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Bjarke Mørkøre Stigel Hansen, The London School of Economics and Political Science,
Houghton Street, London, WC2 A 2AE, United Kingdom, bmh@sk.ku.dk
a question. Rather, Climacus postpones the beginning, whereby the actual begin-
ning begins with another beginning: “And just as he wants…to begin, another
beginning is discovered to be necessary.”³ In other words, something precedes
the question that exhorts it to give an answer. What precedes the question is con-
ceived in the title Propositio, literally meaning that something precedes the ini-
tial question, by which we were properly meant to begin.
We do not begin with the beginning but with what precedes it, namely with
a proposition by Climacus: “The question is asked by one who in his ignorance
does not even know what provided the occasion for his questioning in this
way.”⁴ The conspicuousness of the proposition that precedes the question by
which we begin is that the proposition does not shield the questioner, let
alone him or her who seeks a point of departure; rather, it exposes the question-
er to the fact that the proposition is not that by which we properly begin, because
the question is inferred by someone, who does not even know what made him
ask the way he does. The version of Meno’s aporia, which Climacus introduces
hereby, differs from Socrates’ initial dispute with Meno. In what follows, I
shall elucidate the difference between Climacus’ and Socrates’ aporia.
Socrates pretends that he wants to question the Thessalian Meno about what
he essentially understands through using a bee as an example. What is the es-
sence of a bee? Socrates envisages Meno’s answer as follows: The essence of a
bee is to be found by counting of a large number of bees. Although bees differ
in size, beauty, and so forth, the question of wherein the common property
that makes all bees similar remains unanswered.⁵ Socrates acknowledges the dif-
ficulty in defining what a bee is, inasmuch as the definition presupposes a unity
that applies to definiens as well as definiendum. In short, the difficulty comes
down to determining the common feature of all bees.⁶ What, then, is the bee?
Let us take a closer look at how this question is posed. The dialogue Meno is
said to be the earliest philosophical testimony of the form of questioning
“what is…? [ti esti].” The question “what is a bee?” thereby constitutes a question
seeking to define what is not given in and by the diversity of empirical experi-
ence, insofar as such experience indicates a quantity of accidents. Additionally,
in no case is it possible to deduce the rule of a common feature from accidents.
As the number in itself is not a sufficient condition for essential determinations,
so the example illustrated by Socrates’ swarms of bees is not sufficient for the
determination of the essence of a bee.
What we are asking for when we are asking for the essence of the bee is the
whatness of a bee. If we take the metaphysical history (or histories) into consid-
eration, a certain disposition of reification seems inherent to the way of asking
“what is…?” determining and thus propounding the privileged form of question-
ing of metaphysics itself. Consequently, do we not always impose a metaphysical
structure when we ask what something is, on the basis of which we anticipate
exactly what we are asking for? In this sense, we are back at the aporia of Meno.
The question of Socratic origin, by which Climacus attempts to begin, is con-
nected to an aporia. Socrates does not solve the aporia by showing how knowl-
edge actually emerges in the soul, but by showing how knowledge, the search for
knowledge, and the appropriation of knowledge are expressed through recollec-
tion (anamnesis): we already latently possess the knowledge which the ques-
tion’s answer conveys, although this latency has to be brought into presence.⁷
The one who seeks possesses knowledge about what is asked for in advance;
and in a certain sense the one who asks has already appropriated what is
asked for. According to Climacus, the problem with Socrates’ password of recol-
lection is that the occasion for knowledge remains untouched and indifferent be-
cause we, according to this theory, already know what we know. However, I have
anticipated too much here since Climacus’ thought-project first of all is projected
as a hypothesis, by which Climacus attempts to answer the Socratic question by
other means than recollection. Climacus’ hypothesis can be somewhat formal-
ized: 1) If knowledge has to be learned, then the condition of possibility of
knowledge correspondingly has to be given. Climacus sharpens his argument
by stating that the condition for knowledge cannot already be inherent in the
learner, since such a point of departure would merely repeat the Socratic argu-
ment ex hypothesi. ⁸ 2) No human being can be the teacher who gives the condi-
tion, which necessarily has to imply a radical transformation of the learner. Rath-
er, the condition must come from someone or something else; otherwise it would
be given the learner in advance. 3) Inasmuch as the learner exists, he or she is
created by the god who has given the learner the condition for understanding.
