Bite-sized Kierkegaard #1: Introduction

Bite-sized Kierkegaard series:
Playlist:    • Bite-sized Kierkegaard  

#1 Introduction:    • Bite-sized Kierkegaard #1: Introduction  
#2 Early Polemical Works part 1:    • Early Polemical Works part 1 (Bite-sized K...  
#3 Early Polemical Works part 2:    • Early Polemical Works part 2 (Bite-sized K...  
#4 The Concept of Irony part 1:    • The Concept of Irony part 1 (Bite-sized Ki...  
#5 The Concept of Irony part 2    • The Concept of Irony part 2 (Bite-sized Ki...  
#6 Either/Or part 1:    • Either/Or part 1: introduction (Bite-sized...  
#7 Either/Or part 2: Diapsalmata (ΔIAΨAΛMATA)    • Either/Or part 2: Diapsalmata (ΔIAΨAΛMATA)...  
#8 Either/Or part 3: Immediate Erotic Stages and Tragic in Ancient Drama...    • Either/Or part 3: Immediate Erotic Stages ...  
#9 Either/Or part 4: Silhouettes, ..., Rotation of Crops    • Either/Or part 4: Silhouettes, ..., Rotati...  
#10 Either/Or part 5: The Seducer's Diary    • Either/Or part 5: The Seducer's Diary (Bit...  

Quote from Kierkegaard's Journals and Notebooks Volume 1:

Gilleleje 1 Aug. 1835
...What I really need is to be clear about what I am to do, not what I must know, except in the way knowledge must precede all action. It is a question of understanding my own destiny, of seeing what the Deity really wants me to do; the thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die. And what use would it be in this respect if I were to discover a so-called objective truth, or if I worked my way through the philosophers’ systems and were able to call them all to account on request, point out inconsistencies in every single circle? And what use would it be in that respect to be able to work out a theory of the state, and put all the pieces from so many places into one whole, construct a world which, again, I myself did not inhabit but merely held up for others to see? What use would it be to be able to propound the meaning of Christianity, to explain many separate facts, if it had no deeper meaning for myself and my life? And the better I became at it and the more I saw others appropriate the offspring of my mind, the more distressing my situation would become, rather like that of parents who in their poverty have to send their children out into the world and turn them over to the care of others. What use would it be if truth were to stand there before me, cold and naked, not caring whether I acknowledged it or not, inducing an anxious shiver rather than trusting devotion? Certainly I won’t deny that I still accept an imperative of knowledge, and that through it one can also influence people, but then it must be taken up alive in me, and this is what I now see as the main point. It is this my soul thirsts for as the African deserts thirst for water. That is what is lacking, and this is why I am like a man who has collected furniture 5 and rented rooms but still hasn’t found the beloved with whom to share life’s good and bad fortune. But to find that idea, or more properly to find myself, it is no use my plunging still further into the world. And that is exactly what I did before, which is why I had thought it would be a good idea to throw myself into jurisprudence, to be able to sharpen my mind on life’s many complications. Here a whole mass of details offered itself for me to lose myself in; from the given facts I could perhaps fashion a totality, an organism, of the life of thieves, pursue it in all its darker aspects (here, too, a certain community spirit is highly remarkable). That’s also why I could wish to become an actor, so that by taking on another’s role I could acquire a sort of surrogate for my own life and in these varying externals find some form of diversion. That’s what I lacked for leading a completely human life and not just a life of knowledge, to avoid basing my mind’s development on—yes, on something that people call objective—something which at any rate isn’t my own, and to base it instead on something which is bound up with the deepest roots of my existence,5 through which I have, as it were, grown into the divine, clinging fast to it even if the whole world were to fall apart. This, you see, is what I need, and this is what I strive for. So it is with joy and inner invigoration that I contemplate the great men who have found that precious stone for which they sell everything, even their lives, whether I see them intervening force- fully in life, with firm step, without wavering, going down their chosen paths, or run into them off the beaten track, self-absorbed and working for their lofty goals. I even look with respect upon those false paths that also lie there so close by. It is this inward action of the human, this God-side of man, that matters, not a mass of information.