In another of his major works, Philosophical Fragments, Kierkegaard seeks to utilize reason -- as exemplified in the example he uses throughout the text, Socrates -- in order to explore the logical implications of epistemic Truth. This thought-project of his is written under a different pseudonym, this time Johannes Climacus, who's name is borrowed from a sixth-century monk of the same name who wrote Ladder of Paradise, which details in thirty chapters the steps toward raising one's soul to God. The meaning of the name -- 'climax' or 'ladder' -- mirrors the logical strucure through which Climacus entertains his 'hypothesis' -- central to his writing is Cartesian thought (i.e. the philosophies of skeptical doubt of René Descartes), and it is through its logical method that he concludes, "coherent thinking was a scala paradisi."
The work follows the Socratic model, in that "man should make all haste to escape from earth to heaven; ... and man becomes like God when he becomes just and pure with understanding." Despite his adherence to the rational, Climacus is not, however, satisfied with stopping at the well-received ideals of Socratic understanding; instead, he aims to go beyond Socrates, which then engenders the tension between ideality (as inherent to the rational/ethical, and ultimately limited aim of the Socratic) and the actuality of the individual subjective nature of the paradox with which Climacus engages his interlocutors throughout the dialectic.
Climacus begins the first part of the Fragments with the Propositio -- proposal, or 'hypothesis': "The question is asked by one who in his ignorance does not even know what provided the occasion for his questioning in this way" (PF, p. 9). This statement indicates Climacus' own awareness that he himself has been given some idea, and that this idea is not of his own invention. It is precisely this awareness of question that leads to the hypothesis. The hypothesis, then, provides the basis for the thought-project in which Climacus seeks to understand how a person acquires knowledge.
He begins with the Socratic conception of Truth as recollection (as explored by Plato in his dialogues, which we discussed in class). Socrates' basic assumption rests on the idea that the Reality of things is what is most True of things; the soul participates in this intelligible, true Reality, and thus, the intelligible is inherent within the individual. The soul can be aware of the True through the use of reason. Learning is then 'uncovering' that which is hidden or has become 'dim' by sense perception, which also acts simply as a reminder in that "we refer all the things we perceive to that reality, discovering that it existed before and is ours" (Plato's Phaedo 76d-e). Therefore, knowledge is never new, but eternal, and learning is recollection of those already-present realities.
In terms of his own system, Socrates as the teacher defines himself as the "midwife" who assists in bringing about learning in his followers. He does not himself give new knowledge, but simply aids his followers in discovering "within themselves a multitude of beautiful things, which they bring forth into the light" (Plato's Theaetetus 150c). Climacus in Kierkegaard's Fragments warns that it would cause confusion to the individual for the teacher to present himself as if he were the give of knowledge, which coincides precisely with his own warnings in the Preface above. Because he cannot give new knowledge, the teacher is only of historical importance, as he is as much as the learner particular to the temporal and "influenced by circumstances." At this level exists a reciprocal relationship in which the teacher is both teacher and learner, which is itself the highest relationship humans can achieve -- each acts as an occasion for the self-understanding of the other (in fact, this is also pretty consistent with Hegel's dialectic as well, in which two subjective selfs serve as means for self-discovery).
However, as Climacus points out, knowledge must have been, at some point placed within the individual by someone or something else. If recollection is how truth is learned, then learning from anyone can only be of historical concern, because truth is universal and eternally present within. This fails to address the part of Climacus' original question, in which he asks: "Can a historical point of departure be given for an eternal consciousness?" The point of departure addressed in the Socratic, is no departure at all, and has no bearing on the self's eternal consciousness:
because in the same moment I discover that I have known the truth from eternity without knowing it, in the same instant that moment is hidden in the eternal, assimilated into it in such a way that I, so to speak, still cannot find it even if I were to look for it, because there is no Here and no There, but only the ubique et nusquam. (PF p.13)
The event of historical importance still resides in the realm of the ethical, and the moment of its departure is insignificant as it raises recollection of the universal into which the moment itself is assimilated.
It becomes Climacus' purpose, then, to go beyond the Socratis to answer the second question he raises: "How can such a point of departure be of more than historical interest?" To do this he must address the following concern: How can one seek Truth, if the idea of recollection is not sufficient for explaining the origin of Truth; and how is it possible for one to know whether one even has Truth if awareness of it becomes lost to the universal? If the situation is to be different (namely, if it is to be the movement not from individual to universal but from universal to individual, as the 'leap of faith' past the paradox of the Ethical into the Religious would suggest), then the moment (the specific paradox itself) must have decisive significance so that it will not be hidden or forgotten (or dismissed back) to the universal. This presupposes a few things: 1) the individual must not possess truth (so that it is not available to recollection); and 2) the individual must not be looking for it, as he would not be aware of not having it and so no knowledge of the need to look in the first place. Tehrefore, under these presuppositions, the individual must be outside of the utmost truth, or what Climacus labels as 'untruth.'
