Kierkegaard's Works Research Articles

Anxiety, Hope and Meaning in Times of Ecological Crisis: An Existential-Phenomenological Perspective on Environmental Emotions

AbstractEnvironmental anxiety is often thought of as a psychopathological condition. Our paper aims to challenge this narrow understanding by offering an existential-phenomenological interpretation of environmental anxiety that posits it as an existential attunement with a transformative potential, capable of opening the anxious individual to a hopeful and meaningful outlook on the future. In the first part of the paper, we provide a conceptual analysis of environmental anxiety, drawing on current interdisciplinary taxonomies of environmental emotions as well as on existential-phenomenological definitions of anxiety. We then proceed to define the two key existential characteristics of environmental anxiety, firstly (i) its ability to reframe the aesthetic perception of nature, and secondly (ii) its impact on the subjective constitution of meaning. In the second part of the paper, drawing on the work of Kierkegaard and contemporary ecopsychological and ecotheological thinkers, a distinction is made between a naïve and a radical form of environmental hope. It is argued that while the former type of hope leads to inactivity, the latter is capable of motivating individuals to pro-environmental action.

Типологические параллели в эстетике Ивана Гончарова и Сёрена Кьеркегора

The aim of the study is to identify typological parallels in the creative work and aesthetic views of I. A. Goncharov and S. Kierkegaard. The paper describes the plot situation of seduction and the further development of this situation in Kierkegaard’s post-Romantic works “Shadowgraphs”, “The Unhappiest One” and in Goncharov’s novel “trilogy”. The role of female characters in the works of Kierkegaard and Goncharov was revealed, as wells as their place in the poetics of post-Romanticism, shifting the author’s interest from seducer characters to the inner world of their “victims”. A similar embodiment of religious ideas was found to be among the common features in the aesthetics of the authors under consideration (the text “The Immediate Stages of the Erotic, or Musical Erotic” is the most representative one in Kierkegaard’s creative work). The scientific originality of the study lies in the identified and described typological parallels in the aesthetics and worldview of the authors under consideration. As a result of the study, it was shown that the similarities in the works by Goncharov and Kierkegaard are due to the presence of typological parallels in their writings in the context of the post-Romantic paradigm. The paper proposed a term for the heroine of the plot situation of seduction, i.e., “a victim of seduction”, showed her typological features based on the essay “The Unhappiest One” by Kierkegaard. The researchers raised the question about the artistic interpretation of Christianity in the creative work of the authors in question.

