In Hindsight (Penultimate Version) Forthcoming in Journal of Ethics, 2023. N. Forsberg 1 In Hindsight An Essay Concerning My Limited Moral Understanding Niklas Forsberg Centre for Ethics as Study in Human Value, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, University of Pardubice 1 Late Arrivals Søren Kierkegaard famously claimed that life must be understood backward, but lived forward. This is the passage that is the origin of that view: It is quite true what philosophy says, that life must be understood backward. But then one forgets the other principle, that it must be lived forward. Which principle, the more one thinks it through, ends exactly with temporal life never being able to be properly understood, precisely because I can at no instant find complete rest to adopt the position: backward. (Kierkegaard 2008: 179 (JJ 167)) It is of course unproblematic to say that Kierkegaard here presents the view that life must be understood backwards but lived forwards. But that itself is a rather convoluted thought that invite further reflection. To begin with, there are of course a number of questions that arise in relation to Kierkegaard’s use of the term “philosophy” here; such as “whose philosophy?”; or “what kind of philosophy?”; or “is there a generalized notion of ‘philosophy’ in play here, so we are supposed to think that he meant ‘all variations of philosophy, of all times’?” I will leave the exegetical aspects of these questions to another kind of scholar. My focus in this paper is more problem oriented: what does a philosophy that does not take the backward-looking aspects of understanding and morality into account miss? And, why might there be something wrong with a philosophy that does not recognize, and reflect upon, the inherent supposed opposition between theorization and life (philosophy, or understanding, and life)? These difficulties – that go beyond, or move alongside, the exegetical question about