Otherwise the learner would have been an animal up until the teacher would
make him into “human being for the first time.”⁹ Thus, Climacus concludes
that the learner “must lack the condition, consequently be deprived of it.”¹⁰
We must presume this deprivation in order not to end up at the Socratic pass-
In focusing on the Socratic aporia, I seek to display the way in which we orient
ourselves in relation to the difficulty mentioned above: How can you ask for
something that you do not know, when, after all, you must know what you are
asking for in order to formulate a question? I will translate this difficulty with
aporia because this Greek word emphasizes an absence of regarding the way
in which we orient our question and orient ourselves in relation to this question.
The difficulty of aporia not only pertains to one isolated case but to what Clima-
cus sees as his overall task, namely “to make difficulties everywhere.”¹⁴ Mean-
while, we risk being led astray by this question and therefore “a solution must
be found.”¹⁵ The question of finding a solution is for Climacus also a question
Ibid.
Ibid.
Cf. SKS 4, 385 f. / CA, 82 f.
SKS 7, 172 / CUP1, 187.
SKS 7, 403 / CUP1, 443.
of “the singular [den Enkelte].”¹⁶ The way that leads astray, and from which we
have to find a way out is the pathway which in a peculiar way “comes into ex-
istence for the singular and closes up behind him.”¹⁷ The question concerning
the way also opens the way for an understanding of the singular, but the ques-
tion also risks leading the singular astray inasmuch as everywhere in life there
are crossroads. And, Kierkegaard continues: “Every human being at some time,
at the beginning, stands at the crossroads.”¹⁸ Wherever the singular is, he is
bound to stand, and this stance marks the beginning of his life. From there—
wherever there is—two directions spring: you can either turn the way upward
or turn “the wrong way downward.” Despite these crossroads, Kierkegaard ar-
gues that “from the point of view of the eternal, there are never two ways…the
other way is the wrong way.”¹⁹
However, one could be tempted to ask, as Climacus does: “Of what help is it
to explain how the eternal truth is to be understood eternally when the one to
use the explanation is prevented from understanding it in this way because he
is existing and is merely a fantast if he fancies himself to the sub specie
aeterni.”²⁰ Through this reasoning, the pathway that closes up behind the singu-
lar after having come into existence for the singular apparently brings about a
kind of hallucinatory movement. The steps, which the singular has already
taken along the way, perpetually seem to return the singular to this very same
way, whereby the steps that the singular had already taken are turned into the
steps of another. Hence, another person and another way recurrently haunt
the representation of the singular and his own proper way. In order to find a
way out of this vertiginous movement—which concerns everything and therefore
concerns nothing—something is required of the singular. Climacus articulates
what is required in a demand: “I require a decision.”²¹ The required decision
does not belong to the domain of logic; it concerns something entirely else.
It is alluring to assume that Kierkegaard finds a way out of the aporia by let-
ting the seeker seek what lies beyond the realm of the seeker. Accordingly, the
seeker must find something that does not lie within the power of the seeker
For a discussion of the translation of “den Enkelte,” see Darío González, “Adorno, Kierke-
gaard et la mise-en-scène du Singulier,” in Le singulier. Pensées Kierkegaardiennes sur l’individu,
ed. by Peter Kemp and Karl Verstrynge, Brussels: VUBPRESS 2008, pp. 49 – 51. See also, André
Clair, Kierkegaard. Penser le singulier, Paris: Cerf 1993.
SKS 7, 68 / CUP1, 67. Translation slightly modified.
SKS 10, 31 / CD, 19 – 20.
SKS 10, 32 / CD, 20.
SKS 7, 176 / CUP1, 192.
SKS 7, 109 – 110 / CUP1, 113. Translation modified.
sue two main features, of which the first concerns the relationship between faith
and knowledge, while the other concerns the relationship between the finite and
the infinite decision.
In the preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant remarks
that he finds it necessary “to sublate knowledge, in order to make room for
faith. ”³⁰ When Kant, to some extent, endorses faith in this way, it seems obvious
to align his observation with Kierkegaard’s view on the relationship between
faith and knowledge. The question is, however, whether Kierkegaard considers
the place of faith to be the sublation of knowledge and whether we can think
Kierkegaard as a straightforward continuation of Kant. Faith and Knowledge is
the heading of a complex distinction steeped in tradition, which has given rise
to more questions than proper answers. The title alone, hardly fortuitous, offers
difficulties because the two compounded nouns faith and knowledge, which (in
Danish, Tro og Viden) can also be read as substantivized verbs, appear together
paratactically by virtue of the conjunction and. This conjunction, however, en-
tails a doubleness—or perhaps even an antinomy—between two relata that tradi-
tionally have been regarded as heterogeneous and, in accordance with certain
interpretations, even as incompatible domains. On one side of the conjunction,
we find faith, which is supposed to come either before or after reason and knowl-
edge; on the other side of the conjunction, we find reason and knowledge.
