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Problema II

Problema II

180 sentences · 111 notes

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  1. 1

    Is there an absolute duty toward God?

    Givesis theregive · verb, present, indicative, passivemain verb of the sentence
    derthereder · adverbexpletive with Gives
    enanen · determiner, common gender, singulardeterminer of Pligt
    absolutabsoluteabsolut · adjective, common gender, singularmodifies Pligt
    PligtdutyPligt · noun, common gender, singularsubject of Gives
    modtowardmod · prepositionpreposition marking Gud
    GudGodGud · noun, common gender, singularmodifies Pligt
  2. 2

    The ethical is the universal, and as such, again, the divine.

  3. 3

    One is therefore right in saying that every duty is at bottom a duty toward God; but if one can say no more than this, then one is saying at the same time that I really have no duty toward God at all.

  4. 4

    Duty becomes duty by being referred to God, but in the duty itself I do not enter into relation with God.

  5. 5

    Thus it is a duty to love one's neighbor.

  6. 6

    It is a duty by being referred to God, but in the duty I do not enter into relation with God, but with the neighbor whom I love.

  7. 7

    If I then say, in this connection, that it is my duty to love God, I am really only uttering a tautology, insofar as "God" is here taken in a wholly abstract sense as the divine, i.e. the universal, i.e. duty.

  8. 8

    The whole existence of the human race then rounds itself off perfectly, sphere-like, in itself, and the ethical is at once that which sets the limit and that which fills it out.

  9. 9

    God becomes an invisible, vanishing point, a powerless thought; His power lies only in the ethical, which fills out existence.

  10. 10

    So far, then, as anyone should take it into his head to want to love God in any other than the sense here indicated, he is overwrought; he loves a phantom which, if only it had power enough to speak, would say to him: I do not demand your love; just stay where you belong.

  11. 11

    So far as anyone should take it into his head to want to love God otherwise, this love becomes suspect, like the love Rousseau speaks of, by which a man loves the Kaffirs instead of loving his neighbor.

  12. 12

    If now what has here been developed is correct, if there is nothing incommensurable in a human life, and what incommensurability there is exists only by accident, from which nothing follows so far as existence is regarded under the Idea, then Hegel is right; but what he is not right in is to speak of faith, or to allow Abraham to be regarded as its father; for by the latter he has passed judgment both upon Abraham and upon faith.

  13. 13

    In Hegelian philosophy the outer (the externalization) is higher than the inner.

  14. 14

    This is often illustrated by an example.

  15. 15

    The child is the inner, the man the outer; from this it comes that the child is determined precisely by the outer, and conversely the man, as the outer, is determined precisely by the inner.

  16. 16

    Faith, by contrast, is this paradox: that inwardness is higher than outwardness — or, to recall once more an expression used earlier, that the odd number is higher than the even.

  17. 17

    "For the ethical view of life, then, it is the single individual's task to strip himself of the determinations of inwardness and to express these in an outwardness.

  18. 18

    Every time the single individual shrinks from this, every time he would hold himself back in, or slip down again into, the inwardness of feeling, mood, and so on, he sins — then he lies in a spiritual trial.

  19. 19

    The paradox of faith is this: that there is an inwardness which is incommensurable with the outer — an inwardness which, mark well, is not identical with that first one, but a new inwardness.

  20. 20

    This must not be overlooked.

  21. 21

    Recent philosophy has allowed itself, without further ado, to substitute the immediate for "faith."

  22. 22

    When one does that, it becomes ridiculous to deny that faith has existed in all ages.

  23. 23

    Faith thus comes, in this way, into rather plain company with feeling, mood, idiosyncrasy, vapors, and so on.

  24. 24

    So far, philosophy may be right that one ought not to remain standing there.

  25. 25

    But there is nothing that entitles philosophy to this use of language.

  26. 26

    Before faith there goes a movement of infinity; only then, unexpectedly, by virtue of the absurd, does faith enter in.

  27. 27

    This I can indeed understand, without on that account claiming that I have faith.

  28. 28

    If faith is nothing more than what philosophy makes it out to be, then Socrates already went further, far further — whereas the truth is the reverse: that he never reached it.

  29. 29

    In an intellectual respect he made the movement of infinity.

  30. 30

    His ignorance is the infinite resignation.

  31. 31

    This task is already one that befits human powers, even though our age disdains it; but only when it has been done, only when the single individual has exhausted himself in the infinite, only then has the point come at which faith can break forth.

