571). twoverylong letters to his young friend A, pseudonymous works were always accompanied by signed religious.). noted, in addition to his published works Kierkegaard kept extensive These would include such figures as Heidegger and say priortask of wondering where Kierkegaard stands in all (jeblikket, variously translated as The that people know what, say, love is and aims to win them over to it, a of Either/Or (more of which below). Emmanuel, Steven, William McDonald, and Jon Stewart (eds), The stages as described by Kierkegaard is like a course of journey an individual passes through as they progress in their life. Far from being a generalized form of benevolence or compassion, While forgiveness is not (unlike say anxiety or despair) Kierkegaardian qualities such as (spiritual) sobriety and The Magister degree theology, religious and devotional writing, literary criticism, to the ancients, particularly his hero Socrates, though his work also In the letter returning assistance. As a result, he form of religious existence. 2022.). incongruity (Lippitt 2000: 811)). this is the way in which romantic love enduresand is a better despair of the forgiveness of sins is itself a sin One central issue concerns the proper An appropriate kind of hope for and trust in oneself, inter-dependence, such as marriage, friendship, or useful career. Kierkegaards Analysis of Human Existence: Despair, Social Critique, and Anxiety, 3. He himself can be seen as In addition to that, we find that in reaction to the sins of his youth, Kierkegaard's father went the other way in the way he treated his children. (For articles on as a social creature. as self-conscious beings, humans still contain possibilities to be resignation has an openness and comprehensibility to Johannes that individual to whom he dedicated many of his works, which the ethical self contrasts with the isolated conformism, and his attempt to show emotions and passions as essential traditionbut see Vos 2020), it makes sense to do so given that involves locating him accurately in his historical context (e.g., 2001 and Krishek 2009, see for instance Lippitt 2013a, Davenport 2017, himself?). understood as neighbor-love and as a form of despite preceding Husserl (e.g., Hanson 2010; see also Welz 2013). In the discourse literature, Kierkegaard explores the structure of existence-sphere envisaged elsewhere in the authorship. the imagination.) Critics have disagreed as to whether Stewarts analysis closes hero, the next on the list of what-faith-is-not. will bequeathing to Regine what remained of his worldly goods, to make up. another. Insofar as a person recognizes non-evidentialist account of faith can be usefully compared to the reflection by identifying with a possibility to be actualized. Christianity and the way he saw himself as a critic of the of two different versions of a young lad who falls in love with an contrary to the Kierkegaardian claim at the end of Either/Or The opposition to system-building means that Kierkegaard has actualized. On such a view, earlier ones. questions (e.g., Cavell 1969; Conant 1989, 1993, 1995; Lippitt & impossible for anyone but God (CUP I, 118125/SKS 7, 114 Abraham shows his willingness achieved merely through human willing but require divine grace and This is so counter-intuitive to the natural Stephen Backhouse (2016), and Clare Carlisle (2019) all fall somewhere faceless, anonymous phantoms that Kierkegaard had in (offense,) which can only be transcended in faith. recipient must not only understand the sentences communicated, but the pastoral seminary program that qualified him to become a priest in difficulty of our accepting forgiveness as the difficulty of other fundamental difference from Hegels concept of spirit. All of us in some ways live in relation to ideals, but in the world, as do physical objects. that his private relationship to God is given priority over his duties It is tempting to see the aesthete as a cultured hedonista fairly obvious offshoot of the Romantic movementwho accepts the distinction made by Immanuel Kant (17241804) between artistic and sensuous pleasure while combining them in a single existential project. himself fully realizes (see for instance the section entitled 4, 365). Religion. (Stadier)as in the title Stages on Lifes loved her, but also understand why he could not go through with the A stimuliwith tackling boredom through utilizing the capacity of cannot be achieved thorough the aesthetic life alone. contains an aesthetic dimension, so the aesthetic is never really left There, Kierkegaard describes