Summary: Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments

In 1846, two years after the publication of Philosophical Fragments, Kierkegaard published his famous Postscript. The book’s title is, of course, ironic. A simple postscript is usually only a few lines long, and adds clarifications on inessential points (which is why it does not appear in the body of the original message). Here, the Postscript is four times longer than Philosophical Fragments, and Kierkegaard develops his thought on essential matters.

It is therefore a major work, contrary to what its title might suggest. Philosophy students often favour this book, because it is the one that looks most straightforwardly philosophical, as opposed to works with a more literary cast (such as Repetition, The Seducer’s Diary) or more theological ones (such as Fear and Trembling). It is also here that Kierkegaard opposes Hegel most explicitly.

Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to begin your exploration of Kierkegaard’s thought with this work. It is, after all, a postscript: it offers clarifications of ideas raised in other books—Philosophical Fragments, Either/Or, Fear and Trembling… If you have not read these, and do not know the ideas to which it refers, you will not understand those clarifications.

We therefore invite you to read these works—or their summaries—before turning to this presentation of the Postscript. They contain just as much substance as the Postscript, despite their literary or religious form: they belong fully to philosophy.

In the Preface, Kierkegaard begins by ironising about the lack of success of Philosophical Fragments. This short but dense work, with passages that are sometimes rather obscure, did not find its readers. But its author ultimately praises the freedom this gives him: nobody expects anything from his work, and he is therefore free to go in whatever direction he wishes, without fearing to disappoint anyone:

So now I am preparing to go forward. Hindered by nothing and pressed by no demand of the age, following entirely my inner impulse, I continue, as it were, to knead the thoughts until the dough turns out to my liking.¹

In the Introduction, he refers back to the problem raised in Philosophical Fragments. In that book, the problem was not to ask about the truth of Christianity, but about the individual’s relation to Christianity—that is, the concern of the individual who takes an infinite interest in his relation to such a doctrine.

Kierkegaard analyses this problem through a classic conceptual opposition: subjective/objective.

Thus, the objective problem would be: the truth of Christianity. The subjective problem is: the individual’s relation to Christianity; and it is the subjective problem that Kierkegaard examined in the Fragments.

It is precisely around this opposition that the plan of the Postscript will be organised. In a first part, Kierkegaard proposes to pose the objective problem and to show how it must be treated ; this will be, properly speaking, the continuation of Philosophical Fragments. In the second part, he will pose the subjective problem, and this will be a new attempt in the same direction as the Fragments, which gives fresh impetus to the problem they raise.

Part I: the objective problem of the truth of Christianity

The objective approach can take two forms:
- the historical examination of the various facts (where was Jesus born? etc.)
- philosophical speculation, which examines the truth of Christianity as a doctrine (is there a proof of God’s existence? what is His essence? etc.)

In both cases, what is studied is the object itself (religion, God); in no way does one ask about the subject’s relation (the believer’s) to that object—that is, one does not ask how he became a Christian, whether he really is one, and so on. Why?

For two reasons: either one holds that, in order to be more objective, the person conducting this study must be as neutral and impartial as possible—therefore not a believer, but simply engaged in disinterested contemplation.

Or, on the contrary, one assumes that the researcher is obviously a Christian, so the question does not even arise.

And yet the question does arise. It is even a fundamental problem, in which part of the very meaning of Christianity resides: in the same way that one cannot understand what love is without having experienced it oneself, in all the pain and joy it brings, one probably cannot grasp the meaning of Christianity without having felt that passion which is faith.

The enquiring, speculating, knowing subject certainly enquires into the truth, but not into subjective truth, the truth of appropriation. He is certainly interested, but he is not infinitely, personally interested, in a passion directed towards his eternal blessedness; he is not interested in his relation to this truth.

The fact remains that the truth of Christianity interests me infinitely, because my eternal blessedness depends on it: either there is a God, and a life after death, or there is only nothingness. And one cannot turn to Christianity while pretending to ignore what is at stake in it—this infinite personal interest which colours my relation to the problem of God’s existence. Yet this is exactly what the objective approach claims to do:

The man of science may work with tireless zeal […], the speculative thinker may spare neither his time nor his effort; yet they are not passionately interested in an infinitely personal way—on the contrary, they do not even wish to be. Their objective consideration wants to be disinterested.

¹ Our translation. The references for the quotations are available in the book Kierkegaard: A Close Reading