Kierkegaard and political theory: religion, aesthetics, politics and the intervention of the single individual

Abstract

Soren Kierkegaards radical protestant philosophy of the individual -- in which a persons leap of faith is favoured over general ethics -- has become a model for many contemporary political theorists. Thinkers such as Slavoj Zizek and Alain Badiou have drawn on its revolutionary spirit to position truth above the constraints of political systems. In Kierkegaard and Political Theory, contributors from a wide range of disciplines -- including theology, sociology, philosophy, and aesthetics -- examine just how crucial Kierkegaards anti-institutional thinking has been to such efforts and to modernity as a whole. The contributors convincingly position Kierkegaards radical philosophy as the starting point for contemporary political theory. They show how he pioneered a modernity defined as an argument -- an experience -- of the impossibility of rationally comprehending a system of thinking. They show how religious and aesthetic experiences function as a response to this impossibility, how their coherence in politics must always be questioned, especially in historys extreme example: totalitarianism. Engaging this and many other subjects, they provide a compelling new line in Kierkegaard studies that illuminates new contours of our political thought.