How We Rationalize By Søren Kierkegaard

In The Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard describes a “moment” familiar to all of us. It is the “little tiny transition from having understood to doing.” Here’s what he says about it:

…if a person does not do what is right the very second he knows it is the right thing to do—then, for a start, the knowledge comes off the boil. Next comes the question of what the will thinks of the knowledge. The will is dialectical and has underneath it the whole of man’s lower nature. If it doesn’t like the knowledge, it doesn’t immediately follow that the will goes and does the opposite of what was grasped in knowing — such strong contrasts are presumably rare; but then the will lets some time pass; there is an interim called “We’ll look into it tomorrow.”

During all this knowing becomes more and more obscured, and the lower nature more and more victorious…. And then when the knowing has become duly obscured, the will and the knowing can better understand one another. Eventually they are in entire agreement, since knowing has now deserted to the side of the will and allows it to be known that what the will wants is quite right.