The Chattering Mind: A Conceptual History of Everyday Talk by Samuel McCormick

Reviewed by: The Chattering Mind: A Conceptual History of Everyday Talk by Samuel McCormick Daniel M. Gross (bio) Samuel McCormick, The Chattering Mind: A Conceptual History of Everyday Talk. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2020. 326 pp. ISBN: 978-0-226-67763-7. Implicitly McCormick's book addresses a question that is urgent in the US academic context, where current rhetoric and communication practices are in fact much studied: Why study history at all? At best, so the skeptic might offer, historical work provides some interesting background to the pressing problems of today. At worst, historical work exacerbates some of those same problems around rhetorical power by simply by spending too much time on received traditions. (I've long admired Malea Powell's sly and self-consuming conference paper title "Aristotle Is Not My Father.") At the same time a set of distinct answers to this history question has been brewing at The University of Chicago Press, thanks in large part to the late editor extraordinaire Douglas Mitchell, who had himself learned about rhetoric from the late century Chicago scene, and Richard McKeon in particular. The series Mitchell started at Chicago "Rhetoric and Communication" has published different types of concept-oriented histories by scholars including Nancy Struever, John Durham Peters, Debra Hawhee, David Marshall, and now Samuel McCormick. Taken together, this group of scholars shows how rhetoric and communication can't be studied adequately without some strong historical version of conceptual work, because that is how the very [End Page 90] things we wish to study appear as such in the first place. In what follows I discuss how McCormick's book makes the case elegantly. First of all, why for McCormick "conceptual history," especially as it would apply to "everyday talk" counterintuitively? Shouldn't we study everyday talk by recording and coding ordinary speakers in face-to-face settings? No doubt, replies McCormick, such grounded study of the first type gets at something sociological (2). But how can we study the very concept of everyday talk as it has shifted significantly online for instance, showing up as "chat," which can't be the same thing? For that sort of study, historical work on the concept is essential, because that is the only way we know what our object of study is in the first place. It is not "conversation," which McCormick calls an interpersonal modality, that achieved its highest art and greatest conceptual clarity in the Enlightenment. At the same time, it is not public sphere discourse legitimated by (again Enlightenment) institutions of oratory and journalism (291). Instead, McCormick argues with a nod to paradox, "everyday talk" is a distinct concept that rises with modernity and its industrializing momentum (4), what Kierkegaard first identifies as snak. This is where McCormick must demonstrate—and he does so beautifully—why we turn to Kierkegaard at this point of inquiry, and not only to his rich archive of wagging tongues, noise and nonsense, cliché and bombast, wordplay and witticism, tangent, reprise, gossip, gimcrack, diversion, duplicity, tedious anecdote, absurd abstraction, abrupt interjection, and endless logorrhea (44). Methodologically, McCormick's powerful point is that snak is the concept that names this verbal efflorescence, and Kierkegaard's work is where the concept appears in its sharpest and critical form. If we studied for instance only Gert Westephaler's fictional talk, or the philosophical talk of Hegel's Danish parrots (44), we would lose track of the concept snak altogether, and thus we would not really understand what we were talking about ourselves: an irony that McCormick has to dance with throughout this substantial section steeped in Kierkegaard's first language Danish, and in his vast corpus that we no longer know how to handle academically. One outstanding virtue of McCormick's book is that it will teach a new generation of scholars what Kierkegaard did besides anticipate existentialism. The next section of the book, a book that runs 326 pages in total, picks up the work of Martin Heidegger, who was himself a keen reader of Kierkegaard. Now focusing on the 1920s, which were for Heidegger both a period of tremendous intellectual ferment that includes his 1924 lecture course on Aristotle's Rhetoric and...

Caught on the Hop: Politico-philosophical Writing of the ‘Leap’

This essay reads Derrida’s Geschlecht III: Sex, Race, Nation, Humanity in the context of the philosophical and political legacies associated with the motif of leaping. Surveying the philosophical and textual ‘politics’ of this figure of the leap in the work of Kierkegaard, Hegel, Marx, Freud, Heidegger and others, the essay tracks its connection to the question of philosophical nationalism (and associated images of place, ground and gathering) explored by Derrida in Geschlecht III, speculating on the ambivalent resonances that ‘leap’ across the political spectrum.

The „Book of the Judge”. On the Importance of Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers

Aim. Our main purpose is to explain the connection between the work and the intimate existence of Søren Kierkegaard, and how freedom operates in both of them. Concept. The article makes visible new writing ways that open from within Kierkegaard's work. Analytical reading of Kierkegaard's Journals and the comparative interpretation of the rest of Kierkegaard's work in terms of communicative styles and explains the genesis and location and type of communication of the Journals within the framework of the Kierkegaardian Corpus. Results. Kierkegaard’s philosophy is present and indicates the extremely personal place in which the author possessed its work. Conclusions. We conclude the unavoidable importance of the Journals for the interpretation of Kierkegaard's work. The reason why the Journals are for Kierkegaard's „The Book of the Judge” lies in the direct, personal and intimate communication of its writing. Existence as free and self-conscious action constitutes the core of the article. On it rests the personal development of the individual and the incommensurable value of his life and work.

The Debate as a Mono-Dialogue – Comments on the Question of Philosophical Discourse

It is almost a trite to say that in philosophy, questions matter most of all. Every question begets another question. Its questions are more essential than its answers as Jaspers say. Plato writes about a very important principle in his famous Seventh Letter, namely, the purpose of a debate. The idea of unwritten doctrine has been meaningful for centuries: The ceaseless work referred to here is nothing other than ceaseless discourse, or ceaseless debate. This debate has been interpreted in many ways in philosophy. This lecture analyses the forms of indirect and direct communication (based on the Sophists) and the essence of revelation (Schelling), and concludes that a new form of communication, which we might call mono-dialogue, emerged in the 19th century. Primarily found in the works of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, it was not called this way by these authors. Keywords: dialogue, mono-dialogue, revelation, sophists, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard

“That is Giving a Banquet”: Neighbor‐Love as Spiritualization of Romantic Loves in Works of Love

ABSTRACTRecent readings of Kierkegaard's Works of Love have admirably shown how his apparent reservations about romantic love can be deflected on his own terms by imbuing them with some of the moral rigor of neighbor‐love. This paper argues however that these readings must be complemented by the reverse argument, which would show how some of the qualities of romantic loves are in fact preserved in neighbor‐love. By drawing on his dialectics of sensate love, psychical love, spiritual love, and self‐love, I show how Kierkegaard believes neighbor‐love should be impartial and yet exhibit some of the character of preferential romantic loves.

Being an Authentic Christian: an Analysis Based on The Philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard

Kierkegaard emphasis the importance of each individual being an authentic person. In his works, he gives an overview and direction to become an authentic person. Realizing whether someone authentically is not easy. Nowadays, I see many Christians who do not really live their lives as a Christian. The focus of this research is to present Kierkegaard's view on the criteria of an authentic Christian. The method used is a critical reading analysis of Kierkegaard's works (particularly Purity of Heart and The Sickness unto Death), previous research studies, observations, and interviews with several individuals. The author finds six criteria about authentic Christian individuals, namely: (1) Living in repentance, (2) Personal relationship with God, (3) Fear of God, (4) Willingness to suffer, (5) Being a loving person, and (6) Living in silence.

The Tale of Two Seducers: Existential Entrapment in the Works of Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky

Abstract The present study poses a simple question, namely, what are the specific forces that might at times hinder rather than advance individual moral development? To answer this inquiry, I will investigate the writings of Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky, examining the two aesthetic protagonists found in their works—Johannes the Seducer and Dmitri Karamazov. I will utilise the Kierkegaardian framework of the three existential stages to illustrate that it is an over-reliance on gratification, coupled with an instrumental approach towards beings that not only prevents these two aesthetes from behaving morally, but also from even recognising the ethical perspective as a viable existential position.

Embracing Paradox: Maimonides and Kierkegaard on Divine Transcendence and Immanence

Negotiating the relation between divine transcendence and divine immanence lies at the heart of Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed and of Kierkegaard's philosophical works. The purpose of the paper is to explore the manners in which they do so. I argue that despite various differences between them, both engage with the tension between divine transcendence and immanence by turning away from objectivity to subjectivity and, moreover, by placing paradox, riddle and secret at the heart of their philosophical works. In other words, I argue that they do not attempt to solve or dissolve the great paradox of God's immanent transcendence but to present it in its most acute forms as the paradox within which the religious life is lived.

The Freedom to Become a Christian: A Kierkegaardian Account of Human Transformation in Relationship with God by Andrew B. Torrance