  32. 32

    The paradox of faith, then, is this: that the single individual is higher than the universal — that the single individual, to recall a now rarer dogmatic distinction, determines his relation to the universal by his relation to the absolute, not his relation to the absolute by his relation to the universal.

  33. 33

    The paradox can also be expressed thus: that there is an absolute duty toward God; for in this duty-relation the single individual, as the single individual, relates himself absolutely to the absolute.

  34. 34

    When, then, it is said in this connection that it is a duty to love God, something other is meant than before; for if this duty is absolute, the ethical is reduced to the relative.

  35. 35

    From this it does not follow, however, that the ethical is to be annihilated; rather, it receives a wholly different expression, the paradoxical expression — so that, for example, love of God may bring the knight of faith to give his love of the neighbor the opposite expression to what, ethically speaking, is a duty.

  36. 36

    If this is not so, then faith has no place in existence; then faith is a spiritual trial, and Abraham is lost, since he gave in to it.

  37. 37

    This paradox does not allow of mediation; for it rests precisely on the fact that the single individual is only the single individual.

  38. 38

    As soon as this individual wants to express his absolute duty in the universal, to become conscious of it within the universal, he recognizes himself to be in a spiritual trial; and then, if he otherwise puts up resistance, he does not come to fulfill the so-called absolute duty, while if he does not resist, he sins, even though in reality his deed turns out to be what was his absolute duty.

  39. 39

    What, then, was Abraham to do?

  40. 40

    If he wanted to say to another person: Isaac I love higher than everything in the world, and that is why it is so hard for me to sacrifice him — then the other would surely have shaken his head and said: why, then, do you want to sacrifice him? Or, if the other had been a shrewd head, he might even have seen through Abraham, that he was parading feelings which stood in a crying contradiction to his deed.

  41. 41

    In the story of Abraham we find such a paradox.

  42. 42

    His relation to Isaac, ethically expressed, is this: that the father shall love the son.

  43. 43

    This ethical relation is reduced to the relative, in contrast to the absolute relation to God.

  44. 44

    To the question why, Abraham has no other answer than that it is a trial, a temptation — which, as noted above, is the unity of its being for God's sake and for his own sake.

  45. 45

    These two determinations also correspond to one another in ordinary usage.

  46. 46

    When one sees a person do something that does not go up into the universal, one says that he hardly did it for God's sake, and thereby indicates that he did it for his own sake.

  47. 47

    The paradox of faith has lost the intermediate term, namely the universal.

  48. 48

    On the one side it has the expression of the highest egoism (to do the dreadful thing it does for one's own sake); on the other side, the expression of the most absolute devotion, to do it for God's sake.

  49. 49

    Faith itself cannot be mediated into the universal; for thereby it is annulled.

  50. 50

    Faith is this paradox, and the single individual simply cannot make himself understood to anyone.

  51. 51

    One may imagine, no doubt, that the single individual can make himself understood to another individual who is in the same case.

  52. 52

    Such a view would be unthinkable, were it not that in our age one seeks in so many ways to sneak slyly into greatness.

  53. 53

    The one knight of faith can in no way help the other.

  54. 54

    Either the single individual becomes a knight of faith himself by taking the paradox upon himself, or he never becomes one at all.

  55. 55

    Partnership in these regions is utterly unthinkable.

  56. 56

    Every closer explication of what is to be understood by Isaac, the single individual can constantly give only to himself.

  57. 57

    And even if one could determine ever so precisely, in general terms, what was to be understood by Isaac (which would, moreover, be the most ridiculous self-contradiction — to bring the single individual, who stands precisely outside the universal, under general determinations, when he is to act precisely as the single individual who is outside the universal), the single individual will still never be able to assure himself of it through others, but only through himself as the single individual.

  58. 58

    So, even if a person were cowardly and wretched enough to want to become a knight of faith on someone else's responsibility, he still does not become one; for only the single individual becomes that as the single individual — and this is the great thing, which I can indeed understand without entering into it, since I lack the courage; but this is also the dreadful thing, which I can grasp even better.

  59. 59

    As is well known, there is set forth in Luke XIV, 26 a remarkable teaching about the absolute duty toward God: "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father, and his mother, and his wife, and his children, and his brothers and his sisters, yes, and even his own soul, he cannot be my disciple."

  60. 60

    This is a hard saying — who can bear to listen to it?

  61. 61

    For that reason it is also very seldom heard.

  62. 62

    Yet this silence is only an evasion that helps nothing.

