982 SØRENKIERKEGAARD
obtaining certainty about something altogether different. One hundred thousand
individual witnesses, who by the special nature of their testimony (that they have
believed the absurd) remain individual witnesses, do not become something else en
masse so that the absurd becomes less absurd. Why? Because one hundred thousand
people individually have believed that it was absurd? Quite the contrary, those one
hundred thousand witnesses repel exactly as the absurd does.
But I do not need to develop this further here. In Fragments(especially where the
difference between the follower at first hand and the follower at second hand is
annulled) and in Part One of this book, I have with sufficient care shown that all approx-
imation is futile, since the point is rather to do away with introductory observations,
reliabilities, demonstrations from effects, and the whole mob of pawnbrokers and guar-
antors, in order to get the absurd clear—so that one can believe if one will—I merely
say that this must be extremely strenuous.
If speculative thought wants to become involved in this and, as always, say: From
the point of view of the eternal, the divine, the theocentric, there is no paradox—I shall
not be able to decide whether the speculative thinker is right, because I am only a poor
existing human being who neither eternally nor divinely nor theocentrically is able to
observe the eternal but must be content with existing. This much, however, is certain,
that with speculative thought everything goes backward, back past the Socratic, which
at least comprehended that for an existing person existing is the essential; and much less
has speculative thought taken the time to comprehend what it means to be situatedin
existence the way the existing person is in the imaginary construction.
The difference between the Socratic position and the position that goes beyond
the Socratic is clear enough and is essentially the same as in Fragments,for in the latter
nothing has changed, and in the former the matter has only been made somewhat more
difficult, but nevertheless not more difficult than it is. It has also become somewhat
more difficult because, whereas in FragmentsI set forth the thought-category of the
paradox only in an imaginary construction, here I have also latently made an attempt to
make clear the necessity of the paradox, and even though the attempt is somewhat
weak, it is still something different from speculatively canceling the paradox.
Christianity has itself proclaimed itself to be the eternal, essential truth that has
come into existence in time; it has proclaimed itself as the paradoxand has required the
inwardness of faith with regard to what is an offense to the Jews, foolishness to the
Greeks—and an absurdity to the understanding. It cannot be expressed more strongly
that subjectivity is truth and that objectivity only thrusts away, precisely by virtue of the
absurd, and it seems strange that Christianity should have come into the world in order
to be explained, alas, as if it were itself puzzled about itself and therefore came into the
world to seek out the wise man, the speculative thinker, who can aid with the explana-
tion. It cannot be expressed more inwardly that subjectivity is truth than when
subjectivity is at first untruth, and yet subjectivity is truth.