Søren Kierkegaard

The Book of Job is often read as the Bible's response to theodicy's 'problem of evil.' As a resolution to the logical difficulties of this problem, however, it is singularly unsatisfying. Job's ethical protest against God is never addressed at the level of the ethical. But suggested in Job's final encounter with God is the possibility of a spiritual resolution beyond the ethical. In this paper I examine the Book of Job as a response to the spiritual problem of despair; (...) despair engendered by the ethical problem of evil. My reading is informed by Kierkegaard's analysis of despair in The Sickness unto Death, and Stephen Mitchell's extraordinary translation of the Book of Job, as well as his insightful commentary. (shrink)

Søren Kierkegaard’s influence on the thought of Mikhail Bakhtin has received relatively little attention from Bakhtin scholars (and hardly any attention from Bakhtin scholars in the English-speaking world). Yet, as I argue in this paper, Kierkegaard was among the most important formative influences on Bakhtin's work. This influence is most evident in Bakhtin's early ethical philosophy, but remains highly relevant in later periods. Reading Bakhtin as a follower and developer of Kierkegaard's fundamental philosophical insights provides us with a key to (...) the unity of Bakhtin's thought. (shrink)

Kierkegaard's Either-Or is a book about the choice between aesthetic, ethical, and religious approaches to life. I show that Either-Or also contains a proposal for philosophy of science, and in particular, about the ideal epistemic state for human beings. Whereas the Cartesian-Hegelian tradition conceived of the ideal state as one of detached deliberation -- i.e. "seeing the world as it is in itself" -- Kierkegaard envisions the ideal state as the achievement of equilibrium between the "spectator" and "actor" aspects of (...) the human being. Kierkegaard's proposal thus sets the stage for Niels Bohr's "epistemological lesson of quantum mechanics". (shrink)

Although doubt (Tvivl) and despair (Fortvivlelse) are widely recognized as two central and closely associated concepts in Kierkegaard’s authorship, their precise relationship remains opaque in the extant interpretive literature. To shed light on their relationship, this paper develops a novel interpretation of Kierkegaard’s understanding of the connection between despair and our agency over our beliefs, and its significance for Kierkegaard’s ethics of belief. First, I show that an important yet largely overlooked form of Kierkegaardian despair involves either failing to take (...) ethico-religious responsibility for one’s practical agency over one’s beliefs, or misusing one’s practical agency over one’s beliefs by refusing to recognize or comply with externally given ethico-religious norms governing belief. Second, I argue that Kierkegaard takes properly exercising one’s agency over one’s beliefs to matter because beliefs are partly constitutive of the theological virtues (faith, hope, and love) that Kierkegaard regards as the cure for despair. (shrink)

I argue that in Sheridan Hough's book Kierkegaard's Dancing Tax Collector, the distinctive and novelistic literary form is not a playful, whimsical, or otherwise contingent feature, but a structure that's needed to convey the account of Kierkegaardian faith as practical in nature.

This book reconstructs Heidegger’s philosophy of time by reading his work with and against a series of key interlocutors that he nominates as being central to his own critical history of time. In doing so, it explains what makes time of such significance for Heidegger and argues that Heidegger can contribute to contemporary debates in the philosophy of time. Time is a central concern for Heidegger, yet his thinking on the subject is fragmented, making it difficult to grasp its depth, (...) complexity, and promise. Heidegger traces out a history that focuses on the conceptualisations of time put forward by Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Kant, Hegel, Bergson, and Husserl—an “alternative history of time” that challenges how time has been defined and studied within both philosophy and the sciences. This book explores what happens when we take seriously Heidegger’s claim that these seven figures are essential to any understanding of time, setting out what this can tell us about existence, possibility, and philosophy as a historical discipline. Heidegger’s Alternative History of Time will appeal to scholars and advanced students working on Heidegger, phenomenology, the philosophy of time, and the history of philosophy. (shrink)

This essay describes and analyzes the four versions of the biblical story of Abraham proposed by Johannes de Silentio (a pseudonym used by Kierkegaard) in Fear and Tremblingto understand, from the movement of faith, how in none of these versions is the absurdity that claims the leap of the religious realized. Next, we explain Kierkegaard’s views on ethics and selfhood to then delve into the inextricable paradox that faith signifies and the radical movement that it demands for the existent.

