Kierkegaard and Possibility

Kierkegaard and Possibility PDF Author: Erin Plunkett
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350298999
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
How does our conception of possibility contribute to our understanding of self and world? In what sense does the possible differ from the merely probable, and what would it mean to treat possibility as part of the real? This book is an opportunity to see Kierkegaard as contributing to a distinctive phenomenology, ontology, and psychology of possibility that addresses the question of our existential relationship to the possible. The term 'possibility' (Mulighed) and its variants occur with curious frequency across Kierkegaard's writings. Key to Kierkegaard's understanding of the self, possibility is linked to a number of core concepts in his works: from imagination, anxiety, despair, and 'the moment' to the idea in The Sickness Unto Death that “God is that all things are possible”. Responding to what he sees as a Hegelian and Aristotelian misunderstanding of possibility, Kierkegaard offers a novel reading of the possible that, in turn, directly influences 20th-century philosophers such as Heidegger, Deleuze, and Derrida. Kierkegaard gives a rich account of how anxiety and despair, as lived experiences of possibility, not only show us the contingency and fragility of the systems and identities we presently inhabit but also reveal a more fundamental contingency that demands a new way of relating to the possible. For Kierkegaard, hope, faith, and love are attitudes in which meaning is forged by embracing contingency. In a time of political, social, and environmental uncertainty Kierkegaard's work on radical possibility seems more relevant than ever.

Kierkegaard and Possibility

Kierkegaard and Possibility PDF Author: Erin Plunkett
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350298999
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Get Book Here

Book Description
How does our conception of possibility contribute to our understanding of self and world? In what sense does the possible differ from the merely probable, and what would it mean to treat possibility as part of the real? This book is an opportunity to see Kierkegaard as contributing to a distinctive phenomenology, ontology, and psychology of possibility that addresses the question of our existential relationship to the possible. The term 'possibility' (Mulighed) and its variants occur with curious frequency across Kierkegaard's writings. Key to Kierkegaard's understanding of the self, possibility is linked to a number of core concepts in his works: from imagination, anxiety, despair, and 'the moment' to the idea in The Sickness Unto Death that “God is that all things are possible”. Responding to what he sees as a Hegelian and Aristotelian misunderstanding of possibility, Kierkegaard offers a novel reading of the possible that, in turn, directly influences 20th-century philosophers such as Heidegger, Deleuze, and Derrida. Kierkegaard gives a rich account of how anxiety and despair, as lived experiences of possibility, not only show us the contingency and fragility of the systems and identities we presently inhabit but also reveal a more fundamental contingency that demands a new way of relating to the possible. For Kierkegaard, hope, faith, and love are attitudes in which meaning is forged by embracing contingency. In a time of political, social, and environmental uncertainty Kierkegaard's work on radical possibility seems more relevant than ever.

The Passion of Possibility

The Passion of Possibility PDF Author: Ingolf U. Dalferth
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3111025756
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
For Kierkegaard the most important thing in life is to become a single individual or a true self. We are all born as human beings, but this makes us only members of a crowd, not true selves. To become a true self, we must transcend what we are at any given time and orient ourselves to the possible and to the actuality of the possible, to which all that is possible owes itself. True selves exist only in becoming, they are fragile, and that is their strength. They are not grounded by their own activities, but in a reality extra se, the flip side of which is a deep passivity that underlies all their activity and allows them to continually leave themselves and move beyond their respective actualities toward the new and the possible. Therefore, without the passion of possibility, there is no truly single individual. This study of Kierkegaard's post-metaphysical theology outlines his existential phenomenology of the self by exploring in three parts what Kierkegaard has to say about the sense of self (finitude, uniqueness, self-interpretation, and alienation), about selfless passion (anxiety, trust, hope, and true love), and about how to become a true self (a Christian in Christendom and a neighbor of God's neighbors).

The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Oriented Deliberation in View of the Dogmatic Problem of Hereditary Sin

The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Oriented Deliberation in View of the Dogmatic Problem of Hereditary Sin PDF Author: Søren Kierkegaard
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 087140771X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 114

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Book Description
The first new translation of Kierkegaard's masterwork in a generation brings to vivid life this essential work of modern philosophy. Brilliantly synthesizing human insights with Christian dogma, Soren Kierkegaard presented, in 1844, The Concept of Anxiety as a landmark "psychological deliberation," suggesting that our only hope in overcoming anxiety was not through "powder and pills" but by embracing it with open arms. While Kierkegaard's Danish prose is surprisingly rich, previous translations—the most recent in 1980—have marginalized the work with alternately florid or slavishly wooden language. With a vibrancy never seen before in English, Alastair Hannay, the world's foremost Kierkegaard scholar, has finally re-created its natural rhythm, eager that this overlooked classic will be revivified as the seminal work of existentialism and moral psychology that it is. From The Concept of Anxiety: "And no Grand Inquisitor has such frightful torments in readiness as has anxiety, and no secret agent knows as cunningly how to attack the suspect in his weakest moment, or to make so seductive the trap in which he will be snared; and no discerning judge understands how to examine, yes, exanimate the accused as does anxiety, which never lets him go, not in diversion, not in noise, not at work, not by day, not by night."

