ROVELLI’S KIERKEGAARD
Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.
Welcome to the desert of the real!
If you desire the comfort of neat conclusions, you are lost in this space. Here, we indulge in the unsettling, the excessive, the paradoxes that define our existence.
So, if you have the means and value writing that both enriches and disturbs, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.
Quantum physicists often accuse us philosophers of appropriating, in a superficial way, some claims of quantum mechanics (like superposition, collapse, etc.) and using them in a vague metaphoric way which really contributes nothing to a philosopher’s theory, but just covers it with a cloud of scientific reference. However, I find that quantum physicists are often doing the same, mentioning philosophy to cover their scientific hypotheses with a cloud of philosophical reference. Here is a surprising case: like hundreds of thousands all around the world, I eagerly await Carlo Rovelli’s new book On the Equality of All Things: Lessons on Physics and Philosophy (New York: Scribner, 2026). Since it will appear only in September 2026, I cannot restrain myself from reacting to Nathan Gardels’s review of the book in Noema, where he focuses on the chapter dedicated to the analogy between quantum mechanics and the theology of Soeren Kierkegaard – here is a long passage from this review:
“The dominant cultural paradigm of Kierkegaard’s time, from the early to mid-19th century, was the Hegelian system, ‘where everything finds its place in a rational universal conception of reality.’ Yet, Kierkegaard felt intuitively that ‘something essential was missing’ from this grand framework of the spirit of history unfolding from above and beyond. Rovelli recounts the doubts the Danish philosopher cast on the abstract notion of an objective order as an encompassing whole, the laws of which humans could only endeavor to decipher. As Kierkegaard saw it, ‘the system of Hegel, or all the objective truths of Christianity, are irrelevant to our individual choice, which is the central issue, the only true issue,’ writes Rovelli. Standing at the crossroads between salvation and eternal damnation in the Christian eschatology, Kierkegaard argued that the choice of believing in God or not was of ‘infinite importance for each one of us.’ In deploying his system Hegel describes reality from the outside, from a safe distance, so »what distinguishes it from the abstract description of something that is not real? What links it to reality? The answer is that it is our individual perspective that shows it to us as real, since we, as parts of it, are ourselves real. This way of thinking puts the individual perspective at the center, even if every individual perspective is only partial. This is the inescapable existential situation in which we find ourselves. Kierkegaard’s conclusion is extreme — ‘truth is subjectivity’ — thus overturning the widespread idea that arriving at truth requires our subjectivity to be set aside.”
How does this relate to quantum physics? “The truth of a physical process is subjective. It lies in the observer. Kierkegaard, like Bohr, intuits that the heart of reality lies in subjectivity, and in the plurality of subjectivities … the ‘subjectivity’ I am speaking of has nothing to do with the eternal salvation of Christianity, nor even with us humans in general. It is instead the central idea that truth is intrinsically perspectival. ‘Relative’ is thus a better word than ‘subjective’ here, since ‘subjective’ is usually reserved for human or animal perspectives. But the thread from the tormented Danish philosopher is nevertheless there. /.../ Objectivity without a subject is an abstract construct, of little relevance — it is the illusion of a science now belonging to the past.” As “co-creators of the fabric of reality,” the world ahead of us is not predetermined but shaped by the choices we make. Yet those choices must be made in the absence of full knowledge of the world, in the uncertainty of an undetermined future that can’t be known. Their true meaning will only emerge after events occur. We don’t know in advance what reality will emerge from the plurality of relational influences that converge to constitute the next moment. Kierkegaard pithily summed up this existential condition of humanity, which also conveys the insights of quantum science: “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”1
