Summary: Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments (page 8)

This idea is, in the end, rather surprising: we are, as a matter of fact, subjects, subjectivities. Why does Kierkegaard present this as a task to be accomplished? Why does he speak of 'becoming subjective', when we already are?

In fact, subjectivity is like existence in this respect. In the previous chapter, Kierkegaard showed that although it is a fact that we exist, we can forget it:

In short, for the existing person there are now two paths: either he can do everything to forget his existence—in which case he becomes comic, for existence has this peculiar property that the existing person exists, whether he wills it or not (the comic contradiction of wanting to be what one is not—for example, when a man wants to be a bird—is no more comic than the contradiction of wanting not to be what one is, as in the present case: existing) […] Or else he can direct all his attention to the fact that he exists. ¹

To forget that one exists is what Kierkegaard calls being 'distracted'—a fundamental notion in his work, already found in Either/Or, which characterises the aesthetic way of life, oriented towards pleasure: The existing person who forgets that he exists will become ever more distracted.

This is a distant prefiguration of Sartre's 'bad faith', which leads a man to lie to himself in order to forget that he is fundamentally free—free to make this or that decision. Kierkegaard shows here that a man can flee this reality—the fact that he exists—just as, for Sartre, he can flee his freedom.

The same holds for subjectivity:

It is generally thought that it is no great matter to be subjective—and it is quite true that each person is, in his own way, a subject. But to become what one is, simply that—yes, who would want to waste time on that? it would be the most resigned of all duties in life. Of course; but this duty is very arduous—indeed the most arduous of all—if only for the very reason that each person has a strong natural inclination to be something other and more.

For example, to become objective, by throwing oneself into speculation or the sciences, as we have seen. One knows one has become lost as a subject when one becomes a 'contemplator'. Contemplation is, in fact, the culmination of the objective approach: it consists in turning one's gaze away from oneself and towards the world, forgetting oneself in a kind of ecstasy: The objective tendency […] wants to make everyone a contemplator.

A sort of ethics—ethical only in name—follows from this: The objective direction, which leads to becoming a contemplator, is, in the new vocabulary, the ethical answer to the question of what I am to do (To be a contemplator—there is the ethics! To have to be one is the ethical answer—otherwise one would have to admit that in the system there is not the slightest trace of any question—and any answer—relating to ethics).

In reality, the objective approach dissolves ethics in the historicism that grows out of it—especially in its Hegelian version. It is, of course, this that Kierkegaard is targeting: Ethics does not view with anything but suspicion that world-historical knowledge which can all too easily become a snare for the subject who possesses it.

Why? What is problematic about this approach? Historicism, in fact, dissolves the very concepts of good and evil, replacing them with other notions. One no longer seeks to do good or evil, but to do 'great things'—things of historical significance; and for that, one sometimes has to be immoral: The absolute ethical distinction between good and evil is neutralised in a historico-aesthetic manner in the aesthetic-metaphysical category of the "great", the "significant", to which evil as well as good has access.

But in that case, ethics itself disappears and there is nothing left but History. Spoilt by this incessant commerce with world history, one wants only what is significant; one is concerned only with the contingent, with the world-historical result, instead of what is essential: inwardness, freedom, ethics.

In this upheaval, ludicrous behaviours emerge, provoking Kierkegaard's mockery. Thus, in an age when Hegelian philosophy enjoys great success, one can observe a curious phenomenon: some people seek to become world-historical figures, capable of playing an important role in universal history—worthy of appearing in one of the paragraphs of Reason in History!

This is the very opposite of ethics. When one acts morally, the action must be fundamentally disinterested. One must not calculate the possible effects and benefits of one's action, but be concerned only to do one's duty, as Kant showed. Thus, constant commerce with world history renders one […] unfit for action. True ethical enthusiasm consists in this: that one wills with all one's might, and yet, uplifted by divine cheerfulness, never thinks of the possible result of one's action. As soon as the will begins to squint in that direction, the individual begins to become immoral.

One then falls into an unhealthy and mercenary careerism, which, even when it accomplishes great things, does not accomplish them ethically; the individual demands something other than ethics itself.

To conclude, one must free oneself from this temptation—the temptation to have world-historical importance. In fact, it is unethical to be concerned with it.

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