Tedious Sophistry

Since it is contrary to the spirit of our organization to produce closely coherent works or greater wholes, since it is not our purpose to labor upon a Tower of Babel, which God in His righteousness can descend upon and destroy, since we are conscious of the fact that this confusion of tongues happened justly, recognizing it as a characteristic of all human striving in its truth, that it is fragmentary, and that it is precisely this which separates it from nature’s infinite coherence; that the wealth of an individual consists precisely in the energy he shows in producing the fragmentary, and that that which brings enjoyment to the producing individual also brings enjoyment to the receiving individual, not the troublesome and meticulous execution, nor the tedious apprehension of this execution, but the production and enjoyment of the gleaming transitoriness, which for the producer contains something more than the thorough execution, since it is the appearance of the Idea, and for the recipient, it contains something more, since its fulguration awakens his own productivity–since, I say, all this is contrary to the purpose of our organization, moreover, since the period just read must be regarded as a serious attempt in the interjectory style, wherein the ideas break out without breaking through, which in our organization has an official status: then I shall, after having called attention to the fact that my procedure still cannot be called rebellious, since the bonds which hold the sentence together are so loose that the intermediary clauses stand out aphoristically and arbitrarily enough, merely call to mind that my style has made an attempt apparently to be what it is not–revolutionary.

—Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or