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CHAPTERI N I N E The Subjective IssueThe Subjective Thinker .(Pages 301--60) In no section of Postscript was Climacus in greater need of a tough editor. He becomes so repetitious that the recurrence ofhis central theme is less likely to evoke the musical analogy of a theme developed through reiteration in varied contexts (see chapter 5 above) than to evoke his own satire ofthe madman who sought to prove his sanity by incessantly repeating "Boom! The earth is round" (see chapter 8). He seems to have a skittle ball in his coat, and every time it bumps his behind, he says, "Abstract thinking abstracts from existence." His central theme is indeed the claim that the kind of thinking that can produce a philosophical system needs to see the world sub specie aeterni, since time is disruptive of totality; therefore system-building can only occur in the pure or abstract thinking that abstracts from existence. His point is not that there is no place for abstract thinking but only that the abstract thinkers of the world owe it to themselves not to forget, absentmindedly , that they are existing human beings; and that they owe it to the rest ofus to give an account ofthe relation ofabstract thought to existence. This demand that the relation between the act and the agent of abstraction be thematized, or, in other words, that Hegelians spell out their version of Hume's "Be a philosopher; but amidst all your philosophy, be still a man," is a constant refrain (303, 306, 309, 313-15).1 That the issue is indeed "what it means to be human" (303) is perhaps best grasped with reference to the following excerpts from Kierkegaard's Gilleleie journal of 1835: "What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I am to know, except in so far as a certain understanding must precede every action. The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really I 134 135 I The Subjective Thinker wishes me to do; the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die. For what would be the use of discovering so-called objective truth ... what good would it do me iftruth stood before me, cold and naked, not caring whether I recognized her or not.... I certainly do not deny that I still recognize an imperative of understanding and that through it one can work upon men, but it must be taken up into my life. ... That is what I lacked in order to be able to lead a complete human life and not merely one of the understanding.... For otherwise how near man is to madness, in spite of all his knowledge. What is truth but to live for an idea?" (JK 44-45).2 Climacus repeatedly expresses his admiration for the Greeks, who were not absentminded but kept their own existence clearly in mind. Not only Socrates and the Skeptics, whom we might expect Climacus to mention, but also Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and Simonides are cited in this connection (303,308-9, 311,313,318,331,333,337,352).3 Finally, Christianity is also presented as seeing the task this way, though the difficulty in this case is greater because "existence is accentuated paradoxically as sin, and eternity paradoxically as the god [Guden] in time" (353-54). In keeping with his overall presentation of subjectivity , Climacus again insists that what he is talking about is not specifically Christian but a generic human possibility clearly recognized by the Greeks.4 Thus the Greek philosophers become, as it were, the pagans who pray in passion to a false god, while the Hegelians become the dwellers in Christendom who pray to the true God falsely (201). The assault on Hegel continues to focus on the how. Anticipating Anti-Climacus's dialectical definition ofthe selfat the beginning of Sickness unto Death (SUD 13), Climacus defines existence as "composed of the eternal and the temporal" (301; cf. 309,311-12), as "composed ofthe infinite and the finite" (302), and as the contemporaneity ofthinking, imagination, and feeling (34248 ). As such, "existing is a prodigious contradiction from which the subjective thinker is not to abstract" (350, myemphasis).5 If this is true, then abstract thinking cannot be the highest human task, the keystone of an authentic humanism. Like chapter 1 of section 2 (see chapter 7 above), whose subtitle reads...

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