  63. 63

    The theological student, however, gets to know that these words occur in the New Testament, and in some exegetical aid or other he finds the information that the word, in this and a couple of other places, signifies, by way of euphemism: I love less, I set after, I do not cultivate, I make of no account.

  64. 64

    The context in which these words occur does not, however, seem to support this tasteful explanation.

  65. 65

    For in the very next verse there is found a story of how someone who would build a tower first makes an estimate of whether he is able to do it, so that people will not afterward laugh at him.

  66. 66

    This story's close connection with the quoted verse seems precisely to indicate that the words are to be taken as dreadfully as possible, so that everyone must test himself as to whether he can build the structure.

  67. 67

    If that pious and squeamish exegete, who by thus haggling thinks to smuggle Christianity into the world, should succeed in convincing a person that this was the meaning of that passage — grammatically, linguistically, and 'in keeping with the analogy of faith' — then, presumably, he will also succeed at that very moment in convincing the same person that Christianity is one of the most pitiable things in the world.

  68. 68

    For the teaching which, in one of its most lyrical outbursts — where the consciousness of its eternal validity swells most strongly within it — has nothing more to say than a noisy word that means nothing, but signifies only that one should be less benevolent, less attentive, more indifferent; the teaching which, at the moment when it makes as if to say the dreadful thing, ends by cooling instead of appalling — that teaching is surely not worth rising to one's feet for.

  69. 69

    The words are dreadful, yet I do think one can understand them, without it following from that, however, that whoever has understood them therefore has the courage to do it.

  70. 70

    One ought at least to be honest enough to acknowledge what stands there, to admit that it is the great thing, even though one does not oneself have the courage for it.

  71. 71

    Whoever conducts himself thus shall not exclude himself from a share in the beautiful story, for it does, after all, in a way contain comfort for the one who had not the courage to begin building the tower.

  72. 72

    But honest he must be, and not explain this lack of courage as humility, since on the contrary it is pride — whereas the courage of faith is the only humble courage.

  73. 73

    One now easily sees that, if the passage is to have any meaning, it must be understood quite according to the words.

  74. 74

    God is the one who demands absolute love.

  75. 75

    Now the one who, in demanding a person's love, would hold that this love must also prove itself by his becoming lukewarm toward everything else that was dear to him, he is not merely an egoist, but is also stupid; and whoever would demand such a love signs, at that very moment, his own death warrant, insofar as he had his life in the love he craved.

  76. 76

    A man thus demands that his wife shall leave father and mother; but if he were to take it as a proof of her extraordinary love for him that for his sake she became a lukewarm, sluggish daughter, and so on, then he is more stupid than the most stupid.

  77. 77

    If he had any conception of what love is, he would wish to discover, and to see therein a guarantee, that his wife would love him as no other in the kingdom, if he discovered that as daughter and sister she was perfect in love.

  78. 78

    What one would regard in a human being as a sign of egoism and stupidity, one is, with an exegete's help, to regard as a worthy conception of the Godhead.

  79. 79

    But how, then, is one to hate them?

  80. 80

    I shall not here recall the human distinction of either loving or hating — not because I have so much against it, for it is at least passionate, but because it is egoistic and does not fit here.

  81. 81

    If, on the other hand, I regard the task as a paradox, then I understand it — that is, I understand it in the way one can understand a paradox.

  82. 82

    The absolute duty can then bring one to do what ethics would forbid, but it can in no way bring the knight of faith to leave off loving.

  83. 83

    This is what Abraham shows.

  84. 84

    In the moment when he means to sacrifice Isaac, the ethical expression for what he is doing is this: he hates Isaac.

  85. 85

    But if he really hates Isaac, then he can rest assured that God is not demanding this of him; for Cain and Abraham are not identical.

  86. 86

    Isaac he must love with his whole soul; when God demands him, he must love him, if possible, even higher, and only then can he sacrifice him; for it is precisely this love for Isaac that, by its paradoxical opposition to his love for God, makes his deed a sacrifice.

  87. 87

    But this is the distress and the anguish in the paradox: that he, humanly speaking, simply cannot make himself understood.

  88. 88

    Only in the moment when his deed is in absolute contradiction with his feeling, only then does he sacrifice Isaac; but the reality of his deed is what makes him belong to the universal, and there he is and remains a murderer.

  89. 89

    The passage in Luke must further be understood so that one sees that the knight of faith receives no higher expression whatsoever from the universal (as the ethical) in which he might save himself.

  90. 90

    If one were thus to let the Church demand this sacrifice of one of its members, then we would have only a tragic hero.