Meanwhile, Kierkegaard draws attention to a certain abuse of knowledge
that occurs in the double resonance of the relationship between faith and knowl-
edge, insofar as this relationship may be designated as a relationship at all.³¹
This abuse claims that one does not believe by virtue of knowledge. Rather,
such a relationship conveys an upside-downness by means of which faith of
knowledge is knowledge. The Socratic solution to the aporia of knowledge dem-
onstrates this upside-downness since everyone is said to possess the same
knowledge to be recollected, whereby everyone necessarily must come to the
same conclusion. In this sense, knowledge is given in advance and with it the
conclusion (ergo). According to Kierkegaard, the deception concerning the rela-
Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, in Werke in zehn Bänden, vols. 1– 10, ed. by
Wilhelm Weischedel, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftlicher Buchgesellschaft 1968, vol. 3, B XXX, p. 33.
My translation. For the following discussion, see Jacques Derrida, “Foi et savoir,” in La religion,
ed. by Jacques Derrida and Gianni Vattimo, Paris: Seuil 2001, pp. 9 – 86.
SKS 9, 232 / WL, 231.
tionship between faith and knowledge is that one believes one can infer from
knowledge what one concludes or believes in. The problem is just that one
might as well conclude or believe in the opposite from the very same knowledge.
In pointing to this difficulty pertaining to the relation of faith and knowl-
edge, it is remarkable that Kierkegaard places the conjunction ergo in connection
not with knowledge but with faith: it is first of all in and through ergo that the
singular begins his life; however, the ergo is always already sanctioned by faith.
The ergo issued by faith scarcely avoids the echo stemming from the Cartesian
ergo encountered in Descartes’ meditations on the principles of first philosophy,
that is, the cogito ergo sum—I think, therefore I am. It is precisely in the tradition-
al interpretations of this Cartesian formula that one finds an abuse of knowl-
edge. Descartes makes it clear that the proposition “I am, I exist, necessarily is
true whenever it is enunciated by me [me profertur].”³² Thus, the proposition
not only contains the statement “ego sum, ego existo.” The statement is shad-
owed by another ego, ego sum, ego existo, insofar as it can only be a proposition
when it is enunciated. If the enunciation of the proposition is called into ques-
tion, a performative contradiction is generated by which one is induced to
assume that the employment of existence verbs such as sum and existo immedi-
ately imply the statement that “who I am—I who am certain that I am.”³³ The cer-
tainty following from this statement, and here I leave out of account the matter
of enunciation, is a certainty grounded on itself. The subject extracted from this
certainty is a sub-iectum, which is to say it is that which lies at the root of think-
ing and of itself. As far as I can see, Kierkegaard’s counterargument is that the
sentence connector ergo does not necessarily imply a logical succession of cause
followed by a necessary conclusion. In a note from 1837, in which he takes the
principle of modern subjectivity into consideration, Kierkegaard maintains
that ergo should not be interpreted as conclusive, because the proposition of
subjectivity would thereby amount to be an “imperfect syllogism….This proposi-
tion would therefore be a new presupposition and as such is, in any case, reduci-
ble to the latter; ergo is copulative; I think and exist as thinking.”³⁴ The problem
seems to be that a notion of the pure subjectivity precludes all difficulties of
thinking “this one human being…[as] an existing human being”³⁵ and thus for-
gets “the questioner [who] specifically emphasizes that he is an existing
person.”³⁶ Though Kierkegaard does not call attention to the conjunction in the
conclusive sense, ergo nevertheless retains an expletive power that seems to re-
sist the certainty given in and by “I think, therefore I am.” Therefore, it is crucial
for Kierkegaard to demonstrate how the Cartesian formula refers to an “I,” who
with certainty comes after the fact inasmuch as “knowledge is later [et Senere]
than faith.”³⁷ What does it mean, then, that knowledge is later than faith, that
is, that the certainty concerning what it means to be in a certain sense comes
after faith?