According to a traditional interpretation of Kierkegaard, he endorses a strong form of direct doxastic voluntarism on which we can, by brute force of will, make a “leap of faith” to believe propositions that we ourselves take to be improbable and absurd. Yet most leading Kierkegaard scholars now wholly reject this reading, instead interpreting Kierkegaard as holding that the will can affect what we believe only indirectly. This paper argues that Kierkegaard does in fact endorse a restricted, sophisticated, and plausible (...) version of direct doxastic voluntarism. On Kierkegaard’s view, when we take ourselves to be in an epistemically permissive situation, we have the ability to form outright beliefs (but not credences) at will in virtue of our ability to voluntarily 1) open or close inquiry and 2) determine our attitude towards epistemic risk. (shrink)

Kierkegaard's pseudonym Johannes Climacus famously defines faith as a risky “venture” that requires “holding fast” to “objective uncertainty.” Yet puzzlingly, he emphasizes that faith requires resolute conviction and certainty. Moreover, Climacus claims that all beliefs about contingent propositions about the external world “exclude doubt” and “nullify uncertainty,” but also that uncertainty is “continually present” in these very same beliefs. This paper argues that these apparent contradictions can be resolved by interpreting Climacus as a belief‐credence dualist. That is, Climacus holds that (...) beliefs and credences (i.e., degrees of belief) are two irreducibly distinct types of mental states. Beliefs are resolutions that close inquiry, thereby excluding doubt and reflecting subjective certainty by disregarding the possibility of error. Credences, by contrast, reflect assessments of evidential probabilities, thereby encoding a recognition of “objective uncertainty” by acknowledging the possibility of error. In addition to solving a vexing interpretive puzzle and showing how Kierkegaard anticipates contemporary views about the nature of belief and credence, this paper demonstrates that Kierkegaard developed a sophisticated account of the nature of belief, doubt, and certainty that merits serious philosophical consideration. (shrink)

On the dominant contemporary accounts of how practical considerations affect what we ought to believe, practical considerations either encroach on epistemic rationality by affecting whether a belief is epistemically justified, or constitute distinctively practical reasons for belief which can only affect what we ought to believe by conflicting with epistemic rationality. This paper argues that Søren Kierkegaard offers a promising alternative view on which practical considerations can affect what we ought to believe without either encroaching on or (necessarily) conflicting with (...) epistemic rationality by determining which among the epistemically permitted outright doxastic attitudes one should all‐things‐considered adopt. (shrink)

De Cruz and Levy, in their commentaries on Religion as make‐believe, present distinct questions that can be addressed by clarifying one core idea. De Cruz asks whether one can rationally assess the mental state of religious credence that I theorize. Levy asks why we should not explain the data on religious “belief” merely by positing factual beliefs with religious contents, which happen to be rationally acquired through testimony. To both, I say that having religious credences is p‐irrational: a purposeful departure (...) from rational thought and behavior, where the purpose in question is maintaining a group identity. (shrink)

In this chapter, we argue that a distinct concept of “aesthetic hope” emerges from the way Kierkegaard’s Aesthete treats hope [Haab] and its relationship to recollection [Erindring] in “The Unhappiest One” and “Rotation of Crops.” We first show that aesthetic hope is distinct from the two other kinds of hope discussed by Kierkegaard: temporal hope and eternal hope. We then consider the suggestion that aesthetic hope is also an expression of despair – an inverse hope against hope, which seeks to (...) avoid disappointment by hoping for things that are in some sense certain. The aesthete’s recommendation that we hope in such a way illuminates Kierkegaard’s view of the “dialectic” of temporal hope and eternal hope. Finally, we explore the treatment of hope in Either/Or as essentially involving a controlled, attentional element that anticipates some contemporary trends in the philosophy of hope. (shrink)

In this chapter, I argue that the loss of loved ones requires a revised vision of our relationship to past persons. In particular, I argue that relating to deceased loved ones as points on an ordered, forward-moving timeline—on which they grow more distant from us by the moment—has a distorting and damaging effect on our own identity. If we detach ourselves completely from those who sustain important aspects of our identity, this will cause a jagged break in our narrative where (...) a new self must be constructed (whether by us or our circumstances) ex nihilo. On the other hand, if we allow ourselves to drift into the past with the dead—resigning ourselves to existence as an historical object—we will find that we begin to fade away ourselves. Either way, both the self and the beloved are ultimately lost, since both depend on the lost union. To reject both options is a tremendously difficult task that will require rethinking time and our relationship to the past. I argue that we can look to Kierkegaard’s work on maintaining contemporaneity with the historical past, particularly his warnings about how we must not respond to the loss of a beloved. In the last section of the paper, I offer some suggestions for how we might, in a Kierkegaardian spirit, strive to maintain real union with deceased loved ones, thereby rising above the destructive current of time. (shrink)

In light of Jacques Derrida’s writings on death and mourning, it may seem that the Christian teaching that the dead will be raised is a betrayal of others, a failure to take up one’s responsibility to testify to those who have died. In conversation with Emmanuel Falque’s work on finitude, Martin Heidegger’s reading of 1 Thessalonians, and Søren Kierkegaard’s reading of Abraham, I respond in two movements to this objection to faith that God will raise the dead. First, I propose (...) that even for the Christian, the death of the other remains a loss, since the Christian must surrender the other to God. It is, however, this very surrender of the other to God that seems to be an abdication of responsibility. Second, therefore, I argue that faith in the resurrection decenters the self and challenges our understanding of responsibility even more than does Derrida’s own analysis. Faith, I conclude, means giving up the desire to cling to one’s own responsibility. (shrink)

