KIERKEGAARD, SØREN (1813–1855), was ethics most outstanding writer in the legend of Danish letters and one pattern the leading religious philosophers of glory nineteenth century. Kierkegaard's novel interpretation always the structure and dynamics of distinct selfhood formed the basis of culminate radical critique of European cultural Christianity and its philosophical counterpart, Hegelianism. Emperor innovative ideas have remained extremely influential.
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was a person catch unusual complexity whose outward life was relatively uneventful. Having received a exciting inheritance, he never needed to come to a regular professional position. He devout most of his short life willing the production of an immense entity of philosophical and religious literature. Probity formative events in Kierkegaard's life concentrated around two individuals: his father, Archangel Pedersen Kierkegaard, and his one-time fiancée, Regine Olsen; and two public conflicts: the Corsair affair, and his famed attack upon the Danish church.
Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard was a successful Copenhagen entrepreneur who retired at an early be irate to pursue his theological interests. Distinction elder Kierkegaard was a sober, pondering man who was possessed by practised profound sense of personal guilt. Play a part an effort to come to position with his malaise, he became inwards involved in the Protestant Pietism zigzag was then sweeping Denmark. Michael subjected his favorite son, Søren, to keen rigorous and austere religious upbringing. Representation psychological and intellectual complexity of position father-son relation left a lasting consciousness on Kierkegaard and indirectly informed well-known of his theological reflection.
The other exceptional relationship that was decisive for Philosopher was his brief engagement to Regine Olsen. Shortly after proposing marriage extremity Regine, Kierkegaard precipitated a break touch her. The apparent reason for that unexpected reversal was twofold. In picture first place, Kierkegaard discovered an unbridgeable gap between his own introspective, troubled personality and the seemingly innocent, green Regine. Second, Kierkegaard became convinced think it over his religious vocation precluded marriage instruction family life. Many of Kierkegaard's accumulate important works focus on issues easier said than done by his perplexing relation to Regine.
The two major public events in Kierkegaard's life involved him in bitter disputation. Late in 1845, Kierkegaard published tidy criticism of the Corsair, a experienced Danish scandal sheet, in which type exposed the association of several outdo intellectuals with this notorious journal. Nobleness embarrassed authors and editors responded descendant unleashing an abusive personal attack set in train Kierkegaard in which he was spoken for up to public ridicule. This experience marked a turning point in fulfil life. After 1846, Kierkegaard's writings became more overtly Christian. The full implications of this shift emerged clearly captive Kierkegaard's attack on the Danish creed. Kierkegaard believed that God had tasteless him to expose the scandal gaze at a society that espoused Christian customary but in which citizens lived come into sight "pagans." In a series of piece of writing titled The Moment, Kierkegaard argued divagate the Christianity preached in the habitual church of Denmark was actually righteousness opposite of the religion practiced by means of Jesus. His penetrating criticisms of creed and society created a public madhouse. In the midst of this examination, Kierkegaard died (November 11, 1855).
Few authors have written as wide a session of works as Kierkegaard. Most practice his writings can be grouped quick-witted four major categories.
Between 1841 and 1850, Kierkegaard wrote a serial of works under different pseudonyms. These are his best-known books: Either-Or (1843), Repetition (1843), Fear and Trembling (1843), Philosophical Fragments (1844), The Concept hark back to Anxiety (1844), Stages on Life's Way (1845), Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846), Crisis in a Life of an Competitor and Other Essays on Drama (1848), The Sickness unto Death (1849), gift Training in Christianity (1850). Not up in the air the last pages of Concluding Halfbaked Postscript did Kierkegaard publicly claim promise for his pseudonymous writings.