Despite the fact that knowledge is a later than faith, this lateness does not imply
that faith is located in the response to something preceding or in the past in the
form of a presupposed goal. Rather, the lateness of knowledge is a way to open
up the question concerning the singular; that is, the question concerning the life
of the singular and the way in which the life of the singular is underway. The life
of the singular begins with a decision, but not with any kind of decision, for, if I
know what I have to decide in advance, do I not merely apply some knowledge
and of what significance is my decision? To decide between something or anoth-
er—being capable of deciding something—means that I possess some knowledge
about what is to be decided, making me capable of judging what it is that I
decide. Kierkegaard calls this kind of decision the finite decision. However, the
finite decision is not decision in a decisive manner since “[t]here is no decision
in knowledge.”³⁸ If I am to decide something, it is required that I do not know
what it is that I am about to decide beforehand. Kierkegaard calls the decisions
to which a radical uncertainty is attached the “decisions of infinitude,”³⁹ and in
the strictest sense of the word the infinite decisions are the only decisions that
may properly be called by that name.
However, the difference between the finite and the infinite decision is not
readily determined. Perhaps there is a certain sense in this difficulty of determi-
nation, inasmuch as “the person deciding is not distanced from the decision…
but the decision seems to have been made already [men hvor det er ligesom
var det allerede afgjort].”⁴⁰ The condition of decision is not a question of the pos-
Ibid.
In this sense, the relation between knowledge and decision could also be rendered as a
relation between the factual and hope, insofar as decision, like hope, is the possibility that is
present when there does not exist any possibility. Hope is, as Johannes Sløk mentions, “a hope
which lives when there is no longer or not yet a possibility of any hope” (Johannes Sløk,
Kierkegaard’s Universe: A New Guide to the Genius, trans. by Kenneth Tindall, Copenhagen:
Narayana Press 1994, pp. 89 – 90). However, to hope is not merely to hope all things, or “to hope
always,” as if hope were at rest in “an eternal moment,” because hope is composed of both “the
eternal and the temporal.” For this reason hope takes the form of an inseparable duality: on the
one hand, an eternity entailing “to hope all things,” and, on the other hand, a temporality—
expressing the same thing—entailing “to hope always” (SKS 9, 248 / WL, 248 f.). A complex
analysis of eternity and time then follows. However, I am not able to elucidate, sensu stricto,
Kierkegaard’s argument here, and, therefore, I will restrain my argument in order to say that
hope and decision, as a common trait, relate to the future, inasmuch as the future is not only the
possibility of advance. It is in hope that what could in the future be considered as a fact has not
yet made the traces of its own contingency vacillate. Hope is, as Kierkegaard emphasizes, what
always is, and therefore hope is the hope that cannot be annihilated, but is, as Gerhard Richter
rightfully points out, necessarily “disappointable” (Gerhard Richter, Afterness, New York: Co-
lumbia University Press 2011, pp. 166 – 168).
SKS 8, 73 / TA, 76.
Cf. Immanuel Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, in Werke in zehn Bänden, vol. 8, B III-X / A III-X,
pp. 237– 241.
SKS 7, 186 / CUP1, 203. Emphasis added.
For the authority, as Kant declares, which “represents the highest court of judgment [Ge-
richtshof] pertaining to every conflict comes into conflict with itself” (Immanuel Kant, Kritik der
reinen Vernunft, in Werke in zehn Bänden, vol. 4, B 768 / A 740, p. 632. My translation).
SKS 7, 476 / CUP1, 524.
SKS 7, 476 f. / CUP1, 524 f. See also SKS 4, 456 / CA, 157.
SKS 5, 399 / TD, 18.
Ibid.
SKS 9, 106 / WL, 101.
with both ways,” that is, the singular cannot advance “methodically along both
ways simultaneously?”⁶⁰ Even though the question of the singular might have
paralyzed us (perhaps because the question, all things considered, does not ad-
dress us but addresses the singular being), it nevertheless invites us to question
our way of orienting ourselves. In which direction should we take this question?
Or rather, in which direction does the question take us—the questioners? In ap-
proaching the question of the singular we are easily disoriented; are we letting
ourselves be led and perhaps even led astray by a question, which can only
be posed as though we were able to direct it towards some determinate place?
In which direction must we orient ourselves regarding a question that is so
open and indefinite: Who is the singular?
Ibid.
SKS 9, 232 / WL, 231. See also SKS 9, 361 / WL, 367.
Cf. SKS 8, 140 / UD, 25 – 26. See also SKS 5, 140 / EUD, 137– 138.