This article develops the philosophical work of Joanna Macy. It argues that ecological grief is a fitting response to our ecological predicament and that much of the ‘mental ill health’ that we are now seeing is, in fact, a perfectly sane response to our ecological reality. This paper claims that all ecological emotions are grounded in love/compassion. Acceptance of these emotions reveals that everything is fine in the world as it is, providing that we accept our ecological emotions as part (...) of what is ‘in the world’. This is non-dualistic acceptance or ‘fierce’ acceptance. This paper focuses primarily on the revolutionary qualities of ecological grief: a paradoxical revolution, coming as it does from a profound process of acceptance. (shrink)

In The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir diagnoses “woman” as the “lost sex,” torn between her individual autonomy and her “feminine destiny.” Becoming a “real woman” in patriarchal societies demands that women lose their authentic, autonomous selves to become the “inessential Other” for Man. To better understand this diagnosis and how women might refind themselves, I rehabilitate the influence of Søren Kierkegaard and his concept of repetition as what must be lost to be found again in Beauvoir’s account of freedom (...) and, specifically, the liberation of women. Beauvoir offers a dual account of repetition, that of mundane repetition and sacrificial repetition, bringing them to bear both on her diagnosis of women’s oppression and her theorization of our liberation. Sacrificial repetition becomes a temporality for freedom—one must be able to repeat or retake their autonomy continuously toward an open future. For this to happen concretely, Beauvoir insists that we must sacrifice the (racist, classist) patriarchal ideals of the “real woman” and “real man” as we retake our autonomy and reconfigure the meaning of sex difference anew. (shrink)

This study intends to show that the question whether faith can be justified without proofs can be resolved by importing ideas from Kierkegaard’s and Plantinga’s affirmative take on the matter. There is a deep similarity between the way they understand belief in God and belief in Christianity: for both the first is considered universal human knowledge and the second seen as a gift from God. Against the charge that such an understanding is irrational Plantinga offers an externalist epistemological model which (...) allows those beliefs to be warranted. The authors also share the modern idea that there is an objective truth, combining it with the postmodern stance that no method exists which would guarantee access to it. A specific contribution on Kierkegaard’s part to the understanding of the rationality of transitions toward a Christian stage of existence is to show in detail the way in which such transitions are mediated through inwardnes - a perspective akin to Michael Polanyi’s scientific epistemology. One can see in both authors not only a deep commonality of ideas, but also a remarkable way in which their understandings augment each other. Whereas Plantinga’s inquiry contributes to the rational plausibility of a “Justified Faith without Reasons” project, Kierkegaard’s venture balances such a logical-analytic effort with a deep existential inquiry. (shrink)

Kierkegaard, like Plato, though using different methods and conclusions, sought to ground knowledge in the ineffability of subjectivity. For Plato, knowledge comes subjectively (internally); for Kierkegaard, it comes by God's grace through faith. Socrates becomes the facilitator for the slave in the /Meno/, as does God for the man of faith. Again, Kierkegaard is also concerned with passion. "...the paradox is the passion of thought, and the thinker without the paradox is like the lover without passion; a mediocre fellow" (p. (...) 37). The paradox is necessitated by the metaphysical nature of the inquiry. Only knowledge through faith can approach the paradox since it is by definition beyond our knowledge. Passion must accompany the leap of faith, since knowledge acquisition for the man of faith is guided by God. (shrink)

There is a tension for those who want to simultaneously hold that Abraham’s disposition to sacrifice Isaac is epistemically justified and yet hold that a contemporary father would not be justified in believing that God is commanding him to sacrifice his son. This paper attempts to resolve that tension. While some commentators have correctly pointed out that one must take Abraham’s long relationship with God into account when considering Abraham’s readiness to sacrifice his son, they do not entertain the possibility (...) that his hearing this commandment is evidence against the hypothesis that Abraham is speaking to God. I grant this possibility. But I argue that when God commands Abraham to do the unthinkable, Abraham’s previously acquired evidence could still be sufficient to justify his belief that he is speaking with God. And in making this argument, I attempt to show what differentiates Abraham from the contemporary father who thinks that God is commanding him to sacrifice his son. (shrink)

Many of Søren Kierkegaard's most controversial and influential ideas are more relevant than ever to contemporary debates on ethics, philosophy of religion and selfhood. Kierkegaard develops an original argument according to which wholeheartedness requires both moral and religious commitment. In this book, Roe Fremstedal provides a compelling reconstruction of how Kierkegaard develops wholeheartedness in the context of his views on moral psychology, meta-ethics and the ethics of religious belief. He shows that Kierkegaard's influential account of despair, selfhood, ethics and religion (...) belongs to a larger intellectual context in which German philosophers such as Kant and Fichte play crucial roles. Moreover, Fremstedal makes a solid case for the controversial claim that religion supports ethics, instead of contradicting it. His book offers a novel and comprehensive reading of Kierkegaard, drawing on important sources that are little known. (shrink)

This paper compares the concepts of “spirit” and “dialectic” in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and Kierkegaard’s The Sickness unto Death respectively. For this purpose, I delve into the way in which both philosophers understand these two concepts. The aim of this comparison is to detect whether there is some kind of relationship between the two concepts that could bring Hegel and Kierkegaard closer to each other.

