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Kierkegaard’s “Truth Which Is True for Me”

In an 1835 journal entry written at Gilleleje, the young Søren Kierkegaard asks what could give his life direction. He considers several kinds of knowledge, then notices that mastering a subject would not settle what he should do with himself. His wish for a truth “for me” arises from this practical problem.1

Knowledge does not supply its own purpose

Kierkegaard distinguishes understanding something from having a reason to live by it. He could become learned in Christianity, political theory, or philosophy without deciding what any of them demanded of him. Facts can clarify the possibilities and their consequences, but they cannot decide which end should organize his life.

This is not an argument against knowledge. Kierkegaard says that knowledge must precede action. His concern is that reflection can continue after it has stopped clarifying a choice. Gathering another view may become a safer substitute for commitment.

Appropriation

Kierkegaard later calls the connection between understanding and existence appropriation. A person appropriates an idea by taking responsibility for it and embodying it in conduct. Knowing that generosity is good does not make someone generous. The principle becomes significant through acts that cost time, comfort, or money.

“For me” therefore does not mean “true only from my point of view.” It concerns a person's relation to truth, namely whether an idea remains information or becomes a source of action.

Choice forms the self

Choosing also helps form the chooser. A sustained commitment gives a life continuity. Repeatedly avoiding decision produces a self divided among possibilities. The truth Kierkegaard seeks is therefore close to a vocation, specifically an organizing commitment that ranks other pursuits and makes sacrifice intelligible.

Such choice is not unconstrained self-creation and remains answerable to the world, to other people, and, in Kierkegaard's religious framework, to God. The individual becomes responsible for responding to reality.

Existing without completion

Kierkegaard's later pseudonym Johannes Climacus develops this problem in Concluding Unscientific Postscript. People must choose while their knowledge remains partial and their lives remain unfinished.23 Commitment lets someone live through uncertainty. This becomes the setting for Kierkegaard's account of subjectivity as truth.

References

  1. Søren Kierkegaard. “Journal AA:12, Gilleleje, 1 August 1835.” In Kierkegaard's Journals and Notebooks, vol. 1, ed. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn et al. Princeton University Press, 2007, pp. 19–21. https://api.pageplace.de/preview/DT0400.9781400874323_A25103949/preview-9781400874323_A25103949.pdf. ↩

  2. Søren Kierkegaard. Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton University Press, 1992, p. 203; excerpt reproduced in Thomas Parent, “Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript.” https://tparent.net/Kierkegaard_excerpts.pdf. ↩

  3. John Lippitt. “Søren Kierkegaard.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Fall 2025 edition, section 3.2. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2025/entries/kierkegaard/. ↩