Working in a climate of Danish Hegelian philosophy which claims everything could theoretically become knowable, Kierkegaard cherished the age-old notion that philosophy begins with wonder, not doubt. In his Journals in 1847, Kierkegaard writes:
Quote:
"It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand, and what those things are. Human understanding has vulgarly occupied itself with nothing but understanding, but if it would only take the trouble to understand itself at the same time it would simply have to posit the paradox. The paradox is not a concession but a category, an ontological definition which express the relation between an existing cognitive spirit and eternal truth"
For Kierkegaard, there are two types of questions, questions that have definite answers and which can be understood, and questions that are inherently unanswerable. Questions of the former type include questions like: what is the product of 4x82, when was Rio de Janerio founded, what is the distance from Medicine Hat, Alberta to Rochester, New York. Questions of the latter type include, is there a first cause, what is the Good, what lies beyond the universe.
Questions of the former are important, but once those questions are answered, that's it; the question is rendered inert for the asker. Whereas questions of the latter continually inspire philosophy as wonder, and expresses human awe and creativity (an existing cognitive spirit) with the grand mystery of existence (eternal truth). Even though we may never find a definite answer for any of these questions, Kierkegaard hopes that these questions will never be deemed meaningless and abandoned by philosophy.
As long as there is someone willing to embrace the paradox, philosophy lives.