Summary: Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments (page 10)

To become subjective is to think about death: to stop fleeing this disturbing representation and to face it courageously.

It is precisely in it [the thought of death] that the development of subjectivity resides: that, in reflecting upon his own existence, a man works upon himself in action, that he attends to it at every moment. Here, therefore, everything becomes ever more subjective, as is natural when one strives to develop subjectivity. ¹

The objective approach, culminating in propositions such as if I take a dose of sulphuric acid, I die; likewise if I jump into the water, if I sleep in carbon monoxide, and so on, does not, of course, resolve the problem of death, but deprives it of all meaning. If I stop there, I cannot at all regard death as something I have understood; I miss the problem.

By contrast, I open myself to this problem if I think every day about my death, if I meditate on its meaning, and if I prepare myself for it. Then its representation must change a man's whole life. This, again—like praying and acting morally—is an infinite task, which is how one recognises its existential character: See: if the fact of dying is to be related in this way to the whole life of the subject, I must say—though it is my life—that I am very far from having understood death, and still more from having accomplished my task in existence. And yet I have reflected on it incessantly; I sought guidance in books—and found none.

To become subjective is also, conversely, to think about the question of immortality: the life after death, the eternal blessedness to which the Christian aspires. This is not essentially a learned question; it is a question of inwardness that the subject himself must pose by becoming subjective. Objectively, one cannot answer it at all, because one cannot even objectively pose the question of immortality—for immortality is precisely the possibility and the highest development of subjectivity. It is only by becoming truly subjective that the question can be clearly posed; and how could it then receive an objective answer: […] do I become immortal, or am I immortal?

Here again, one can flee the question of immortality; one can avoid asking what will come after death—nothingness or eternal life. But that is evasion. Kierkegaard retrieves an intuition of Pascal: in the Pensées, Pascal notes that he is astonished by those who take no interest in this problem:

This negligence in a matter in which their very selves are at stake—their eternity, their all—irritates me more than it moves me; it astonishes and appals me; it is monstrous to me.

One can evade this question not only by refusing to ask it, but also by posing it in an objective way—for example, by seeking a proof of the soul's immortality. Yet the consciousness of my immortality belongs to me alone; at the very moment I am conscious of my immortality, I am absolutely subjective—and I cannot become immortal in the company of two other gentlemen, taking turns.

But the fate of this partisan of the objective approach is sealed: Since he has not used his life to become subjective, his subjectivity is something indeterminate—something in general; and this abstract determination is precisely indeterminacy.

Kierkegaard concludes this chapter by claiming, with a touch of irony, that whereas the innovations of his contemporaries tend to make life easier—steamships, the telegraph, and so on—he has decided to make things more 'difficult': I understood that this was my task: to create difficulties everywhere. Thus, by questioning the phenomenon of faith as he does, one realises that it is not so obvious, for instance, that we are Christians.

This is a profession of faith that should belong to every philosopher since Socrates: to identify false self-evidences, to problematise them, to reveal the paradoxes and contradictions concealed within them, and to bring to light the complexity hidden beneath simplistic reductions.

We are now beginning to glimpse what lies concealed under the expression 'becoming subjective'—the title of the first chapter of this second section. But a problem then arises. We know what an objective truth is: the agreement between thought and being. But what is a 'subjective truth'? What becomes of truth in this sphere whose legitimacy Kierkegaard has just established? For objectivism, the notion of subjective truth is simply a contradiction in terms. Is it possible, then, to give it a meaning? And if so, what is it?

Such is the problem Kierkegaard will raise in the second chapter of this section, entitled: Subjective truth, inwardness: truth is subjectivity.

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