In Philosophical Fragments the pseudonymous author Johannes Climacus explored the question: What is required in order to go beyond Socratic recollection of eternal ideas already possessed by the learner? Written as an afterword to this work, Concluding Unscientific Postscript is on one level a philosophical jest, yet on another it is Climacus's characterization of the subjective thinker's relation to the truth of Christianity. At once ironic, humorous, and polemical, this work takes on the "unscientific" form of a mimical-pathetical-dialectical compilation of (...) ideas. Whereas the movement in the earlier pseudonymous writings is away from the aesthetic, the movement in Postscript is away from speculative thought. Kierkegaard intended Postscript to be his concluding work as an author. The subsequent "second authorship" after The Corsair Affair made Postscript the turning point in the entire authorship. Part One of the text volume examines the truth of Christianity as an objective issue, Part Two the subjective issue of what is involved for the individual in becoming a Christian, and the volume ends with an addendum in which Kierkegaard acknowledges and explains his relation to the pseudonymous authors and their writings. The second volume contains the scholarly apparatus, including a key to references and selected entries from Kierkegaard's journals and papers. (shrink)

He shows us that Kierkegaard's expressed intent is to provide readers with the opportunity to choose or reject Christ. He explores the question of who Kierkegaard understands Jesus to be and why he believes that faith or history alone cannot answer this question, claiming that history is meaningful only when it is understood from the perspective of "sacred history." Kierkegaard's Livingroom explores what "sacred history" is, why it is so important to us, and why it depends on an incarnate God. (...) Mercer argues that Kierkegaard is not tilting at windmills but responding to Hegel's view of history and Kant's view of faith, showing that Kierkegaard has much to contribute to the debates on liberalism and post-modernism. (shrink)

In PHILOSOPHICAL FRAGMENTS, Søren Kierkegaard (writing under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus), seeks to explain the nature of Christianity in such as way as to bring out its demands on the individual, and to emphasize its incompatibility with the theology based on the work of Hegel that was becoming progressively more influential in Denmark. If one were to read only two or three of Kierkegaard's works, this is unquestionably one of the ones to read. One cannot understand Kierkegaard's thought without reading (...) this book, and along with its sequel represents the heart of what he was trying to achieve in what he called his "Authorship." Through PHILOSOPHICAL FRAGMENTS, Kierkegaard purports to present the logic of Christianity. (shrink)

Stages on Life's Way, the sequel to Either/Or, is an intensely poetic example of Kierkegaard's vision of the three stages, or spheres, of existence: the esthetic, the ethical, and the religious. With characteristic love for mystification, he presents the work as a bundle of documents fallen by chance into the hands of "Hilarius Bookbinder," who prepared them for printing. The book begins with a banquet scene patterned on Plato's Symposium. (George Brandes maintained that "one must recognize with amazement that it (...) holds its own in this comparison.") Next is a discourse by "Judge William" in praise of marriage "in answer to objections." The remainder of the volume, almost two-thirds of the whole, is the diary of a young man, discovered by "Frater Taciturnus," who was deeply in love but felt compelled to break his engagement. The work closes with a letter to the reader from Taciturnus on the three "existence-spheres" represented by the three parts of the book. Stages on Life's Way not only repeats themes, characters, and pseudonymous authors of the earlier works but also goes beyond them and points to further development of central ideas in Concluding Unscientific Postscript. (shrink)

In Philosophical Fragments the pseudonymous author Johannes Climacus explored the question: What is required in order to go beyond Socratic recollection of eternal ideas already possessed by the learner? Written as an afterword to this work, Concluding Unscientific Postscript is on one level a philosophical jest, yet on another it is Climacus's characterization of the subjective thinker's relation to the truth of Christianity. At once ironic, humorous, and polemical, this work takes on the "unscientific" form of a mimical-pathetical-dialectical compilation of (...) ideas. Whereas the movement in the earlier pseudonymous writings is away from the aesthetic, the movement in Postscript is away from speculative thought. Kierkegaard intended Postscript to be his concluding work as an author. The subsequent "second authorship" after The Corsair Affair made Postscript the turning point in the entire authorship. Part One of the text volume examines the truth of Christianity as an objective issue, Part Two the subjective issue of what is involved for the individual in becoming a Christian, and the volume ends with an addendum in which Kierkegaard acknowledges and explains his relation to the pseudonymous authors and their writings. The second volume contains the scholarly apparatus, including a key to references and selected entries from Kierkegaard's journals and papers. (shrink)

In this 1982 text, Professor Wartofsky wishes to go beyond this conventional view to establish Feuerbach as much more than a transitional figure between Hegel ...

Ludwig Feuerbach is traditionally regarded as a significant but transitional figure in the development of nineteenth-century German thought. Readings of Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity tend to focus on those features which made it seem liberating to the Young Hegelians: namely, its criticism of reification as abstraction, and its interpretation of religion as alienation. In this book, Van Harvey claims that this is a limited and inadequate view of Feuerbach's work, especially of his critique of religion. The author argues that (...) Feuerbach's philosophical development led him to a much more complex and interesting theory of religion which he expounded in works which have been virtually ignored hitherto. By exploring these works, Harvey gives them a significant contemporary re-statement, and brings Feuerbach into conversation with a number of modern theorists of religion. (shrink)

Often viewed by his contemporaries as a person who deliberately cultivated an air of mystery and eccentricity, Soren Kierkegaard has continued to be a subject of great speculation. Here historian Bruce Kirmmse provides a collection of every known eyewitness account of the great Danish thinker. These accounts give us a glimpse of Kierkegaard's spiritual and intellectual development, along with other aspects of his life. 21 photos.

