Wednesday, December 03, 2003
Making Inadmissible the Essential
Why did Socrates compare himself to a gadfly? Because he wanted his influence only to be ethical. He didn't want to be an admired genius standing apart from the rest, who therefore simply makes life easier for them, for they say, 'Yes, it's all very well for him, he's a genius.' No, he did only what everyone can do, understand only what everyone can understand. That's where the epigrammatic quality lies. He dug his teeth hard into the individual, constantly compelling and teasing him with the commonplace. It was thus he was a gadfly, causing irritation through the individual's own feelings, not letting him go on leisurely and weakly admiring, but demanding of him his very self. If a person has ethical powers, people will gladly make a genius out of him just to be rid of him, for his life contains a demand.
'When subjectivity, inwardness is the truth, the truth becomes objectively a paradox; and the fact that truth is objectively a paradox shows in its turn that subjectivity is the truth . . . The paradoxical character of the truth is its objective uncertainty. This uncertainty is the expression for passionate inwardness, and this passion is precisely the truth.' (Kierkegaard, 1845a)
- posted by -g @ 7:47 PM | | 0 rocks in pond
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