Book: Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments

Context and Aim
Published in 1846 under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus, Concluding Unscientific Postscript presents a sustained response to the speculative idealism of Kierkegaard’s day, especially the Hegelian aspiration to a completed, systematic knowledge. Framed as a “postscript” to Philosophical Fragments yet vastly larger and more polemical, it argues that existential passion and personal appropriation, not detached cognition, are decisive for the highest human concerns. The book dismantles the idea that Christianity can be captured by argument or system and redirects the reader toward lived inwardness and decision.

Subjective Truth and Existence
At the heart of the work stands the claim that “truth is subjectivity.” This does not deny objective facts; it reorients the highest truth toward how an individual exists in relation to it. Objective reflection seeks neutral certainty, but when the issue is how to live, such detachment becomes evasion. Subjective reflection intensifies inwardness, risk, and commitment, making the existing individual the locus of truth. The emphasis falls on the how rather than the what: on appropriation, passion, and the unity of understanding and living. The subjective thinker does not dissolve life into abstract concepts; the thinker exists.

Faith, Paradox, and Offense
Christianity is presented as the absolute paradox: the eternal God entering time as a human. This event cannot be mediated by speculative thought without being emptied of offense. The paradox divides the individual: either offense at its scandal, or faith that appropriates it in passionate inwardness. Faith is not inference but decision, a leap that cannot be guaranteed by proofs. The category of the Moment marks the incursion of the eternal into time, confronting the learner with an either/or. The decision is qualitative, not a matter of more data, and it binds the self before God.

Critique of the System
Climacus mocks the promise of a finished system, arguing that existence is an unfinished task lived forward in time. A system presupposes the eternity of the thinker, yet human beings are temporal, contingent, and morally accountable. Speculative philosophy confuses thinking with being, replacing inward commitment with conceptual mediation. Where Socratic recollection makes truth a matter of remembering what one already knows, Christianity introduces an infinite qualitative difference between God and human, requiring revelation and a transformation of the learner. The “scientific” approach to Christianity becomes a category mistake that loses the pathos of existence.

Becoming a Christian
The distinction between being and becoming is crucial. To be a Christian is not to possess a doctrine but to be continually becoming one through repentance, imitation, and perseverance. Climacus attacks Christendom’s complacency, where baptism, culture, and correct ideas masquerade as faith. Contemporaneity with Christ is demanded: the individual must face the same offense and decision as the first disciples, not hide behind historical distance or learned commentary. Equality before God levels distinctions of talent and learning; what counts is the individual’s absolute relation to the absolute.

Style and Indirect Communication
The Postscript exemplifies indirect communication. Climacus disclaims authority and even denies being a Christian, a strategy that refuses to coerce the reader and preserves the freedom of decision. Humor and irony serve as border categories, exposing pretension and softening the approach to the religious while refusing premature resolution. The style enacts the argument: no system can deliver the existential leap; only the individual can decide.

Legacy
The book crystallizes Kierkegaard’s existential project, shifting philosophy from knowledge to existence, from objectivity to inward appropriation. Its critique of system and its analysis of faith’s passion influenced existentialism, theology, and modern philosophy of subjectivity, leaving a lasting challenge to any attempt to make life’s ultimate commitments an exercise in detached reason.