This article explains and assesses a particular method of loving others that is espoused by Søren Kierkegaard. In his later works, Kierkegaard advocates a kind of deceptive love whereby one mystifies or deceives another person for that other person's own good. The theological underpinning of this mode of love is found in the imitation of Christ. In other words, just as Jesus adopted an incognito, so also Christians should, at times, appear different or lowlier in order to help others by (...) meeting them where they are. After explaining this form of love, I argue that there are considerable reasons not to follow Kierkegaard in his support of outright deception within personal relationships. I conclude with some brief reflections on whether the deceptive structure of Kierkegaard's own authorship is thereby condemned or whether it can be exonerated. (shrink)

Resumen Entre 1834 y 1835, Kierkegaard, quien todavía era un estudiante de veintiún años en la Universidad de Copenhague, se interesó en la figura mítica y folclórica conocida como el “ladrón maestro”. Decidió entonces trabajar en un drama que girara alrededor de este personaje y su lucha en contra del orden establecido. Con eso en mente, este artículo tiene dos objetivos. El primero consiste en hacer una exposición general del denominado proyecto del ladrón maestro. Las notas de Kierkegaard sobre el (...) ladrón maestro han permanecido en una relativa oscuridad, de manera que este artículo busca presentarle al lector hispanohablante este trabajo poco conocido del pensador danés. El segundo objetivo es analizar la cuestión filosófica planteada en el proyecto del ladrón maestro, es decir, la cuestión sobre la relación del individuo rebelde y marginado con el orden establecido.In the years 1834 and1835, Kierkegaard, still a 21-year-old student at the University of Copenhagen, became interested in the mythical character known as the master-thief. He then decided to work on a drama about this character and his struggle against the established order. With this in mind, the paper has two main objectives. First, to offer a complete account of the so-called master-thief project. Kierkegaard’s notes on the master-thief have remained in a relative obscurity. This paper aims at exposing this little-known work of the Danish thinker to the Spanish-speaking reader. Second, to analyze the philosophical question raised in the master thief project, that is, the issue about the relationship of the rebel and marginalized individual with the established order. (shrink)

Philosophers have often misunderstood Kierkegaard's views on the nature and purposes of God due to a fascination with his earlier, pseudonymous works. We examine many of Kierkegaard's later works with the aim of setting forth an accurate view on this matter. The portrait of God that emerges is a personal and fiercely loving God with whom humans can and should enter into relationship. Far from advocating a fideistic faith or a cognitively unrestrained leap in the dark, we argue that Kierkegaard (...) connects this God-relationship to (a particular kind of) evidence and even knowledge. However, such evidence and knowledge – and hence God himself – may remain hidden from many individuals due to misconceptions of God and misuses of the human will. (shrink)

I argue for an approach to Philosophical Fragments that allows it to be philosophical and fragmentary, and that pays particular attention to the fragments, or crumbs, that seem least important. One such overlooked crumb is the theory of merely human education in the book—education that does not enlist God as the teacher, where humans simply try to teach and learn from each other. I argue that Philosophical Fragments defends this theory of education with several reductio ad absurdum proofs that are (...) especially useful because they clarify why merely human education so often fails. Finally I apply the theory of merely human education in Philosophical Fragments to Kierkegaard’s authorship as a whole and argue that it gives us a paradigm for understanding all of Kierkegaard’s texts that is more fundamental than the distinction between direct and indirect communication. (shrink)

A pesar de que el mismo S. Kierkegaard reconoció haber sido hegeliano y que sus propios contemporáneos lo tuvieron por tal, su pensamiento ha pasado a la historia como una de las mayores fuerzas anti-hegelianas. La recepción historiográfica hegemónica asumió acríticamente el modelo de un dualismo existencial-especulativo, que entiende a Kierkegaard como el pensador de la experiencia subjetiva y a Hegel como el aliado de un concepto abstracto y vacío. Las siguientes páginas se proponen contribuir a la rectificación de esta (...) incomprensión especulativa, cuyas consecuencias agudizan cada vez más la confusión contemporánea. En oposición a la imagen de un Kierkegaard antihegeliano, intentaremos mostrar la profunda influencia del pensamiento de Hegel sobre el existencialismo kierkegaardiano, influencia que se manifiesta en las categorías de espíritu, dialéctica, idea, reduplicación e unidad relacional, entre otras. (shrink)