Hansen. The Aporia of Decision. Revisiting The Question of Decision in SK.

Bjarke Mørkøre Stigel Hansen
The Aporia of Decision:

Revisiting the Question of Decision in
Kierkegaard
Abstract: In this essay I will examine the various ways in which the concept of
decision emerges in the writings of Kierkegaard focusing mainly on the Philo-
sophical Fragments and the Postscript. This prepares the way for revisiting
Kierkegaard’s concept of decision. Doing so indicates the radical way in which
Kierkegaard connects the concept of decision to an aporia. The crucial existential
concept of decision not only concerns the difficulty, or even the impasse, pertain-
ing to knowledge, but also relates to the question of how the singular finds his or
her own way through existence.
Cela d’une façon générale. Il doit y avoir d’autres biais.

Sinon ce serait à désespérer de tout.
Mais c’est à désespérer de tout.
A remarquer, avant d’aller plus loin, de l’avant,
que je dis aporia sans savoir ce que ça veut dire.¹
I Climacus’ Aporetic Project

In Philosophical Fragments, the pseudonym Johannes Climacus reopens the apo-
ria concerning what a human being can know when he or she cannot possibly
seek “what he knows, and, just as impossibly, he cannot seek what he does
not know, for what he knows he cannot seek, since he knows it, and what he
does not know he cannot seek, because, after all, he does not even know
what he is supposed to seek.”² By restating the aporia stemming from Plato’s dia-
logue Meno, Climacus launches his “Thought-Project” with a question of Socratic
origin. However, while Climacus intends to begin his project with a question, he
already appears to have abandoned this beginning since he does not begin with
 Samuel Beckett, L’innommable, Paris: Minuit 1953, p. 8.

 SKS 4, 224 / PF, 9. Cf. Plato, Meno, 80e.
Bjarke Mørkøre Stigel Hansen, The London School of Economics and Political Science,
Houghton Street, London, WC2 A 2AE, United Kingdom, bmh@sk.ku.dk
Brought to you by | Copenhagen University Denmark

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54 Bjarke Mørkøre Stigel Hansen
a question. Rather, Climacus postpones the beginning, whereby the actual begin-
ning begins with another beginning: “And just as he wants…to begin, another
beginning is discovered to be necessary.”³ In other words, something precedes
the question that exhorts it to give an answer. What precedes the question is con-
ceived in the title Propositio, literally meaning that something precedes the ini-
tial question, by which we were properly meant to begin.
We do not begin with the beginning but with what precedes it, namely with
a proposition by Climacus: “The question is asked by one who in his ignorance
does not even know what provided the occasion for his questioning in this
way.”⁴ The conspicuousness of the proposition that precedes the question by
which we begin is that the proposition does not shield the questioner, let
alone him or her who seeks a point of departure; rather, it exposes the question-
er to the fact that the proposition is not that by which we properly begin, because
the question is inferred by someone, who does not even know what made him
ask the way he does. The version of Meno’s aporia, which Climacus introduces
hereby, differs from Socrates’ initial dispute with Meno. In what follows, I
shall elucidate the difference between Climacus’ and Socrates’ aporia.
Socrates pretends that he wants to question the Thessalian Meno about what
he essentially understands through using a bee as an example. What is the es-
sence of a bee? Socrates envisages Meno’s answer as follows: The essence of a
bee is to be found by counting of a large number of bees. Although bees differ
in size, beauty, and so forth, the question of wherein the common property
that makes all bees similar remains unanswered.⁵ Socrates acknowledges the dif-
ficulty in defining what a bee is, inasmuch as the definition presupposes a unity
that applies to definiens as well as definiendum. In short, the difficulty comes
down to determining the common feature of all bees.⁶ What, then, is the bee?
Let us take a closer look at how this question is posed. The dialogue Meno is
said to be the earliest philosophical testimony of the form of questioning
“what is…? [ti esti].” The question “what is a bee?” thereby constitutes a question
seeking to define what is not given in and by the diversity of empirical experi-
ence, insofar as such experience indicates a quantity of accidents. Additionally,
in no case is it possible to deduce the rule of a common feature from accidents.
As the number in itself is not a sufficient condition for essential determinations,
so the example illustrated by Socrates’ swarms of bees is not sufficient for the
determination of the essence of a bee.
 SKS 7, 478 / CUP2, 526. Emphasis added.

 SKS 4, 218 / PF, 9.
 Plato, Meno, 72c.
 Ibid., 74a.

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The Aporia of Decision: Revisiting the Question of Decision in Kierkegaard 55
What we are asking for when we are asking for the essence of the bee is the
whatness of a bee. If we take the metaphysical history (or histories) into consid-
eration, a certain disposition of reification seems inherent to the way of asking
“what is…?” determining and thus propounding the privileged form of question-
ing of metaphysics itself. Consequently, do we not always impose a metaphysical
structure when we ask what something is, on the basis of which we anticipate
exactly what we are asking for? In this sense, we are back at the aporia of Meno.
The question of Socratic origin, by which Climacus attempts to begin, is con-
nected to an aporia. Socrates does not solve the aporia by showing how knowl-
edge actually emerges in the soul, but by showing how knowledge, the search for
knowledge, and the appropriation of knowledge are expressed through recollec-
tion (anamnesis): we already latently possess the knowledge which the ques-
tion’s answer conveys, although this latency has to be brought into presence.⁷
The one who seeks possesses knowledge about what is asked for in advance;
and in a certain sense the one who asks has already appropriated what is
asked for. According to Climacus, the problem with Socrates’ password of recol-
lection is that the occasion for knowledge remains untouched and indifferent be-
cause we, according to this theory, already know what we know. However, I have
anticipated too much here since Climacus’ thought-project first of all is projected
as a hypothesis, by which Climacus attempts to answer the Socratic question by
other means than recollection. Climacus’ hypothesis can be somewhat formal-
ized: 1) If knowledge has to be learned, then the condition of possibility of
knowledge correspondingly has to be given. Climacus sharpens his argument
by stating that the condition for knowledge cannot already be inherent in the
learner, since such a point of departure would merely repeat the Socratic argu-
ment ex hypothesi. ⁸ 2) No human being can be the teacher who gives the condi-
tion, which necessarily has to imply a radical transformation of the learner. Rath-
er, the condition must come from someone or something else; otherwise it would
be given the learner in advance. 3) Inasmuch as the learner exists, he or she is
created by the god who has given the learner the condition for understanding.
Otherwise the learner would have been an animal up until the teacher would
make him into “human being for the first time.”⁹ Thus, Climacus concludes
that the learner “must lack the condition, consequently be deprived of it.”¹⁰
We must presume this deprivation in order not to end up at the Socratic pass-
 Cf. Ibid., 79e-82a.

 For the formalization of Climacus’ argument, see Geoffrey Bennington, “A Moment of Mad-
ness: Derrida’s Kierkegaard,” The Oxford Literary Review, vol. 33, no. 1, 2011, p. 110.
 SKS 4, 223 / PF, 15.
 Ibid.

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word of recollection, i.e., a password that cannot have “decisive significance.”¹¹

In what follows, I shall outline the contours of Climacus’ argument.
According to Climacus, the deprivation of condition has occurred due nei-
ther to an act of God nor to an accident: “it must therefore have been due to
himself.”¹² That is to say, the learner has forfeited and is continually forfeiting
the condition. This situation in which the learner is reminded by the teacher,
who acts as the occasion, that it is due to the learner’s own fault to be deprived
of the condition of knowing who the learner is, Climacus calls sin. The name sin
here designates the condition in which the learner is situated, because the deci-
sive significance of the moment disappears when the condition of knowledge is
rooted in the learner himself. Knowledge would thereby merely be a contingent
coincidence of realization of a possibility given in advance. Moreover, the condi-
tion of sin signifies that the learner himself is guilty in the loss of the condition
of knowledge, although the learner is not his or her own occasion of knowledge,
because the occasion is given by something outside. In what follows, I will try to
elucidate this sinful situation since it implies and retains a difficulty regarding
the Moment and its decisive significance in relation to which one must orient
oneself.¹³
II An Opening of the Question of Decision
In focusing on the Socratic aporia, I seek to display the way in which we orient
ourselves in relation to the difficulty mentioned above: How can you ask for
something that you do not know, when, after all, you must know what you are
asking for in order to formulate a question? I will translate this difficulty with
aporia because this Greek word emphasizes an absence of regarding the way
in which we orient our question and orient ourselves in relation to this question.
The difficulty of aporia not only pertains to one isolated case but to what Clima-
cus sees as his overall task, namely “to make difficulties everywhere.”¹⁴ Mean-
while, we risk being led astray by this question and therefore “a solution must
be found.”¹⁵ The question of finding a solution is for Climacus also a question
 Ibid.
 Ibid.
 Cf. SKS 4, 385 f. / CA, 82 f.
 SKS 7, 172 / CUP1, 187.
 SKS 7, 403 / CUP1, 443.

