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This book is an attempt to write about Kierkegaard's philosophy in the style of Kierkegaard's philosophy: energetic, playful, free spirited, surprising, and joyous. It is a deliberately crumby book in the sense that it seeks out the fragments, scraps, and crumbs of philosophical arguments that are generally ignored or swept away, like so much rubbish, but that are actually the most interesting parts of the meal. The Anti-Assistant-Professor Method that this book follows adopts Kierkegaard's many excellent jokes about assistant professors as a guide to how not to write about Kierkegaard's philosophy; specifically: - Don't cease to be human. - Don't be a parasite, merely feeding off other people's creations and never creating anything new. - Don't reduce or simplify or systematize Kierkegaard's ideas in order to make life easier for everyone (because that was never the point). - Don't kill Kierkegaard's philosophy by lecturing on it, thereby turning it into a collection of dead ideas for nonhumans rather than subjective truths that need to be lived. Following these guidelines, the book attempts to extend and amplify some of Kierkegaard's most important ideas in a way that combats the persistent problem of nihilism--a disease that even Kierkegaard succumbed to at the end of his life.
This book is an attempt to write about Kierkegaard's philosophy in the style of Kierkegaard's philosophy: energetic, playful, free spirited, surprising, and joyous. It is a deliberately crumby book in the sense that it seeks out the fragments, scraps, and crumbs of philosophical arguments that are generally ignored or swept away, like so much rubbish, but that are actually the most interesting parts of the meal. The Anti-Assistant-Professor Method that this book follows adopts Kierkegaard's many excellent jokes about assistant professors as a guide to how not to write about Kierkegaard's philosophy; specifically: - Don't cease to be human. - Don't be a parasite, merely feeding off other people's creations and never creating anything new. - Don't reduce or simplify or systematize Kierkegaard's ideas in order to make life easier for everyone (because that was never the point). - Don't kill Kierkegaard's philosophy by lecturing on it, thereby turning it into a collection of dead ideas for nonhumans rather than subjective truths that need to be lived. Following these guidelines, the book attempts to extend and amplify some of Kierkegaard's most important ideas in a way that combats the persistent problem of nihilism--a disease that even Kierkegaard succumbed to at the end of his life.
In his extraordinarily influential book on ethics, After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre maintained that Kierkegaard's notion of "choosing" to interpret one's choices in ethical terms implies an arbitrary and irrational leap. MacIntyre's critique of Kierkegaard has become the focal point for several new interpretations of Kierkegaard that seek to answer MacIntyre. Kierkegaard After MacIntyre brings together both new and already published articles in this vein, with a new reply by Professor MacIntyre. Kierkegaard After MacIntyre reflects the emergence of a new consensus in Kierkegaard scholarship. This consensus is strongly anti-irrationalist and contemporary neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics, clarifying their common ground as well as their differences. In responding to MacIntyre's 'irrationalist' objection, the authors clarify the sense in which Kierkegaard's own conception of freedom is teleological and suggest that his understanding of the development of ethical personality involves a quest for narrative unity, a commitment to practices involving social values, and a self-understanding conditioned by historical reality—all of which are also central themes in MacIntyre's work on virtue ethics. Despite MacIntyre's diagnosis of Kierkegaard's existential approach to ethics as unsuccessful, some of Kierkegaard's insights may support MacIntyre's own theses. "Kierkegaard After MacIntyre is an outstanding book which brings Kierkegaard into direct conversation with one of the most important contemporary philosophers. The conversation contains both lively disagreements and illuminating analyses, all focused on issues of fundamental importance for human life." —C. Stephen Evans, Calvin College ". . . this wonderfully edifying collection of essays." —Timothy P. Jackson, Emory University "In addressing MacIntyre's charge that for Kierkegaard the adoption of the ethical can only be a 'cirterionless choice,' this stimulating set of essays by well-known Kierkegaard scholars provides a welcome addition to the literature on Kierkegaardian ethics. Kierkegaard After MacIntyre provides a valuable exploration of the role of reasoning, will, and passion in moral life, as well as of the relation between aesthetic and ethical dimensions of life." —M. Jamie Ferreira, University of Virginia
Soren Kierkegaard is one of the prophets of the contemporary age, a man whose acute observations on life in nineteenth-century Copenhagen might have been written yesterday, whose work anticipated fundamental developments in psychoanalysis, philosophy, theology and the critique of mass culture by over a century. John Caputo offers a compelling account of Kierkegaard as a thinker of particular relevance in our postmodern times, who set off a revolution that numbers Martin Heidegger and Karl Barth among its heirs. His conceptions of truth as a self-transforming 'deed' and his haunting account of the 'single individual' seemed to have been written with us especially in mind. Extracts include Kierkegaard's classic reading of the story of Abraham and Isaac, the jolting theory that truth is subjectivity and his ground-breaking analysis of the concept of anxiety.