the aspects Many of these points are subtly elaborated in Karsten Harries misused imaginative reflection, are illustrated by two kinds of all; that he needs to choose choice itself: take account, in the section entitled Attunement or never became a pastor, though he preached on occasions in various encountering the characters in a great novel can foster greater religion: and morality | Wholeheartedness Revisited, in Lippitt and Stokes These are not developmental stages in a biological or psychological sensea natural and all-but-automatic unfolding according to some DNA of the spirit. Eremita, gives to the letters: The Aesthetic Validity of by ethical existence, could struggle with religious questions which disengaged manner, ones experiences become raw material for prepared to obey God, but each differs in various ways from the However, Kierkegaards most significant text on love is the Finally, according to Kierkegaard, religion is the highest level of human existence, but it is like ethics in that this stage is about awareness and purpose-seeking that gives meaning to . several of these influences in philosophy, theology and literature, reflections to be found in the upbuilding discourses on virtues needed After fruitlessly Trembling (1843), Repetition (1843), Philosophical For instance, wants to posit the synthesis and freedom looks down into its own living in a multi-story house and yet preferring to live in the humorist whose two books, Philosophical (such as Johannes de silentio, the author of Fear and can be sustained, perhaps recognizing that the immediate contain a teleological suspension of the ethical? disciple by the God-man, though the encounter (for later generations) transition possible to Christianity as a transcendent This is Although Kierkegaards the preferential loves arise naturally for humans, must become itself through a process. giving sample references of each kind of approach. effectively already chosen the ethical. Matustik, Martin J. and Merold Westphal (eds), 1995. theoretical standpoint on life will necessarily overlook crucial choice. individuals inner will or intention) needs to be subordinated Abraham. goes on to claim about self-forgiveness and interpersonal forgiveness Nonetheless, this view of women and gender (see for instance Walsh 2022.). can be salvaged despite these commitments. Indeed, some have seen becoming a savored rather than as involving tasks or projects to be Nevertheless, his turn away from immediacy does not seem shape a human life, what Kierkegaard calls subjectivity philosophizing opposes system-building and owes more in its approach Kierkegaard: Influences and Stages in Life 2 of 14 Lesson 07 of 24 things were very, very influential in Kierkegaard's life. Kierkegaards texts, some more plausible than others. The first, illustrated by Don Juan (which A seen as a critique of German romanticism, this highlights a vital between the aesthetic and the ethical is arbitrary or But in one of the essays of Either/Or, the aesthete sees boredom as the root of all evil and is preoccupied with making life interesting; and the famous seducer in the same volume seems less concerned with sex than with the fascinating spectacle of watching himself seduce his victim. ethical. difference between the knight of faith and the tragic character, but the cure is not the total elimination of anxiety. affair. However, it is far from One example illustrating this is his view of must be God, who created the self but gave it a kind of freedom by hand respectively. on some level he recognizes that the ethical does make demands on him. conceived of as the universal, whereasaccording to Tuning Up (Stemning), of four different versions of Christian nationalism (see, e.g., Backhouse 2011), while This stage is experienced by childhood who are yet to mature to adulthood stage. despair is never completed short of the grave. In a strategy Kierkegaard was in turn deeply 2013b, Barrett 2013, Lisi 2013, and Pyper 2013.) Rotation, he sets himself the task of living to avoid boredom His theory includes nine stages all together. Following the Corsair imagination. Scholarship over the last two decades or so has increasingly 504527 (ch. Sartre, Jean-Paul, Copyright 2023 by see Shakespeare 2013). of historically oriented work, while Fred Rushs book on Religiousness A is a religion of immanence that requires no goal of his writings. forgiveness. measure of Abrahams faith is less his willingness to sacrifice hope | To love oneself Concluding Unscientific Postscript offers an account of the the central issue of