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of “the singular [den Enkelte].”¹⁶ The way that leads astray, and from which we
have to find a way out is the pathway which in a peculiar way “comes into ex-
istence for the singular and closes up behind him.”¹⁷ The question concerning
the way also opens the way for an understanding of the singular, but the ques-
tion also risks leading the singular astray inasmuch as everywhere in life there
are crossroads. And, Kierkegaard continues: “Every human being at some time,
at the beginning, stands at the crossroads.”¹⁸ Wherever the singular is, he is
bound to stand, and this stance marks the beginning of his life. From there—
wherever there is—two directions spring: you can either turn the way upward
or turn “the wrong way downward.” Despite these crossroads, Kierkegaard ar-
gues that “from the point of view of the eternal, there are never two ways…the
other way is the wrong way.”¹⁹
However, one could be tempted to ask, as Climacus does: “Of what help is it
to explain how the eternal truth is to be understood eternally when the one to
use the explanation is prevented from understanding it in this way because he
is existing and is merely a fantast if he fancies himself to the sub specie
aeterni.”²⁰ Through this reasoning, the pathway that closes up behind the singu-
lar after having come into existence for the singular apparently brings about a
kind of hallucinatory movement. The steps, which the singular has already
taken along the way, perpetually seem to return the singular to this very same
way, whereby the steps that the singular had already taken are turned into the
steps of another. Hence, another person and another way recurrently haunt
the representation of the singular and his own proper way. In order to find a
way out of this vertiginous movement—which concerns everything and therefore
concerns nothing—something is required of the singular. Climacus articulates
what is required in a demand: “I require a decision.”²¹ The required decision
does not belong to the domain of logic; it concerns something entirely else.
It is alluring to assume that Kierkegaard finds a way out of the aporia by let-
ting the seeker seek what lies beyond the realm of the seeker. Accordingly, the
seeker must find something that does not lie within the power of the seeker
 For a discussion of the translation of “den Enkelte,” see Darío González, “Adorno, Kierke-
gaard et la mise-en-scène du Singulier,” in Le singulier. Pensées Kierkegaardiennes sur l’individu,
ed. by Peter Kemp and Karl Verstrynge, Brussels: VUBPRESS 2008, pp. 49 – 51. See also, André
Clair, Kierkegaard. Penser le singulier, Paris: Cerf 1993.
 SKS 7, 68 / CUP1, 67. Translation slightly modified.
 SKS 10, 31 / CD, 19 – 20.
 SKS 10, 32 / CD, 20.
 SKS 7, 176 / CUP1, 192.
 SKS 7, 109 – 110 / CUP1, 113. Translation modified.

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but which nevertheless is to be found in a definite location. If the seeker finds

this location, the endeavor will be successful. However, according to Kierkegaard
this success is deceitful, and anyone seeking would be wiser in winning “the du-
plexity of doubt and the halfheartedness of decision [Beslutningens Halvhed]!”²²
Despite his reverence for Socrates, Climacus finds the way out of the aporia
offered by anamnesis dubious since it cannot entail a decisive significance. In-
stead, Climacus insists on the radical aporia. The question, which according to
Kierkegaard has a decisive significance, does not even constitute a question of
knowledge, inasmuch as knowledge “places everything in possibility and to
that extent is outside the actuality of existence in possibility,” which further
means that “in knowledge…there is no decision.”²³ Prior to the decisive signifi-
cance of decision, the decision cannot be reduced to a resolution of a determi-
nable or determining knowledge, considered merely as a logical consequence
of an antecedence or of a pre-established order. Such logic is precisely what
the Socratic way out of the aporia offers by virtue of recollection. Thus, the Soc-
ratic question of knowledge is missing “a new decision: the moment.”²⁴
If the decision is founded on knowledge, then this fundamental knowledge
already contains the result of the decision in advance. What the decision decides,
however, does not concern just any kind of relationship; it concerns the life of
the singular. Thus, Climacus cautions against finishing “too quickly,”²⁵ as though
the decision could be anticipated before time, thereby allowing the singular to be
“finished with life before life is finished with him.”²⁶ In this sense, the singular is
brought to stand “at the crossroads in such a way that there is no way out for him
except to choose.”²⁷ That is, the singular stands at the crossroads as he is ma-
tured in “the hour of decision.”²⁸ Hence, the question of decision turns out to
be inextricably bound up with the question of the singular, because it is in
and by the decision that the singular first begins his life.²⁹ Here we ought to pur-
sue a detailed reading of the way in which the decision, the moment, faith, and
knowledge interact. However, with these questions the economy that I have at
my disposal in this paper encounters its limit and collapses because these leit-
motifs in Kierkegaard’s oeuvre cannot be assimilated into it. Instead, I shall pur-
 SKS 5, 398 / TD, 17. Translation modified.

 SKS 9, 232 / WL, 230.
 SKS 4, 306 / PF, 111.
 SKS 7, 152 / CUP1, 164.
 SKS 7, 151 / CUP1, 163.
 SKS 3, 164 / EO2, 168.
 SKS 3, 155 / EO2, 157.
 Cf. SKS 9, 232 / WL, 230.

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sue two main features, of which the first concerns the relationship between faith
and knowledge, while the other concerns the relationship between the finite and
the infinite decision.
In the preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant remarks
that he finds it necessary “to sublate knowledge, in order to make room for
faith. ”³⁰ When Kant, to some extent, endorses faith in this way, it seems obvious
to align his observation with Kierkegaard’s view on the relationship between
faith and knowledge. The question is, however, whether Kierkegaard considers
the place of faith to be the sublation of knowledge and whether we can think
Kierkegaard as a straightforward continuation of Kant. Faith and Knowledge is
the heading of a complex distinction steeped in tradition, which has given rise
to more questions than proper answers. The title alone, hardly fortuitous, offers
difficulties because the two compounded nouns faith and knowledge, which (in
Danish, Tro og Viden) can also be read as substantivized verbs, appear together
paratactically by virtue of the conjunction and. This conjunction, however, en-
tails a doubleness—or perhaps even an antinomy—between two relata that tradi-
tionally have been regarded as heterogeneous and, in accordance with certain
interpretations, even as incompatible domains. On one side of the conjunction,
we find faith, which is supposed to come either before or after reason and knowl-
edge; on the other side of the conjunction, we find reason and knowledge.
Meanwhile, Kierkegaard draws attention to a certain abuse of knowledge
that occurs in the double resonance of the relationship between faith and knowl-
edge, insofar as this relationship may be designated as a relationship at all.³¹
This abuse claims that one does not believe by virtue of knowledge. Rather,
such a relationship conveys an upside-downness by means of which faith of
knowledge is knowledge. The Socratic solution to the aporia of knowledge dem-
onstrates this upside-downness since everyone is said to possess the same
knowledge to be recollected, whereby everyone necessarily must come to the
same conclusion. In this sense, knowledge is given in advance and with it the
conclusion (ergo). According to Kierkegaard, the deception concerning the rela-
 Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, in Werke in zehn Bänden, vols. 1– 10, ed. by
Wilhelm Weischedel, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftlicher Buchgesellschaft 1968, vol. 3, B XXX, p. 33.
My translation. For the following discussion, see Jacques Derrida, “Foi et savoir,” in La religion,
ed. by Jacques Derrida and Gianni Vattimo, Paris: Seuil 2001, pp. 9 – 86.
 SKS 9, 232 / WL, 231.

