When I was young, I found this passage in a book:
Modern philosophy has tried anything and everything in the effort to help the individual to transcend himself objectively, which is a wholly impossible feat; existence exercises its restraining influence, and if philosophers nowadays had not become mere scribblers in the service of a fantastic thinking and its preoccupation, they would long ago have perceived that suicide was the only tolerable practical interpretation of its striving. But the scribbling modern philosophy holds passion in contempt; and yet passion is the culmination of existence for an existing individual--and we are all of us existing individuals. In passion the existing subject is rendered infinite in the eternity of the imaginative representation, and yet he is at the same time most definitely himself.
It was from the Concluding Unscientific Postscript by Kierkegaard. I do not know why, but I copied this passage meticulously on a piece of paper and kept it with me. I carried it with me, in my purse, wherever I went. Sometimes I would take it out and read it again. I grew older, I got married, had children. Then the time came and the children no longer needed me. I decided to answer the question, the only question worth answering. To be or not to be. That is the question.
Well, no. The answer was not to be. Not unless…
And then, in my quest for a reason to be, I discovered passion.
A potential slave has no other necessary quality but this: she is capable of passion. This is not an easy matter. All eternal decisiveness is rooted in subjectivity. This means that there is no objective way to measure security in a decision of this type. No objective way to measure sensibility. The potential slave is not a reasonable, cautious person. And yet, she decides. The objective way deems itself to have security which the subjective way does not have (and, of course, existence and existing cannot be thought in combination with objective security); it thinks to escape a danger which threatens the subjective way, and this danger is at its maximum: madness.
The Concluding Unscientific Postscript will always provide a good argument, in favour of the leap of faith. The leap of faith is absolutely essential if two people decide to engage in madness.
But isn’t this idea to be dismissed as romantic? Yes, it will be dismissed by most people. Don Quixote is the prototype for a subjective madness, in which the passion of inwardness embraces a particular finite fixed idea. There is no other human project for Don Quixote. Or, if there are other projects, they are secondary to the main one. They spring from the main project. The main project is this: is it worth living? Is there one single idea that makes all other ideas worth it? That is why priorities are important. That is why there can be only one concern and the others will have to follow. I live like this. Or rather, I need to live like this.
One who does not understand these matters will dismiss Don Quixote as a lunatic, in the same way as he will dismiss a potential slave as having a fixation. In the type of madness which manifests itself as an aberrant inwardness, the tragic and the comic is that the something which is of such infinite concern to the unfortunate individual is a particular fixation which does not really concern anybody. Of course, loneliness is part of the decision, part of the fixation. Who will understand? Nobody. One shrinks from looking into the eyes of a madman… lest one be compelled to plumb there the depths of his delirium.
I am a slave. What does this mean? What does my capacity for passion translate to? How fast is too fast and how slow is too slow? Are these measures destined for a slave’s soul or are they thoroughly inappropriate and irrelevant? Picture a dog, devoted to its Master. The Master lifts his hand and picks up an imaginary stick in the air. He pretends to throw it away. The dog follows the movement of the Master’s hand. Every single time the dog goes for the imaginary stick. Every single time the dog follows that which does not exist. Every single time the dog returns with nothing. It never complains, never wonders, never questions. If the Master pretends to throw the stick a million times, the dog will go and fetch the imaginary stick a million times.
That is a relationship based on faith. That is loyalty.
Let us take as an example the knowledge of God. Objectively, reflection is directed to the problem of whether this object is the true God; subjectively, reflection is directed to the question whether the individual is related to a something in such a manner that his relationship is in truth a God-relationship.
So how long before the slave finds the objectivity of that which she already knows subjectively? The existing individual who chooses the subjective way apprehends instantly the entire dialectical difficulty involved in having to use some time, perhaps a long time, in finding God objectively; and [she] feels this dialectical difficulty in all its painfulness, because every moment is wasted in which [she] does not have God.
How long is too long?
It is at this point, so difficult dialectically, that the way swings off for everyone who knows what it means to think, and to think existentially; which is something very different from sitting at a desk and writing about what one has never done, something very different from writing de omnibus dubitandum and at the same time being as credulous existentially as the most sensuous of [people]. Here is where the way swings off, and the change is marked by the fact that while objective knowledge rambles comfortably on by way of the long road of approximation without being impelled by the urge of passion, subjective knowledge counts every delay a deadly peril, and the decision so infinitely important and so instantly pressing that it is as if the opportunity had already passed.
The leap of faith can be made only in the face of uncertainty. If one is certain about things, one cannot exercise this unique quality of faith. A slave needs the opportunity to exercise this unique quality. No one should deprive her of that moment of uncertainty, where she discovers her faith. In that moment, her passion becomes infinite.
A young girl may enjoy all the sweetness of love on the basis of what is merely a weak hope that she is beloved. Hope never dies. I will keep going for the ghost of that stick, a million times if I have to. Because I know it is there.
And that is why I said, from the very first moment, what I said. Because,
If I wish to preserve myself in faith I must constantly be intent upon holding fast the objective uncertainty, so as to remain out upon the deep, over seventy thousand fathoms of water, still preserving my faith.