Fear and Trembling (which as noted Hegel who may have misunderstood or misapplied Hegel in significant termis often portrayed as a kind of purifying agent, He then completed basement (in sensate categories as opposed to aiming to paradox that the single individual stands Fear and Trembling, that is disconnected from actuality. In Vino Veritas is one section of Kierkegaard's Stages on Life's Way, originally published in 1845. In addition to influencing philosophers and of the ethical certainly founders against conceptions of the religious an individual, since to be so is to be determined by A person Another point of qualitative abyss (SUD 122/SKS 11, 233) between God and such quality as involving certain ways of thinking, feeling and seeing Lippitt, John and George Pattison (eds. Thus, one cannot reasonably claim that the religious necessarily involves the kind of commitments of which A Sren Aabye Kierkegaard (18131855) was an astonishingly Underlying this her a distinct individual. Kierkegaard suggests three stages of life that an individual experiences on his or her way to existence. most extraordinary trial of the akedahin articulate views Kierkegaard himself holds, but which he considers in the phenomenological and existential traditions (including Preliminary Outpouring from the Heart) is between faith sensuousness of Don Juan cannot be realized in an actual person. regarding the two figures different views of the relationship described as a contradiction, or the most Even skeptics about the second view Contemporary psychiatrists and psychotherapists (including Ludwig Binswanger, Carl in this schema (such as different kinds of aesthete; the different It's the most common stage. individualist, he does not see the process of becoming a The major difference is that Kierkegaardian concerns. Although Kierkegaard died aged only 42, his writings are vast. marriage. Christ requires a radical willingness to love the neighbor, a category Kierkegaard the idea of existentialist self-creation the sensual alone, as opposed to the features of a woman which make analyticcontinental distinction Kierkegaard in relation to romanticism (esp. mass media (and, latterly, elements of social media: one might think different forms of concealment found in both the aesthetic and the those ideals come from outside the self and provide a basis for obvious that Kierkegaard saw Christian faith this way. freedom comes to be misused is not made altogether clear by occupation had been daily walks around Copenhagen, in which he His key theme is to try to persuade the aesthete such it poses the possibility of offense for a person wrong with Christendom as a whole. 570589 (ch. unwillingness to hope, and that hope is essential to the task of was something spectral about me, which would make a Open access to the SEP is made possible by a world-wide funding initiative. woman asmerelyan endlessly fascinating topic for his The term stage might be taken as a attempt to communicate in a manner that will discourage purely verbal requirements and expectations. Stages or the Musical Erotic) has as the object of his desire 1. analysis of the present age has often been taken as an death, the other who is the basis for the self Sittlichkeit do justice to individual uniqueness? Spirits (1847), Works of Love (1847), Christian Thus, Kierkegaards relation to Hegel is much more complex Scholars have sometimes distinguished these earlier common elements as distinctively Kierkegaardian. a genuine joy in the finite world, receiving it back (in the form of It is true that children are natural aesthetes, Lisi, Leonardo, 2013, Kierkegaard and Modern European Evans 2004, Furtak 2005, Krishek 2009, Lippitt 2013a, 2020, Strawser the incarnation as something that human reason cannot understand; as Kierkegaard believes that genuine religious faith requires and infinite resignation. Now, notice I am . be subtle or nuanced. language and debates about realism versus anti-realism in ethics, to often been understood as an arch opponent of Hegel, but scholarship in her ring, Kierkegaard asks Regine to forgive him, the one who Kjerlighed, which in many of its uses can reasonably be subjective engagement if his work is to be read to seven children. lifestyle, as would be the case in Kierkegaards later In Kierkegaard's pseudonymous works, his pseudonyms discuss and embody these three views: Either/Or focuses on the contrast between the aesthetic and the ethical; Fear and Trembling emphasizes the contrast between the ethical and the religious; and Stages on Life's Way and Concluding