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tionship between faith and knowledge is that one believes one can infer from
knowledge what one concludes or believes in. The problem is just that one
might as well conclude or believe in the opposite from the very same knowledge.
In pointing to this difficulty pertaining to the relation of faith and knowl-
edge, it is remarkable that Kierkegaard places the conjunction ergo in connection
not with knowledge but with faith: it is first of all in and through ergo that the
singular begins his life; however, the ergo is always already sanctioned by faith.
The ergo issued by faith scarcely avoids the echo stemming from the Cartesian
ergo encountered in Descartes’ meditations on the principles of first philosophy,
that is, the cogito ergo sum—I think, therefore I am. It is precisely in the tradition-
al interpretations of this Cartesian formula that one finds an abuse of knowl-
edge. Descartes makes it clear that the proposition “I am, I exist, necessarily is
true whenever it is enunciated by me [me profertur].”³² Thus, the proposition
not only contains the statement “ego sum, ego existo.” The statement is shad-
owed by another ego, ego sum, ego existo, insofar as it can only be a proposition
when it is enunciated. If the enunciation of the proposition is called into ques-
tion, a performative contradiction is generated by which one is induced to
assume that the employment of existence verbs such as sum and existo immedi-
ately imply the statement that “who I am—I who am certain that I am.”³³ The cer-
tainty following from this statement, and here I leave out of account the matter
of enunciation, is a certainty grounded on itself. The subject extracted from this
certainty is a sub-iectum, which is to say it is that which lies at the root of think-
ing and of itself. As far as I can see, Kierkegaard’s counterargument is that the
sentence connector ergo does not necessarily imply a logical succession of cause
followed by a necessary conclusion. In a note from 1837, in which he takes the
principle of modern subjectivity into consideration, Kierkegaard maintains
that ergo should not be interpreted as conclusive, because the proposition of
subjectivity would thereby amount to be an “imperfect syllogism….This proposi-
tion would therefore be a new presupposition and as such is, in any case, reduci-
ble to the latter; ergo is copulative; I think and exist as thinking.”³⁴ The problem
seems to be that a notion of the pure subjectivity precludes all difficulties of
thinking “this one human being…[as] an existing human being”³⁵ and thus for-
gets “the questioner [who] specifically emphasizes that he is an existing
 René Descartes, Meditationes de prima philosophia, Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin

1978, II. 25, l. 10 – 13, p. 25. My translation.
 Ibid., l. 14– 15, p. 26.
 SKS 19, 131, Not4:7 / KJN 3, 131.
 SKS 7, 323 / CUP1, 353.

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person.”³⁶ Though Kierkegaard does not call attention to the conjunction in the
conclusive sense, ergo nevertheless retains an expletive power that seems to re-
sist the certainty given in and by “I think, therefore I am.” Therefore, it is crucial
for Kierkegaard to demonstrate how the Cartesian formula refers to an “I,” who
with certainty comes after the fact inasmuch as “knowledge is later [et Senere]
than faith.”³⁷ What does it mean, then, that knowledge is later than faith, that
is, that the certainty concerning what it means to be in a certain sense comes
after faith?
Despite the fact that knowledge is a later than faith, this lateness does not imply
that faith is located in the response to something preceding or in the past in the
form of a presupposed goal. Rather, the lateness of knowledge is a way to open
up the question concerning the singular; that is, the question concerning the life
of the singular and the way in which the life of the singular is underway. The life
of the singular begins with a decision, but not with any kind of decision, for, if I
know what I have to decide in advance, do I not merely apply some knowledge
and of what significance is my decision? To decide between something or anoth-
er—being capable of deciding something—means that I possess some knowledge
about what is to be decided, making me capable of judging what it is that I
decide. Kierkegaard calls this kind of decision the finite decision. However, the
finite decision is not decision in a decisive manner since “[t]here is no decision
in knowledge.”³⁸ If I am to decide something, it is required that I do not know
what it is that I am about to decide beforehand. Kierkegaard calls the decisions
to which a radical uncertainty is attached the “decisions of infinitude,”³⁹ and in
the strictest sense of the word the infinite decisions are the only decisions that
may properly be called by that name.
However, the difference between the finite and the infinite decision is not
readily determined. Perhaps there is a certain sense in this difficulty of determi-
nation, inasmuch as “the person deciding is not distanced from the decision…
but the decision seems to have been made already [men hvor det er ligesom
var det allerede afgjort].”⁴⁰ The condition of decision is not a question of the pos-
 SKS 7, 177 / CUP1, 193.

 SKS 18, 203, JJ:196 / KJN 2, 187.
 SKS 9, 232 / WL, 231.
 SKS 20, 172, NB2:73 / KJN 4, 170.
 SKS 7, 333 / CUP1, 365.

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sibility of deciding between something or other; rather, it is a question of the im-

possibility of condition for decision by virtue of an indecisive opening between
preparing oneself for the decision and the decision as such.
It does not follow from this opening that the decision introduces a new di-
chotomy between the finite and the infinite. Rather, the difficulty of decision
shows itself by a doubleness: First, we encounter a first decision, which upon
closer inspection shows itself to be merely an apparent decision and as a possi-
bility subjected to knowledge. Second, we are introduced to the decision as such,
which should not be understood in strict opposition to the first decision. Rather,
there is a desire of decision in both a finite and an infinite sense. However, the
obvious distance between the decider, i.e., someone who executes an active de-
cision in regard of something, and the decision itself, is the condition of possi-
bility for the very taking place of decision. This decision only takes place as if the
decision has been made, inasmuch as “the decision seems to have been made
already.”⁴¹ In other words, the concept of infinity is not separated from the finite
because the finite has the infinite in itself. Furthermore, the notion of the infin-
ite, which is different from the finite, is a notion whose representational charac-
ter is exceeded by the infinite itself.
The distance between decider and decision not only opens up to the condi-
tion of possibility, it also discloses itself as a condition of impossibility, i.e., a
condition by which we cannot know in advance what we are about to decide.
It is the desire of this uncertain decision that knowledge seeks to expel by pre-
tending that the decision operates as if the decider knows what he or she decides
in advance, and thereby knows how to enumerate and calculate with the condi-
tions of possibility and how to anticipate the limits and the works of decision.⁴²
 Ibid.
 In this sense, the relation between knowledge and decision could also be rendered as a
relation between the factual and hope, insofar as decision, like hope, is the possibility that is
present when there does not exist any possibility. Hope is, as Johannes Sløk mentions, “a hope
which lives when there is no longer or not yet a possibility of any hope” (Johannes Sløk,
Kierkegaard’s Universe: A New Guide to the Genius, trans. by Kenneth Tindall, Copenhagen:
Narayana Press 1994, pp. 89 – 90). However, to hope is not merely to hope all things, or “to hope
always,” as if hope were at rest in “an eternal moment,” because hope is composed of both “the
eternal and the temporal.” For this reason hope takes the form of an inseparable duality: on the
one hand, an eternity entailing “to hope all things,” and, on the other hand, a temporality—
expressing the same thing—entailing “to hope always” (SKS 9, 248 / WL, 248 f.). A complex
analysis of eternity and time then follows. However, I am not able to elucidate, sensu stricto,
Kierkegaard’s argument here, and, therefore, I will restrain my argument in order to say that
hope and decision, as a common trait, relate to the future, inasmuch as the future is not only the
possibility of advance. It is in hope that what could in the future be considered as a fact has not

