52 pages • 1 hour read
Søren KierkegaardConcluding Unscientific Postscript
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1846A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Book 2, Part 2, Chapter 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Book 2: “The Subjective Problem,” Part 2: “How the Subjectivity of the Individual Must be Qualified”
Book 2, Part 2, Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis: “The Task of Becoming Subjective”
The “subjective problem” of Christianity concerns the inner life of the believer—their choice or decision for faith. A decision to believe in Christianity is not the result of “objective deliberation”—the topic of the previous chapters—but a matter of “subjective acceptance” (116).
To become Christians, we must “become subjective,” freeing ourselves from the pretension of being disinterested and looking squarely at the personal choice involved in believing. Kierkegaard stakes the bold claim that “objectively, Christianity has absolutely no existence” because it is wholly concerned with the subjective inner life of the individual (116), not with abstract ideas or humanity as a collective.
Christianity proposes to give the individual eternal happiness, but it does not assume that the individual is automatically ready to receive it. We are all subjects and potentially able to receive truth and eternal happiness; however, we must develop this capacity and in a sense strive to become what we already are. Elsewhere in the book Kierkegaard will speak of the paradox that we become Christians at baptism, yet we must also become Christians throughout our lives. In other words, we must personally appropriate the Christian faith that was conferred on us at birth.