Literature, in particular philosophical literature, proves to be particularly challenging when read in isolation from the philosophy it comes from. Reading Sarte’s Nausea through Kierkegaard illuminates important themes of language, music, the ethical and aesthetic, and immediacy in both Nausea and Kierkegaard’s various pseudonymous works. The comparison here is extremely fruitful given the poetic and literary form of Kierkegaard’s work, especially against this particular work from Sartre. The themes in Nausea that are examined are interestingly not present in his other (...) works and are necessary in some regard to be brought forth in a novel rather than a philosophical treatise. (shrink)

ABSTRACT It is commonly argued that Kierkegaard’s famous observation that life can be understood backward, but must be lived forward excludes the possibility of intellectual preparation to life. This article suggests the view that, while it is not the case that Kierkegaard has an elaborate vision of thinking about the possibilities of life one faces, he engages the notion of imaginary construction [experimentere] to propose existential prototypes for mental exploration that prepare us for life lived forward. It is concluded that (...) the person capable of imaginary construction has to be able to be firmly in control of the possibilities she faces. In Kierkegaard’s view, such a control requires the grasp of the opposite temporal directions – to be both looking at one’s past and future. Kierkegaard’s employment of such a double temporal vision of existence is modelled on Janus Bifrons, the two-faced god who is effectively able to simultaneously look both backward into the past and forward into the future. (shrink)

This article demonstrates a novel conceptualization of sublimity: the sublime in the pedestrian. This pedestrian mode of sublimity is exemplified by the Biblical Abraham, the central figure of Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous Fear and Trembling. It is rooted in the analysis of one of the foundational stories of the three monotheistic religions: Abraham’s averted sacrifice of his son Isaac. The defining feature of this new, pedestrian mode of sublimity is that is remains hidden behind what I call a total incognito. It is (...) similar to the classical ‘elevated mode of sublimity’ as developed by Burke, Kant, and Schiller insofar as it denotes two contrasting feelings at once: repulsion and attraction. It is different insofar as Kierkegaard’s pedestrian mode of sublimity remains hidden from view and can only be shown indirectly. This article expounds the new, pedestrian mode of sublimity by investigating the relation between the incognito and the sublime in Fear and Trembling. It achieves that goal by engaging three perspectives: (1) the sublime failure that comes to the fore in the incognitos of an imaginary Abraham; (2) the ‘fear without being afraid’ that is invoked by God’s incognitos; (3) the total incognito of the pedestrian which conceals Abraham’s sublimity. (shrink)

This project retraces activations of Kierkegaard in the development of polit­ical theology. It suggests alternative modes of states of exception than those attributed to him by Schmitt, Taubes and Agamben. Several Kierkegaardian themes open themselves to 'something like pure potential' in Agamben, namely: living death, animality, criminality, auto-constitution, modification, liturgy, love and certain articulations of improbabilities. Attention is drawn to a modal ontology and auto-constitution at work in Kierkegaard's writings, as well as a complicated and indissociable operation between killing and (...) letting-live in legalist exceptionalism, comparable to similar functions found in Foucault regarding the biopowers and necropolitics of territorial and governmental apparatuses. It closes in consideration of Kierkegaard's critique of enumeration, large numbers, and statistical probability alongside contemporary tele-technoscientific social controls via the online datafication of people by surveillance or platform capitalisms. After Kierkegaard, such apparatuses are perhaps suspect as calculated to tranquilize humanity into more docile subhumans as it fools folk into becoming part of its numbers. (*Accompanying file includes only front matter, abstract, and endnotes*). (shrink)

En Kierkegaard podemos encontrar un señalamiento fuerte de la tendencia de la sociedad de masas de la época manifestada ante sus ojos. De este tipo de consideraciones se podría partir para llegar a la idea de que Kierkegaard es un pensador social por su fuerte crítica social. Aunque el cristianismo no tenga pretensiones políticas, según el mismo Kierkegaard, la radicalidad ética pretendida por nuestro autor necesariamente se genera incomodidad social. Debido al exceso de postulados abstractos y a las falsas tendencias (...) en las relaciones que han gestado en la sociedad, el cristianismo se presenta como un escándalo y quien lo practique corre el riesgo de ser burlado y aborrecido. Este texto se centra en la crítica de Kierkegaard a la sociedad y, por tanto, en la dificultad de llevar a cabo el mandato del cristiano en ésta. Y, finalmente, ¿es Kierkegaard un pensador social? Se llega la discusión sobre las consecuencias y cuestionamientos sobre la posibilidad de considerar a Kierkegaard como un pensador social fundamental. (shrink)

