Kierkegaard's Instant

Kierkegaard's Instant
Author: David J. Kangas
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2007-05-31
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 025311697X

In Kierkegaard's Instant, David J. Kangas reads Kierkegaard to reveal his radical thinking about temporality. For Kierkegaard, the instant of becoming, in which everything changes in the blink of an eye, eludes recollection and anticipation. It constitutes a beginning always already at work. As Kangas shows, Kierkegaard's retrieval of the sudden quality of temporality allows him to stage a deep critique of the idealist projects of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. By linking Kierkegaard's thought to the tradition of Meister Eckhart, Kangas formulates the central problem of these early texts and puts them into contemporary light -- can thinking hold itself open to the challenges of temporality?

Kierkegaard

Kierkegaard
Author: Daphne Hampson
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 359
Release: 2013-04-25
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0191654000

Kierkegaard is a fascinating author. Living shortly after the dawn of modernity in the Enlightenment, he restates classical Christianity in novel and dynamic fashion. His Lutheran heritage is pivotal here as he places 'faith' over against 'reason'. But we should recognise that decidedly pre-modern epistemological presuppositions lie behind Kierkegaard's theological contentions, giving us pause for thought. A profound thinker with eclectic interests, philosophical, theological, ethical, social and pastoral, Kierkegaard never ceases to engage the reader. His insights into human life - the matter of coherence of the self, the crucial category of the individual, or the significance of choice - are memorable. A fine writer with observant eye, Kierkegaard enthrals the reader with his flair, perspicacity and ready wit. After an initial chapter on Kierkegaard's intellectual milieu, the book considers seven of his major texts. An 'Exposition', with extensive quotation, sets the text in philosophical, theological and historical context. Following which a 'Critique' raises issues, ranging from Kierkegaard's indifference to biblical scholarship, to his lack of recognition of the regularity of causation, and his a-political outlook. A final chapter considers Kierkegaard as a person and evaluates the authorship. Lucidly written, Hampson's book provides a general introduction to Kierkegaard, while greatly aiding novice readers of his texts. It should also command the attention of scholars, for its forthright debate with Kierkegaard and for illuminating, as has no previous work, his Lutheran thought forms. Provocative and original, it will leave its mark on Kierkegaard scholarship, while raising seminal questions for the wider theological enterprise.

Volume 18, Tome II: Kierkegaard Secondary Literature

Volume 18, Tome II: Kierkegaard Secondary Literature
Author: Jon Stewart
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2021-12-16
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1351874756

In recent years interest in the thought of Kierkegaard has grown dramatically, and with it the body of secondary literature has expanded so quickly that it has become impossible for even the most conscientious scholar to keep pace. The problem of the explosion of secondary literature is made more acute by the fact that much of what is written about Kierkegaard appears in languages that most Kierkegaard scholars do not know. Kierkegaard has become a global phenomenon, and new research traditions have emerged in different languages, countries and regions. The present volume is dedicated to trying to help to resolve these two problems in Kierkegaard studies. Its purpose is, first, to provide book reviews of some of the leading monographic studies in the Kierkegaard secondary literature so as to assist the community of scholars to become familiar with the works that they have not read for themselves. The aim is thus to offer students and scholars of Kierkegaard a comprehensive survey of works that have played a more or less significant role in the research. Second, the present volume also tries to make accessible many works in the Kierkegaard secondary literature that are written in different languages and thus to give a glimpse into various and lesser-known research traditions. The six tomes of the present volume present reviews of works written in Catalan, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, and Swedish.

Kierkegaard and Possibility

Kierkegaard and Possibility
Author: Erin Plunkett
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2023-07-27
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1350298999

How does our conception of possibility contribute to our understanding of self and world? In what sense does the possible differ from the merely probable, and what would it mean to treat possibility as part of the real? This book is an opportunity to see Kierkegaard as contributing to a distinctive phenomenology, ontology, and psychology of possibility that addresses the question of our existential relationship to the possible. The term 'possibility' (Mulighed) and its variants occur with curious frequency across Kierkegaard's writings. Key to Kierkegaard's understanding of the self, possibility is linked to a number of core concepts in his works: from imagination, anxiety, despair, and 'the moment' to the idea in The Sickness Unto Death that “God is that all things are possible”. Responding to what he sees as a Hegelian and Aristotelian misunderstanding of possibility, Kierkegaard offers a novel reading of the possible that, in turn, directly influences 20th-century philosophers such as Heidegger, Deleuze, and Derrida. Kierkegaard gives a rich account of how anxiety and despair, as lived experiences of possibility, not only show us the contingency and fragility of the systems and identities we presently inhabit but also reveal a more fundamental contingency that demands a new way of relating to the possible. For Kierkegaard, hope, faith, and love are attitudes in which meaning is forged by embracing contingency. In a time of political, social, and environmental uncertainty Kierkegaard's work on radical possibility seems more relevant than ever.