Reviewed by: The Freedom to Become a Christian: A Kierkegaardian Account of Human Transformation in Relationship with God by Andrew B. Torrance Walter Wietzke The Freedom to Become a Christian: A Kierkegaardian Account of Human Transformation in Relationship with God. By Andrew B. Torrance. London: Bloomsbury Press, 2016. 217 pp. In his book The Point of View for My Work as an Author, Kierkegaard wrote that the central issue of his authorship had been to explain what it meant for a person to become a Christian. This remark has captivated readers ever since, and numerous arguments have been offered for how Kierkegaard understands Christian religious transformation (i.e., conversion), including religious, social, and psychological explanations. It is also the subject of Torrance's book. Torrance argues that, for Kierkegaard, God's assistance is essential for Christian conversion. The book has five chapters. Chapter one is an exposition of the moral and psychological concepts in Kierkegaard's writings relevant to religious conversion. Chapter two elucidates the theme ofxy [End Page 230] reconciliation in Kierkegaard's writings, describing the various parables and metaphors Kierkegaard uses to explain how God brings about salvation for humans. Chapters three and four explain the human side of this process—specifically, the kinds of beliefs and values that facilitate the reception of divine assistance. Chapter five concludes with more discussion of how humans relate to God, as well as some critical analysis of scholarship that minimizes how Kierkegaard understands God's role in conversion. In general, Torrance's analysis is illuminating and innovative. This book is not written for the beginning student of Kierkegaard, but it will be very helpful to those looking for an analytical account of a Christian conversion experience. It also distinguishes itself with a deeper incorporation of Kierkegaard's religious writings into a discussion that usually focuses on his philosophical works. Yet, on this note, an abiding concern of mine has to do with the fact that Kierkegaard's main philosophical positions conflict with some of the dogmatic Christian views expressed in the religious writings, a fact that raises some questions about Torrance's main thesis. For example, Concluding Unscientific Postscript (arguably Kierkegaard's most important philosophical work) treats Christian dogma as a hypothetical issue: if the claims of God's intervention in human history through the person of Jesus Christ are true, then it must be true that Christian doctrine is absurd, paradoxical, and offensive to reason. Christianity is incommensurate with a naturalistic explanation of human nature, and several important claims follow. Crucially, in this view human beings lack the epistemic ability to know whether God really exists, whether Jesus was truly the Son of God, or even if the individual aspiring to become a Christian ever succeeds. Belief in these matters is a matter of faith, not knowledge. If they were objects of our knowledge their status would shift to that of objective, historical facts, and this would invalidate one of the central arguments of the Postscript. That is, once religious beliefs become objective facts, they can no longer support the subjective conditions necessary for religious faith. It is the uncertainty of religious dogma that generates the passion that is the defining characteristic of religious faith. To be sure, Torrance acknowledges all these points in Kierkegaard's work, but [End Page 231] granting them requires having a more nuanced account of God's role in our religious life. The Sickness Unto Death provides an important perspective on this issue. In this work Kierkegaard explains how the concept of sin draws a line between the naturalistic, non-Christian explanations and Christian explanations of human existence. Sin attributes a human being's failure to achieve moral or religious goals to a fundamentally flawed constitution. Kierkegaard is also clear that the concept of sin strictly belongs to Christian religious faith; no secular, purely psychological explanation for how human beings are so constitutionally flawed is possible. The result is that an individual will understand her experience of moral failure differently depending on whether or not she believes in sin. Torrance provides helpful exposition of these issues, but he does not draw out their implications for the subject of conversion. As with belief in sin, once...

Valuing humanity: Kierkegaardian worries about Korsgaardian transcendental arguments

ABSTRACTThis paper draws out from Kierkegaard’s work a distinctive critical perspective on an influential contemporary approach in moral philosophy: namely, Christine Korsgaard’s transcendental argument for the value of humanity. From Kierkegaard’s perspective, we argue, Korsgaard argument goes too far, in attributing absolute value to humanity – but also that she is required to make this claim if her transcendental argument is to work. From a Kierkegaardian perspective, to place this sort of value in humanity is problematic since it threatens to make the relation between individuals too claustrophobic. Finally, we explore the possibility of a rival approach, in which we should view others as ethically significant because they too are related to the kind of ‘third’ which Kierkegaard argues is needed to bring stability to the structure of the self. In this way, we claim, a different and more successful transcendental argument to the value of humanity can be found in the work of Kierkegaard.

Relationality and difference

Søren Kierkegaard's work The Concept of Irony is an ambivalent and subtle analysis of irony with special reference to Socrates. Kierkegaard demonstrates how irony paradoxically makes its own method into an object of irony, a process culminating in a transgression of dialectics resulting in pure negativity. Moreover, irony is only a tool whereby the philosopher approximates the Absolute through indirect communication and explores the limits of language by contrasting it with music. The ultimate goal of this speculative, rhetorical procedure is to open up the aesthetic dimension to the ethico­religious dimension. This involves an emancipation of subjectivity entailing the subject's serious confrontation with existence as an ethically disposed interest, inter­esse, where the individual is in constant dialogue with her/himself. The dialogue in the individual self is propelled by longing, which may be conceived as an intensified mental force containing an erotic and religious core and manifesting the ever­present, immanent difference between self and other. That difference is emblematic of a psychological, moral and epistemological problematic indicating indeterminacy and relationality, the pivots of individual becoming.

Stories of despair: a Kierkegaardian read of suffering and selfhood in survivorship.