In this way, the encounter with the limit is a kind of encounter without encounter.
Climacus clarifies, “If the unknown (the god) is not solely the frontier [Grændse],
then the one idea about the different is confused with the many ideas about the
different. The unknown is then in διασπορά, and the understanding [Forstanden]
has an attractive selection from among what is available.”⁶⁷ Although we are
never capable of reasonably predicting, and thus of anticipating, the full exten-
sion of what happens, inasmuch as what happens has not yet obtained an exten-
sion, the encounter of reason with its own limit is a factual encounter insofar as
it forfeits the very encounter it encounters. Thus, the factual encounter amounts
to an encounter with a certain impossibility of possibility, understood as an en-
counter with what withdraws itself in the encounter.
Ibid.
SKS 6, 251 / SLW, 269.
Ibid.
Ibid.
ing would remove the singular from the decision itself. Only the decision itself is
the proper significance of decision, in the sense that the decision precedes the
very distinction between the proper and improper content of decision. Thus,
one could say that Kierkegaard’s concept of decision in a decisive manner expels
the idea of decisionism since the decision does not break away from anything
improper in order to recover something proper. Kierkegaard’s radical concept
of decision is precisely a decision whose origin remains undecided and a deci-
sion that happens without happening in compliance with organized schemata.
In this way, the decision can never be guaranteed by a predisposition, let
alone by a presage, without suspending the decision itself. The decision, in
which anything can change in a moment, must surprise itself. Hence, any proper
decision is decided in the undecided. Even though the decision in a proper sense
is decided beyond the propriety of the proper whose opposite remains the im-
proper, a certain axiology seems to be preserved. But what kind of axiology is
at stake, when the decision in a proper sense cannot even be said to be proper,
understood in opposition or relation to an improper decision? What character
does this axiology disclose when the foundation of a proper decision appears
conspicuously absent?
With the idea of pure reasonable decision conditioning both the point of ori-
gin and the end of such decision, reason can be said to dominate its madness by
knowing the point of intersection of the possibility of decision with its realiza-
tion in advance. However, this relation between reason (including the decision
of reason) and the moment of madness is conditioned by a certain difference,
which separates reason from its pure possibility. This relation of separation or
dispersion between reason and madness is not located outside of reason; rather
it is the difference that marks an outside within reason itself. If I dare to assume,
it is important to adhere to this difference internal to reason as a side of reason’s
own division, which induces the doubt or double-mindedness about which
Kierkegaard repeatedly writes because it is first in and through this double-mind-
edness that reason becomes aware of its own consciousness. In a certain sense,
madness is thus a condition in order for reason to define itself as reason.
The problem of reason, which is also always a problem of knowledge, rests
upon the radical decision of which Kierkegaard writes that “the moment of de-
cision is foolishness.”⁷¹ This formulation is posed in relation to “the dialectics of
SKS 4, 255 / PF, 52. The Danish word “Daarskab,” which in English is translated into “foo-
lishness” and in French into “folie,” is not unambiguously related to “madness” as the English
and French translation suggests. However, as Mjaaland has argued, it is not an impossible
translation, since the moment becomes “folly to the Greek.” See Marius Timmann Mjaaland,
the moment,”⁷² when Climacus considers the significance of the paradox and the
offense which transports us beyond the time of distinctions, inasmuch as “the
moment is not to be seen or to be distinguished; it does not exist, has not
been, and will not come.”⁷³ At this point, I would like to mention the French phi-
losopher Jacques Derrida, not because it is interesting in itself to demonstrate a
relation between Derrida and Kierkegaard, but because a problem repeatedly
poses itself to both of their works, namely, the problematic relationship between
reason and madness.⁷⁴ In this regard, Derrida translates Climacus’ words as fol-
lows: “L’Instant de la Décision est une Folie…(KIERKEGAARD).”⁷⁵
However, madness is not simply opposed to reason in the form of a dichot-
omy. Rather, madness is that outside of reason, which is inside of reason, which
reason cannot grasp and gather itself round. In other words, the moment of fool-
ishness is that very moment when reason is no longer “able to be able [pouvoir
de pouvoir].”⁷⁶ This is the “objective uncertainty”⁷⁷ which suspends the certainty
that reason pretends to give. Hence, the only thing that remains, the only objec-
tive thing, is the uncertain. The radical decision thereby brings the limit of rea-
son to experience, that is to say a limit that reason itself cannot draw but that
reason can experience exactly as what it cannot draw. Reason thus appears to
be bound up with its own uncertainty and with a peculiar passivity inasmuch
as the objectivity against which reason is posited marks a limit, which reason
has not posited itself but which it is being exposed by. This passivity, which is
connected with the radical decision and which is required in order for the singu-
lar to live his life, is a passivity that radically puts the singular to the test, all the
Autopsia: Self, Death, and God after Kierkegaard and Derrida, Berlin and New York: Walter de
Gruyter 2008 (Kierkegaard Studies Monograph Series, vol. 17), p. 65.