Fear and Trembling

Fear and Trembling
Author: Soren Kierkegaard
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 142
Release: 2013-01-18
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1625584024

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.

Kierkegaard’s Mirrors

Kierkegaard’s Mirrors
Author: P. Stokes
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2009-11-18
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0230251269

What is it to see the world, other people, and imagined situations as making personal moral demands of us? What is it to experience stories as speaking to us personally and directly? Kierkegaard's Mirrors explores Kierkegaard's answers to these questions, with a new phenomenological interpretation of Kierkegaardian 'interest'.

Kierkegaard's Theology of Encounter

Kierkegaard's Theology of Encounter
Author: David James Lappano
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2017
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0198792433

This study considers the social and political aspects of Kierkegaard's authorship, building upon work over the last couple of decades. Dr Lappano focuses on Kierkegaard's writing between 1846 and 1852, the period of Kierkegaard's more explicitly politicized writing.

Kierkegaard's Critique of Christian Nationalism

Kierkegaard's Critique of Christian Nationalism
Author: Stephen Backhouse
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages:
Release: 2011-07-07
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0191619167

'Christian nationalism' refers to the set of ideas in which belief in the development and superiority of one's national group is combined with, or underwritten by, Christian theology and practice. A critique of Christian nationalism is implicit throughout the thought of Søren Kierkegaard, an analysis inseparable from his wider aim of reintroducing Christianity into Christendom. Stephen Backhouse examines the nationalist theologies of Kierkegaard's contemporaries H.L. Martensen and N.F.S. Grundtvig, to show how Kierkegaard's thought developed in response to the writings of these important cultural leaders of the day. Kierkegaard's response formed the backbone of his own philosophical and theological project, namely his attempt to form authentic Christian individuals through the use of 'the moment', 'the leap' and 'contemporaneity'. This study brings Kierkegaard's critique of Christian nationalism into conversation with current political science theories of religious nationalism and reflects on the implications of Kierkegaard's radical approach. While the critique is unsettling to politicians and church leaders alike, nevertheless there is much to commend it to the reality of modern religious and social life. As a theological thinker keenly aware of the unique problems posed by Christendom, Kierkegaard's critique is timely for any Christian culture that is tempted to confuse its faith with patriotism or national affiliation.

Kierkegaard and the Matter of Philosophy

Kierkegaard and the Matter of Philosophy
Author: Michael O'Neill Burns
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2015-01-05
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1783482044

Søren Kierkegaard is often cast as the forefather of existentialism and an anti-Hegelian proponent of the single individual. Yet this book calls these traditional characterizations into question by arguing that Kierkegaard offers not only a systematic critique of idealist philosophy, but more surprisingly, a political ontology that is paradoxically at home in the context of twenty-first-century philosophical and political thought. Through a close consideration of his authorship in the context of nineteenth-century German idealism, Michael O'Neill Burns argues that Kierkegaard develops an ontology, anthropology and theory of the political that are outcomes of his critical appropriation of the philosophical projects of Hegel, Schelling, and Fichte. While starting out in the philosophical concerns of the nineteenth century, the book offers an interpretation of Kierkegaard that shows his relevance to philosophers and political theorists in the twenty-first century.

Kierkegaard's Either/Or

Kierkegaard's Either/Or
Author: Ryan S. Kemp
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2023-11-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1009080202

Either/Or is Kierkegaard's first major work and arguably his most virtuosic. It introduces many of the most important philosophical themes that define the rest of his authorship and showcases - through its several pseudonyms and genres - Kierkegaard's prodigious literary scope. In this Critical Guide, a diverse group of scholars strike new ground in our understanding of both this work, and Kierkegaard's authorship as a whole. Their essays highlight the text's philosophical range, with substantial discussions of issues in aesthetics, epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, phenomenology, and philosophy of religion. The volume will be essential reading for any person seeking to deepen their understanding of Either/Or and Kierkegaard's work more generally.