A life-threatening illness such as cancer can bring about much existential suffering and a disconnect to self in spite of surviving cancer. In my recent research project, I interviewed 14 long-term cancer survivors on being post cancer. Contrary to common assumptions about long-term survivorship, my interviewees reported grave existential difficulties in finding a firm footing in their sense of self, fostering a variety of stories of despair. This article examines long-term cancer survivors' suffering from the vantage point of selfhood and provides a philosophical interpretation of the reintegration of the self by illuminating their stories of despair through the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard's seminal work The Sickness Unto Death. The participating survivors described how the cancer experience had quaked old perceptions of self, instigating them to question the depth of their self-understanding before the cancer and who they really were. In relating to themselves, they realized the dynamic process of becoming who they are by continuing to balance opposing poles within the self. This act of relating to self revealed the limit of the autonomous self in the creation of selfhood. The article intends to illustrate how a philosophical reading of selfhood and suffering in survivorship can inform medicine and inspire models for follow-up cancer care for long-term survivors.

A Shared Performance: The Age of Innocence and The Shaughraun's Ribbon-Kissing Scene

Abstract The intertextual dialogue between the ribbon-kissing scene included in Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence and Dion Boucicault's two versions of The Shaughraun (as he wrote it and directed it) reveals an underexplored dimension of the relationship between Newland Archer and Ellen Olenska. Drawing on Søren Kierkegaard's work, I argue that the conventions of this intertextual scene frame their mutual performance of an implicit angst confined within the constrained social code of the novel's 1870s New York elite. Boucicault's original play did not include the unspoken moment. However, Boucicault added it to capture his audience's interest. The scene presents the attraction between a respectable Englishman and an outlandish Irish woman, with their separation being a consequence of their duties to others, providing a sense of emotional wavering on the edge of dishonor. After both Newland and Ellen connect their relationship to the scene, they repeatedly model it throughout the novel. The conventions of this scene provide a frame for an emotional experience keyed to their social milieu. From this perspective, Newland's retreat at the novel's end may be part of a shared performance with Ellen necessary to realize in the present the angst that would otherwise be lost to memory and history.

Concrete and Otherworldly: Reading Kierkegaard's Works of Love alongside Hegel's Philosophy of Right

AbstractHere I argue that much of the confusion surrounding the status of material aid to the neighbor in Kierkegaard's Works of Love is cleared up once one sees the text as participating in a movement that has a fundamentally Hegelian substructure: from Moralität in Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits to Sittlichkeit in Works of Love. As might be expected, Kierkegaard takes this Hegelian structure in a very different direction than the Hegel of Philosophy of Right—a direction best described as an Augustinian ethic that is both concrete and otherworldly.

Love as Power and Powerlessness: Kierkegaard and Adorno Revisited

This article defends the ongoing relevance of Adorno's criticism of Kierkegaard's Works of Love, despite the fact that many Kierkegaard scholars dismiss it. To support this claim, the discussion shows how issues at the heart of Adorno's critique resurface in contemporary debates over Kierkegaard's distinction between preferential and non-preferential love. This is particularly evident in Krishek's debate with Ferreira. The article argues that the repair Krishek proposes to Kierkegaard's account falls short of Adorno's insistence on the significance of social context. This issue is drawn out by contrasting Krishek's emphasis on caring compassion with Adorno's preference for concepts such as reconciliation and justice. The discussion subsequently acknowledges that Adorno's own account of subjectivity remains inadequate in ways that recall issues he criticizes in Kierkegaard's philosophy. Potential resources in Adorno's thought are drawn out from some of his aphorisms on the power of love.

Rule‐Following and Rule‐Breaking: Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein

AbstractMy aim in this paper is twofold: to establish that Kierkegaard's so‐called theory of the leap strongly anticipates a line of argument that is central to Wittgenstein's so‐called rule‐following considerations; and to begin to show how Kierkegaard's work has fruitful contributions of its own to make to on‐going discussions about rules and rule‐following. The paper focuses throughout on the question of how, if at all, human rule‐following can be distinguished from behaviour that is merely mechanical or instinctual. I identify a central line of argument in Wittgenstein that problematizes this question by establishing the basis our ability to follow rules in our spontaneous responses. I argue that Kierkegaard not only strongly anticipates this line of argument but also offers a distinctive story about what, at bottom, makes the difference between human rule‐following and behaviour that is merely mechanical or instinctual. In a word, on Kierkegaard's story, what makes the difference is: anxiety.