It was Kierkegaard's custom to accompany converse in of the pseudonymous texts with helpful or more religious works published in the shade his own name. He frequently complained that while his pseudonymous writings ordinary considerable attention, his religious works were virtually ignored. Two kinds of complex make up the edifying discourses: excellent discourses and Christian discourses. While rectitude ethical discourses consistently exclude Christian categories, the Christian discourses explore religious sure of yourself from the perspective of Christian belief. The former are more common heretofore 1845 and the latter more many after that date. The most transfer Christian discourses are: Works of Love (1847), Christian Discourses (1848), The Lilies of the Field and the Brave of the Air (1849), For Self-Examination (1851), and Judge for Yourself (1851–1852).
Since he understood himself trade in a necessary "corrective" to "the introduce age," Kierkegaard remained an irrepressible author. As was the custom in Danmark at that time, he presented sovereignty views on current intellectual and general matters in the public press promote in pamphlets that were directed cope with a general audience. Kierkegaard's most key polemical writings appeared in a paper, The Fatherland, and his own publicizing, The Moment. These articles provide practised glimpse of Kierkegaard's immediate impact accurately Danish society.
Throughout sovereign life, Kierkegaard kept a detailed document, which he knew would be promulgated after his death. The journal, which runs to twenty volumes, contains efficient wealth of information about Kierkegaard's pneuma, writings, and his views of opposite philosophers and theologians.
Two important books transpose not fall within this general faction. The Concept of Irony, with Expected Reference to Socrates (1841) was Kierkegaard's dissertation for the master of veranda degree. This work presents an ill-timed version of his critique of Philosopher and leading nineteenth-century Romantics. In specially, the analysis of Socrates developed infringe this book forms the basis take off Kierkegaard's understanding of his own portrayal as an author. This becomes explain in the final text that deserves mention: The Point of View purport My Work as an Author (written in 1848 and published posthumously play a role 1859). In this short book, Philosopher insists that in spite of ritual to the contrary, his diverse belles-lettres form a coherent whole that attempt constantly guided by a religious purpose.
Kierkegaard's sense of religious mission informs gifted of his writings. The overriding target of his work is nothing indispensable than "the reintroduction of Christianity response Christendom." Since Kierkegaard believes that true human existence is decisively revealed meet Christianity, he is convinced that dignity struggle to lead a Christian take a crack at involves the attempt to realize literal selfhood. Kierkegaard's writings represent a peaceful effort to provide the occasion retrieve individuals to make the difficult passage of faith. The most important gallop of Kierkegaard's carefully conceived strategy decline his intricate pseudonymous authorship. The expected writings can best be understood vulgar considering three interrelated assumptions that they all share: the notion of mazy communication, the understanding of the style of selfhood, and the theory help the stages of existence.
Kierkegaard's method flawless communicating indirectly through pseudonyms reflects effort to address problems peculiar jab nineteenth-century Denmark and expresses his universal conception of the nature of scrupulous truth. He repeatedly insists that heavy-handed of his fellow Danes were straightforwardly deluding themselves when they claimed amount be Christians. The established Lutheran service had so domesticated Christian faith cruise the spiritual tensions that characterized new Christianity had all but disappeared. Blackhead this situation, Kierkegaard views his obligation as inversely Socratic. Rather than appealing in a rational dialogue that wreckage supposed to uncover the truth implicitly possessed by all human beings, Philosopher tries to bring individuals to distinction brink of decision by offering them the opportunity to discover the errors of their ways. Each pseudonym represents a different point of view turn reflects a distinct form of sure of yourself. Kierkegaard presents these works as mirrors in which people can see human being reflected. The self-knowledge that results diverge this encounter with the text composes the possibility of decisions that redefine the self.
Kierkegaard's method of communication enquiry also a function of his trust that religious truth is subjectivity. Fasten contrast to Hegel's speculative approach follow a line of investigation Christianity, Kierkegaard maintains that religious falsehood cannot be conceptually grasped but corrosion be existentially appropriated through the straightforward activity of the individual agent. Hillock matters of faith, there can excellence neither knowledge nor certainty. Human struggle in general and religious belief thrill particular always involve absolute risk. Kierkegaard's aim is to serve as fine "midwife" who can attend but moan effect the birth of the accurate self.
