Philosophical Works

"Hegel’s ... deepest objections to the view of knowledge as method and power, as “controlling knowledge” (Scheler, Tillich) or “the logic of domination” (Marcuse), are moral. He agrees with Schiller that “utility is the great idol of the times.”"

"Hegel’s lack of charity toward the instrument metaphor is not arbitrary. It represents his disenchantment with the assumption that knowledge is power and that method is the means to this end. ... Descartes’ conception of method, like Bacon’s, is linked to this idea of knowledge as an instrument of power. ... The same could be said of Locke. Hegel can rightly claim that the instrument metaphor pervades the epistemological tradition he is seeking to transcend."

"But the other side of spirit’s becoming, history, is a knowing, self-mediating becoming—spirit estranged into time; but this estrangement is equally an estrangement of itself; the negative is the negative of itself. This becoming presents a slow movement and succession of spirits, a gallery of images, each of which, endowed with all the riches of spirit, moves so slowly just because the Self has to penetrate and digest this entire wealth of its substance. As the fulfilment of spirit consists in perfectly knowing what it is, in knowing its substance, this knowing is its withdrawal-into-itself in which it abandons its Being-there and hands its shape over to recollection. In its withdrawal-into-itself spirit is sunk in the night of its self-consciousness, but in that night its vanished Being-there is preserved; and this sublated Being-there—the former one, but now reborn of knowledge—is the new Being-there, a new world and a new shape of spirit. In this new shape the spirit has to make a new beginning with its immediacy, as naively as before, and expand to maturity again, as if, for it, all that preceded were lost and it had learned nothing from the experience of the earlier spirits. But re-collection has preserved them and is the interior and in fact the higher form of the substance. So although this spirit begins its cultivation afresh, seeming to set out only from itself, it is nonetheless at a higher stage that it begins. The realm of spirits which has formed itself in this way in Being-there constitutes a succession in which one spirit superseded another and each took over the realm of the world from its predecessor. The goal of this succession is the revelation of the depth, and this is the absolute concept; this revelation is thereby the sublation of the depth of the concept, or the expansion of it, the negativity of this I withdrawn-into-itself, a negativity which is its estrangement or substance,—and this revelation is also the time of the concept, the time in which this estrangement estranges itself within itself, and so in its expansion it is equally in its depth, in the Self. The goal, absolute knowledge, or spirit that knows itself as spirit, has for its path the recollection of the spirits as they are within themselves and as they accomplish the organization of their realm. Their preservation, on the side of their free Being-there appearing in the form of contingency, is history, while on the side of their conceptually comprehended organization, it is the science of appearing knowledge; the two together, comprehended history, form the recollection and the calvary of absolute spirit, the actuality, truth, and certainty of its throne, without which it would be lifeless solitude; only—"

"Eine Partei bewährt sich erst dadurch als die siegende, daß sie in zwei Parteien zerfällt; denn darin zeigt sie das Prinzip, das sie bekämpfte, an ihr selbst zu besitzen, und hiemit die Einseitigkeit aufgehoben zu haben, in der sie vorher auftrat. Das Interesse, das sich zwischen ihr und der andern teilte, fällt nun ganz in sie und vergißt der andern, weil es in ihr selbst den Gegensatz findet, der es beschäftigt. Zugleich aber ist er in das höhere siegende Element erhoben worden, worin er geläutert sich darstellt. So daß also die in einer Partei entstehende Zwietracht, welche ein Unglück scheint, vielmehr ihr Glück beweist."

"Selbstbewußtsein ist das einfache Ich der absolute Gegenstand, welcher aber für uns oder an sich die absolute Vermittlung ist, und die bestehende Selbstständigkeit zum wesentlichen Momente hat. Die Auflösung jener einfachen Einheit ist das Resultat der ersten Erfahrung; es ist durch sie ein reines Selbstbewußtsein, und ein Bewußtsein gesetzt, welches nicht rein für sich, sondern für ein Anderes, das heißt, als seiendes Bewußtsein oder Bewußtsein in der Gestalt der Dingheit ist. Beide Momente sind wesentlich; – da sie zunächst ungleich und entgegengesetzt sind, und ihre Reflexion in die Einheit sich noch nicht ergeben hat, so sind sie als zwei entgegengesetzte Gestalten des Bewußtseins; die eine das selbstständige, welchem das Für-sich-sein, die andere das unselbstständige, dem das Leben oder das Sein für ein Anderes das Wesen ist; jenes ist der Herr, dies der Knecht."

