QuestionsDoes life have a meaning?A truth for me
Does life have a meaning?A meaning to create

A truth for me

Søren Kierkegaard 1813 · 1855Truth is subjectivity: one must take the leap of faith.
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What it claims

I must find a truth which is truth for me, the idea for which I want to live and die.

Why

An objective truth stays cold and indifferent to my life; to know what to do, I need a truth that is true for me.

In short

"A truth for me" is an argument by Søren Kierkegaard (Journal, Gilleleje, 1 August 1835) on the question "Does life have a meaning?" (answer: a meaning to create). Its claim: I must find a truth which is truth for me, the idea for which I want to live and die. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P3). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 0 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Journal, Gilleleje, 1 August 1835
Valid with an implicit premise

Here it is Kierkegaard himself speaking, without a pseudonym: a page of his private journal, written at 22 by the sea at Gilleleje, and published only after his death. A theology student, he hesitates between science, theology, law, the theatre. He realises that what he lacks is not more knowledge, but a reason to live.

P1What I lack is to know what I must do, not what I must know (except insofar as knowing must precede acting).
P2An objective truth, even an exact one, stays "cold and naked", indifferent to my life: explaining Christianity or building a system is no use to me if it has no meaning for me.
P3 · implicit premiseTo know what to do with one's life, one needs either an objective truth that says it, or a truth that is truth for me: an idea I make my own and live for.
Therefore I must find a truth which is truth for me, the idea for which I want to live and die.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P3, the computer finds a case where I need to know what to do, objective truth does not guide me, and yet I find no truth for me.
Valid with P3, which the young Kierkegaard does not state: there would be only two possibilities, an objective truth that guides, or a lived truth. Without P3, one can grant that one must know what to do and that cold knowledge is not enough, without concluding that a "truth for me" is needed: one could also, for instance, live without any guiding idea.
Analogy. Knowing every map in the world does not tell you where you want to go. The maps are accurate, but it is up to you to choose the destination, and to commit to it.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Kant (the moral law) 1785 · attacks premise 2

An objective truth can say what to do: the moral law holds for everyone and commands each person, without having to be made a personal matter.

no reply
We have not yet found a direct reply by Kierkegaard in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) Kierkegaard is not aiming at Kant on this page. He only writes, a few lines further on, that he still accepts an "imperative of knowledge" which can act on people, but which must be "taken up living" into him: he is speaking of knowledge in general, not of the moral law. For Kant, it is each person's reason that recognises the law: it is already "mine" without being a chosen idea. The disagreement is about what, beyond duty, is needed to give a life meaning.
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus 1942 · attacks the conclusion

What is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying. And in Kierkegaard, the idea to live for ends up being God, reached by a "leap" that Camus calls "philosophical suicide". Honesty means living without appeal, without hoping for a meaning that comes from elsewhere.

no reply
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
No reply possible: objection raised in 1942, after the author's death (1855).
O
Objection: an idea to die for may be the worst attacks the conclusion

An idea "for which I want to live and die" can be any idea, including a fanatical or cruel one. The passion with which one gives oneself to it says nothing about its worth.

no reply
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
We have not yet found a direct reply by Kierkegaard in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) On the same page he sees the danger: "wrong paths" lie very close, and he regards them "with respect". He gives no criterion to avoid them; it is the Postscript (Johannes Climacus) that will later distinguish the passion of the infinite from the madman's fixed idea.