourself. When you mock God, you mock yourself.

 

No one can lecture himself into eternity.

 

Fixed ideas are like a cramp in your foot: the best remedy is to stomp on them.

 

A dogmatic system ought not be erected in order to comprehend faith, but in order to comprehend that faith cannot be comprehended.

 

To treat Christianity as a science is to change it into something of the past and to admit that it is no longer something present.

 

The longer one lives with God the more infinite God becomes and the less one becomes. Alas, as a child one thinks that God and man can play happily together. As a youth one dreams that if he really and truly makes an effort, like someone passionately in love, then that relationship to God might still be achieved. Alas, when one matures he discovers how infinite God is, discovers the infinite distance.

 

God is the only power who does not hold sales or reduce the prices; his prices remain eternally unchanged.

 

The true is not superior to the good and the beautiful. The true and the good and the beautiful belong essentially to every human existence and are united not in thinking them but in living them.

 

Seeking the truth means that the seeker himself is changed, so that he may become the place where the object of his search can be.

 

The goal is not to merge into God through some fading away or in some divine ocean. No, in an intensified consciousness "a person must render account for every careless word he has uttered." Even though grace blots out sin, the union with God still takes place in the personality clarified and intensified to the utmost.

 

The solid, sensible thinker goes about Christianity this way: "Just let there be clarity and certainty about the truth of Christianity and I will surely accept it." The trouble, however, is that the truth of Christianity has something in common with the nettle: the solid, sensible thinker only stings himself when he wants to grasp it this way. In fact, he does not grasp it at all; he grasps its objective truth so objectively that he himself remains outside.

 

Philosophy is life s dry nurse who can take care of us but not suckle us.

 

Though the system were politely to assign me a guest room in the loft, in order that I might be included, I still prefer to be a thinker who is like a bird on a twig.

 

All existence-issues are passionate. To think about them so as to leave out passion is not to think about them at all. It is to forget the point that one indeed is oneself an existing person. To exist is an art. The subjective thinker is aesthetic enough for his life to have aesthetic content, ethical enough to regulate it, passionate enough in thinking to master it.

 

The important thing is to be honest towards God, until he himself gives the explanation; which, whether it is the one you want or not, is always the best.

 

It is existence which preaches, not the mouth. What my existing says is my sermon.

 

The expression, "Truth is naked," may also be interpreted in this way: truly relating to truth means that all the inner and the outer garments of illusion have to be discarded.

 

The truth is incessantly subject to fraud, particularly on the part of those closest to it. Since truth is never decided by the "what" but by the "how," it is clear that we will always have false editions of the same truth.

 

The exact opposite of the truth is "the probable." Truth does not consist of an approximation. That which lies nearest to the truth is not, if you please, closest to the truth no, this is the most dangerous delusion of all, the most dangerous simply because it lies so near to the truth without being the truth.

 

Let us be honest about it. We are more afraid of the truth than of death.

 

The truth is a snare: you cannot get it without being caught yourself. In fact, you can never get the truth by catching it yourself but only by its catching you.

 

"Authority" does not mean to be a king, but by a firm and conscious resolution to be willing to sacrifice everything, one s very life, for a cause. It means to articulate a cause in such a way that a person is at one with himself, needing nothing and fearing nothing. This infinite recklessness is authority.

Those with authority always address themselves to the conscience, not to the understanding. True authority is present when the truth is the cause. The reason the Pharisees spoke without authority, although they were indeed authorized teachers, was precisely because their talk, like their lives, was in the power of endless finite concerns.

 

To venture the truth is what gives human life and the human situation pith and meaning. To venture is the fountainhead of inspiration. Calculating is the sworn enemy of enthusiasm, the mirage whereby the earthly person drags out time and keeps the eternal away, whereby one cheats God, himself, and his generation.

 

Suffering for the truth is the only possible awakening. An appalling, all-engulfing web of knowledge and sophistication such as now envelops the generation cannot be exploded by words; greater powers are needed. And martyrs are the only ones who can do it.

 

Who is the authentic individual? One whose life, in the fruit of long silence, gains character and whose actions acquire the power to excite and arouse.

 

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