In this paper we compare Kierkegaard’s and Marx’s views on social reform. Then we argue that Kierkegaard’s own reasoning is consistent with the expression of neighbor-love through collective action, i.e. social reform. However, Kierkegaard’s approach to social reform would be vastly different than Marx’s. We end by reviewing several questions that Kierkegaardian social reformers would ask themselves. Our hope is that this exploration will provide helpful insights into how those who genuinely love their neighbors ought to seek the common good (...) through collective action. (shrink)

Este capítulo versa sobre a relação de Kierkegaard com um dos problemas filo- sóficos centrais da ontologia e epistemologia, i.e., o problema das categorias. O texto te- mos um tríplice objetivo: 1) explicitar que Kierkegaard se envolveu com o problema das categorias; 2) identificar o estado da questão dessa relação por meio de uma recensão da literatura; e 3) apontar os problemas ainda em aberto e o que está indeterminado dessa relação Kierkegaard-Problema das categorias a partir desses comentadores.

In the comprehension of many 19th century European philosophers, there seems ever present in much of the work, a shared notion of struggle. This notion seems mainly to arise within the confines of human consciousness. The notion of struggle is in fact pervasive in contemporary thought as well, and could simply be inherent to human nature. However, I will maintain specific focus on the notion of struggle as brought to light by a sampling of works by three relevant 19th century (...) philosophers, namely Fichte, Hegel, and Kierkegaard. I look into some of the foundational claims made by these thinkers to see what can be discovered about their reasoning and what sense can be made of this seemingly unavoidable aspect of the human condition. The goal is to see what relations can be made among their ideas and where conflict and contradiction may arise. Once these elucidations have been made, I argue for my own stance on the notion of struggle both within the confines of human consciousness and on the outset to explain my arguments in terms of human behavior. I argue that there is one thinker amongst the three covered that offers a methodology of practical application in a person’s life in terms of human nature as opposed to the formulations made by the remaining two who I consider only to offer general descriptions of human consciousness. (shrink)

TRABAJO DE FIN DE GRADO -/- Søren Kierkegaard (Copenhague, 1813-1855) figura como una de las grandes figuras del pensamiento filosófico de Europa en pleno siglo XIX. Su filosofía se articula como una tensión constante entre el pesimismo existencial, la fe protestante y la impotencia de la razón, motivo por el cual se ha debatido acerca de lo adecuado del calificativo de filósofo o teólogo. Los años 1844 y 1849, por otra parte, son uno de los más prolijos de su carrera (...) como escritor, publicando textos como "Migajas filosóficas", "El concepto de angustia" o "La enfermedad mortal". Se trata de las obras seleccionadas para el presente trabajo, cuyo primer objetivo no es sino la investigación del papel de la fe en la filosofía de Kierkegaard. Esto responde a varios motivos: el primero de ellos, por la inextricabilidad que comporta la religión con las concepciones de la existencia en su obra. Como hemos mencionado, el análisis vital que hace en sus escritos siempre tienen presente las aportaciones del cristianismo, sobre todo en su vertiente protestante. De esta manera, saber cuál es la significación esencial de fe en el autor danés permitirá una más profunda dilucidación de su vinculación con el resto de los condicionantes existenciales que plantea, como lo son la angustia o el terror. -/- El segundo motivo se marcaría por la cercanía temática que guarda con un aclamado personaje de nuestras letras: Miguel de Unamuno. En efecto, el bilbaíno escritor de "nivolas" ha sido y es conocido por una finísima —y, desde luego, también agónica— sensibilidad existencial. Los temas centrales de sus escritos principales son, mediata o inmediatamente, la expresión y canalización literaria de los análisis de Kierkegaard. Así, "San Manuel Bueno, mártir" rezuma una incertidumbre nauseabunda —en el sentido sartreano del término— que recuerda a "El concepto de angustia"; mientras que "Del sentimiento trágico de la vida" expone, a caballo entre la poesía y la filosofía —a las cuales, como veremos, considera idénticas—, las características esenciales de la fe y su naturaleza de «salto» aducidas en las "Migajas filosóficas". De hecho, es bien conocida la fascinación de don Miguel por el autor de Copenhague, llegando incluso a estudiar danés para acceder a los textos originales. -/- De esta manera, el breve ensayo que se sigue pretende investigar uno de los conceptos angulares de la filosofía de Søren Kierkegaard con el objetivo último de aproximarlo al contexto peninsular, donde los desasosiegos existenciales del norte europeo encuentran en la figura de Miguel de Unamuno un digno interlocutor. Para ello, se hará una lectura comparativa, si bien no tratando de detectar influencias intelectuales o biográficas reales, sí planteando el núcleo de investigación como perteneciente a una misma preocupación fundamental: lo que Unamuno bautizó como el sentimiento trágico de la vida. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to explore how we might understand the relation of Deleuze’s early works to ethics, and to develop the connections between this way of understanding Deleuze and the work of Søren Kierkegaard. I will claim that we can view both figures as arguing that the sense or meaning we take from the world, and the metaphysical structure we ascribe to it, is secondary to an ethical stance we take in the face of a world of (...) becoming. As such, the central preoccupation of both Kierkegaard and Deleuze is how we make sense of an existence which is necessarily temporal. As we shall see, recognizing the importance of temporality involves a move away from the traditional resolution of the problem of sense that operates by making temporality an accidental aspect of a world. In the first half of this paper, I want to explore this claim in relation to Deleuze’s reading of Plato, tying his claim that Plato is essentially developing an ethical rather than metaphysical doctrine with the claim that “the task of modern philosophy has been defined: to overturn [renversement] Platonism” (DR 59). My emphasis in this section is how Deleuze, rather than “overturning” Platonism by simply rejecting the priority it gives to Forms or essences over appearances, the renversement of Deleuze’s reading inverts the relation to show how the search for essence is in fact grounded in an ethical decision, or “selection,” in the world of appearances/simulacra itself. As such, both Plato and Deleuze can be seen as presenting different trajectories for making sense of a world of becoming, either by grounding it in a transcendent, atemporal realm, or by seeing it as an intensive field of processes. In the second half, I will argue that Kierkegaard’s philosophy rests on a claim, similar to the one we find in Deleuze’s work, that we need to develop a logic of sense in response to a world of becoming. I will conclude that Deleuze’s reading of Kierkegaard is limited by a focus on the theological aspects of his thought, and that Kierkegaard provides a sophisticated and complementary taxonomy of the ways in which we try to make sense of our existence in a world of becoming by developing diverse ethical postures. (shrink)