Kierkegaard's Philosophy of Becoming

Kierkegaard's Philosophy of Becoming PDF Author: Clare Carlisle
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791482804
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
Søren Kierkegaard's proposal of "repetition" as the new category of truth signaled the beginning of existentialist thought, turning philosophical attention from the pursuit of objective knowledge to the movement of becoming that characterizes each individual's life. Focusing on the theme of movement in his 1843 pseudonymous texts Either/Or, Repetition, and Fear and Trembling, Clare Carlisle presents an original and illuminating interpretation of Kierkegaard's religious thought, including newly translated material, that emphasizes equally its philosophical and theological significance. Kierkegaard complained of a lack of movement not only in Hegelian philosophy but also in his own "dreadful still life," and his heroes are those who leap, dance, and make journeys—but what do these movements signify, and how are they accomplished? How can we be true to ourselves, let alone to others if we are continually becoming? Carlisle explores these questions to uncover both the philosophical and the literary coherence of Kierkegaard's notoriously enigmatic authorship.

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.

Kierkegaard on Faith and Love

Kierkegaard on Faith and Love PDF Author: Sharon Krishek
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139479911
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
Kierkegaard's writings are interspersed with remarkable stories of love, commonly understood as a literary device that illustrates the problematic nature of aesthetic and ethical forms of life, and the contrasting desirability of the life of faith. Sharon Krishek argues that for Kierkegaard the connection between love and faith is far from being merely illustrative. Rather, love and faith have a common structure, and are involved with one another in a way that makes it impossible to love well without faith. Remarkably, this applies to romantic love no less than to neighbourly love. Krishek's original and compelling interpretation of the Works of Love in the light of Kierkegaard's famous analysis of the paradoxicality of faith in Fear and Trembling shows that preferential love, and in particular romantic love, plays a much more important and positive role in his thinking than has usually been assumed.

Kierkegaard on Ethics and Religion

Kierkegaard on Ethics and Religion PDF Author: W. Glenn Kirkconnell
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1441146733
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
Søren Kierkegaard is simultaneously one of the most obscure philosophers of the Western world and one of the most influential. His writings have influenced atheists and faithful alike. Yet there is still widespread disagreement on many of the most important aspects of his thought. Kierkegaard was deliberately obscure in his writings, forcing the reader to interpret and reflect as Socrates did with incessant questioning. But at the same time that Kierkegaard was producing his esoteric, pseudonymous philosophical writings, he was also producing simpler, direct religious writings. Kierkegaard always claimed that he was, despite appearances, a religious writer. This important book accepts that claim and tests it. By using Kierkegaard's direct writings as he suggests, as the key to understanding the more obscure, indirect works, W. Glenn Kirkconnell aims to develop a coherent understanding of Kierkegaard's authorship and his theories.

Kierkegaard

Kierkegaard PDF Author: Sylvia Walsh
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199208352
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
Kierkegaard was a Christian thinker perhaps best known for his devastating attack upon Christendom or the established order of his time. Sylvia Walsh explores his understanding of Christianity and the existential mode of thinking theologically appropriate to it in the context of the intellectual, cultural, and socio-political milieu of his time.

Kierkegaard as Humanist

Kierkegaard as Humanist PDF Author: Arnold B. Come
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773564136
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 506

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Book Description
Kierkegaard as Humanist is an extensive analysis of Kierkegaard's concepts of self, freedom, possibility, and necessity. Topics examined include the essential and continuing duality of the self, the process by which the self becomes self-consciousness, freedom as the dialectical tension between necessity and possibility and between temporality and eternity, the indeterminate/determinate leap as freedom's form, and love as freedom's content. Come finds in Kierkegaard's writings an anthropological ontology that is derived by a phenomenological method and distinct from those Kierkegaardian materials that are clearly theological in a Christian sense; he concludes that Kierkegaard's anthropological ontology is independent of his Christian theology.

Thinking through Kierkegaard

Thinking through Kierkegaard PDF Author: Peter J. Mehl
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252091914
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
Thinking through Kierkegaard is a critical evaluation of Søren Kierkegaard's vision of the normatively human, of who we are and might aspire to become, and of what Mehl calls our existential identity. Through a pragmatist examination of three of Kierkegaard's key pseudonymous "voices" (Judge William, Climacus, and Anti-Climacus), Peter J. Mehl argues that Kierkegaard's path is not the only end of our search, but instead leads us to affirm a plurality of paths toward a fulfilling existential identity. Contrary to Kierkegaard's ideal of moral personhood and orthodox Christian identity, Mehl aims to acknowledge the possibility of pluralism in existential identities. By demanding sensitivity to the deep ways social and cultural context influences human perception, interpretation and self?representation, Mehl argues that Kierkegaard is not simply discovering but also participating in a cultural construction of the human being. Drawing on accounts of what it is to be a person by prominent philosophers outside of Kierkegaard scholarship, including Charles Taylor, Owen Flanagan, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Thomas Nagel, Mehl also works to bridge the analytic and continental traditions and reestablishes Kierkegaard as a rich resource for situating moral and spiritual identity. This reexamination of Kierkegaard is recommended for anyone interested in what it means to be a person.