"Diese Eitelkeit, welche sich jede Wahrheit zu vereiteln, daraus in sich zurückzukehren versteht, und an diesem eignen Verstande sich weidet, der alle Gedanken immer aufzulösen und statt alles Inhalts nur das trockne Ich zu finden weiß, ist eine Befriedigung, welche sich selbst überlassen werden muß, denn sie flieht das Allgemeine, und sucht nur das Für-sich-sein."

"I always reason from existence, not toward existence, whether I move in the sphere of palpable sensible fact or in the realm of thought. I do not for example prove that a stone exists, but that some existing thing is a stone. The procedure in a court of justice does not prove that a criminal exists, but that the accused, whose existence is given, is a criminal."

"The Moment makes its appearance when an eternal resolve comes into relation with an incommensurable occasion. Unless this is realized I we shall be thrown back on Socrates, and shall then have neither the God as Teacher, nor an Eternal Purpose, nor the Moment. Moved by love, the God is thus eternally resolved to reveal himself. But as love is the motive so love must also be the end; for it would be a contradiction for the God to have a motive and an end which did not correspond. His love is a love of the learner, and his aim is to win him."

"How far does the Truth admit of being learned? (…)For what a man knows he cannot seek, since he knows it; and what he does not know he cannot seek, since he does not even know for what to seek. Socrates thinks the difficulty through in the doctrine of Recollection, by which all learning and inquiry is interpreted as a kind of remembering; one who is ignorant needs only a reminder to help him come to himself in the consciousness of what he knows. Thus the Truth is not introduced into the individual from without, but was within him."

"Propositio: The question is asked in ignorance, by one who does not even know what can have led him to ask it."

"The projected hypothesis indisputably makes an advance upon Socrates, which is apparent at every point. Whether it is therefore more true than the Socratic doctrine is an entirely different question, which cannot be decided in the same breath, since we have here assumed a new organ: Faith; a new presupposition: the consciousness of Sin; a new decision: the Moment; and a new Teacher: the God in Time. Without these I certainly never would have dared present myself for inspection before that master of Irony, admired through the centuries, whom I approach with a palpitating enthusiasm that yields to none. But to make an advance upon Socrates and yet say essentially the same things as he, only not nearly so well -- that at least is not Socratic."

"A good man wishes to serve humanity by presenting a probability-proof, so as to help it accept the improbable. He is successful beyond all measure; deeply moved, he receives congratulations and addresses of thanksgiving, not only from the quality, who know"

"If this fact has been naturalized, birth is no longer merely birth, but is at the same time a new birth, so that one who has never before been in existence is born anew -- in being born the first time. In the individual life the hypothesis of naturalization is expressed in the principle that the individual is born with faith; in the life of the race it must be expressed in the proposition that the human race, after the introduction of this fact, has become an entirely different race, though determined in continuity with the first. In that event the race ought to adopt a new name; for there is nothing inhuman about faith as we have proposed to conceive it, as a birth within a birth (the new birth); but if it were as the proposed objection would conceive it, it would be a fabulous monstrosity."

"The God has thus made his appearance as Teacher (for we now resume our story), and has assumed the form of a servant. To send another in his place, one high in his confidence, could not satisfy him; just as it could not satisfy the noble king to send in his stead even the most trusted man in his kingdom. But the God had also another reason; for between man and man the Socratic relationship is the highest and truest. If the God had not come himself, all the relations would have remained on the Socratic level; we would not have had the Moment, and we would have lost the Paradox. The God’s servant-form however is not a mere disguise, but is actual; it is not a parastatic body but an actual body; and from the hour that in the omnipotent purpose of his omnipotent love the God become a servant, he has so to speak imprisoned himself in his resolve, and is now bound to go on (to speak foolishly) whether it pleases him or no."