Feuerbach is now recognized as a central figure in the history of nineteenth-century thought. He was one of Hegel's most influential pupils: he dominated German radical philosophy in the 1840s and was the leader of the Young Hegelians; his 'anthropological' critique of Hegel's idealism decisively influences the materialism and humanism of Marx and Engels; his critique of religion pointed the way for the philosophers of religion; and his psychological analyses found a place in Freudian thought and the existential and phenomenological (...) traditions. In this 1977 text, Professor Wartofsky wishes to go beyond this conventional view to establish Feuerbach as much more than a transitional figure between Hegel and Marx or an influence on important later developments. He seriously considers Feuerbach's philosophy on its own terms and seeks to demonstrate its continuing importance. He therefore traces Feuerbach's development in detail, emphasizing its dialectical character, and finds fundamental originality in his epistemology. (shrink)

Best known as a philosopher, one of the founders of existentialism, Kierkegaard also wrote books whose themes were primarily religious, psychological or literary. He was opposed to much in organised Christianity, stressing the necessity for individual choice against prescribed dogma and ritual. In this book, he concentrates his penetrating psychological observations on the theme of despair.

In Philosophical Fragments the pseudonymous author Johannes Climacus explored the question: What is required in order to go beyond Socratic recollection of eternal ideas already possessed by the learner? Written as an afterword to this work, Concluding Unscientific Postscript is on one level a philosophical jest, yet on another it is Climacus's characterization of the subjective thinker's relation to the truth of Christianity. At once ironic, humorous, and polemical, this work takes on the "unscientific" form of a mimical-pathetical-dialectical compilation of (...) ideas. Whereas the movement in the earlier pseudonymous writings is away from the aesthetic, the movement in Postscript is away from speculative thought. Kierkegaard intended Postscript to be his concluding work as an author. The subsequent "second authorship" after The Corsair Affair made Postscript the turning point in the entire authorship. Part One of the text volume examines the truth of Christianity as an objective issue, Part Two the subjective issue of what is involved for the individual in becoming a Christian, and the volume ends with an addendum in which Kierkegaard acknowledges and explains his relation to the pseudonymous authors and their writings. The second volume contains the scholarly apparatus, including a key to references and selected entries from Kierkegaard's journals and papers. (shrink)

"... the most important contribution to Kierkegaard studies to be published in English in recent years.... Not only is it a fascinating, surprising, and perceptive study of Kierkegaard within his time and world, Kirmmse has produced a research resource, a reference work, that is simply without parallel or equal." —Michael Plekon "It is a rare work of philosophy that not only clarifies its subject but also places it within an intellectual and historical context. In his study of 19th-century Danish philosopher (...) Kierkegaard, Kirmmse accomplishes both, setting a standard... " —Library Journal "... an outstanding contribution to Kierkegaard research... The book is intellectual history of the highest calibre." —So[slash]ren Kierkegaard Newsletter "This excellent book is recommended for all collections on Kierkegaard... For all readers." —Choice "This richly researched and readable book supplies an important contribution to the widespread reappropriation of Kierkegaard’s thought currently taking place."—Theology Today "This book is a tour de force in intellectual history." —Review of Metaphysics "Kirmmse's book is a major work of scholarship that confers on Kierkegaard's social and intellectual universe a depth and a richness of detail that will permanently alter the familiar stereotypes about Kierkegaard's isolation from his fellow Danes and his supposedly fanatical campaign against philistine Denmark and its corrupt state church." —American Historical Review Against the background of Denmark’s evolution from a mercantile economy to a broad-based agricultural economy, Kirmmse reinterprets Kierkegaard’s thought as a reaction to the tensions within his society. (shrink)

In Kierkegaard's Livingroom David Mercer weaves his way through the Philosophical Fragments, bringing the reader a new understanding of Kierkegaard's work.

Jon Stewart's study is a major re-evaluation of the complex relations between the philosophies of Kierkegaard and Hegel. The standard view on the subject is that Kierkegaard defined himself as explicitly anti-Hegelian, indeed that he viewed Hegel's philosophy with disdain. Jon Stewart shows convincingly that Kierkegaard's criticism was not of Hegel but of a number of contemporary Danish Hegelians. Kierkegaard's own view of Hegel was in fact much more positive to the point where he was directly influenced by some of (...) Hegel's work. Any scholar working in the tradition of Continental philosophy will find this an insightful and provocative book with implications for the subsequent history of philosophy in the twentieth century. The book will also appeal to scholars in religious studies and the history of ideas. (shrink)

This volume is a study of the relationship between philosophy and faith in Søren Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments. It is also the first book to examine the role of Socrates in this body of writings, illuminating the significance of Socrates for Kierkegaard's thought. Jacob Howland argues that in the Fragments, philosophy and faith are closely related passions. A careful examination of the role of Socrates demonstrates that Socratic, philosophical eros opens up a path to faith. At the same time, the work (...) of faith - which holds the self together with that which transcends it - is essentially erotic in the Socratic sense of the term. Chapters on Kierkegaard's Johannes Climacus and on Plato's Apology shed light on the Socratic character of the pseudonymous author of the Fragments and the role of 'the god' in Socrates' pursuit of wisdom. Howland also analyzes the Concluding Unscientific Postscript and Kierkegaard's reflections on Socrates and Christ. (shrink)

Attempts to unlock the Climacus section of Kierkegaard's pseudonymous literature. This book offers a sustained analysis of the key concepts discussed in the works: existence and the ethical, truth and subjectivity, indirect communication, guilt and suffering, irony and humour, reason and paradox, and faith and history.

Emerson's famous declaration of independence for American literature.