Appropriation and Polemics: Karl Jaspers’ Criticism of Kierkegaard’s Concept of Religion

Abstract

Karl Jaspers is widely known as one of the most eminent interpreters of Soren Kierkegaard’s thinking in the early period of German reception. Although his relation to the Danish thinker is often characterized as an uncritical approval, this receptive relationship was in fact rather ambiguous in certain respects. Professor Czako’s essay focuses on Kierkegaard’s notion of religiously motivated ‘world-negation’. This attitude is certainly present in the late thinking of Kierkegaard and Jaspers criticized it sharply. Professor Czako argues, however, that this criticism is one-sided and over-simplifies the issue; it is based almost exclusively on the polemical writings of the late period and fails to consider the overall formation and development of Kierkegaard’s concept of religion. He also briefly discusses whether Kierkegaard’s thinking can be adequately dealt with within the framework of a systematic philosophy of religion, as well as in what sense his and Jaspers’ positions represented, in their historical contexts, genuinely new approaches in religious philosophy.