Kierkegaard on Faith and the Self


Book Description

Evans makes a strong case that Kierkegaard has something crucial to say to the Christian church as a philosopher and something equally crucial to say to the philosophical world as a Christian believer.--Robert L. Perkins, Stetson University and Editor, International Kierkegaard Commentary "Prespectives in Religious Studies"




Kierkegaardian Essays


Book Description

Søren Kierkegaard argued that the most essential truths come to light by asking "How...?" This innovative collection of essays by leading scholars focuses on this questioning "How?", asking how we should relate to ourselves, to others, and to God; how we should be in the world; how we can become human. The result is a searching, original colloquium on what it means to be Kierkegaardian in the 21st century. The adjective "Kierkegaardian" names many possibilities: ways of philosophizing, choosing, loving, looking, listening, reading, writing, teaching, making art, praying, going to church – or not going to church. "How" gestures to subjectivity, one of Kierkegaard’s most fundamental philosophical categories, while "What" signals an objectifying line of thought. The authors of these essays suggest that the crucial Kierkegaardian question is not what we are and ought to do, but how we can remain true to the finitude, passivity, and ambiguity of human existence. While this Kierkegaardian "how" is often acknowledged by scholars, it is rarely thematized directly. Attending to it elicits new kinds of argument and reflection. Kierkegaardian Essays proposes a fresh approach to Kierkegaard, and is essential reading for experts and students alike.




Kierkegaard After MacIntyre


Book Description

In his extraordinarily influential book on ethics, After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre maintained that Kierkegaard's notion of "choosing" to interpret one's choices in ethical terms implies an arbitrary and irrational leap. MacIntyre's critique of Kierkegaard has become the focal point for several new interpretations of Kierkegaard that seek to answer MacIntyre. Kierkegaard After MacIntyre brings together both new and already published articles in this vein, with a new reply by Professor MacIntyre. Kierkegaard After MacIntyre reflects the emergence of a new consensus in Kierkegaard scholarship. This consensus is strongly anti-irrationalist and contemporary neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics, clarifying their common ground as well as their differences. In responding to MacIntyre's 'irrationalist' objection, the authors clarify the sense in which Kierkegaard's own conception of freedom is teleological and suggest that his understanding of the development of ethical personality involves a quest for narrative unity, a commitment to practices involving social values, and a self-understanding conditioned by historical reality—all of which are also central themes in MacIntyre's work on virtue ethics. Despite MacIntyre's diagnosis of Kierkegaard's existential approach to ethics as unsuccessful, some of Kierkegaard's insights may support MacIntyre's own theses. "Kierkegaard After MacIntyre is an outstanding book which brings Kierkegaard into direct conversation with one of the most important contemporary philosophers. The conversation contains both lively disagreements and illuminating analyses, all focused on issues of fundamental importance for human life." —C. Stephen Evans, Calvin College ". . . this wonderfully edifying collection of essays." —Timothy P. Jackson, Emory University "In addressing MacIntyre's charge that for Kierkegaard the adoption of the ethical can only be a 'cirterionless choice,' this stimulating set of essays by well-known Kierkegaard scholars provides a welcome addition to the literature on Kierkegaardian ethics. Kierkegaard After MacIntyre provides a valuable exploration of the role of reasoning, will, and passion in moral life, as well as of the relation between aesthetic and ethical dimensions of life." —M. Jamie Ferreira, University of Virginia




The Joy of Kierkegaard


Book Description

Kierkegaard has often been regarded as a gloomy thinker yet, as an evangelist, his aim was to discover the joy of the truth of Christianity. Both Kierkegaard's belief and his doubt in his own work were the result of his attempt to comprehend the exceptional experiences of biblical characters and to examine what he found most puzzling or offensive. 'The Joy of Kierkegaard' brings together the writings of one of the most influential of Kierkegaard scholars. These essays argue that Kierkegaard's most original thought arises from his struggle with biblical passages and that joy underpins his profound exploration of spiritual alienation.