Kierkegaard on Truth: One or Many?

This paper re-examines Kierkegaard's work with respect to the question whether truth is one or many. I argue that his famous distinction between objective and subjective truth is grounded in a unitary conception of truth as such: truth as self-coincidence. By explaining his use in this context of the term ‘redoubling’ [Fordoblelse], I show how Kierkegaard can intelligibly maintain that truth is neither one nor many, neither a simple unity nor a complex multiplicity. I further show how these points shed much-needed light on the relationship between objective and subjective truth, conceived not as different kinds or species of truth but as different ways in which truth manifests itself as a standard of success across different contexts of inquiry.

The Place of the “Aesthetic” in <em>Zuckerman Unbound:</em> Roth's Conversation with Kierkegaard

Philip Roth's frequent references to other writers create links that expand themes of each novel. intertextual relationships are part of a larger history, which begins to be a universe itself within its own world.One of these worlds, which will be focus of this article, is established through Roth's conversation with Kierkegaard his novel Zuckerman Unbound (1981).1In his introduction to Crisis Life of an Actress and Other Essays on Drama Kierkegaard's translator, Stephen Crites, reminds us of meaning of word aesthetic ancient Greek, which will also be a useful starting point for us as we go deeper into Kierkegaard's and Roth's explorations of term. Aesthetic, in its most comprehensive sense, is derived from verb ... which means literally 'perceive,' 'apprehend by senses,' 'learn,' 'understand,' 'observe' (Kierkegaard, Crisis 21). definition guides us to see how, according to Kierkegaard, each novel we experience what is apprehended by senses and what is perceived most of time by characters so that this experience can be transferred to readers. In addition, novels have atmosphere, musicality, and rhythm, and this is why, Kierkegaard's reading of literature, all novels can be considered aesthetic. importance of such moods, perceptions, and constant observations will later explain why Kierkegaard defines some of his own writings as aesthetic- even if aesthetic his world has multiple significations that are still debated among Kierkegaard scholars today.2The idea of a larger world made by connections between authors and their works and works to which they allude can be linked to what Ross Posnock calls Roth's cosmopolitanism. Posnock explains this epithet when he writes that, as Greek for 'world citizen' [it] is rarely a neutral term and often pejorative because it usually involves a refusal to revere local or national authority and a desire to uphold multiple affiliations (6). In his view, is better understood an international context (3), and he points out: The main effort of [Philip Roth's Rude Truth] is to construct these frames of reference, using them as a resource for literary criticism of fiction, and making vivid Roth's creative engagement with a rich lineage of intellectual history (3). Posnock argues that this cosmopolitanism evades fixed identities (4), a point with which I would agree.Taking lead from Posnock, this essay considers overlapping frames of reference a careful reading of one connection, conversation that undertakes with Kierkegaard Zuckerman Unbound. In so doing, it will reveal the rich lineage of intellectual history carried forward by Kierkegaard and continued by Roth. One of main focuses of Kierkegaard's work is how singularity is created and how one can live with oneself by oneself.3 To achieve this purpose, according to Danish philosopher, one has to be free of a fixed mind, a state of being that seems to achieve via his very conversation with Kierkegaard.However, Roth's bounds can also be seen his books terms of what Pia Masiero, Philip and Zuckerman Books, calls a storyworld. Here she explores possibilities of reading that Roth's novels offer to readers. Consequently, this article focuses on this storyworld and pays particular attention to effect of reading on reader. This ambitious and ambivalent story, which is created both by readers and by Zuckerman, is also an world within itself.As Masiero describes playful relationship that has with Zuckerman, Roth projects onto his favorite alter ego burdens and pleasure of authorship; that is, of actual making of fictional worlds to be engaged and apprehended by an audience (11). Later, she explains that Zuckerman typically mirror[s] his being-crucially-an author whose work revolves around deft blurring of boundaries between what is imagined and what is real through a careful handling of order and presentation of events. …