Kierkegaard’s ideal supports a radical form of “deep diversity,” to use Charles Taylor’s expression. It is radical because it embraces not only irreducible conceptions of the good but also incompatible ones. This is due to its paradoxical nature, which arises from its affirmation of both monism and pluralism, the One and the Many, together. It does so in at least three ways. First, in terms of the structure of the self, Kierkegaard describes his ideal as both unified (the “positive third”) (...) and plural (a “negative unity”). Second, he affirms a process which brings together unity, as implied by the linear notion of “stages”, with plurality, in the form of “spheres of existence” (aesthetic, ethical, and religious). And third, the culmination of the process implies that we should embrace both a unified dialectic (“Religiousness A”) alongside the plural remnants of the ethical/aesthetic, that is, both the infinity of the former and the finitudes of the latter. Unsurprisingly, while Kierkegaard describes those who are able to exemplify his ideal in practice as “always joyful,” he also considers the ideal to be “extremely hard, the hardest task of all.” This is why those such as Hubert L. Dreyfus are wrong to claim that it provides an experience of bliss; on the contrary, those who realize it “are always in danger.” As I shall show, one form this danger takes is that it threatens to dirty the hands of those who manage to uphold Kierkegaard’s ideal. Moreover, it does so in ways that, I claim, tend to be missed by Kierkegaard himself. Nevertheless, the danger is also essential to the creativity of his approach, and I conclude by pointing out how this creativity makes it capable of tackling one of the profoundest challenges in contemporary ethics: that arising from what just war theorists call a “supreme emergency.” . (shrink)

Søren Kierkegaard is well-known as an original philosophical thinker, but less known is his reliance upon and development of the Christian tradition of the Seven Deadly Sins, in particular the vice of acedia, or sloth. As acedia has enjoyed renewed interest in the past century or so, commentators have attempted to pin down one or another Kierkegaardian concept (e.g., despair, heavy-mindedness, boredom, etc.) as the embodiment of the vice, but these attempts have yet to achieve any consensus. In our estimation, (...) the complicated reality is that, in using slightly different but related concepts, Kierkegaard is providing a unique look at acedia as it manifests differently at different stages on life’s way. Thus, on this “perspectival account”, acedia will manifest differently according to whether an individual inhabits the aesthetic, ethical, or religious sphere. We propose two axes for this perspectival account. Such descriptions of how acedia manifests make up the first, phenomenal axis, while the second, evaluative axis, accounts for the various bits of advice and wisdom we read in the diagnoses of acedia from one Kierkegaardian pseudonym to another. Our aim is to show that Kierkegaard was not only familiar with the concept of acedia, but his contributions helped to develop and extend the tradition. (shrink)

“Postularse como un ser radicalmente autogenerado, ser el autor de la propia voluntad y conocimiento, es negar que uno está constituido en y por lo que es infinitamente más grande que el individuo humano. Kierkegaard llamará a esta fuente más grande que todo lo humano 'Dios' o 'el infinito'. Negar que uno está constituido en lo que es más grande que uno mismo es, para Kierkegaard, estar en una especie de desesperación”.

