Kierkegaard, Johannes Climacus

Page 151

a. How does the single individual who enunciates that thesis relate to it?

To that end, he asked whether that thesis had existed [existeret] at all times in the temporal sense so that everyone had known it in substance, even though no one had enunciated it as a thesis. Would it hold for that thesis as it holds for the thesis: Man is mortal? —Did it state something people had always done without being conscious of it? Was it something immediately inherent in human nature? For example, if no one had ever explained what it is to wonder, every human being would still have done it. —Had the thesis existed in the eternal sense at all times but had been discovered in time? Does it hold for that thesis as it holds for mathematical theses—namely, that when they are discovered they are discovered in their eternity? —Would it continue to exist in the eternal sense at all times just as a philosophical thesis does? —Would the personality of the one who discovered the thesis become a matter of indifference after the thesis was discovered, as is the case with mathematical and metaphysical theses? —Would it be of importance to the thesis that people knew the personality of the one who had enunciated it? For example, we would still require acquaintance with the personality of the speaker with respect to religious theses and also, up to a point, with respect to an ethical thesis, for anyone could state a religious or an ethical thesis, but it would not necessarily follow that in everyone’s mouth it would become a religious or an ethical thesis, unless it were assumed that it makes no difference whether it was Christ who declared that he was God’s son or any human being whatsoever, or that it makes no difference whether it was a person who actually knew himself who said “Know yourself” or any human being whatsoever. The thesis, to be sure, would be the same, and

Page 152

yet it would become something else—that is, in the one case it would become a thesis, in the other mere chatter—whereas with respect to a mathematical thesis it makes no difference whether it is Archimedes or Arv who enunciates it, provided only that it is enunciated correctly. In the one case, personality does nothing and in the other, everything, just as in civil life anyone may formally be a guarantor, and yet it makes an absolute difference who the guarantor is.

What kind of a personality should the person be who is supposed to enunciate it? Would he have to be a talented person, and would talent be sufficient to authorize that person to enunciate the thesis? To enunciate a mathematical thesis requires mathematical talent. The person who could enunciate it would prove that he had talent, and if the inanity were to be imagined (something that is always inane by reason of the perfect immanence of the talent in the presentation) that someone devoid of talent could do it, the thesis would retain just as much its truth, its mathematical truth—that is, its essential truth—just as in daily life a bond payable to the bearer is just as sound whether a rich man or a poor man holds it, whether a thief or the legitimate owner possesses it. Not so with religious and ethical theses. If a two-year-old child could be taught a mathematical thesis,* it would be essentially just as true in the child’s mouth as in the mouth of Pythagoras. If we taught a two-year-old child to say these words, “I believe that there is a God” or “Know yourself,” then no one would reflect on those words. Is talent itself, then, not the adequate authority? Do not religious and ethical truths require something else, or another kind of authority, or, rather, what we do actually call authority, for we do, after all, make a distinction between talent and authority? If someone has enough talent to perceive all the implications in such a thesis, enough talent to enunciate it, it does not follow that he himself believes it or that he himself does it, and insofar as this is not the case, he then changes the thesis from

Margin note: if a madman recited it.

Page 153

a religious to a historical thesis, or from an ethical to a metaphysical thesis.

Now it was clear to him that if philosophy was not supposed to have four beginnings (and even in that case the conclusion would remain the same), then this thesis [philosophy begins with doubt] would have to belong to the subjective beginning, as was also clear from the fact that it would be shadowboxing to talk about an objective doubt, for an objective doubt is not doubt but deliberation. Therefore, this thesis, no more than any philosophical thesis, could not make any claim to mathematical necessity, or to philosophical necessity, either, as any thesis in the absolute and objective philosophy does. This thesis, then, had to be of such a nature that the person who was supposed to enunciate it had to discover it, had to have talent, had to have authority.