The Existentialists


Book Description

This volume brings together for the first time some of the most helpful and insightful essays on the four most influential and discussed philosophers in the history of existentialism: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre. The contributors write on such topics as Kierkegaard's knight of faith and his diagnosis of the 'present age;' Nietzsche's view of morality and self-creation; Heidegger's accounts of worldhood and authenticity; and Sartre's ontology, ethics, and conception of the cogito. The essays have been selected for their higher level of scholarship and for their ability to illuminate various aspects of their subject's work. The volume is enhanced by the editor's introduction and extensive bibliography to aid further study.







Kierkegaard, Literature, and the Arts


Book Description

In this volume fifteen eminent scholars illuminate the broad and often underappreciated variety of the nineteenth‐century Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard’s engagements with literature and the arts. The essays in Kierkegaard, Literature, and the Arts, contextualized with an insightful introduction by Eric Ziolkowski, explore Kierkegaard’s relationship to literature (poetry, prose, and storytelling), the performing arts (theater, music, opera, and dance), and the visual arts, including film. The collection is rounded out with a comparative section that considers Kierkegaard in juxtaposition with a romantic poet (William Blake), a modern composer (Arnold Schoenberg), and a contemporary singer‐songwriter (Bob Dylan). Kierkegaard was as much an aesthetic thinker as a philosopher, and his philosophical writings are complemented by his literary and music criticism. Kierkegaard, Literature, and the Arts will offer much of interest to scholars concerned with Kierkegaard as well as teachers, performers, and readers in the various aesthetic fields discussed. CONTRIBUTORS: Christopher B. Barnett, Martijn Boven, Anne Margrete Fiskvik, Joakim Garff, Ronald M. Green, Peder Jothen, Ragni Linnet, Jamie A. Lorentzen, Edward F. Mooney, George Pattison, Nils Holger Petersen, Howard Pickett, Marcia C. Robinson, James Rovira




Philosopher of the Heart


Book Description

Philosopher of the Heart is the groundbreaking biography of renowned existentialist Søren Kierkegaard’s life and creativity, and a searching exploration of how to be a human being in the world. Søren Kierkegaard is one of the most passionate and challenging of all modern philosophers, and is often regarded as the founder of existentialism. Over about a decade in the 1840s and 1850s, writings poured from his pen pursuing the question of existence—how to be a human being in the world?—while exploring the possibilities of Christianity and confronting the failures of its institutional manifestation around him. Much of his creativity sprang from his relationship with the young woman whom he promised to marry, then left to devote himself to writing, a relationship which remained decisive for the rest of his life. He deliberately lived in the swim of human life in Copenhagen, but alone, and died exhausted in 1855 at the age of 42, bequeathing his remarkable writings to his erstwhile fiancée. Clare Carlisle’s innovative and moving biography writes Kierkegaard’s life as far as possible from his own perspective, to convey what it was like actually being this Socrates of Christendom—as he put it, living life forwards yet only understanding it backwards.




The Original Age of Anxiety


Book Description

The book proposes a radically revised understanding of the epoch of the Danish Golden Age by investigating the historical and literary contexts of Søren Kierkegaard’s pioneering thoughts on anxiety.




Kierkegaard's Concept of Faith


Book Description

In this book renowned philosopher Merold Westphal unpacks the writings of nineteenth-century thinker Søren Kierkegaard on biblical, Christian faith and its relation to reason. Across five books — Fear and Trembling, Philosophical Fragments, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Sickness Unto Death, and Practice in Christianity — and three pseudonyms, Kierkegaard sought to articulate a biblical concept of faith by approaching it from a variety of perspectives in relation to one another. Westphal offers a careful textual reading of these major discussions to present an overarching analysis of Kierkegaard’s conception of the true meaning of biblical faith. Though Kierkegaard presents a complex picture of faith through his pseudonyms, Westphal argues that his perspective is a faithful and illuminating one, making claims that are important for philosophy of religion, for theology, and most of all for Christian life as it might be lived by faithful people.