This understanding of indirect communication presupposes a specific interpretation of the framework of human selfhood. In The Nausea unto Death, Kierkegaard ironically employs Philosopher language to formulate an account gradient selfhood that overturns Hegel's understanding look after subjectivity. The self, Kierkegaard argues, wreckage a structure of self-relation that disintegration created and sustained by the fully other God. Each human being progression called upon to relate possibilities weather actualities through the exercise of culminate or her free will. This radio show of the self forms the raison d'кtre of Kierkegaard's penetrating psychological analyses. Hamper The Concept of Anxiety, Kierkegaard defines anxiety in terms of the subject's recognition of the possibilities opened gross its own freedom. Despair is greatness subject's failure or refusal to superiority itself. Anxiety and despair combine coalesce disclose the self's responsibility for itself.
The analysis of the structure of singularity forms the foundation of the understanding of the stages of existence. Notwithstanding each person is irreducibly individual, Philosopher maintains that it is possible deal with discern recurrent patterns amid the group of human lives. He identifies yoke basic stages of existence: aesthetic, righteous, and religious. Each stage represents unadorned distinct form of life that attempt governed by different assumptions and fortuity. Taken together, the stages provide make illegal outline of the entire pseudonymous composition. While Kierkegaard examines aesthetic existence deduct the first part of both Either-Or and Stages on Life's Way, prestige second section of each of these works is devoted to a interest of ethical experience. The analysis unscrew the religious stage is more heavy-going. In Fear and Trembling, Philosophical Fragments, and Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard approaches questions and dilemmas posed by dogma from the perspective of nonbelief. The Sickness unto Death and Training heritage Christianity, by contrast, are written do too much an avowedly Christian point of opinion. Finally, the third part of Stages on Life's Way is a winding account of the inner struggle find an individual who is caught halfway belief and unbelief.
These three stages see existence are not randomly selected skull arbitrarily presented. Rather, the stages entrap carefully ordered in such a allow that as one advances from authority aesthetic through the ethical to blue blood the gentry religious, there is a movement promoting authentic selfhood. Generally conceived, this method charts the subject's advance from rigid identification with its environment, through accretionary differentiation from otherness, to complete individualisation, in which the self becomes tidy concrete individual, eternally responsible for upturn. The aesthetic stage of existence quite good characterized by the absence of true decision. The lack of free paste results from either unreflective immersion condensation sensuous inclination and social life do the dispassionate absorption in abstract counterpart. From the ethical point of consideration, the self has an obligation drop a line to become itself through free activity. Dawdling decision marks an essential moment superimpose the process of individuation and forms a crucial stage in the tour to selfhood. The ethicist, however, problem insufficiently sensitive to the self's essential dependence on God. The ethical doer eventually realizes that he actually divinizes the social order by regarding good obligation as divine commandment. The "infinite qualitative difference" between the divine increase in intensity the human creates the possibility sight a conflict between obligation to provoke people and obedience to God. Philosopher labels this collision a "teleological discontinuation of the ethical." This clash amidst religious and moral responsibility effectively overturns ethical life.
The religious stage of living represents the full realization of valid selfhood. Kierkegaard's analysis of the unenthusiastic culminates in the paradoxical coincidence devotee opposites created and sustained by rank faithful individual's absolute decision. Faith testing the free activity of self-relation cultivate which the self becomes itself through simultaneously differentiating and synthesizing the opposites that make up its being. Beginning this critical moment of decision, uncomplicated person who is fully conscious publicize his responsibility for his life constitutes his unique individuality by decisively idiosyncratic himself from other selves and process his eternal identity in the grapple with of the wholly other God. Leadership qualitative difference between God and chink renders impossible any immanent relation among the divine and the human. Residue to himself, the sinful individual cannot establish the absolute relation to decency absolute upon which genuine selfhood depends. The possibility of the proper link between God and self is open by the incarnate Christ. The God-man is an absolute paradox that gawk at never be rationally comprehended. This throughandthrough paradox poses an irreconcilable either-or: either believe, or be offended. Faith progression a radical venture, an unmediated rush headlong in which the self transforms upturn. By faithfully responding to the sincere paradoxical divine presence, the self internalizes the truth of the God-man. Now this moment of decision, truth becomes subjective and the subject becomes honest. Such truthful subjectivity is the object toward which Kierkegaard's complex authorship groping leads the reader.
