Climacus's Thought-Project

Abstract

On the title page of Philosophical Fragments, or A Fragment of Philosophy we find three questions: “Can a historical point of departure be given for an eternal consciousness; how can such a point of departure be of more than historical interest; can an eternal happiness be built on historical knowledge?” Climacus explores these questions within the framework of a hypothetical understanding of the difference between philosophy and religious faith. This framework is provided by two diametrically opposed assumptions about our access to the truth: (1) We can learn the truth by means of reason alone (the Socratic or philosophical hypothesis), and (2) We can learn the truth only with divine aid (the hypothesis of religious faith). Fragments initially appears to be a philosophical deduction, or logical development, of the implications of these assumptions – a deduction that ultimately presents the reader with a choice between Socratic philosophizing and Christianity. In Fragments , however, first appearances often deceive. Climacus's “deduction” unfolds in the space between philosophy and religion, a space that we are at pains to characterize given the direct and fundamental opposition between these two that emerges in the course of the inquiry. On the one hand, Climacus seems to arrive at Christianity through philosophical reasoning about the conditions under which learning can take place, if one assumes that the truth is not accessible by means of the unaided intellect.