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Kierkegaard communicates the consequence of this desire very clearly, namely

that the one who has to decide is thrown into “dyspeptic, abnormal common
sense [Forstandighed].”⁴³ Kierkegaard’s pathological imagery is characteristic
of the way in which the wounded sovereignty of reason is described, inasmuch
as reason is said to suffer from or be traumatized by the realization of its own
limits. The trauma of reason, disclosed by the insight instituted by Kant’s critical
philosophy, is that reason by itself will never achieve the perfection it pretends
to be able to reach by determining the conditions of possibility for all the things
that it is capable of knowing—including itself.⁴⁴
III The Indecidability of Decision

According to Climacus, the decision is not an undaring venture; it can finish you
off. In the moment of decision, “where the road swings off from the objective
knowledge, it looks as if the infinite decision were thereby finished. But at the
same moment, the existing person is in the temporal realm.”⁴⁵ This means
that wherever the road of the singular existent swings off it cannot be stated ob-
jectively. What is left is the suspension of objective knowledge, whereby the sin-
gular, who in order to begin his life as this singular existent must decide for him-
self without preconceived rules of conduct (i.e. the objective uncertainty), thereby
risking to lead the singular existent astray. In this sense, the aporia becomes a
condition for the decision, albeit a condition which does not procure the possi-
bility of decision as such. Rather, the condition accentuates the aporetic situa-
tion—by which I mean the impasse—on account of which the decision is struc-
tured by a condition of impossibility. In other words, it is not required to know or
to look ahead of what one decides; rather, it is necessary to decide from an un-
predictable and improvident perspective that seeks to see what it cannot see and
makes the decider incapable of calculating who makes the decision. Who can be
said to make the decision if we do not even know who this who is?
yet made the traces of its own contingency vacillate. Hope is, as Kierkegaard emphasizes, what
always is, and therefore hope is the hope that cannot be annihilated, but is, as Gerhard Richter
rightfully points out, necessarily “disappointable” (Gerhard Richter, Afterness, New York: Co-
lumbia University Press 2011, pp. 166 – 168).
 SKS 8, 73 / TA, 76.
 Cf. Immanuel Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, in Werke in zehn Bänden, vol. 8, B III-X / A III-X,
pp. 237– 241.
 SKS 7, 186 / CUP1, 203. Emphasis added.

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As the German word Ent-Scheidung clarifies, the de-cision interrupts—like a

crisis in time. However, the decision does not interrupt a preceding knowledge as
though the certainty of knowledge consisted in readymade evidence to be en-
trusted. Rather, the decision must be thought of radically inasmuch as reason
cannot go beyond the crisis instigated by decision in order to suture its
wound. In this sense, one could speak of a crisis of reason, i.e., a crisis consti-
tuted by a lack of meaning. The crisis is not merely a crisis of something or other;
rather, it is the crisis of reason in a decisive manner, insofar as reason that makes
itself known as a convicting jurisdiction grasps its broken authority.⁴⁶ So, the de-
cision discloses that the highest court of reason is in a critical state. The crisis, to
which Kierkegaard refers, is therefore the crisis of crisis because it interrupts the
convicting authority of reason.
In a note to the Postscript, Climacus explores the uncertainty of faith over
against the certainty of reason, although this uncertainty “will not have its
day and then be over.”⁴⁷ The uncertainty of faith does not belong to a delimited
time after which it would cease to be in favor of a certainty, as though faith was
preceded by a prerogative of knowledge.⁴⁸ Contrarily, faith stands, insofar as
faith stands anywhere, as a wink of the (in)fidelity of reason toward that
which in and for itself exceeds reason’s fantasy of being its own precondition.
The most powerful of the relations of the reason which reasons itself is also
“the most powerless,”⁴⁹ inasmuch as the ground on which reason grounds itself
is grounded in an abyss, thereby eroding the very ground of reason. Thus, no
matter how pious a role reason plays, Kierkegaard remarks, it “sighs out of deep-
est distress.”⁵⁰ Despite reason’s pretention of being its own sufficient condition,
which, as mentioned above, Kierkegaard considers to be an abuse of knowledge,
it is precisely in the concession of its own insufficiency that reason grounds it-
self. Therein resides the fragility of reason in the light of which we, according
to Kierkegaard, are obliged to separate explaining and being. The power of this
distinction, however, is just a token of this “weakness of ours [vor Afmagt]”⁵¹ re-
vealing how we must relate to the absolute.
 For the authority, as Kant declares, which “represents the highest court of judgment [Ge-
richtshof] pertaining to every conflict comes into conflict with itself” (Immanuel Kant, Kritik der
reinen Vernunft, in Werke in zehn Bänden, vol. 4, B 768 / A 740, p. 632. My translation).
 SKS 7, 476 / CUP1, 524.
 SKS 7, 476 f. / CUP1, 524 f. See also SKS 4, 456 / CA, 157.
 SKS 5, 399 / TD, 18.
 Ibid.
 SKS 9, 106 / WL, 101.

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In opposition to the self-conception of reason as being a self-grounded

court, Kierkegaard insists on a precedence of faith concerning the relationship
between faith and knowledge, because the decision in its radical sense is con-
ceived as a “daring venture”⁵² that cannot be preceded by evidence, no matter
how reasonable. Thus, Kierkegaard names the radical decision that is also the
infinite decision “the decision of faith.”⁵³ Accordingly, faith is not something
that the one who decides can possess. Rather, at the heart of faith, i.e., the
faith inhabiting “the heart’s room…if it finds a place there,”⁵⁴ there is a decision
of faith that precedes itself and thereby exceeds itself as decision.
Decision is not something we do in order to finish off a possibility, by means
of which the schema of possibility and reality is effectuated. Rather, decision is
recovered in a radical indecidability that throws us into passivity beyond the act-
ing and receiving of self-certainty. Nevertheless, in some way or another we are
always bound up with what we decide. What we do could always have been done
otherwise. Hence, the strange indecidability in the midst of decision discloses
that the decision is never equal to the choice made on the basis of a deliberation.
Rather, the indecidability of decision rests upon a kind of decision beyond which
no one can go, namely the decision whether one should exist or not. Such a de-
cision is never at anyone’s disposal but is the tragic condition which no one can
escape and which escapes no one. In spite of this fundamental indecidability,
the singular is always already responsible for this inescapability.⁵⁵
The tragic knowledge of our condition, which is the origin of our situated-
ness, is also the interruption of the principle of that very same origin insofar
as the condition pursues us from our very birth and haunts us until the moment
of our death. This tragic condition is what impelled Nietzsche to repeat the wis-
dom of Silenus: “The very best thing for you is entirely unattainable: not to have
been born, not to be, to be nothing at all. The second best thing for you, however,
is this—to die soon.”⁵⁶ Therefore, the very best thing is not to have been born at
all, however, the advancement to such wisdom implies that you are already born,
that you exist. Thus, the premise for the singular in order to make his choice re-
 SKS 7, 186 / CUP1, 203.

 SKS 24, 20, NB21:16 / JP 2, 336.
 SKS 9, 137 / WL, 135.
 For an interesting discussion of the tragic condition and knowledge, see Reiner Schürmann,
Des hégémonies brisées, Mauvezin: Trans-Europ-Repress 1996, pp. 787 ff.
 Friedrich Nietzsche, Die Geburt der Tragödie, in Kritische Studienausgabe, vols. 1– 15, ed. by
Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter 1967– 1977, vol. 1, p.
35. My translation.