In our time nobody is content to stop with faith but wants to go further. It would perhaps be rash to ask where these people are going, but it is surely a sign of breeding and culture for me to assume that everybody has faith, for otherwise it would be queer for them to be . . . going further. In those old days it was different, then faith was a task for a whole lifetime, because it was assumed that dexterity in faith is not acquired in a few days or weeks. When the tried oldster drew near to his last hour, having fought the good fight and kept the faith, his heart was still young enough not to have forgotten that fear and trembling which chastened the youth, which the man indeed held in check, but which no man quite outgrows. . . except as he might succeed at the earliest opportunity in going further. Where these revered figures arrived, that is the point where everybody in our day begins to go further.
This clear, readable introduction to Kierkegaard presents him as a thinker with powerful answers to the questions which philosophers ask.
Philosopher of the Heart is the groundbreaking biography of renowned existentialist Søren Kierkegaard’s life and creativity, and a searching exploration of how to be a human being in the world. Søren Kierkegaard is one of the most passionate and challenging of all modern philosophers, and is often regarded as the founder of existentialism. Over about a decade in the 1840s and 1850s, writings poured from his pen pursuing the question of existence—how to be a human being in the world?—while exploring the possibilities of Christianity and confronting the failures of its institutional manifestation around him. Much of his creativity sprang from his relationship with the young woman whom he promised to marry, then left to devote himself to writing, a relationship which remained decisive for the rest of his life. He deliberately lived in the swim of human life in Copenhagen, but alone, and died exhausted in 1855 at the age of 42, bequeathing his remarkable writings to his erstwhile fiancée. Clare Carlisle’s innovative and moving biography writes Kierkegaard’s life as far as possible from his own perspective, to convey what it was like actually being this Socrates of Christendom—as he put it, living life forwards yet only understanding it backwards.
Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) had a mission—reintroduce the Christian faith to Christians. Mark Tietjen thinks that Kierkegaard's critique of his contemporaries strikes close to home today. Through an examination of core Christian doctrines, he helps us hear Kierkegaard's missionary message to a church that often fails to follow Christ with purity of heart.
This newly translated Fear and Trembling, a foundational document of modern philosophy and existentialism, could not be more apt for our perilous times. First published in 1843 under the pseudonym Johannes de silentio (“John of Silence”), Soren Kierkegaard’s richly resonant Fear and Trembling has for generations stood as a pivotal text in the history of moral philosophy, inspiring such artistic and philosophical luminaries as Edvard Munch, W. H. Auden, Walter Benjamin, and existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. Now, in our era of immense uncertainty, renowned Kierkegaard scholar Bruce H. Kirmmse eloquently brings this classic work to a new generation of readers. Retelling the biblical story of the binding of Isaac, Fear and Trembling expounds on the ordeal of Abraham, who was commanded by God to sacrifice his own son in an exceptional test of faith. Disgusted at the self-certainty of his own age, Kierkegaard investigates the paradox underlying Abraham’s decision to allow his duty to God to take precedence over his duties to his family. As Kierkegaard’s narrator explains, the story presents a difficulty that is not often considered—namely, that after the ordeal is over and Isaac has been spared at the last moment, Abraham is capable of receiving him again and living normally, even joyfully, for the rest of his days. Almost inexplicably, “Abraham had faith and did not doubt.” Deftly tracing the autobiographical threads that run throughout the work, Kirmmse initially, in his lucid and engaging introduction, demystifies Kierkegaard’s fictive narrator, Johannes de silentio, drawing parallels between Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son and the author’s personal “sacrifices.” Ultimately, however, Kirmmse reveals Fear and Trembling as a fiercely polemical volume, designed to provoke the reader into considering what is actually meant by the word “faith,” and whether those who consider themselves “true believers” actually are. With a vibrancy almost never before seen in English, and “a matchless grasp of the intricacies of Kierkegaard’s writing process” (Gordon Marino), Kirmmse here definitively demonstrates Kierkegaard’s enduring power to illuminate the terrible wonder of faith.