Quotation
Last reviewed:
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
Søren Kierkegaard · Existentialism (forerunner) · Modern · 1843
What does it mean?
Life, he notes in the journal, can be understood only backwards, and it has to be lived forwards. The two directions never coincide in time, so understanding arrives too late to be a full instruction for the living. A rival reading says this is just the banality that hindsight is easier, and that a careful person can understand enough in the middle to choose. He thinks the delay is structural, not a skill you might acquire. The entry is an observation, not a system.
Did Søren Kierkegaard really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. A standard English of a journal entry. The Danish continues with the thought that the two directions never coincide in time, so the understanding is always too late to give the living a full instruction.
Where it comes from
Journals, 1843 (JJ:167)
Approximate date: 1843.
How to use it
Someone in Glasgow accepts a job they cannot fully understand, then spends the next year narrating it as inevitable. Make the decision that has to be lived forwards. Schedule the backwards look for later. Waiting for the story to be complete before you will move is the confusion the entry names.
A mindset reading
Hindsight is real and it is not a manual. Treat the later story of what it all meant as a story, not as the thing you were supposed to have known on the morning you chose.
Understand the philosophy
The journal entry fits his larger theme that existence is something you do under incompleteness, especially where the choice is ethical or religious. It is not a theory of history, and it is not Hegel's owl, though both of them distrust premature comprehension.
- knowledge
- meaning
- change
FAQ
What does it mean?
Life, he notes in the journal, can be understood only backwards, and it has to be lived forwards. The two directions never coincide in time, so understanding arrives too late to be a full instruction for the living. A rival reading says this is just the banality that hindsight is easier, and that a careful person can understand enough in the middle to choose. He thinks the delay is structural, not a skill you might acquire. The entry is an observation, not a system.
Did Søren Kierkegaard really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. A standard English of a journal entry. The Danish continues with the thought that the two directions never coincide in time, so the understanding is always too late to give the living a full instruction.
Which work is it in?
Journals, 1843 (JJ:167) Approximate date: 1843.