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fers to a preceding decision situating all later decisions in a radical indecidabil-

ity, namely, the indecidability of the decision that the singular exists.
This does not mean that the indecidability of existence constitutes a point at
which all decisions are equivalent to one another and thereby annihilated as
such. On the contrary, the one who has to decide what is decisive, that is, the
one who must determine both the criterion of the decision and of the one who
decides, precedes the decision itself. In other words, the determination of deci-
sion is implemented in the attempt to enunciate something about decision, that
is, to state that a decision may be measured to a certain degree. However, accord-
ing to Climacus, such measuring is “to deny decision,” because “decision is de-
signed specifically to put an end to that perpetual prattle about ‘to a certain
degree.’”⁵⁷ Accordingly, it is my assumption that the form decisive (Afgjørende),
which Kierkegaard employs locally, has to be read with the emphasis on the past
participle, that is, as what is not yet done or concluded, inasmuch as the deci-
sion at any moment is anew. The decision, which the deciding one has to
make in consideration of the question concerning himself and the beginning
of his life, is a decision made by a seeker who is, as it were, seeking blindly, be-
cause the seeker does not know whether he “is getting closer to it or further
away.”⁵⁸ In other words, how does one know that what the decision decides is
exactly what the decision should decide in order for the deciding one to live
his life properly?
The decision which the singular one must make in order to begin his life as
this singular one also consists of making the decision that comprehends the task
required to determine the difficulty or the aporia connected with the question of
finding one’s way. Thus, the aporia is a kind of direction. Before the question of
the singular can be posed and determined as a question, the singular in some
sense has to know where to go, by which way, and in which direction. According
to Climacus, the way of the singular cannot be reduced to an act of reflection al-
lowing the singular to take both the way that the singular takes and the way that
the singular does not take. Hence, Climacus’ preliminary orientational descrip-
tion of existence is that the singular, inasmuch as he is existing, is prevented
from going “both ways at once.”⁵⁹ Climacus therefore suggests a kind of method,
that is, a way of approaching what becomes a question for the singular: which
way is the proper way for the singular? Which way must the singular take in
order to become this singular existent as he cannot be “simultaneously finished
 SKS 7, 202 / CUP1, 221.

 SKS 5, 399 / TD, 18.
 SKS 7, 177 / CUP1, 193.

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with both ways,” that is, the singular cannot advance “methodically along both
ways simultaneously?”⁶⁰ Even though the question of the singular might have
paralyzed us (perhaps because the question, all things considered, does not ad-
dress us but addresses the singular being), it nevertheless invites us to question
our way of orienting ourselves. In which direction should we take this question?
Or rather, in which direction does the question take us—the questioners? In ap-
proaching the question of the singular we are easily disoriented; are we letting
ourselves be led and perhaps even led astray by a question, which can only
be posed as though we were able to direct it towards some determinate place?
In which direction must we orient ourselves regarding a question that is so
open and indefinite: Who is the singular?
IV A Decision Without Decision

A decision without knowledge makes it undecidable, because the decision in an
absolute sense is unknown. By virtue of this unknown, the condition of possibil-
ity for the decision interrupts the collapse inherent to the very distinction be-
tween the possible and the impossible. The unknown—understood as the impos-
sibility of distinction between the possible and the impossible—does not belong
to the modality of the possible, but is an experience in which the experience of
the possible is interrupted. Thus, the distinction between the possible and the
impossible prolongs faith in the opposition between faith and knowledge,
which is an opposition that belongs to the “genuine profundity of thinking in
depth” pertaining to “these times.”⁶¹ The absolute decision is not a decision
that decides in a relation between opposites. Rather, it is an experience of a
non-relation that exposes the very ab-soluteness of decision, thereby becoming
the occasion for an interruption.
In this respect, the importance of faith cannot be emphasized enough. Ac-
cording to Kierkegaard, faith cannot be a mere supplement to the content of
faith available to inspection because such content gives occasion for doubt,
that is, to the “double-mindedness [Tvesindethed]” which throws the singular
into impropriety.⁶² The conjunction in the title Faith and Knowledge is therefore
misleading, insofar as faith cannot be an analogy to knowledge—not even to a
 Ibid.
 SKS 9, 232 / WL, 231. See also SKS 9, 361 / WL, 367.
 Cf. SKS 8, 140 / UD, 25 – 26. See also SKS 5, 140 / EUD, 137– 138.

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weak, hypothetical, or personal knowledge.⁶³ Faith is not faith in something par-

ticular; rather, faith refers to a relation in reason with what bypasses reason in-
finitely. But what kind of relationship can a relation be to that in reason that is
beyond reason?
First of all, it is important to be aware that the infinite passing by reason is
neither a movement nor a change, since these modes are (more or less intense)
relations in time. The relationship between reason and that in reason which
passes infinitely by reason, is not a question about movement or change in
time but is a relation of time to “the transition of the sudden” by which reason
or “the understanding comes to the end of its rope [Forstanden kommer til
kort].”⁶⁴ In relation to the sudden, reason petrifies or stands still like a lifeless
thing, a stone for example, thereby becoming an obstacle to encounter and
stumble over. However, what interrupts the speculative progress of reason, and
thereby obliges it to lift its foot, is reason itself. In this sense, there is “no relation
or, rather, there is an absolute misrelation between what the understanding is
capable of doing and the task here enjoined.”⁶⁵
The process inaugurated by speculative reason is interrupted in a standstill
where reason is not able to stabilize itself absolutely but instead only relatively,
whereby the unstable, i.e., the interruption, remains unstable. Hence, the spec-
ulative phantasm of a sovereign reason, which constitutes its own principle, is
interrupted. Thereby, reason is thrown into what Climacus calls diaspora, a
term used to designate reason’s concession of “the unknown,”⁶⁶ i.e., the limit
against which reason unremittingly collides.
The limit of reason, that is, the limit with which reason collides as it seeks to
think what cannot be thought, implies an encounter with that which is absolute-
ly different from reason. However, we cannot think this encounter as an actual
encounter between one thing and another, as if the singular were actually capa-
ble of encountering the absolute without the absolute immediately becoming a
derived absolute. Induced by the absoluteness of the absolute, the encounter
with the limit, or the encounter which is the limit, cannot be an actual encounter
since reason is not able to think the absolutely different from itself. Reason does
not possess the capacity to identify what it would think as the absolute different.
 According to Jean-Luc Nancy, faith cannot be an adherence to a content of belief, inasmuch

as belief is understood as a weak form or analogy of knowledge. Faith is its own work, not
symmetrical to any knowledge. See Jean-Luc Nancy, La déclosion (Déconstruction du christia-
nisme I), Paris: Galilée 2005, pp. 77 ff.
 SKS 6, 250 / SLW, 269.
 SKS 6, 251 / SLW, 269.
 SKS 4, 250 / PF, 45.

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In this way, the encounter with the limit is a kind of encounter without encounter.
Climacus clarifies, “If the unknown (the god) is not solely the frontier [Grændse],
then the one idea about the different is confused with the many ideas about the
different. The unknown is then in διασπορά, and the understanding [Forstanden]
has an attractive selection from among what is available.”⁶⁷ Although we are
never capable of reasonably predicting, and thus of anticipating, the full exten-
sion of what happens, inasmuch as what happens has not yet obtained an exten-
sion, the encounter of reason with its own limit is a factual encounter insofar as
it forfeits the very encounter it encounters. Thus, the factual encounter amounts
to an encounter with a certain impossibility of possibility, understood as an en-
counter with what withdraws itself in the encounter.
V The Madness of the Moment

The phantasm of the homogeneity of reason is repeatedly shipwrecked. The land-
mark of reason is lost, and reason is torn asunder. Reason is riven by not being
its own ground, which has to do with that part of reason to which reason cannot
relate absolutely, that is, with the absolute misrelation of reason itself. This mis-
relation or difference (diaphora) that takes place in reason throws reason into
dispersion (diaspora): Reason is gathered around difference, and this is the
sole gathering of reason. Thus, reason petrifies in a relationship to itself that
is actually not a reasonable relationship at all, since a change could suddenly
occur that would blind the self-view (autopsy) of reason turning it into “insanity”
or “madness [Vanvidet].”⁶⁸ And, according to Kierkegaard, madness is when
“one moment decides it all.”⁶⁹ Concerning the moment of madness, what is at
stake is the fact that “just one moment more, then this would not have
happened.”⁷⁰ This supplementary remark indicates the extraordinary radicality
of the decision of moment, namely, that the decision could always have been
otherwise.
As far as I can see, it is crucial to Kierkegaard that the decision at any time
could have been otherwise, since we cannot say what it means to decide ahead
of decision. Decision alone may provide an answer. Insofar as the answer can be
given solely by decision there is no prescribed meaning in the verb to decide;
what the singular must do is not given in advance. Such prescriptions of mean-
 Ibid.
 SKS 6, 251 / SLW, 269.
 Ibid.
 Ibid.