  91. 91

    For the idea of the Church is not qualitatively different from that of the State, as soon as the single individual can enter it by a simple mediation; and as soon as the single individual has entered the paradox, he does not arrive at the idea of the Church — he does not come out of the paradox, but must find in it either his salvation or his perdition.

  92. 92

    Such an ecclesiastical hero expresses the universal in his deed, and there shall be no one in the Church, not even his father and mother and so on, without their understanding him.

  93. 93

    A knight of faith, by contrast, he is not, and he also has a different answer from Abraham's; he does not say that it is a trial or a temptation in which he is being tested.

  94. 94

    People generally refrain from citing such passages as the one in Luke.

  95. 95

    People are afraid of setting men loose; they fear that the worst will happen once the single individual takes it into his head to conduct himself as the single individual.

  96. 96

    Furthermore, people think that to exist as the single individual is the easiest thing of all, and therefore one must precisely compel people to become the universal.

  97. 97

    I can share neither that fear nor this opinion, and for the same reason.

  98. 98

    He who has learned that to exist as the single individual is the most terrible thing of all should not be afraid to say that it is the greatest; but he should also say it in such a way that his words barely become a snare for someone gone astray, but rather help him into the universal, even though his words make a little room for the great.

  99. 99

    He who dares not name such passages dares not name Abraham either; and to think that to exist as the single individual is easy enough contains a very questionable indirect concession with respect to oneself — for he who really has respect for himself and concern for his soul is convinced that one who lives under his own supervision, alone in the whole world, lives more strictly and withdrawn than a maiden in her bower.

  100. 100

    That there may be those who need compulsion — those who, if set free, would like unbridled beasts wallow in selfish lust — is true enough; but one must precisely show that one does not belong to them, by knowing how to speak with fear and trembling, and speak one must, out of reverence for the great, so that it not be forgotten out of fear of the harm — which will surely fail to come when one speaks in such a way that one knows it is the great, knows its terrors, and without this one does not know its grandeur either.

  101. 101

    Let us then consider a little more closely the distress and the anguish in the paradox of faith.

  102. 102

    The tragic hero resigns himself in order to express the universal; the knight of faith resigns the universal in order to become the single individual.

  103. 103

    As said, everything depends on how one is situated.

  104. 104

    He who believes that it is easy enough to be the single individual can always be sure that he is not the knight of faith; for loose birds and vagabond geniuses are not men of faith.

  105. 105

    The knight of this faith, by contrast, knows that it is glorious to belong to the universal.

  106. 106

    He knows that it is beautiful and beneficial to be the single individual who translates himself into the universal — the one who, so to speak, himself produces a clean and elegant and, as far as possible, flawless edition of himself, legible to all; he knows that it is refreshing to become intelligible to oneself in the universal, in such a way that he understands it, and that every individual who understands him understands the universal again in him, and both rejoice in the security of the universal.

  107. 107

    He knows that it is beautiful to be born as the single individual who has his home in the universal, his friendly dwelling-place, which at once receives him with open arms whenever he is willing to remain in it.

  108. 108

    But he also knows that higher than this winds a lonely road, narrow and steep; he knows that it is terrible to be born solitary out of the universal, to walk without meeting a single wayfarer.

  109. 109

    He knows very well where he is and how he stands in relation to other people.

  110. 110

    Humanly speaking, he is mad and cannot make himself intelligible to anyone.

  111. 111

    And yet to be called mad is the mildest expression for it.

  112. 112

    If he is not regarded so, then he is a hypocrite, and the higher he climbs along the road, the more dreadful a hypocrite.

  113. 113

    The knight of faith knows that it is inspiring to give oneself up for the universal, that courage is required for it, but that there is also a security in it, precisely because it is for the universal; he knows that it is glorious to be understood by every noble soul, and in such a way that the beholder is himself ennobled by it.

  114. 114

    This he knows, and he feels himself, as it were, bound; he could wish that this were the task set for him.

  115. 115

    Thus Abraham might now and then have wished that the task were to love Isaac as it befits and behooves a father, intelligible to all, unforgettable through the ages; he could wish that the task were to sacrifice Isaac for the universal, that he might inspire fathers to renowned deeds — and he was almost horrified at the thought that such wishes are for him only temptations, and must be treated as such; for he knows that it is a lonely road he treads, and that he accomplishes nothing for the universal, but is himself only tested and tried.

  116. 116

    Or what did Abraham accomplish for the universal?

  117. 117

    Let me speak of it humanly, quite humanly!

