“The genuine subjective thinker [Kierkegaard means the thinker concerned with reality] is always as negative as he is positive, and vice versa . . . . He is conscious of the negativity of the infinite in existence [conceiving, as Socrates did, infinity in the form of his ignorance], and he constantly keeps the wound of the negative open . . . . The others let the wound heal over and become positive . . . . He is therefore never a teacher but a learner; and since he is always just as negative as he is positive, he is always striving.
“To be sure, in this manner, such a subjective thinker misses something; he does not enjoy life in the customary positive and comfortable manner. For most men, when they have arrived at a certain point in their search for truth, life takes on a change. They marry, and they acquire a certain position, in consequence of which they feel that they must in all honor have something finished, that they must have results. For regard for the opinions of men bids them have a result; what reverence for divinity might dictate is less frequently regarded. And so they come to think of themselves as really finished, or feel obliged to think so out of deference to custom and convention . . . . So they occupy themselves now and then with a little striving, but this is only the parsimonious marginal note for a text long since complete.
Concluding Unscientific Postscript, D. F. Swenson and W. Lowrie, trans., Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941, pp. 78 - 79.
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