Section I: “Existence and Reality”

The problem with abstract thought, Kierkegaard contends, is that it tends to forget the individual existing human being. The abstract thinker “moves in the pure being of abstract thought” (268), but in their own life they are more concerned with material concerns (like their university salary) and matters of “differential talent” (like who is smarter than someone else) than with human existence as such. The abstract thinker is close to being a “stunted, crippled creature” (269). Although they may proclaim noble ideals in their philosophy, their own life does not reflect those ideals.

Kierkegaard brings out the irony of such a situation in a passage of invective:

It is professed that thought is higher than feeling and imagination,

and this is professed by a thinker who lacks pathos and passion. Thought is higher than irony and humor—this is professed by a thinker who is wholly lacking in a sense for the comical. How comical! (269).

One way in which Hegelianism has abandoned human existence lies in the fact that it denies the principle of contradiction, or “either-or.” For Kierkegaard the phrase “either-or” symbolizes the fact of human choice or decision.