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ing would remove the singular from the decision itself. Only the decision itself is
the proper significance of decision, in the sense that the decision precedes the
very distinction between the proper and improper content of decision. Thus,
one could say that Kierkegaard’s concept of decision in a decisive manner expels
the idea of decisionism since the decision does not break away from anything
improper in order to recover something proper. Kierkegaard’s radical concept
of decision is precisely a decision whose origin remains undecided and a deci-
sion that happens without happening in compliance with organized schemata.
In this way, the decision can never be guaranteed by a predisposition, let
alone by a presage, without suspending the decision itself. The decision, in
which anything can change in a moment, must surprise itself. Hence, any proper
decision is decided in the undecided. Even though the decision in a proper sense
is decided beyond the propriety of the proper whose opposite remains the im-
proper, a certain axiology seems to be preserved. But what kind of axiology is
at stake, when the decision in a proper sense cannot even be said to be proper,
understood in opposition or relation to an improper decision? What character
does this axiology disclose when the foundation of a proper decision appears
conspicuously absent?
With the idea of pure reasonable decision conditioning both the point of ori-
gin and the end of such decision, reason can be said to dominate its madness by
knowing the point of intersection of the possibility of decision with its realiza-
tion in advance. However, this relation between reason (including the decision
of reason) and the moment of madness is conditioned by a certain difference,
which separates reason from its pure possibility. This relation of separation or
dispersion between reason and madness is not located outside of reason; rather
it is the difference that marks an outside within reason itself. If I dare to assume,
it is important to adhere to this difference internal to reason as a side of reason’s
own division, which induces the doubt or double-mindedness about which
Kierkegaard repeatedly writes because it is first in and through this double-mind-
edness that reason becomes aware of its own consciousness. In a certain sense,
madness is thus a condition in order for reason to define itself as reason.
The problem of reason, which is also always a problem of knowledge, rests
upon the radical decision of which Kierkegaard writes that “the moment of de-
cision is foolishness.”⁷¹ This formulation is posed in relation to “the dialectics of
 SKS 4, 255 / PF, 52. The Danish word “Daarskab,” which in English is translated into “foo-
lishness” and in French into “folie,” is not unambiguously related to “madness” as the English
and French translation suggests. However, as Mjaaland has argued, it is not an impossible
translation, since the moment becomes “folly to the Greek.” See Marius Timmann Mjaaland,

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the moment,”⁷² when Climacus considers the significance of the paradox and the
offense which transports us beyond the time of distinctions, inasmuch as “the
moment is not to be seen or to be distinguished; it does not exist, has not
been, and will not come.”⁷³ At this point, I would like to mention the French phi-
losopher Jacques Derrida, not because it is interesting in itself to demonstrate a
relation between Derrida and Kierkegaard, but because a problem repeatedly
poses itself to both of their works, namely, the problematic relationship between
reason and madness.⁷⁴ In this regard, Derrida translates Climacus’ words as fol-
lows: “L’Instant de la Décision est une Folie…(KIERKEGAARD).”⁷⁵
However, madness is not simply opposed to reason in the form of a dichot-
omy. Rather, madness is that outside of reason, which is inside of reason, which
reason cannot grasp and gather itself round. In other words, the moment of fool-
ishness is that very moment when reason is no longer “able to be able [pouvoir
de pouvoir].”⁷⁶ This is the “objective uncertainty”⁷⁷ which suspends the certainty
that reason pretends to give. Hence, the only thing that remains, the only objec-
tive thing, is the uncertain. The radical decision thereby brings the limit of rea-
son to experience, that is to say a limit that reason itself cannot draw but that
reason can experience exactly as what it cannot draw. Reason thus appears to
be bound up with its own uncertainty and with a peculiar passivity inasmuch
as the objectivity against which reason is posited marks a limit, which reason
has not posited itself but which it is being exposed by. This passivity, which is
connected with the radical decision and which is required in order for the singu-
lar to live his life, is a passivity that radically puts the singular to the test, all the
Autopsia: Self, Death, and God after Kierkegaard and Derrida, Berlin and New York: Walter de
Gruyter 2008 (Kierkegaard Studies Monograph Series, vol. 17), p. 65.
 SKS 4, 254– 255 / PF, 51.
 SKS 4, 255 / PF, 52.
 In an interview with Maurizio Ferraris in January 1994, Derrida says that it is Kierkegaard
whom he has been most faithful to and who has interested him most. He mentions, in particular,
the “absolute existence,” “the meaning he gives to the word subjectivity,” and “the resistance of
existence to the concept of system,” as something to which Derrida attaches great importance
and feels very deeply. See Jacques Derrida and Maurizio Ferraris, “Il gusto del segreto,” Rome-
Bari: Gius. Laterza & Figli 1997, p. 37.
 Cf. Jacques Derrida, Force de loi, Paris: Galilée 1994, p. 58; Jacques Derrida, “Dialangues,” in
Points de suspension, ed. by Elisabeth Weber, Paris: Galilée 1992, p. 157; Jacques Derrida, Don-
ner–le temps I: La fausse monnaie, Paris: Galilée 1991, p. 21. For a discussion of Derrida and
Kierkegaard, see Mjaaland, Autopsia, p. 65. See also, Bennington, “A Moment of Madness:
Derrida’s Kierkegaard,” pp. 103 – 127.
 Emmanuel Lévinas, “Le temps et l’autre,” in Le choix, le monde, l’existence, ed. by Jean Wahl
et al. Paris: Arthaud 1947 (Cahiers du Collège philosophiques), p. 170.
 SKS 7, 186 / CUP1, 203.

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while it is the singular itself that has to make the decision. In decision it is the
reason of the singular itself that is put to the test.
When Climacus mentions madness, he is not referring to someone who is
sick or whose mental state is unstable. The word madness, which I apply in
the sense of the Danish word “vanvid,” is derived from the German noun “Wahn-
sinn,” whose first root refers to the Old High German word “wana” designating a
state without. ⁷⁸ According to Climacus, the remarkable thing about madness does
not concern the mental state of the mad one; rather, it outlines the double situa-
tion in which he who has to make a decision finds himself situated. As Kant
writes in his Anthropology, this double situation emerges, because the madness
or distraughtness (Verrücktheit) of the deciding one, on the one hand, refers to a
loss of common sense, and, on the other hand, elucidates a substitution of pri-
vate sense.⁷⁹ Madness hereby throws the deciding one into a situation in which
the decider must decide as no one else, thus remaining outside of the opinion of
the Others.
Obviously, this double situation only specifies one aspect of madness. The
term madness, again with the Danish word “vanvid” in mind, also comports
the component “sinnan,” which means to travel, to aim at, or to move in direction
of. As the Indo-Germanic roots “sent” and “set” furthermore indicate, “sinnan”
points to a way or a direction one has to take. He who goes off and takes his
leave is the one who finds himself in a situation of madness, for he is going
down a way which is another way than the others might have taken. However,
the way taken also remains an other way for the one who took it, inasmuch
as it remains different from the one he could also have taken. The way to be
taken may be a way whose direction we can ask for, but the singular is not
able to reason absolutely or to legitimize the way taken because the singular
could always also have taken another way. This double situation comprises
the strangeness that divides the mind of the singular into a double, which is dif-
ficult to know and experience “in this world, because his double-mindedness is
not obvious within the world and [he] has no informer and no confidant.”⁸⁰
Occasionally, reason is attributed with a certain immunity, enabling it to ex-
clude the madness inherent to the decision-making. However, reason is not able
to protect itself against what could happen in a moment, because in a moment
anything could happen and everything could change. The road of the singular
 See Martin Heidegger, Unterwegs zur Sprache, in Gesamtausgabe, ed. by Friedrich-Wilhelm

von Herrmann, Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann 1975 ff., vol. 12, p. 49.
 Cf. Immanuel Kant, Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, in Werke in zehn Bänden,
vol. 10, BA 151, p. 535.
 SKS 8, 171 / UD, 63.

