Concluding Unscientific Postscript

A long, often comic book published in 1846 under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus, as a 'postscript' many times longer than the Philosophical Fragments it follows. Its question is how an individual can come to have an eternal happiness, or, put plainly, how one becomes a Christian. Climacus argues that neither the objective study of history and scripture nor speculative philosophy in the manner of Hegel can answer it, since both give at best approximations and leave out the existing person who must decide. Hence the claim that truth is subjectivity: what matters is not only what one believes but how one holds it, with passionate inwardness in the face of objective uncertainty. The book discusses Lessing, indirect communication and the existing thinker, and distinguishes Religiousness A, open to anyone, from Religiousness B, the Christian faith built on paradox. At the end, Kierkegaard openly acknowledges authorship of the pseudonymous works.

It is the main source of the idea that truth can be subjective in a serious sense, and it shows why Kierkegaard thought philosophical systems forget the person doing the thinking.