Philosopher of the Heart

Philosopher of the Heart PDF Author: Clare Carlisle
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374721696
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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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.

Sickness Unto Death

Sickness Unto Death PDF Author: Soren Kierkegaard
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1625585918
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
Man is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation which relates itself to its own self, or it is that in the relation [which accounts for it] that the relation relates itself to its own self; the self is not the relation but [consists in the fact] that the relation relates itself to its own self. Man is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity; in short, it is a synthesis.

The Essential Kierkegaard

The Essential Kierkegaard PDF Author: Søren Kierkegaard
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691019401
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 536

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Book Description
An anthology containing substantial excerpts from the Danish philosopher's major works.

Kierkegaard's Writings IV, Part II

Kierkegaard's Writings IV, Part II PDF Author: Søren Kierkegaard
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400846943
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 537

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Book Description
Søren Kierkegaard, the nineteenth-century Danish philosopher rediscovered in the twentieth century, is a major influence in contemporary philosophy, religion, and literature. He regarded Either/Or as the beginning of his authorship, although he had published two earlier works on Hans Christian Andersen and irony. The pseudonymous volumes of Either/Or are the writings of a young man (I) and of Judge William (II). The ironical young man's papers include a collection of sardonic aphorisms; essays on Mozart, modern drama, and boredom; and "The Seducer's Diary." The seeming miscellany is a reflective presentation of aspects of the "either," the esthetic view of life. Part II is an older friend's "or," the ethical life of integrated, authentic personhood, elaborated in discussions of personal becoming and of marriage. The resolution of the "either/or" is left to the reader, for there is no Part III until the appearance of Stages on Life's Way. The poetic-reflective creations of a master stylist and imaginative impersonator, the two men write in distinctive ways appropriate to their respective positions.

The Prayers of Kierkegaard

The Prayers of Kierkegaard PDF Author: Soren Kierkegaard
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226470573
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Soren Kierkegaard's influence has been felt in many areas of human thought from theology to psychology. Nearly 100 of his prayers are gathered here, illuminating his own life of prayer and speaking to the concerns of Christians today.

Kierkegaard's Writings, VII, Volume 7

Kierkegaard's Writings, VII, Volume 7 PDF Author: Søren Kierkegaard
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 140084696X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
This volume contains a new translation, with a historical introduction by the translators, of two works written under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus. Through Climacus, Kierkegaard contrasts the paradoxes of Christianity with Greek and modern philosophical thinking. In Philosophical Fragments he begins with Greek Platonic philosophy, exploring the implications of venturing beyond the Socratic understanding of truth acquired through recollection to the Christian experience of acquiring truth through grace. Published in 1844 and not originally planned to appear under the pseudonym Climacus, the book varies in tone and substance from the other works so attributed, but it is dialectically related to them, as well as to the other pseudonymous writings. The central issue of Johannes Climacus is doubt. Probably written between November 1842 and April 1843 but unfinished and published only posthumously, this book was described by Kierkegaard as an attack on modern speculative philosophy by "means of the melancholy irony, which did not consist in any single utterance on the part of Johannes Climacus but in his whole life. . . . Johannes does what we are told to do--he actually doubts everything--he suffers through all the pain of doing that, becomes cunning, almost acquires a bad conscience. When he has gone as far in that direction as he can go and wants to come back, he cannot do so. . . . Now he despairs, his life is wasted, his youth is spent in these deliberations. Life does not acquire any meaning for him, and all this is the fault of philosophy." A note by Kierkegaard suggests how he might have finished the work: "Doubt is conquered not by the system but by faith, just as it is faith that has brought doubt into the world!."

Repetition and Philosophical Crumbs

Repetition and Philosophical Crumbs PDF Author: Soren Kierkegaard
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191607509
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 559

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Book Description
'The love of repetition is in truth the only happy love' So says Constantine Constantius on the first page of Kierkegaard's Repetition. Life itself, according to Kierkegaard's pseudonymous narrator, is a repetition, and in the course of this witty, playful work Constantius explores the nature of love and happiness, the passing of time and the importance of moving forward (and backward). The ironically entitled Philosophical Crumbs pursues the investigation of faith and love and their tense relationship with reason. Written only a year apart, these two works complement each other and give the reader a unique insight into the breadth and substance of Kierkegaard's thought. The first reads like a novel and the second like a Platonic dialogue, but both engage, in different ways, the same challenging issues. These are the first translations to convey the literary quality and philosophical precision of the originals. They were not intended, however, for philosophers, but for anyone who feels drawn to the question of the ultimate truth of human existence and the source of human happiness. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Fear and Trembling

Fear and Trembling PDF Author: Soren Kierkegaard
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1625584024
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 142

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Book Description
In our time nobody is content to stop with faith but wants to go further. It would perhaps be rash to ask where these people are going, but it is surely a sign of breeding and culture for me to assume that everybody has faith, for otherwise it would be queer for them to be . . . going further. In those old days it was different, then faith was a task for a whole lifetime, because it was assumed that dexterity in faith is not acquired in a few days or weeks. When the tried oldster drew near to his last hour, having fought the good fight and kept the faith, his heart was still young enough not to have forgotten that fear and trembling which chastened the youth, which the man indeed held in check, but which no man quite outgrows. . . except as he might succeed at the earliest opportunity in going further. Where these revered figures arrived, that is the point where everybody in our day begins to go further.

The Paradoxical Rationality of Søren Kierkegaard

The Paradoxical Rationality of Søren Kierkegaard PDF Author: Richard Phillip McCombs
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253006473
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
Richard McCombs presents Søren Kierkegaard as an author who deliberately pretended to be irrational in many of his pseudonymous writings in order to provoke his readers to discover the hidden and paradoxical rationality of faith. Focusing on pseudonymous works by Johannes Climacus, McCombs interprets Kierkegaardian rationality as a striving to become a self consistently unified in all its dimensions: thinking, feeling, willing, acting, and communicating. McCombs argues that Kierkegaard's strategy of feigning irrationality is sometimes brilliantly instructive, but also partly misguided. This fresh reading of Kierkegaard addresses an essential problem in the philosophy of religion—the relation between faith and reason.

Søren Kierkegaard

Søren Kierkegaard PDF Author: Alastair Hannay
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1780239637
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
The Danish philosopher, theologian, and author Søren Kierkegaard is widely considered to be one of the most important and wide-ranging religious thinkers of the modern age. He is known as the father of existentialism, but his work was also influential on theories of modernism, theology, Western culture, church politics, and the Christian faith. His wit, imagination and humor have inspired a generation of followers, from Woody Allen to Franz Kafka. But how did this inattentive schoolboy rise to critique the work of great thinkers such as Hegel and the German romantics? Who was the real (and unusual) person writing behind so many pseudonyms? And in what way are Kierkegaard’s concepts still relevant today? In this absorbing new biography, Alastair Hannay unravels the mystery of Søren Kierkegaard’s short but momentous career. Looking at both Kierkegaard the thinker and the person, Hannay describes this controversial figure’s key concepts and major works alongside the major incidents in his private and public life. From Kierkegaard’s longing for selfhood as expressed at the age of twenty-two, to a self-provoked spat with a satirical weekly that has caused him to be caricatured to this day, to a verbal assault on the Church in the months prior to his early death at the age of forty-two, Søren Kierkegaard is the fascinating story of a man destined to become a thorn in the side of society.