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being, who always stands at crossroads, could take a new direction in the blink
of an eye without regard of the direction. The moment is precisely this blink of an
eye within which anything could happen and within which anything shows itself
in two visions simultaneously. The decisive moment is first “recognizable at the
boundary,” which means that the moment only becomes visible through the dou-
ble-mindedness “where time and eternity touch each other.”⁸¹ However, these
two visions remain separated in time, which is where the deciding existent
stands.
Unfortunately, I am not presently able to develop this aspect of the moment
of decision further. However, I do wish to remark that the touch of eternity and
time does not happen in a gathering, because eternity and time are precisely
what remains separated in a blink of an eye. What landmark, then, can eternity
constitute for the singular being? Kierkegaard has several interesting remarks
concerning the matter of eternal guidance, especially the remark that only
“one way and one resource [een Udvei] [is known], but it [i.e., Christianity]
does always know the way and the resource. It is with the help of the eternal.”⁸²
How can one find a secure ground in eternity, that is, a ground (if any) whose
grounding (if any) the singular being does not im-mediately understand? In
short, the crucial thing for Climacus to emphasize is that while the singular
being “in the meantime [Imedens]”⁸³ considers which way to take, the singular
being exists. In other words, the singular being is always already underway as
he considers which way he should take. The question concerning how the singu-
lar being should begin, however, turns out to be ambiguous: as soon as the sin-
gular being desires to begin “another beginning is discovered to be necessary.”⁸⁴
And, as Climacus continues, this other beginning is “the beginning of the enor-
mous detour [Omvei] that is dying to immediacy. And just as the beginning is
about to be made here, it is discovered that, since meanwhile time [in which
the singular is situated (bestedt)] has been passing, a mad beginning [en gal Be-
gyndelse] has been made.”⁸⁵ Hence, the other beginning does not signify that a
first beginning simply has been overcome. Rather, while the singular existent is
about to begin, something is already lost because the singular existent is always
already there in the meantime and “the beginning is not promptly made.”⁸⁶
However, what is already lost is not something to be overcome as one leaves
 SKS 8, 172 / UD, 63.

 SKS 9, 246 / WL, 246.
 SKS 7, 478 / CUP1, 526.
 Ibid.
 Ibid. Translation slightly modified.
 Ibid.

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the first beginning behind in favor of recovering another beginning. Rather, the
other beginning is always already engraved in the first beginning, thus displac-
ing or allocating the principality of the first beginning by means of the “unremit-
ting ‘in the meantime.’”⁸⁷
According to Kierkegaard, the gaze evoked by the blink of the eye demar-
cates a difference between two kinds of gazes. On the one hand, we find the
“sensate eye”⁸⁸ with which we do not see what we see. On the other hand, we
see with the eye of faith. In the gaze of the blink of an eye, we are not able to
separate the sensible eye from the eye of faith because the eye of faith sees
that which cannot be seen, and is therefore in a certain sense blind. The dou-
ble-mindedness of the singular being consists in uniting what timeliness sepa-
rates in a paradoxical way. It is important to underline that the radicality of
double-mindedness is not to be confused with “the multifarious double-
mindedness”⁸⁹ which compares the nature of double-mindedness. The double-
mindedness reveals the doubleness of reason inasmuch as madness is both
inside and outside of reason. In a fantastic manner, reason seeks to define the
indeterminable character of madness by imposing an original separation be-
tween madness and sanity. Such an original separation would allow reason to
define madness as an exteriority to be clearly contrasted with sanity, thereby en-
abling reason to control, define, and protect itself from madness. However, if rea-
son defines itself by excluding madness, does reason not include madness in its
own self-definition? That might very well be the case, but this does not mean
that Kierkegaard—or any of his pseudonyms—endorses an idea of creative mad-
ness, even though such an assumption might seem plausible on the grounds of
the description of madness mentioned above. Rather, Kierkegaard’s description
of madness aims at emphasizing the double and paradoxical refraction of deci-
sion.
VI Concluding Remarks:
the Turning Point of Decision
According to Kierkegaard, a decision not only takes place; it also takes place in
accordance with the time of decision. In a radical manner, the decision indicates
the interruption of what one expects oneself to be able to prepare for. However,
 Ibid.
 SKS 8, 172 / UD, 64.
 Ibid. See also SKS 8, 185 / UD, 70 – 71.

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the expectation of being capable of arranging or preparing for such moments of

decision must see themselves displaced or unearthed inasmuch as any horizon
of expectation is exceeded in the radical decision. Therefore, Climacus calls the
radical decision “the absolute decision.”⁹⁰ The fact that Climacus associates the
decision with the absolute intensifies the quality of decision by which the leap is
emphasized: in order for the singular to begin his life a leap is required, which
means that our question concerning what it means to be a singular being cannot
be answered by counting singularities. On the contrary, the category of the leap
opens up to the uncountable and the incommensurable aspect of the singular,
which, because the decision is absolute, is also incommensurable to itself.
No matter how long an introduction we might make in direction of a deci-
sion, we will not get any further in direction of the radical decision. Were it
so, the decision would not be ab-solute. The absolute decision thus decides
the absolute as such. Otherwise, the absoluteness of the absolute decision finish-
es off the decision itself, inasmuch as the decision in an absolute manner re-
moves itself from any relationship to what the decision actually decides.⁹¹ In
this sense, the absolute decision even removes, and therewith estranges, itself
from itself. This step, by which we will not reasonably come closer to the deci-
sion, is a step that cannot be taken, but is a step beyond reason itself where
faith poses the absolute; that is, a step (not) beyond,⁹² both taken and not
taken in a moment. The decision, which is necessary for the singular in order
to be this singular existent, is not controlled by knowledge. However, this deficit
is the paradoxical condition of any decision, inasmuch as a decision cannot be
deduced from any knowledge which would make the decision into a mere effect,
a conclusion, or an explication. In the hour of despair, the singular can only
close his eyes and say farewell or adieu to reason. This farewell means that
the singular, as he realizes his impotence, in all his weakness gives in to the un-
known, i.e., the unknown that Climacus renders as “the god,”⁹³ which he some-
 SKS 7, 350 / CUP1, 384.

 Cf. Jean-Luc Nancy, L’expérience de la liberté, Paris: Galilée 1988, pp. 205 – 207.
 In using the phrase “step (not) beyond,” I have in mind the title of Maurice Blanchot’s book
Le pas au-delà. The French phrase le pas au-delà comports an ambiguity insofar as pas can be
read as both a noun, i.e. the step, and as an adverb, i.e. not. The step beyond is a movement
never completed, that is, the step beyond the limit of reason is never really a step beyond, but
always calls for another limit: “there must be a crossing in order for there to be a limit, but only
the limit, inasmuch as uncrossable [infranchissable], calls to cross, affirms the desire (the false
step) that has always already, through an unforeseeable [imprévisible] movement, crossed the
line” (Maurice Blanchot, Le pas au-delà, Paris: Gallimard 1973, p. 38. My translation).
 SKS 4, 245 / PF, 39.