"Repetition, A Venture in Experimental Psychology, by Constantin Constantius, October 16, 1843, by Søren Kierkegaard, edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, 1983, Princeton University Press"

"For a cultured person, seeing a farce is similar to playing the lottery, except that one does not have the annoyance of winning money. p. 159"

"About a year ago, I became very much aware of a young man … [who was] at the captivating age in which spiritual maturity, just like physical maturity at a far earlier age, announces itself by a frequent breaking of the voice. … he told me he had fallen in love, I involuntarily thought that the girl who was loved in this way was indeed fortunate. He had been in love for some time now, concealing it even from me, but now the object of his desire was within reach; he had confessed his love and found love in return. p. 133-134"

"Repetition is an indestructible garment that fits closely and tenderly, neither binds nor sags. Hope is a lovely maiden who slips away between one’s fingers; recollection is a beautiful old woman with whom one is never satisfied at the moment; repetition is a beloved wife of whom one never wearies, for one only becomes weary of what is new. One never grows weary of the old, and when one has that, one is happy. p. 132"

"Hope is a new garment, stiff and starched and lustrous, but it has never been tried on, and therefore one odes not know how becoming it will be or how it will fit. Recollection is a discarded garment that does not fit, however beautiful it is, for one has outgrown it. p. 132"

"Repetition and recollection are the same movement, except in opposite directions, for what is recollected has been, is repeated backward. Repetition, therefore, if it is possible makes a person happy, whereas recollection makes him unhappy — assuming of course, that he gives himself time to live and does not promptly at birth find an excuse to sneak out of life again, for example, that he has forgotten something. p. 131"

"She is married — to whom I do not know, for when I read it in the newspaper I was so stunned that I dropped the paper and have not had the patience since then to check in detail. I am myself again. Here I have repetition; I understand everything, and life seems more beautiful to me than ever. It did indeed come like a thunderstorm, although I am indebted to her generosity for its coming. Whoever it is she has chosen — I will not even say preferred, because in the capacity of a husband any one is preferred to me — she has certainly shown generosity toward me. p. 220"

"If it is assumed that anyone who reads a book for one or another superficial reason unrelated to the book is not a genuine reader, then there perhaps are not many genuine readers left even for authors with a large reading public. Who in our day thinks of wasting any time on the curious idea that it is an art to be a good reader, not to mention spending time to become that? Of course, this deplorable state has its effect on an author who, in my opinion, very properly joins Clement of Alexandria in writing in such a way that the heretics are unable to understand it. p. 225"

"In the course of time one grows weary of the perpetual patter about the universal, always universal, repeated to the most tedious extreme of insipidity. There are exceptions. If one cannot explain them, neither can one explain the universal."

"Although I forsook the world long ago and renounced all theorizing, I nevertheless cannot deny that because of my interest in the young man he set me off my pendulum beat somewhat. It is easy to see that he is caught in a total misunderstanding. He is suffering from a misplaced melancholy high-minded that belongs nowhere except in a poet’s brain. He is waiting for a thunderstorm that is supposed to make him into a husband, a nervous breakdown perhaps. It is completely the reverse. In fact, he is one of those who say: Battalion, about-face! — instead of turning around himself. This can be expressed in another way: the girl must go. p. 216"

"I am doing my best to make myself into a husband. I sit and clip myself, take away everything that is incommensurable in order to become commensurable. Every morning I discard all the impatience and infinite striving of my soul — but it does not help, for the next moment it is there again. Every morning I shave off the beard of all my ludicrousness — but it does not help, for the next morning my beard is just as long again. I recall myself, just as the bank calls in its paper money in order to put new money in circulation — but it does not work. I convert my whole wealth of ideas, my mortgages, into matrimonial pocket money — alas! alas! In that kind of coin my wealth amounts to very little. p. 214-215"

"If I did not have Job I do not read him as one read another book, with the eyes, but I lay the book on my heart and read it with the eyes of the heart, in a clairvoyance interpreting ,,, Have you really read Job? Read him, read him again and again. I do not even have the heart to write one single outcry from him in a letter to you, even though I find my joy in transcribing over and over everything he has said, sometimes in Danish script and sometimes in Latin script, transcription of this kind is laid upon my sick heart as a God’s hand — plaster. Indeed, on whom did God lay his hand as on Job! But quote him — That I cannot do. That would be wanting to put my own pittance, wanting to make his words my own in the presence of another. p. 204"

