Karl Daub

[4] Daub was one of the leaders of a school which sought to reconcile theology and philosophy, and to bring about a speculative reconstruction of orthodox dogma.

In the course of his intellectual development, he came successively under the influence of Immanuel Kant, Friedrich von Schelling and G. W. F. Hegel, and on account of the different phases through which he passed he was called the Talleyrand of German thought.

His purpose was, as Otto Pfleiderer says,[2] "to connect the metaphysical ideas, which had been arrived at by means of philosophical dialectic, directly with the persons and events of the Gospel narratives, thus raising these above the region of ordinary experience into that of the supernatural, and regarding the most absurd assertions as philosophically justified.

Daub had become so hopelessly addicted to this perverse principle that he deduced not only Jesus as the embodiment of the philosophical idea of the union of God and man, but also Judas Iscariot as the embodiment of the idea of a rival god, or Satan."

In From the Papers of One Still Living, Kierkegaard wrote: There must come a moment, I say, when as Daub observes, life is understood backward through the idea… Some years later, Kierkegaard expanded on this idea in his journal, in a passage that is often quoted or paraphrased: Philosophy is perfectly right in saying that life must be understood backwards.