"Kierkegaard’s output is vast and earlier, was not available in English. Had they been available then certainly [Edith] Stein, [Simone] Weil, [Hannah] Arendt, and [Susan] Neiman would have constructed their theodicies around Kierkegaard more fully, abandoning the charlatanism of Martin Heidegger’s Nazi histrionics. These Princeton hardbacks, handsomely bound, with appealing fonts and meticulous notes will help disseminate Kierkegaard’s writings to a broader audience." This is how this review focussed on Kierkegaard's theodicy sees the volume under review. The reviewer thanks the (...) Ramakrishna Mission for getting the hardcopy of this book to this reviewer who is a recluse in a non-glamorous backwater within Kolkata; India. If the Ramakrishna Mission weren't generous enough; then this reviewer would not have been able to get his hardcover copy. The review thanks the Ramakrishna Mission for getting the hardcopy of this book to this reviewer who is a recluse in a non-glamorous backwater within Kolkata; India. Indian lives too matter! First world scholars do not read what people like I write. They in their white hot rage take it as a given that our writings don't matter. But the Ramakrishna Mission will outlast this reviewer and hundred others who will come by. In this sense; this review matters and those named in this review which, at the cost of reiterating, will be remembered two hundred years hence. Even IVY League Presses do not have the resources to archive everything, come the looming COVID 19 recession. & as Dr Anthony Fauci honestly says over and over, COVID 19 is going nowhere. And Ebola is out of the Congo. So, there we go...Indian writers on European thinkers do matter and will matter. All said and done, it was great fun reviewing these volumes. Kierkegaard gets it dot on mark that Christianity, or for that matter, any religion is all about the mystery of suffering. (shrink)

This is one of a series of reviews of Kierkegaard's Journals and Notebooks.

This review of one in the series of the monumental primary works of Kierkegaard shows him as the champion and, as it were, an inaugurator of the phenomenological turn in both philosophy and literature. The review touches upon serious issues regarding mass culture and Christianity. The review of the eighth volume in this series was published in January 2020, and these two reviews are the first by any Indian Hindu. While discussing Kierkegaard the reviewer touches upon John Caputo's theology derived (...) from Jürgen Moltmann's concept of a weak God. There are inadvertent typos in this review. (shrink)

Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, Bruce H Kirmmse, David D Possen, Joel D S Rasmussen, and Vanessa Rumble working with the Princeton University Press and the Søren Kierkegaard Research Center at the University of Copenhagen have produced this huge work with facsimiles etc. The review comments on Kierkegaard's shrewd observations which are applicable today in the New Media World of information skews in a COVID 19 world. Further; Kierkegaard's attack against mediocrity is commented on. This review finds Kierkegaard on St (...) Augustine of Hippo as immature. It is another thing that Kierkegaard's observations and this reviewer's extrapolations from them are not yet part of the New Media Studies's mostly platitude-filled webinars. How long will we go on about Marshall McLuhan? At least let us now learn from that most sharp of ironists: that the Press will be the Press and its mostly about optics. One wonders still how, Kierkegaard misread so much Augustine? Well, no man is an island and Kierkegaard tried to be an anonymous Christian. An impossibility. (shrink)

Caracterizando a existência como um processo de escolha e decisão que converge para a constituição do sujeito como tal, Kierkegaard atribui à existência a condição de um projeto em uma construção que encerra três possibilidades existenciais fundamentais, a saber, o estético, o ético e o religioso. Dessa forma, o artigo assinala que, constituindo-se uma dimensão em cujo estádio a procura do sentido ou a busca do absoluto circunscreve-se à imanência, o modo existencial estético caracteriza-se como a fruição da subjetividade consigo (...) própria através do instante do prazer sensual em um movimento que implica a sedução como esforço de conquista de si que, contudo, escapa ao seu poder em uma relação que converge para o desespero, haja vista que a renovação de forma indefinida da condição originária do amor esgota-se na generalização. E se o estágio ético encerra a integração na comunidade social através da institucionalização da repetição como um modo de vida baseado na objetividade e na racionalidade, a conformação do sujeito ao modus vivendi e ao modus essendi do geral implica a harmonização da sua subjetividade com a generalidade do bem e do mal por meio de um processo que torna-se incapaz de resolver a questão da sua desordem existencial. Assim sendo, o artigo mostra que, se a virtude moral que o ético impõe converge para a impossibilidade de superação do desespero que caracteriza a busca do absoluto na imanência, a atitude religiosa, abdicando da realidade em sua totalidade finita em função da relação absoluta com o Absoluto, demanda a suspensão teleológica do ético e tende a instaurar a autenticidade existencial através de um movimento que mantém correspondência com a fé como o “salto” que implica a consciência de si em sua singularidade e a espiritualidade individual. (shrink)