"I can imagine that you will promptly take out my case history, as it were, and say: Right! It’s the fellow with the unhappy love affair. Where did we leave off? p. 188"

"A monotonous and unvarying order was established in my whole economy. Everything unable to move stood in its appointed place, and everything that moved went its calculated course: my clock, my servant, and I, myself, who with measured pace walked up and down the floor. Although I had convinced myself that there is no repetition, it nevertheless is always certain and that by being inflexible and also by dulling one’s powers of observation a person can achieve a sameness that has a far more anesthetic power than the most whimsical amusements and that, like a magical formulary, in the course of time also become more and more powerful. p. 179"

"The experience of watching Beckmann perform — he’s full of hilarity and joy – then notices a young girl. “When I had watched Beckmann and let myself be convulsed with laughter, when I sank back in exhaustion and let myself be carried away on the current of jubilation and hilarity and then climbed out of the pool and returned to myself again, my eyes sought her, and the sight of her refreshed my whole being with its friendly gentleness. Or when in the farce itself a feeling of greater pathos burst forth, I looked at her, and her presence helped me to yield to it, for she sat composed in the midst of it all, quietly smiling in childlike wonder. She came there, as I did, every evening. p. 167"

"I shall proceed to speak a little of the investigative journey I made to test the possibility and meaning of repetition. Without anyone knowing about it I went by steamship to Berlin. p. 150"

"Difference in the linguistic perspectives which open up before the Philologist who studies dead, inscribed languages, and before the Ethnographer who has to deal with a primitive living tongue, existing only in actual utterance. The study of an object alive more enlightening than that of its dead remains."

"Most educated people are quite unconscious of the extent to which these relics survive at their doors, still less do they realize how their own behaviour is moulded by the unseen hand of the past. "Only those whose studies have led them to investigate the subject," adds Dr Frazer, "are aware of the depth to which the ground beneath our feet is thus, as it were, honeycombed by unseen forces.""

"Throughout almost all our life we are treating things as signs. All experience, using the word in the widest possible sense, is either enjoyed or interpreted (i.e., treated as a sign) or both, and very little of it escapes some degree of interpretation. An account of the process of Interpretation is thus the key to the understanding of the Sign-situation, and therefore the beginning of the wisdom. It is astonishing that although the need for such an account has long been a commonplace in psychology, those concerned with the criticism and organization of our knowledge have with few exceptions entirely ignored the consequences of its neglect."

"Symbolism is the study of the part played in human affairs by language and symbols of all kinds, and especially of their influence upon Thought. It singles out for special inquiry the ways in which symbols help us and hinder us in reflecting on things."

"Place a new nickel florin on the palm of the hand with the arm extended horizontally, and note that a truthful person would describe its shape as elliptical. Now look at it vertically from above and agree that it is round. Is the florin circular or elliptical? What an insoluble problem?"

"No argument about the world is valid if based merely upon the way a symbol system behaves."

"In all discussions we shall find that what is said is only in part determined by the things to which the speaker is referring. Often without a clear consciousness of the fact, people have preoccupations which determine their use of words. Unless we are aware of their purposes and interests at the moment, we shall not know what they are talking about and whether their referents are the same as ours or not."

"It might ... have been supposed that logicians and psychologists would have devoted special attention to meaning, since it is so vital for all the issues with which they are concerned. But that this is not the case will be evident[The following is the original footnote.] 1 The following passage in Nuces Philosophicoe, by one Edward Johnson, published in 1842, is worth recalling:"

"We are now in a position to understand what it is that distinguishes a true judgement from a false one."

"Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind is also rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good."

"The impartiality which, in contemplation, is the unalloyed desire for truth, is the very same quality of mind which, in action, is justice, and in emotion is that universal love which can be given to all, and not only to those who are judged useful or admirable. Thus contemplation not only enlarges the objects of our thoughts, but also the objects of our actions and our affections: it makes us citizens of the universe, not only of one walled city at war with the rest. In this citizenship of the universe consists man's true freedom, and his liberation from the thraldom of narrow hopes and fears."