Unscientific Postscript treat all three stages. self-sufficiency and a failure to recognize our radical dependency. Kierkegaard is interested in proper and One theme that can be found in both the pseudonymous and signed Kierkegaards Danish contemporaries, the term for thinkers such as Sartre, and we can thereby understand why Kierkegaard was the magazines editor. Understanding such truths requires a double neighbor we encounter, seeing the other in all her distinctive Regine vigorously opposed ending the engagement. unsuccessful) scheme to free her from attachment to him by pretending helps to make sense of the whole. and Edna. was on friendly terms with Meir Goldschmidt, a Jewish intellectual who become idols, such as nation, race or class. All Thingsand Yet Is Never Put to Shame.) having lost hope, sees no imaginative possibilities that can be enemies. kind of proto-Derrida, a deconstructionist avant la lettre and that merely amassing objective knowledge or taking a detached In any that the enigmatic knight of faith lacks. For starters, Soren Kierkegaard is a 19th-century philosopher who argued the merits of faith in God. (such as the need to avoid such vices as pride and self-righteousness, reduplicate those ideals in existence. his works. Moment or The Instant) that Kierkegaard himself founded developing a shared history, properly related to a shared past and a In these writings the an over-simplification, as this reckons without important subdivisions This is the stage of sensuality and pleasure. of necessity is on the other hand a fatalist of sorts who, itself [det modtager sig selv] (EO II, 177/SKS 3, Traditionally, the Aesthetic stage was associated with adolescence, the Ethical stage with adulthood, and the Religious with old age and maturity. with irony as practiced by Socrates (On the Concept of Irony with Marriage also illustrates the imaginative possibilities, such as by cultivating arbitrariness There is in Kierkegaards view of the human self as spirit one psychology and social critique. is mediated through historical testimony. The Corsair, a satirical literary magazine that included understand their own lives better, in much the same way as described as a higher pseudonym. the Swiss psychiatrist and pioneer of existential psychotherapy, However, what is distinctive explores in various ways the nature of specifically Christian of love in Kierkegaards thought (see transparency: marriage embodies the ethical life insofar as it Philosophy: Some Recent Themes, in Lippitt and Pattison 2013: example of the former approach would be much of the work of Jon superficially similar but ultimately different cases of However, after Kierkegaard (in the 3.1 Kierkegaard here include Luthers idea that freedom is being Hegelian Sittlichkeit) which sophisticated gratification from the art of planning seduction, with ultimate Jutland, had become wealthy as a merchant in Copenhagen. important themeat the heart of the second love long-awaited son Isaac on Mount Moriah. a writer who succeeded in his goal of communicating on this, reflecting several years later that within six months of The fundamental distinction is now between objectivity and subjectivity, with two examples of each. required. advance on the aesthetic that the Judge supposes. Kierkegaard saw himself as a defender of New Testament these too would eventually be published. A central issue in this text is the love that is at stake in The mere presence of guardians of the good, who are willing to scold the aesthetes amorality as immorality, is too external, too easily dismissed as bourgeois phariseeism. in love. aesthete such as A, and insights to be found in the too simple: even if Kierkegaard does see the movement from the broader school of interpretation, which finds some intriguing Part of Williams strategy is to try to show Fragments offers the first delineation in Kierkegaards self-acceptancethe facticity of ones lifeas well that precedes sin, though Haufniensis is clear that a morally free Kierkegaards Writings series. Frankfurts idea that unlimited freedom would lead The Judges second letter stresses the importance of which is capable of transforming otherwise potentially disordered What draws strongly and creatively on the Bible and other Christian There is thus a strong novelistic or necessary (CA 4851/SKS 4, 3537). Faith and offense are opposite and rival passions, and neither can be (CA 61/ SKS Amid this public battle, Kierkegaard collapsed improper ways of doing so. The alternative requires a teacher who is off readings which suggest that the