A Life Lived Forward, Understood Backwards Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855)
Below is a long-form blog post structured explicitly around the 5W1H framework, with detailed subtitles and an academic–reflective tone. I’ve written it so it can function both as a public-facing blog and as a piece that implicitly supports arguments about exceptional circumstances, diminished guilt, rehabilitation, and public interest, without turning it into a legal brief.
A Life Lived Forward, Understood Backwards
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855)
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
— Søren Kierkegaard
Introduction: Meaning Found Too Late to Prevent the Past
There is a particular cruelty in human existence that Søren Kierkegaard identified nearly two centuries ago: understanding often arrives after action, not before it. Insight, wisdom, and self-knowledge are frequently retrospective. We live first, and only later—sometimes much later—do we grasp what we were doing, why we did it, and who we truly were at the time.
This tension between action and understanding becomes especially stark in the context of criminal justice, where lives are judged at a fixed point in time, yet human beings continue to evolve long after sentencing. The case of Stephen Antonio Farley, and his later philosophical and psychological awakening while studying in prison, offers a compelling real-world illustration of Kierkegaard’s insight—and raises urgent questions about guilt, responsibility, rehabilitation, and the public interest in revisiting past judgments.
WHO
: The Individual Behind the Case
Stephen Antonio Farley — More Than a Moment Frozen in Time
Stephen Antonio Farley is not merely a name attached to a conviction. He is a developing moral agent whose understanding of himself, his actions, and their causes emerged gradually—most profoundly during years of sustained study in philosophy, psychology, and languages while incarcerated.
At the time of his plea, his capacity for full self-understanding was diminished. His admission of guilt was not informed by the depth of insight later acquired, but by the limited psychological, emotional, and cognitive framework available to him at that moment. This distinction—between legal guilt and moral comprehension—is precisely where Kierkegaard’s philosophy becomes relevant.
WHAT
: A Diminished Plea of Guilt Reconsidered
When Guilt Is Technically Valid but Philosophically Incomplete
A diminished plea of guilt does not necessarily mean innocence. Rather, it suggests that the plea was entered without a full understanding of:
- The psychological determinants of behaviour
- The role of trauma, identity formation, and cognitive distortion
- The philosophical nature of agency, choice, and responsibility
Farley’s later realization—arriving through rigorous academic study—was not an attempt to evade accountability, but to contextualize it truthfully. His appeal out of time is underpinned by the claim that essential understanding was unavailable to him when it mattered most.
This aligns with Kierkegaard’s existential position: authentic responsibility requires self-knowledge, and self-knowledge is often delayed.
WHEN
: Understanding That Emerged After the Fact
Kierkegaard (1813–1855) and the Long Shadow of Existential Insight
Kierkegaard wrote in the 19th century, but his ideas have proven enduring precisely because they describe a timeless human pattern. Theories of delayed insight appear repeatedly across disciplines:
- Existential philosophy (Kierkegaard, Sartre)
- Depth psychology (Freud, Jung)
- Cognitive development theory (Piaget, Kohlberg)
- Narrative psychology (McAdams)
In Farley’s case, the crucial “when” is not the date of the offence or plea, but the period of incarceration during which genuine understanding became possible. Years after conviction, through disciplined study and reflection, he arrived at insights that simply could not have existed earlier.
WHERE
: Prison as an Unintended Site of Transformation
From Punitive Space to Philosophical Laboratory
Prison is designed to restrain, not to enlighten. Yet paradoxically, it often becomes the first environment in which sustained reflection is possible. Removed from the immediacy of survival, distraction, and social performance, individuals may finally confront:
- The narratives they told themselves
- The unconscious motivations behind past behaviour
- The structural and psychological forces shaping their choices
For Farley, prison became the place where philosophy and psychology intersected with lived experience. Studying language further deepened this process, as linguistic awareness reshaped how meaning, intention, and responsibility were understood.
WHY
: Theoretical Foundations for Re-Evaluation
Theorists Who Support the Possibility of Late Understanding
Several influential thinkers support the idea that moral and cognitive insight can emerge long after action:
- Søren Kierkegaard: Authentic selfhood emerges through reflection over time.
- Jean-Paul Sartre: Responsibility presupposes awareness of freedom, which is not always immediate.
- Carl Jung: Individuation is a lifelong process; unconscious material may dominate early action.
- Lawrence Kohlberg: Moral reasoning develops in stages; earlier stages limit ethical comprehension.
- Narrative theorists: Identity is reconstructed retrospectively, not fixed at a single moment.
Together, these perspectives undermine the assumption that a person at the time of a plea is the final authority on their own moral understanding.
HOW
: Exceptional Circumstances and the Public Interest
Appealing Out of Time as a Moral, Not Merely Legal, Question
The effort to seek permission from the courts to appeal out of time rests on two pillars:
- Exceptional Circumstances
- The later acquisition of profound psychological and philosophical insight
- Evidence of sustained intellectual rehabilitation
- A demonstrable shift in self-understanding unavailable at the time of plea
- Public Interest
- Encouraging genuine rehabilitation rather than performative remorse
- Aligning justice with contemporary understanding of human development
- Demonstrating that the legal system can respond to truth, not just procedure
Allowing such appeals does not weaken justice; it strengthens it by acknowledging that human beings are not static entities frozen at their worst moment.
Conclusion: Justice That Understands Backwards, Too
Kierkegaard reminds us that understanding is retrospective, but life—and law—move forward. The challenge for modern justice systems is whether they can integrate this existential truth without collapsing into relativism.
Stephen Antonio Farley’s case does not argue for the erasure of responsibility. It argues for responsibility grounded in genuine understanding, not truncated self-knowledge. When insight arrives late but sincerely, the ethical response is not dismissal, but careful reconsideration.
If life can only be understood backwards, perhaps justice, too, must occasionally look back—not to undo the past, but to finally understand it.
If you’d like, I can also:
- Rewrite this in a more legal-academic tone
- Adapt it into a court-facing public interest submission
- Shorten it for publication on Medium or Substack
- Add citations and footnotes to specific philosophers and psychologists