SKS 4, 254– 255 / PF, 51.
SKS 4, 255 / PF, 52.
In an interview with Maurizio Ferraris in January 1994, Derrida says that it is Kierkegaard
whom he has been most faithful to and who has interested him most. He mentions, in particular,
the “absolute existence,” “the meaning he gives to the word subjectivity,” and “the resistance of
existence to the concept of system,” as something to which Derrida attaches great importance
and feels very deeply. See Jacques Derrida and Maurizio Ferraris, “Il gusto del segreto,” Rome-
Bari: Gius. Laterza & Figli 1997, p. 37.
Cf. Jacques Derrida, Force de loi, Paris: Galilée 1994, p. 58; Jacques Derrida, “Dialangues,” in
Points de suspension, ed. by Elisabeth Weber, Paris: Galilée 1992, p. 157; Jacques Derrida, Don-
ner–le temps I: La fausse monnaie, Paris: Galilée 1991, p. 21. For a discussion of Derrida and
Kierkegaard, see Mjaaland, Autopsia, p. 65. See also, Bennington, “A Moment of Madness:
Derrida’s Kierkegaard,” pp. 103 – 127.
Emmanuel Lévinas, “Le temps et l’autre,” in Le choix, le monde, l’existence, ed. by Jean Wahl
et al. Paris: Arthaud 1947 (Cahiers du Collège philosophiques), p. 170.
SKS 7, 186 / CUP1, 203.
while it is the singular itself that has to make the decision. In decision it is the
reason of the singular itself that is put to the test.
When Climacus mentions madness, he is not referring to someone who is
sick or whose mental state is unstable. The word madness, which I apply in
the sense of the Danish word “vanvid,” is derived from the German noun “Wahn-
sinn,” whose first root refers to the Old High German word “wana” designating a
state without. ⁷⁸ According to Climacus, the remarkable thing about madness does
not concern the mental state of the mad one; rather, it outlines the double situa-
tion in which he who has to make a decision finds himself situated. As Kant
writes in his Anthropology, this double situation emerges, because the madness
or distraughtness (Verrücktheit) of the deciding one, on the one hand, refers to a
loss of common sense, and, on the other hand, elucidates a substitution of pri-
vate sense.⁷⁹ Madness hereby throws the deciding one into a situation in which
the decider must decide as no one else, thus remaining outside of the opinion of
the Others.
Obviously, this double situation only specifies one aspect of madness. The
term madness, again with the Danish word “vanvid” in mind, also comports
the component “sinnan,” which means to travel, to aim at, or to move in direction
of. As the Indo-Germanic roots “sent” and “set” furthermore indicate, “sinnan”
points to a way or a direction one has to take. He who goes off and takes his
leave is the one who finds himself in a situation of madness, for he is going
down a way which is another way than the others might have taken. However,
the way taken also remains an other way for the one who took it, inasmuch
as it remains different from the one he could also have taken. The way to be
taken may be a way whose direction we can ask for, but the singular is not
able to reason absolutely or to legitimize the way taken because the singular
could always also have taken another way. This double situation comprises
the strangeness that divides the mind of the singular into a double, which is dif-
ficult to know and experience “in this world, because his double-mindedness is
not obvious within the world and [he] has no informer and no confidant.”⁸⁰
Occasionally, reason is attributed with a certain immunity, enabling it to ex-
clude the madness inherent to the decision-making. However, reason is not able
to protect itself against what could happen in a moment, because in a moment
anything could happen and everything could change. The road of the singular
being, who always stands at crossroads, could take a new direction in the blink
of an eye without regard of the direction. The moment is precisely this blink of an
eye within which anything could happen and within which anything shows itself
in two visions simultaneously. The decisive moment is first “recognizable at the
boundary,” which means that the moment only becomes visible through the dou-
ble-mindedness “where time and eternity touch each other.”⁸¹ However, these
two visions remain separated in time, which is where the deciding existent
stands.