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times even brackets, and the unknown which Jean Wahl translates with “à
Dieu.”⁹⁴
The unknown—and I shall keep this name—is not merely a negative concept
of knowledge or a limit to knowledge itself by which some dichotomy between
what is known and what is not known is reinstalled. Neither does the unknown
operate as a doctrine of ignorance, presenting itself as constitutive. Perhaps the
unknown does not even present knowledge in a negated form as non-knowledge,
insofar as new knowledge or certainty would then be provided in the negative.
However, if we insist on the name God this is merely a sign that designates the
exposed fact that nothing stands in the place of the name God, for it is a name
that dwells nowhere.⁹⁵
To give in to or to welcome the unknown is, in a certain sense, also to take
one’s leave with the unknown insofar as the unknown is never given. One cannot
incorporate the relation to the unknown as any other relationship. There remains
an infinite distance between what I know and my non-knowledge; although this
non-knowledge is never actually mine, it appears within a layer of meaning bor-
dering on my knowledge and on the world that I know. One can never know the
unknown. Or the unknown is known only by its very retreat.
How does one, then, take the unknown into consideration? How does one
give in to that which one, in an absolute manner, has no idea about what or
who it is? What kind of relationship can we maintain to the unknown? If the un-
known must remain unknown in the knowledge that we have of it, do we then
not risk obligating ourselves to conclude from that about which we have knowl-
edge, that is, to conclude from that which is intimate or familiar to us?⁹⁶ To give
in to the unknown is, in a certain sense, to abandon and thus to trust oneself to
this unknown. However, in confiding to the unknown you are not only abandon-
ing yourself, but the unknown also takes leave insofar as we may no longer try to
understand what this unknown is. But how does the unknown remain unknown
when we are no longer trying to make the unknown known? What is at stake is
not trying to get rid of the unknown either by making the unknown known or by
obliterating it. It is not about getting out of the abyss of the unknown, rather it is
 See Jean Wahl, “Introduction,” in Kierkegaard, Crainte et tremblement, trans. by P.-H. Tis-
seau, Paris: Montaigne 1935, p. XIV. For a discussion, see Hent de Vries, Religion and Violence:
Philosophical Perspective from Kant to Derrida, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press
2002, pp. 181 ff.
 See Jean-Luc Nancy, L’Adoration (Déconstruction du christianisme II), Paris: Galilée 2010,
pp. 93 – 94.
 Cf. Maurice Blanchot, L’Entretien infini, Paris: Gallimard 1969, pp. 70 ff.

Authenticated
about being faithful to “what tolerates only infidelity,”⁹⁷ not to think the un-
known as the unknown, but rather to think the unknown as the other of the
known. In some sense, one can therefore speak of a duplicity of the unknown
or of a double infidelity of the unknown, because when one entrusts oneself
to the unknown, and thereby abandons oneself, one also abandons the un-
known: in turning away from one another, one can no longer be faithful to
the unknown, except by this reciprocal infidelity, which Anti-Climacus calls
“the absolute unknown.”⁹⁸
The manifestation of the unknown, since it is absolute, detaches itself from
every relation to the known. The unknown manifests itself as something that is
absent or, more precisely, manifests itself only through the movement of its very
retreat. However, the retreated unknown is also a retracing of the unknown: the
withdrawal of the unknown in its manifestation in a certain sense also enables
the approach to the unknown in its detachment. Moreover, the unknown is de-
tached from itself by virtue of its absoluteness, thus locating the unknown no-
where, not even beyond, insofar as the unknown is withdrawn into itself. The re-
treat of the absolute unknown is the point of abandonment: It is “the most bitter
moment to be abandoned [forladt] by the last one,”⁹⁹ or by the unknown. Fur-
thermore, there is something which we could not have foreknown in our trusting
ourselves to the unknown, namely “to have to be abandoned by”¹⁰⁰ the un-
known itself. What comes about is the impossibility itself, insofar as “in relation
to the unknown [Ukjendelighed]…direct communication is an impossibility, be-
cause the direct communication does indeed directly state what one essentially
is—but the unknown means not to be in the character of what one essentially
is.”¹⁰¹ The faithful infidelity of a singular being is a response, that is, the only
 See Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Le sujet de la philosophie (Typographies 1), Paris: Aubier-

Flammarion 1979, p. 28.
 SKS 12, 132 / PC, 127. Translation slightly modified. The idea of a reciprocal infidelity seems to
be contained in what Johannes de Silentio calls the “absolute relation to the absolute” (SKS 4,
150 / FT, 56; SKS 4, 155 / FT, 62; SKS 4, 171 / FT, 81; SKS 4, 183 / FT, 93; SKS 4, 188 / FT, 98; SKS 4,
199 / FT, 111; SKS 4, 201 / FT, 113; SKS 4, 207 / FT, 120). Significant about this idea is that the
“position [Standpunkt]” of the singular existent is not mediated by a relation to the absolute.
Standing in an absolute relation to the absolute means that not only does the absolute withdraw
from the singular existent in order to become absolute, the singular existent also turns away
from the absolute in order to be faithful to the absolute. The relation to the absolute thereby
signifies the double infidelity explicated in the above.
 SKS 12, 193 / PC, 195. Translation slightly modified.
 SKS 12, 194 / PC, 195. Translation slightly modified.
 SKS 12, 136 – 137 / PC, 132. Translation slightly modified.

Authenticated
way in which he or she can maintain a communication with the retreated

unknown.¹⁰²
Once you entrust yourself to the unknown, whose mystical connotations are
unmistakable, you do not elevate yourself to a higher truth immersed in the un-
known. The “most impenetrable unknown”¹⁰³ remains neither true nor false; it
exposes the singularity of the singular. The singular is abandoned, entrusted,
and left alone at the edge bordering at the limit of that which “was long in com-
ing and withdrew.”¹⁰⁴ Coming out of the future, this unnameable which is called
the unforeseeable or ineffable, incessantly risks becoming a master-word, a mas-
ter-name, or the promise of something yet to come. ¹⁰⁵
 The enigmatic thought of a faithful infidelity stems from Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, “La
forme toute oublieuse de l’infidélité,” Revue des sciences sociales de la France de l’Est, vol. 22,
1995, pp. 10 – 13.
 SKS 12, 136 / PC, 131. Translation slightly modified.
 SKS 12, 194 / PC, 195.
 See Climacus’ consideration of the difficulty in articulating the “unutterable [uudsigelige]”
(SKS 7, 282 / CUP1, 221). This unutterable or unnameable attests, according to Lévinas, to an
awareness of a spirituality or piety without promises, that is, a piety never certain of itself since
it is always a piety whose future is unknown. See Emmanuel Lévinas, “La Bible et les Grecs,” in
A l’heure des nations, Paris: Minuit 1988, p. 157. The question is therefore, as Nietzsche poses it,
to what extent we are still too pious. See Friedrich Nietzsche, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, in
Kritische Studienausgabe, vol. 3, p. 574.

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The Aporia of Decision:

Cela d’une façon générale. Il doit y avoir d’autres biais.

I Climacus’ Aporetic Project

 Samuel Beckett, L’innommable, Paris: Minuit 1953, p. 8.

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 SKS 7, 478 / CUP2, 526. Emphasis added.

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 Cf. Ibid., 79e-82a.

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word of recollection, i.e., a password that cannot have “decisive significance.”¹¹

II An Opening of the Question of Decision

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but which nevertheless is to be found in a definite location. If the seeker finds

 SKS 5, 398 / TD, 17. Translation modified.

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 René Descartes, Meditationes de prima philosophia, Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin

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 SKS 7, 177 / CUP1, 193.

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sibility of deciding between something or other; rather, it is a question of the im-

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Kierkegaard communicates the consequence of this desire very clearly, namely

III The Indecidability of Decision

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As the German word Ent-Scheidung clarifies, the de-cision interrupts—like a

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In opposition to the self-conception of reason as being a self-grounded

 SKS 7, 186 / CUP1, 203.

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fers to a preceding decision situating all later decisions in a radical indecidabil-

 SKS 7, 202 / CUP1, 221.

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IV A Decision Without Decision

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weak, hypothetical, or personal knowledge.⁶³ Faith is not faith in something par-

 According to Jean-Luc Nancy, faith cannot be an adherence to a content of belief, inasmuch

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V The Madness of the Moment

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 See Martin Heidegger, Unterwegs zur Sprache, in Gesamtausgabe, ed. by Friedrich-Wilhelm

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 SKS 8, 172 / UD, 63.

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the expectation of being capable of arranging or preparing for such moments of

 SKS 7, 350 / CUP1, 384.

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 See Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Le sujet de la philosophie (Typographies 1), Paris: Aubier-

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way in which he or she can maintain a communication with the retreated

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