Kierkegaard, Soren
(1813-1855)
Truth
- I must find a truth that is true for me... the idea for
which I can live or die.
- What I really need is to get clear what I must do, not what I
must know. What matters is to find a purpose; to see what ... I
shall do; the crucial thing is to find a truth that is a
truth for me.
- My purpose in life would seem to be to present the
truth as I discover it.
The Journal
Soul and Body
- I am in the deepest sense an unfortunate individual who has
from the earliest age been nailed fast to one suffering or
another, to the very verge of insanity, which may have its deeper
ground in a disproportion between my soul and my body; for
(and this is the remarkable thing in conjunction with my infinite
cheerfulness) this is entirely out of proportion to my spirit,
which anomalously, and perhaps because of the strain and stress
between soul and body, has acquired a tensile strength which
is very rare.
The Journal
Single Individual
- Inasmuch as in being published it is in a figurative sense
starting a journey, I let my eyes follow it for a little while. I
saw how it wended its way down solitary paths or walked solitary
on public roads. After a few little mistakes, through being
deceived by a fleeting resemblance, it finally met that single
individual [hiin Enkelte] whom I with joy and gratitude
call my reader, that single individual it is seeking, to
whom, so to speak, it stretches out its arms, that single
individual who is favorably enough disposed to receive it,
whether at the time of the encounter it finds him cheerful and
confident or "weary and pensive."
Two Upbuilding Discourses (1843) Preface
Condemnation of Church Christianity
- Woe, woe to the Christian Church if it would triumph in
this world, for then it is not the Church that triumphs, but the
world has triumphed. Christ never desired to conquer in this
world; He came to this world to suffer, that is what He called
conquering. But when human impatience and the impudent forwardness
which ascribes to Christ its own thoughts and feeling, instead of
letting its thoughts and conceptions be transformed by Christ --
when this got the upper hand , and, in the old human way the
Church thought to conquer meant to conquer in this world,
Christianity was done away with.
- This is a death sentence to all official Christianity
-- this prodigious castle in the air: Christian states,
kingdoms and lands.
- There is nothing so displeasing to God as official
Christianity... if thou dost believe, as surely thou dost,
that to steal, rob, plunder, commit adultery and slander is
displeasing to God, then official Christianity and its worship is
infinitely more abhorrent to Him.
- Let the State make all preaching of Christianity a
private practice... what keeps up the illusion about a Christian
Nation is partly the universal human indolence and love of ease
which prefers to remain in old ruts.
- This thing of Christianity being protected by the State is
like a fairy tale... these rascally priests have transformed
Christianity into the very opposite of what it was in the New
Testament, and thereby put the idea into my head that I could
patronize Christianity!
- Under the name of Christian education, they turn Christianity
topsy turvy and transform its view of life into exactly the
opposite of what it is.
- What Christ said about His Kingdom not being of this world was
not said with a special reference to those times when he uttered
this saying; it is an eternally valid utterance about the relation
of Christ's Kingdom to this world, and so it is valid for every
age. As soon as Christ's kingdom comes to terms with the world,
Christianity is abolished.
ATTACK UPON CHRISTENDOM
- This culture is in the process of identifying being a
Christian with culture. This is where the struggle must come, and
will be fought in the future.
PHILOSOPHICAL FRAGMENTS
Selected Sites for the Life and Thought of Kierkegaard
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