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present into the past, and Kierkegaard would not he satisfied with
only a Proustian "recovery" of the past. Having sacrificed all,
the man of faith now demands complete restitution, not in heaven,
but on earth, here and now. Rationally the demand is impossible;
but
God
can do the impossible; in relation to this world, God is
precisely this "Paradox," this "Scandal." Abraham has renounced
Isaac without any hope for his return, hut not his love for Isaac
(again it is Kierkegaard and his fiancee), and in anguish calls
for his restitution. It is granted him because he has faith (but
Kierkegaard's fiancee was not returned to him; he therefore thinks
that his renunciation had not been an act of faith but of "despair").
"The knight of faith is a man truly happy who possesses all fini–
tude," and thus solves Don Juan's problem. His possession is a
higher kind of possession, one that does not kill love; "recovery"
is
lucid instinct, timeless time, eventful eternity, "immediacy
after
reflection." The lost unity of human life is thus re-established
by faith, "by virtue of the absurd."
Kierkegaard attempts to realize the individual outside all
accepted forms, spiritual or social. In his opinion, philosophy,
morality, institutions leave the problems of concrete existence un–
solved. It was in the name of the "concrete" that he attacked
Hegelianism, the official philosophy of his period, and his argu·
ments against Hegel are still valid against all modern versions
of rationalism. He saw that Hegel's method solved the contra·
dictions of actual life in an illusory and apologetic manner. The
abstract thinker, "man in general," left real man in the lurch,
sacrificing him to the "world spirit." "Precisely because abstract
thinking is
sub specie aetemitatis
it abstracts from the concrete,"
said Kierkegaard.
"If
abstract thinking is the highest, it follows
that scientists and thinkers walk proudly out of existence, leaving
us, common men, with the worst burdens. . . . Abstract thinking
kills
me as a separate individual and then makes me immortal."
And he added ironically: "The being with which thought is
identical should no doubt call itself not-being-a-man." What Hegel
had done in theory was accomplished in social practice by a society
that was "revolutionary, but without passion." that "instead of
culminating in a revolution, weakened the inner reality of human
relations in a stream of concepts that changed nothing and only
made existence itself wholly ambiguous." Even worse than Hegel·