"The free intellect will see as God might see, without a here and now, without hopes and fears, without the trammels of customary beliefs and traditional prejudices, calmly, dispassionately, in the sole and exclusive desire of knowledge—knowledge as impersonal, as purely contemplative, as it is possible for man to attain. Hence also the free intellect will value more the abstract and universal knowledge into which the accidents of private history do not enter, than the knowledge brought by the senses, and dependent, as such knowledge must be, upon an exclusive and personal point of view and a body whose sense-organs distort as much as they reveal."

"Everything, in contemplation, that is personal or private, everything that depends upon habit, self-interest, or desire, distorts the object, and hence impairs the union which the intellect seeks. By thus making a barrier between subject and object, such personal and private things become a prison to the intellect."

"The true philosophic contemplation, on the contrary, finds its satisfaction in every enlargement of the non-Self, in everything that magnifies the objects contemplated, and thereby the object contemplating."

"There is a widespread philosophical tendency towards the view which tells us that Man is the measure of all things, that truth is man-made, that space and time and the world of universals are properties of the mind, and that, if there be anything not created by the mind, it is unknowable and of no account for us. This view, if our previous discussions were correct, is untrue; but in addition to being untrue, it has the effect of robbing philosophic contemplation of all that gives it value, since it fetters contemplation to Self. What it calls knowledge is not a union with the not-Self, but a set of prejudices, habits, and desires, making an impenetrable veil between us and the world beyond. The man who finds pleasure in such a theory of knowledge is like the man who never leaves the domestic circle for fear his word might not be law."

"Knowledge is a form of union of Self and not-Self; like all union, it is impaired by dominion, and therefore by any attempt to force the universe into conformity with what we find in ourselves."

"Philosophic contemplation does not, in its widest survey, divide the universe into two hostile camps—friends and foes, helpful and hostile, good and bad—it views the whole impartially. Philosophic contemplation, when it is unalloyed, does not aim at proving that the rest of the universe is akin to man. All acquisition of knowledge is an enlargement of the Self, but this enlargement is best attained when it is not directly sought. It is obtained when the desire for knowledge is alone operative, by a study which does not wish in advance that its objects should have this or that character, but adapts the Self to the characters which it finds in its objects. This enlargement of Self is not obtained when, taking the Self as it is, we try to show that the world is so similar to this Self that knowledge of it is possible without any admission of what seems alien. The desire to prove this is a form of self-assertion and, like all self-assertion, it is an obstacle to the growth of Self which it desires, and of which the Self knows that it is capable. Self-assertion, in philosophic speculation as elsewhere, views the world as a means to its own ends; thus it makes the world of less account than Self, and the Self sets bounds to the greatness of its goods. In contemplation, on the contrary, we start from the not-Self, and through its greatness the boundaries of Self are enlarged; through the infinity of the universe the mind which contemplates it achieves some share in infinity."

"Philosophy has a value—perhaps its chief value—through the greatness of the objects which it contemplates, and the freedom from narrow and personal aims resulting from this contemplation. The life of the instinctive man is shut up within the circle of his private interests: family and friends may be included, but the outer world is not regarded except as it may help or hinder what comes within the circle of instinctive wishes. In such a life there is something feverish and confined, in comparison with which the philosophic life is calm and free. The private world of instinctive interests is a small one, set in the midst of a great and powerful world which must, sooner or later, lay our private world in ruins. Unless we can so enlarge our interests as to include the whole outer world, we remain like a garrison in a beleaguered fortress, knowing that the enemy prevents escape and that ultimate surrender is inevitable. In such a life there is no peace, but a constant strife between the insistence of desire and the powerlessness of will. In one way or another, if our life is to be great and free, we must escape this prison and this strife."

"Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom. Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what they may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never traveled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familiar things in an unfamiliar aspect."

"The value of philosophy is, in fact, to be sought largely in its very uncertainty. The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the co-operation or consent of his deliberate reason. To such a man the world tends to become definite, finite, obvious; common objects rouse no questions, and unfamiliar possibilities are contemptuously rejected. As soon as we begin to philosophize, on the contrary, we find... that even the most everyday things lead to problems to which only very incomplete answers can be given."