From PHILOSOPHICAL FRAGMENTS (1844)

On the king and the maiden.

“Such a life—sheer love and sheer sorrow. To want to express the unity of love and then not to be understood, to be obliged to fear for everyone’s perdition and yet in this way truly to be able to save only one single person—sheer sorrow, while his days and hours are filled with the sorrow of the learner who entrusts himself to him. Thus does the god stand upon the earth, like unto the lowliest through his omnipotent love.”

Philosophical Fragments is well-known for its presentation of rival epistemologies—the Socratic/Platonic understanding of acquiring truth through recollection, and the Christian insistence that truth is received through divine grace. Attributed to Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Johannes Climacus, this reading is schematic in terms of the history of philosophy. And yet, Climacus’ aim is not to develop a comprehensive survey of epistemology. Among other things, he is attempting to poetically elicit what it feels like to come to know something—to arrive at truth. The one who learns from Socrates, as it were, is grateful for the teacher’s help even as she simultaneously recognizes that he is but the pedagogical occasion for knowledge. It is different with the one who learns from “the god.” Climacus sketches out this difference in his so-called “parable of the king and the maiden,” in which he compares God’s intentions to a powerful king who, in order to express equality with his beloved, disguises his true nature and becomes a servant. Hence, in the passage quoted above, Climacus observes that, if a divine incarnation were to take place, its loving purpose would also entail “sheer sorrow.” But for the one who receives the god, there is not only thanksgiving but also joyful solace. For otherwise the truth would not have appeared.