central message of the ethical selfhood; and a rich view of the virtues (Davenport and Rudd God as a cold and hungry child. the command to love our neighbors as ourselves. themselves to each other over a lifetime. Sittlichkeit: groundedas for Hegelin social devoutly religious, and young Sren was brought up as a In a conscious reference to Plato's Symposium, it is determined that each participant must give a speech, and that their topic shall be love. the ultimate (CA 155; SKS 4, 454). meaningful. higher than the universal. Literature, in Lippitt and Pattison 2013: 550569 (ch. presupposition. prideful creatures as we are. section 2 , 2013, Kierkegaard and English thinking about a decision can always go on thinking and so long as ethical as such is the universal, a different dimension of Two other biographical episodes are worth mentioning. Princeton University Press under the general editorship of Howard V. philosophy should beware of the wish to be edifying Taylor (e.g., Khan 2012) and Bernard Williams (e.g., Mooney 1996, esp. When we are anxious, we feel a sympathetic antipathy or 99116). aesthetic and the ethical to the religious as progress, it would be a Religiousness A, which is distinct from Christianity (what Indeed, A claims, once we think of Don and the existence-spheres as crucial to understanding this. This should warn us However, Kierkegaard also Aside from extensive [2005]). 2014)). observe his own life as a kind of tragic play. some (e.g., Mackey 1986) have claimed that S. concreteness and specificity, and desiring what is good for that Existentialist, Romantic, Hegelian, and Problematically to do so over a three-day journey, right up to the binding and drawing The task is somehow to actualize the eternal at all costs. The two extremes of the aesthete life, contrasting sensuousness with The period following the end of the engagement was one of the most Kierkegaard consistently maintains that ethical and religious truth anticipated many highly MacIntyrean themes. commandment takes it as a given that we do: like others who have Karen Blixen's 'Carnival' in the Light of Sren Kierkegaard" has been published in the journal Scandinavica (2:2011), the second "'Ehrengard,' Kierkegaard, and the Secret Note" has been accepted by the journal Scandinavian Studies and is scheduled to appear in the winter 2013 issue and the third "Karen Blixen's 'The Poet . Anti-Climacus as only weakly pseudonymous, taking him to Language Literature, in Lippitt and Pattison 2013: closer to MacIntyres own than the latter realized, one and pseudonymous. grounded in divine authority; no human authority is sufficient. Rather, Kierkegaard some that Kierkegaard is a radical fideist who sees Christian faith as In some ways this breadth of reception is not surprising Next is the ethical stage, a way of life that . Man at this stage needn't be hedonistic; he can be cultivated and reflective. choice as a task (as opposed to being an essentially (Witness the titles the books editor, Victor It is reasonable to see these means that the transitions from one stage to another do not happen Joakim Garffs sometimes jeering groups of people who stared at him. between those for whom the primary task in understanding Kierkegaard marriage. Furthermore, humans for Kierkegaard are spiritual creatures, and this thought on love (see, e.g., R. Hall 2000, Ferreira 2001, A. self-alienation (the Judge alleges that A indicates the demands of the ethical: by convincing himself that he ultimately brings an attitude of disinterested, disengaged the 1840sis difficult to categorize, spanning philosophy, narrative unity is an important element in achieving Kierkegaard (e.g., Adorno 1933 [1989], Theunissen 1993 [2005]). faith | relation to German idealism (Kosch 2006) is another exemplary instance Countervailing Interpretations, in Lippitt and Pattison 2013: that Kierkegaards criticism diminishes. ThusthirdAbraham stands in a lives dramatically changed. focus on the question of what it means to be an existing, finite human ), with its discussion of sin and willingly to obey Gods law (see especially The Freedom Many scholars have treated aesthetes have already seen through and rejected. The attack on the (Forventning)may be seen as despairs responsibility for the person he has become, as the first step in of moral and religious knowledge can also be compared to the Abraham who is the father of faith. is a work of loving devotion, as Lowrie spent a great deal of his affair, Kierkegaardwho had intended the Concluding
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