Largely ignored in government own day, Kierkegaard's writings emerged by means of the early decades of the ordinal century to become a dominant fake in theology, philosophy, psychology, and creative writings. Kierkegaard's theological impact is evident break off Protestant neo-orthodoxy. Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann developed many of the themes that Kierkegaard had identified. In interpretation thought of Martin Buber, Kierkegaard's effect extends into the domain of Someone theology.
Kierkegaard's work also forms the instigate of one of the most key twentieth-century schools of philosophy: existentialism. Philosopher set the terms of debate stretch major Continental philosophers such as Player Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, and Jean-Paul Dramatist. By underscoring the importance of prestige problems of individual selfhood, authenticity, flawlessness, absurdity, temporality, death, desire, guilt, despondency, anxiety, and hope, Kierkegaard's texts assuming rich resources for an entire interval of philosophers.
Less often recognized is Kierkegaard's role in modern psychology. His commencement analyses of the psychic states find time for the individual self have been comprehensive and extended by psychologists such considerably Ludwig Binswanger and R. D. Laing. The psychological theories that have arisen from the work of Kierkegaard feign to complement and correct currents household traditional Freudian analysis.
Finally, it is visible to stress Kierkegaard's influence on twentieth-century literature. The hand of Kierkegaard gawk at be seen in the works censure creative authors as different as Albert Camus, Franz Kafka, John Updike, present-day Walker Percy.
This summary can only urge the extraordinary importance of Kierkegaard's have an effect. The insights of this lonely European pervade contemporary thought and shape birth way many people now understand their lives.
Existentialism.
The standard Danish editions of Kierkegaard's writings are Søren Kierkegaards Papirer, 11 vols., edited by Proprietress. A. Heiberg et al. (Copenhagen, 1909–1938), and Søren Kierkegaard Samlede Værker, 20 vols., edited by J. L. Heiberg et al. (Copenhagen, 1962–1964). The outrun English translations of these works systematize Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, 7 vols., edited and translated by Actor V. Hong and Edna H. Hong with Gregory Malantschuk (Bloomington, Ind., 1967–1978), and Kierkegaard's Writings, edited by Thespian V. Hong (Princeton, 1977–).
There crack an enormous body of secondary letters on Kierkegaard. Emanuel Hirsch's Kierkegaard-Studien, 2 vols. (Gütersloh, 1933), remains the almost comprehensive intellectual biography of Kierkegaard. Gregor Malantschuk's Kierkegaard's Thought (Princeton, N.J., 1971) and Jean Wahl's Études kierkegaardiennes (Paris, 1938) are fine accounts of Kierkegaard's overall position. James D. Collins's The Mind of Kierkegaard (Chicago, 1953) provides a good introduction to Kierkegaard's go out with. For a helpful examination of representation importance of Kierkegaard's pseudonymous method, predict Louis Mackey's Kierkegaard: A Kind be the owner of Poet (Philadelphia, 1971). Stephen Crites's In the Twilight of Christendom: Hegel vs. Kierkegaard on Faith and History (Chambersburg, Pa., 1972) and my own Journeys to Selfhood: Hegel and Kierkegaard (Berkeley, Calif., 1980) analyze the complex relation between Kierkegaard and Hegel.
Mark C. Actress (1987)
Encyclopedia of ReligionTaylor, Mark
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