En Kierkegaard, la desesperación es analizada desde dos perspectivas. Por una parte, el individuo no sabe que posee un yo y, por otra parte, se sabe que posee un yo. Y esta última a su vez, puede ser en dos sentidos. El individuo desespera de la debilidad cuando no quiere ser sí mismo y desespera de la obstinación cuando quiere ser sí mismo. Este querer ser sí mismo lleva al hombre a sufrir y a enfrentarse a la idea de Dios, (...) a no querer ser fundamental por una fuerza externa, algo que no crea que provenga desde su interioridad. Este texto es un prólogo al libro de Judith Butler, La desesperación especulativa de Søren Kierkegaard, sin embargo, se presenta un enfoque en el cual el se menciona que el hombre que desespera de la obstinación de querer ser sí mismo. Por lo que se hace una exposición de lo que implica este momento de la desesperación, donde el hombre se llega a enfrentar al Poder que lo fundamenta. (shrink)

This essay provides a close reading of Kierkegaard’s later signed text, For Self-Examination. While many of Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous texts often are selected for their philosophically explicit engagements with Hegelian philosophy, I use Hegel’s dialectic of lordship and bondage to draw out how Kierkegaard circumvents it in this one. I first provide historical context, noting how Kierkegaard turned to earnest works after his public humiliation in the Copenhagen newspaper, undermining his ability to deploy irony effectively. Second, I briefly develop Hegel’s lordship (...) and bondage dialectic as a model for how selfhood is constituted through work and labor. Third, I dwell with a close reading of Kierkegaard’s book both in its composition and in its interpretation, bringing out how it donates grace rather than work (à la Hegel) to the reader’s attempt at self-realization. I conclude by noting one challenge to Kierkegaard’s ideal of addressing the “single individual” from the perspective of intersectional analysis. (shrink)

The course delivered by Heidegger during the Summer semester of 1923, and published later under the title of Ontology – The hermeneutics of facticity, is one of the most important loci in which we can have a glimpse of Kierkegaard’s influence on and importance to Heidegger, as well as of some of his interpretations about the thought of the Dane philosopher. One of them, notwithstanding puts forward a very interesting assessment of the relation between Kierkegaard and Hegel – through F. (...) A. Trendelenburg –, one of hottest topics in the Kierkegaardian scholarship, is not usually analyzed by that scholarship. Hence, this paper aims to show and analyze Heidegger’s theses on the relation between Kierkegaard-Hegel in that work in order to evaluate their correctness. As final remarks, this paper presents some metaphilosophical reflections on the very notions of relation and dependence between philosophers. (shrink)

Kant’s critical philosophy represents a rudimentary existentialism, or a proto-existentialism, in the following respects: He emphasizes human finitude, limits our knowledge, and argues that human consciousness is characterized by mineness (Jemeinigkeit). He introduces the influential concept of autonomy, something that lead to controversies about constructivism and anti-realism in meta-ethics and anticipated problems concerning decisionism in Existentialism. Kant makes human freedom the central philosophical issue, arguing (in the incorporation thesis) that freedom is inescapable for human agents. He even holds that awareness (...) of freedom leads to anxiety (as opposed to fear), and that anxiety precedes the fall into evil. In the doctrine of radical evil, he argues that human agents are always already suffering from self-deception because of this fall. In order to overcome self-deception and evil, Kant proscribes a radical self-choice in which the agent takes over himself and society by thinking independently and consistently. However, this is not only a moral issue for Kant but also something that concerns religious faith and hope, since Kant argues that we need religion to overcome not only moral evil but also despair. Although he criticizes traditional natural theology, Kant develops a practical (moral) interpretation of religion that anticipates religious Existentialism. In this context, he developed an influential critique of philosophical theodicies and a notion of the hiddenness of God that emphasizes the importance and inscrutability of evil. By doing this, and by introducing philosophy of religion and philosophical anthropology as new disciplines, Kant prepared the ground for Existentialism. (shrink)

Søren Kierkegaard, in his essay "The Present Age," takes a hostile stance towards the press. This is because he maintains that the press prepares the ground for the emergence of nihilism. Hubert Dreyfus extends this idea to other information technologies, especially the Internet. Since Kierkegaard-Dreyfus’ attitude towards various forms of information technology originates from philosophical anthropology and a particular conception of the meaning of life, assessing the viability of the attitude they hold requires further critical scrutiny. This paper aims to (...) show that, although, Kierkegaard’s and Dreyfus' insights are important in understanding the dangers of information technology their approach concerning the meaning of life and human identity is a one-sided analysis of the problem situation; In particular, their reliance on "Unconditional Commitment" could bring about new undesired consequences. This paper emphasizes that an appropriate stance towards information technology needs, among other things, a richer and more effective philosophical anthropology; one that by utilizing religious-moral wisdom in a sensible manner, provides an effective way to safely benefit from various types of technology without falling into the abyss of nihilism. The paper further argues that we also need to provide an institutional control of technology through piecemeal social engineering in a democratic process. (shrink)