In this situation, the Socratic definition of the teacher is no longer sufficient. If the truth is not innate nor given, the teacher is only the occasion that reminds the learner that he is untruth, which in turn further excludes the learner from the truth that when he was in ignorance. If the learner is to obtain truth, he must also have the condition for understanding it. The learner himself cannot be that condition, as this would revert back to the idea of recollection. The presence of the condition, however, is essential to the process of learning. In order for the moment to have decisive significance, the learner must lack the condition, and then receive it; this cannot be an act of God (as this would be contradiction to his character), cannot be accident (which would have no essential significance), but must be an act of will of the learner. In this understanding, the learner has chosen to forfeit the condition, believing himself to be in freedom when in fact he is slave to 'unfreedom' unconsciously and acts within it. Thus, the teacher must save the individual from himself by providing truth and the condition for understanding it.
The learner who is in untruth, upon receiving the condition and the truth, becomes a new self -- this process is what Climacus labels as 'rebirth.' The learner here owes no human teacher anything (as they are just an occasion), but owes the divine teacher everything; thus, he must not forget this moment of rebirth and must continually choose to assimilate the truth into his eternal consciousness. He again raises the difficulties of the Socratic, saying that recollection would produce no significance in the defining of the self, in that the moment of self becomes ware of being,' he recollects that he was already 'being' and would continue as he was. Therefore, in line with the Cartesian cogito, ergo sum, it must be so that the self was previously 'not-being' and can only be aware of having been 'not-being' once he has received the truth and condition for understanding it by God, and experiences that rebirth. Thus, he shows that "only with Christianity does eternity become essential" (Kierkegaard's Concept of Anxiety p. 84).
As a result, Climacus looks specifically at the relationship of God as the Teacher who is beyond the Socratic. He argues that the relationship between teacher and learner is not similar to the Socratic, which produces the occasion for mutual self-understanding, as "God needs no pupil in order to understand himself" (PF p. 24). Nothing moves God to appear int he teacher-learner relationship but himself. Climacus hypothesizes that the movement is of a love that is self-directed and for the learner within which "the different [are] made equal, and only in equality or in unity is there understanding" (PF p. 25). It is this love which serves as the moment; it must be from eternity, but itself fulfilled in time (hint: he's alluding to God's love of man, out of which he gave his only begotten son, upon the cross, to die for the sins of all creation and atone all in the moment of the crucifixion and of which salvation lasts for all eternity). It is not, however, a low in equality, as the learner has yet to be brought to 'Absolute relation with the Absolute,' and so it is an unhappy love based in misunderstanding (think about John chapter 1: In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God ... and they knew Him not) -- and the unhappiness belongs only to the one who is ware of the existence of the misunderstanding (i.e. God). It is in the unequal love that man owes God everything, as God (through this love) is providing something for him (namely truth and the condition for understanding it) which cannot be reciprocated (there is nothing I can give God that is even remotely equal to what he's giving me, here).
Unfortunately, Climacus' problem in the form of his hypothesis inherently contradicts its content. The Religion, which as shown in our discussion of Fear and Trembling, is incommunicable, irrational, and not something that can be or should be understood, and vastly inwardly personal (which is why we can never truly understand Abraham, or his moment of the paradox -- it's only his own moment, not our own). And yet, it is the Religious that ironically the philosopher makes attempts to understand in Philosophical Fragments through the use of logical dialect. It is particularly in the moment, "simultaneously historical and eternal" (PF 134-135) that philosophy meets its biggest challenge; and its attempt to rationalize such produces "old-fashioned orthodoxy in its rightful severity" (Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript p. 275) and is an obstacle to establishing a proper relation to the paradox (and thus, be able to make the 'leap of faith' to 'Absolute relation to the Absolute'). Climacus is not immune from this contradiction, in his need to attempt to rationalize the religious standpoint, leading to the perversion of understanding that he himself warns against (and which, as a human is unfortunately impossible to get away from if we're going to make any attempt at communicating the concept to each other -- language inevitably fails us).
The question, however, remains: who can attest to the idea of the religious, one who is reborn, or not? Climacus concludes this rhetorical question by answering that it must be the one who is reborn (the one who is in the Absolute relation to the Absolute, the one who has embraces the religious standpoint) as they would be the only ones aware of the transition from not-being to being. This conclusion places a level of doubt over Climacus' own mental processes in Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments, as one who is not himself 'reborn.' Climacus does exactly as the philosopher should in his willingness to "lay down life simply in oder to solve it" (as quoted in the historical introduction to the text) but comes to the same limited that any in the ethical face when approaching the religious -- namely, the futile attempt to 'solve' something which cannot be rationally solved: "If he abandons this extreme position, he may very well arrive at something, but in doing that he would have to also abandon his doubt about everything... Life has not acquired any meaning for him, and all this is the fault of philosophy."
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