Unfortunately, I am not presently able to develop this aspect of the moment
of decision further. However, I do wish to remark that the touch of eternity and
time does not happen in a gathering, because eternity and time are precisely
what remains separated in a blink of an eye. What landmark, then, can eternity
constitute for the singular being? Kierkegaard has several interesting remarks
concerning the matter of eternal guidance, especially the remark that only
“one way and one resource [een Udvei] [is known], but it [i.e., Christianity]
does always know the way and the resource. It is with the help of the eternal.”⁸²
How can one find a secure ground in eternity, that is, a ground (if any) whose
grounding (if any) the singular being does not im-mediately understand? In
short, the crucial thing for Climacus to emphasize is that while the singular
being “in the meantime [Imedens]”⁸³ considers which way to take, the singular
being exists. In other words, the singular being is always already underway as
he considers which way he should take. The question concerning how the singu-
lar being should begin, however, turns out to be ambiguous: as soon as the sin-
gular being desires to begin “another beginning is discovered to be necessary.”⁸⁴
And, as Climacus continues, this other beginning is “the beginning of the enor-
mous detour [Omvei] that is dying to immediacy. And just as the beginning is
about to be made here, it is discovered that, since meanwhile time [in which
the singular is situated (bestedt)] has been passing, a mad beginning [en gal Be-
gyndelse] has been made.”⁸⁵ Hence, the other beginning does not signify that a
first beginning simply has been overcome. Rather, while the singular existent is
about to begin, something is already lost because the singular existent is always
already there in the meantime and “the beginning is not promptly made.”⁸⁶
However, what is already lost is not something to be overcome as one leaves
the first beginning behind in favor of recovering another beginning. Rather, the
other beginning is always already engraved in the first beginning, thus displac-
ing or allocating the principality of the first beginning by means of the “unremit-
ting ‘in the meantime.’”⁸⁷
According to Kierkegaard, the gaze evoked by the blink of the eye demar-
cates a difference between two kinds of gazes. On the one hand, we find the
“sensate eye”⁸⁸ with which we do not see what we see. On the other hand, we
see with the eye of faith. In the gaze of the blink of an eye, we are not able to
separate the sensible eye from the eye of faith because the eye of faith sees
that which cannot be seen, and is therefore in a certain sense blind. The dou-
ble-mindedness of the singular being consists in uniting what timeliness sepa-
rates in a paradoxical way. It is important to underline that the radicality of
double-mindedness is not to be confused with “the multifarious double-
mindedness”⁸⁹ which compares the nature of double-mindedness. The double-
mindedness reveals the doubleness of reason inasmuch as madness is both
inside and outside of reason. In a fantastic manner, reason seeks to define the
indeterminable character of madness by imposing an original separation be-
tween madness and sanity. Such an original separation would allow reason to
define madness as an exteriority to be clearly contrasted with sanity, thereby en-
abling reason to control, define, and protect itself from madness. However, if rea-
son defines itself by excluding madness, does reason not include madness in its
own self-definition? That might very well be the case, but this does not mean
that Kierkegaard—or any of his pseudonyms—endorses an idea of creative mad-
ness, even though such an assumption might seem plausible on the grounds of
the description of madness mentioned above. Rather, Kierkegaard’s description
of madness aims at emphasizing the double and paradoxical refraction of deci-
sion.
VI Concluding Remarks:
the Turning Point of Decision
According to Kierkegaard, a decision not only takes place; it also takes place in
accordance with the time of decision. In a radical manner, the decision indicates
the interruption of what one expects oneself to be able to prepare for. However,
Ibid.
SKS 8, 172 / UD, 64.
Ibid. See also SKS 8, 185 / UD, 70 – 71.
times even brackets, and the unknown which Jean Wahl translates with “à
Dieu.”⁹⁴
The unknown—and I shall keep this name—is not merely a negative concept
of knowledge or a limit to knowledge itself by which some dichotomy between
what is known and what is not known is reinstalled. Neither does the unknown
operate as a doctrine of ignorance, presenting itself as constitutive. Perhaps the
unknown does not even present knowledge in a negated form as non-knowledge,
insofar as new knowledge or certainty would then be provided in the negative.
