"But Kierkegaard's belief in the superiority of subjective truth (to objective truth) caused him to doubt Hume's view concerning the primacy of fact. Kierkegaard rightly sees that even so called facts can be determined by our attitude. To a considerable extent, our values determine our "facts." Faced with the same reality, the Christian and the pleasure-seeker may see different "facts." (As for example, if both were introduced to a bordello or a religious retreat.) In this way, each individual is to a certain extent the creator of his own world. And he creates his world because of the values he holds....
Kierkegaard also anticipates twentieth-century phenomenology, which sees all forms of consciousness as "intentional"-in other words, consciousness is always purposive. We see the world the way we do because of what we intend to do to it. Likewise Wittgenstein's remark: "The world of the happy man is different from the world of the unhappy one," whose apparent banality takes on a more profound tenor when one realizes that he is speaking here of the exercise of the will. As Kierkegaard realized, the individual sees the world that he wills to see, and this depends upon the values he has previously chosen, the ones he lives by, the ones that make him what he is. Kierkegaard thus argues that the values that make the individual what he is, also makes the world what it is."
Paul Strathern
Kierkegaard in 90 Minutes
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