  118. 118

    He spends seventy years to get a son of his old age.

  119. 119

    What others get quickly enough and enjoy for a long time, on that he spends seventy years; and why? because he is tested and tempted.

  120. 120

    Is this not madness!

  121. 121

    But Abraham believed, and only Sarah wavered and got him to take Hagar as a concubine; but for that reason he also had to drive her away.

  122. 122

    He gets Isaac — and then he is to be tested again.

  123. 123

    He knew that it is glorious to express the universal, glorious to live with Isaac.

  124. 124

    But that is not the task.

  125. 125

    He knew that it is kingly to sacrifice such a son for the universal; he himself would have found rest in it, and all would have rested in praise upon his deed, as the vowel rests in its quiescent letter; but that is not the task — he is being tested.

  126. 126

    That Roman general, famous for his cognomen Cunctator, halted the enemy by his delaying — but what a delayer Abraham is in comparison with him! — yet he does not save the State.

  127. 127

    This is — the content of a hundred and thirty years.

  128. 128

    Who can endure it? would not his contemporaries, if such could be spoken of, say: 'it is an eternal delaying with Abraham; at last he got a son, it took long enough, and now he wants to sacrifice him — is he not insane?

  129. 129

    And if he could at least explain why he wants it — but always it is a trial.'

  130. 130

    Abraham could explain no more either; for his life is like a book placed under divine seal, and which does not become publici juris.

  131. 131

    This is the terrible thing.

  132. 132

    He who does not see this can always be sure that he is no knight of faith; but he who does see it will not want to deny that even the most sorely tried tragic hero goes as if in a dance compared with the knight of faith, who comes forward only slowly and creeping.

  133. 133

    And when he has grasped this and convinced himself that he has not the courage to understand it, then he will surely sense the wondrous glory that knight attains: that he becomes God's confidant, the Lord's friend — to speak quite humanly — that he says 'thou' to God in heaven, whereas even the tragic hero addresses Him only in the third person.

  134. 134

    The tragic hero is soon finished, and has soon fought his fight through; he makes the infinite movement and is now secured in the universal.

  135. 135

    The knight of faith, by contrast, is kept sleepless; for he is constantly being tested, and in every moment there is a possibility of being able to turn back, repentant, to the universal, and this possibility may just as well be a temptation as truth.

  136. 136

    Enlightenment about this he cannot get from any human being; for then he would be outside the paradox.

  137. 137

    The knight of faith therefore has, first and foremost, the passion to concentrate in a single moment the whole of the ethical, that he may give himself the assurance that he really loves Isaac with his whole soul.

  138. 138

    If he cannot do this, then he lies in temptation.

  139. 139

    Next he has the passion to bring forth this whole assurance in an instant, and in such a way that it is just as fully valid as in the first moment.

  140. 140

    If he cannot do this, then he does not get anywhere; for then he must constantly begin again from the start.

  141. 141

    The tragic hero too concentrates in one moment the ethical that he teleologically went beyond, but in this respect he has support in the universal.

  142. 142

    The knight of faith has only and alone himself, and therein lies the terrible thing.

  143. 143

    Most people live in an ethical obligation in such a way that they let each day have its own sorrow, but then they never come to this passionate concentration, this energetic consciousness.

  144. 144

    In a certain sense the universal can help the tragic hero attain this, but the knight of faith is alone in it. — The difference between the collision as it is set for the tragic hero and for the knight of faith I will illuminate once more.

  145. 145

    The tragic hero assures himself that the whole ethical obligation is totally present in him by transforming it into a wish.

  146. 146

    Agamemnon can thus say: this is the proof to me that I do not violate my fatherly duty, that what is my duty is my only wish.

  147. 147

    We thus have here wish and duty set over against each other.

  148. 148

    The fortunate thing in life is that the two coincide, that my wish is my duty and vice versa; and most people's task in life is precisely to remain in their duty, and by their enthusiasm to transform it into their wish.

  149. 149

    The tragic hero gives up his wish in order to fulfill his duty.

  150. 150

    For the knight of faith, wish and duty are also identical, but it is demanded of him that he give up both.

  151. 151

    When he then wishes to resign by giving up his wish, he finds no rest; for it is, after all, his duty.

  152. 152

    If he wants to remain in his duty and in his wish, then he does not become the knight of faith; for the absolute duty demanded precisely that he give it up.

  153. 153

    The tragic hero received a higher expression of duty, but not an absolute duty.

  154. 154

    Everything.