However, if we insist on the name God this is merely a sign that designates the
exposed fact that nothing stands in the place of the name God, for it is a name
that dwells nowhere.⁹⁵
To give in to or to welcome the unknown is, in a certain sense, also to take
one’s leave with the unknown insofar as the unknown is never given. One cannot
incorporate the relation to the unknown as any other relationship. There remains
an infinite distance between what I know and my non-knowledge; although this
non-knowledge is never actually mine, it appears within a layer of meaning bor-
dering on my knowledge and on the world that I know. One can never know the
unknown. Or the unknown is known only by its very retreat.
How does one, then, take the unknown into consideration? How does one
give in to that which one, in an absolute manner, has no idea about what or
who it is? What kind of relationship can we maintain to the unknown? If the un-
known must remain unknown in the knowledge that we have of it, do we then
not risk obligating ourselves to conclude from that about which we have knowl-
edge, that is, to conclude from that which is intimate or familiar to us?⁹⁶ To give
in to the unknown is, in a certain sense, to abandon and thus to trust oneself to
this unknown. However, in confiding to the unknown you are not only abandon-
ing yourself, but the unknown also takes leave insofar as we may no longer try to
understand what this unknown is. But how does the unknown remain unknown
when we are no longer trying to make the unknown known? What is at stake is
not trying to get rid of the unknown either by making the unknown known or by
obliterating it. It is not about getting out of the abyss of the unknown, rather it is
See Jean Wahl, “Introduction,” in Kierkegaard, Crainte et tremblement, trans. by P.-H. Tis-
seau, Paris: Montaigne 1935, p. XIV. For a discussion, see Hent de Vries, Religion and Violence:
Philosophical Perspective from Kant to Derrida, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press
2002, pp. 181 ff.
See Jean-Luc Nancy, L’Adoration (Déconstruction du christianisme II), Paris: Galilée 2010,
pp. 93 – 94.
Cf. Maurice Blanchot, L’Entretien infini, Paris: Gallimard 1969, pp. 70 ff.
about being faithful to “what tolerates only infidelity,”⁹⁷ not to think the un-
known as the unknown, but rather to think the unknown as the other of the
known. In some sense, one can therefore speak of a duplicity of the unknown
or of a double infidelity of the unknown, because when one entrusts oneself
to the unknown, and thereby abandons oneself, one also abandons the un-
known: in turning away from one another, one can no longer be faithful to
the unknown, except by this reciprocal infidelity, which Anti-Climacus calls
“the absolute unknown.”⁹⁸
The manifestation of the unknown, since it is absolute, detaches itself from
every relation to the known. The unknown manifests itself as something that is
absent or, more precisely, manifests itself only through the movement of its very
retreat. However, the retreated unknown is also a retracing of the unknown: the
withdrawal of the unknown in its manifestation in a certain sense also enables
the approach to the unknown in its detachment. Moreover, the unknown is de-
tached from itself by virtue of its absoluteness, thus locating the unknown no-
where, not even beyond, insofar as the unknown is withdrawn into itself. The re-
treat of the absolute unknown is the point of abandonment: It is “the most bitter
moment to be abandoned [forladt] by the last one,”⁹⁹ or by the unknown. Fur-
thermore, there is something which we could not have foreknown in our trusting
ourselves to the unknown, namely “to have to be abandoned by”¹⁰⁰ the un-
known itself. What comes about is the impossibility itself, insofar as “in relation
to the unknown [Ukjendelighed]…direct communication is an impossibility, be-
cause the direct communication does indeed directly state what one essentially
is—but the unknown means not to be in the character of what one essentially
is.”¹⁰¹ The faithful infidelity of a singular being is a response, that is, the only
The enigmatic thought of a faithful infidelity stems from Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, “La
forme toute oublieuse de l’infidélité,” Revue des sciences sociales de la France de l’Est, vol. 22,
1995, pp. 10 – 13.
SKS 12, 136 / PC, 131. Translation slightly modified.
SKS 12, 194 / PC, 195.
See Climacus’ consideration of the difficulty in articulating the “unutterable [uudsigelige]”
(SKS 7, 282 / CUP1, 221). This unutterable or unnameable attests, according to Lévinas, to an
awareness of a spirituality or piety without promises, that is, a piety never certain of itself since
it is always a piety whose future is unknown. See Emmanuel Lévinas, “La Bible et les Grecs,” in
A l’heure des nations, Paris: Minuit 1988, p. 157. The question is therefore, as Nietzsche poses it,
to what extent we are still too pious. See Friedrich Nietzsche, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, in
Kritische Studienausgabe, vol. 3, p. 574.