A: The Socratic starting point
Kierkegaard begins chapter 1 of his Philosophical Fragments with the Socratic. In order to be able to build a bliss on something, one must know what it is, and here Climacus begins by addressing Menon's question: "To what extent can the truth be learned?" Together, Socrates and Menon come to the conclusion that a man cannot seek what he knows when he already knows, nor can he seek what he does not know because he does not know what to look for. Socrates' solution to this paradox is that all knowledge is merely genetic change. Since the soul is immortal and has experienced everything an infinite number of times, man has the truth in him, and it is then the task to rediscover this knowledge through dialectical interaction between two people.
In this way, there is no crucial problem for us in acquiring the truth, for it is found in ourselves. We thus have the ability or condition to find the truth in ourselves and are thus not dependent on other bodies that must teach us the truth or the virtue, eg a teacher. So there is no fundamental problem in the acquisition of the truth, "which I had from the beginning without knowing it."
It has, according to Climacus, a consequence at the moment in time, which was the starting point for the study. "Socratically speaking, every Starting Point of Time eo ipso is a Random, a Disappearing, an Occasion;" The moment therefore has no meaning, because as soon as I discover that I have always known it, it becomes hidden in eternity. From the point of view of eternity, the moment is not crucial. So nothing new has happened. I just remembered what has always been in me. The Socratic is constantly moving in the 'immanent' world. No attempt is made to give an explanation of life by something coming from outside, eg God. Man is considered to be the most important thing in the acquisition of knowledge. Therein lies a fundamentally optimistic view of cognition. There is no truth that can not be understood according to thought project A.
The relationship between student and teacher also has a meaning, as the teacher provides an opportunity and acts as a midwife. The teacher does not 'give' the truth, but helps to remove the human obstacles that may exist to regenerate. The teacher thus becomes an occasion.
The entire book Philosophical Frgaments starts on the front page with the question of whether a historical starting point can be given to an eternal consciousness. Based on his presentation of A, Climacus' conclusion is that Socratically thought, then the answer is no. The starting point of time is not important, but rather just random, vanishing, yes just an occasion. For the immortal soul already knows the truth. Since the teacher is not important either, the time at which the teacher helped the learner to cognition is equally unimportant. The learner is himself divine and has only for a short period forgotten the truth. Everything points to the conclusion that time is not important. Thus, people can not, socially speaking, build eternal bliss on a historical knowledge (cf. the second part of the question on the front page of Philosophical Fragments).
B: The Christian starting point
Now Climacus begins to illuminate an alternative to the Socratic by examining whether the moment in time can have decisive significance. In contrast to the Socratic "... the seeker must not until the moment have had the truth, not even in the form of ignorance," for the moment to have decisive significance. But that is an outrage. Man is in a state 'outside' the truth and is not even able to recognize the truth. There is thus a boundary between the known and the unknown, which man can not cross.
So far in the analysis, Climacus begins to put designations on the various concepts he operates with. The terminology makes it clear that project B is the Christian, but hypothetically could be something else. The Teacher, who is called the God, becomes the reason why man becomes aware that he is in the untruth: "What the Teacher can then cause him to remember is that he is the Untruth.", And that he is thus excluded from the truth. The teacher, or God, has in the creation of every human being given it the condition, but man has lost it. The condition is the ability to understand the truth. God has to bestow the learning condition before man is even able to understand the truth. In fact, it is the case that man "... himself has wasted and wastes the Condition" to understand the truth, which Climacus calls sin. Sin is to be understood here more as unwillingness and defiance of God in one's existence, than as concrete actions. That man himself is guilty of being in sin is an insult and indignation, which is a stumbling block for man. It is not nice to become aware of one's own guilt ; the consciousness of sin exposes the freedom of man.
Climacus continues to introduce recognizable dogmatic concepts. God thus saves man from unfreedom by giving man the condition and redeems the one who has trapped himself by wasting the condition and keeping himself in the untruth and reconciling by removing the anger that man had deserved. The moment is called the Fullness of Time (with an implicit reference to the Gospels), and it is made clear that the moment in time is about the revelation of Jesus Christ. The moment is therefore understood both as his coming to earth, but also as the individual's leap or discovery of Christ, ie the meeting between that in time and eternity. The change of man, from being in the untruth to getting the condition and thus the truth, is a rebirth of man after repentance and repentance to a new life in the truth. All this, however, is not due to man himself, as it was in the Socratic, but is due solely to the divine teacher. In this starting point, man is dependent on something external, ie God himself, because man lacks the ability to recognize the truth. Climacus says after this far-reaching logicline of thought: "But does this Developed think?" The task is not completed with this. It has raised several major issues that require clarification.