  155. 155

    The tragic hero does it and finds rest in the universal; the knight of faith is kept constantly in tension.

  156. 156

    Agamemnon gives up Iphigenia and has thereby found rest in the universal; he now proceeds to sacrifice her.

  157. 157

    If Agamemnon has not made the movement — if his soul in the decisive moment, instead of passionate concentration, has been lost in ordinary chatter about how he had several daughters and that perhaps the extraordinary might yet happen — then of course he is not a hero, but a hospital inmate.

  158. 158

    The hero's concentration Abraham has too, though in him it is far more difficult, since he has no support whatever in the universal; but he makes yet another movement, by which he gathers his soul back upon the wonder.

  159. 159

    If Abraham has not done this, then he is only an Agamemnon — insofar as one can otherwise explain how it can be defended to want to sacrifice Isaac, when one thereby does no good to the universal.

  160. 160

    Whether the single individual now really lies in a temptation or is the knight of faith, that only the single individual himself can decide.

  161. 161

    Nevertheless, some marks could be constructed out of the paradox that even one who is not in it can understand.

  162. 162

    The true knight of faith is always absolute isolation; the false one is sectarian.

  163. 163

    This is an attempt to leap off from the paradox's narrow road and become a tragic hero on the cheap.

  164. 164

    The tragic hero expresses the universal and sacrifices himself for it.

  165. 165

    Instead of that, the sectarian Master Jackel has a private theater, a few good friends and comrades who represent the universal about as well as the wooden jurymen in The Golden Snuffbox represent Justice.

  166. 166

    The knight of faith, by contrast, is the paradox; he is the single individual, absolutely only the single individual, without any connections or ramifications.

  167. 167

    This is the terrible thing that the sectarian weakling cannot endure.

  168. 168

    For instead of learning from this that he is not capable of doing the great thing, and then frankly admitting it — which of course I cannot but approve, since it is what I myself do — the bungler thinks that by joining himself to some other bunglers he will be able to do it.

  169. 169

    But that will not do at all; in the world of spirit no cheating is tolerated.

  170. 170

    A dozen sectarians take one another by the arm; they know nothing at all of the lonely trials that await the knight of faith, and which he dares not flee, precisely because it would be still more dreadful were he presumptuously to push himself forward.

  171. 171

    The sectarians drown one another out with noise and din, keep dread at bay with their shouting, and such a whooping fairground crew imagines it is storming heaven and imagines it goes by the same road as the knight of faith, who in the solitude of the universe never hears any human voice, but walks alone with his dreadful responsibility.

  172. 172

    The knight of faith is referred to himself alone; he feels the pain of not being able to make himself intelligible to others, yet he feels no vain desire to want to guide others.

  173. 173

    The pain is his assurance; the vain desire he does not know — for that his soul is too earnest.

  174. 174

    The counterfeit knight easily betrays himself by this mastery, which he has acquired in a single moment.

  175. 175

    He grasps nothing at all of what is in question: that insofar as another single individual is to walk the same road, he must in exactly the same way become the single individual, and then has no need of anyone's guidance, least of all of one who would force himself upon him.

  176. 176

    Here one leaps off again; one cannot endure the martyrdom of unintelligibility, and instead of it one then conveniently enough chooses the worldly admiration that mastery brings.

  177. 177

    The true knight of faith is a witness, never a teacher, and in this lies the deep humanity that is worth something more than that silly fussing over other people's woe and weal which is honored under the name of sympathy, while it is yet nothing but vanity.

  178. 178

    He who will only be a witness thereby confesses that no human being, not even the lowliest, needs another human being's fellow-feeling, or is to be debased so that the other may be exalted.

  179. 179

    But just as he himself did not win what he won at a cheap price, so neither does he sell it off cheap; he is not so base as to take people's admiration and give them in return his silent contempt — he knows that what is in truth great is equally accessible to all.

  180. 180

    Either, then, there is an absolute duty toward God — and if there is such a thing, it is the paradox already described, that the single individual as the single individual is higher than the universal and as the single individual stands in an absolute relation to the absolute — or else there has never been faith, just because it has always existed, or else Abraham is lost, or else one must explain the passage in Luke XIV as that tasteful exegete did, and explain the corresponding passages in the same way, and the like.

The particulars

The text
Frygt og Bæven, Søren Kierkegaard. Problemata.
Translation
Public-domain Danish (Kierkegaard, d. 1855; published 1843). English translation © 2026 1732 Studios, LLC.
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Two whoopie pies and a pine. An inside joke.