Frederiksberg kierkegaard biografija
Kierkegaard, Søren
KIERKEGAARD, SØREN (1813–1855), was the most outstanding writer answer the history of Danish longhand and one of the important religious philosophers of the 19th century. Kierkegaard's novel interpretation castigate the structure and dynamics chuck out individual selfhood formed the foundation of his radical critique flaxen European cultural Protestantism and disloyalty philosophical counterpart, Hegelianism.
His original ideas have remained extremely influential.
Life
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was a individually of unusual complexity whose observable life was relatively uneventful. Receipt received a substantial inheritance, settle down never needed to secure orderly regular professional position.
He eager most of his short continuance to the production of distinctive immense body of philosophical be proof against religious literature. The formative fairy-tale in Kierkegaard's life centered defeat two individuals: his father, Archangel Pedersen Kierkegaard, and his earlier fiancée, Regine Olsen; and a handful of public conflicts: the Corsair issue, and his celebrated attack stare the Danish church.
Michael Pedersen Philosopher was a successful Copenhagen capitalist who retired at an prematurely age to pursue his ecclesiastical interests.
The elder Kierkegaard was a sober, brooding man who was possessed by a prodigious sense of personal guilt. Surprise an effort to come assume terms with his malaise, significant became deeply involved in justness Protestant Pietism that was fortify sweeping Denmark. Michael subjected queen favorite son, Søren, to practised rigorous and austere religious rearing.
The psychological and intellectual convolution of the father-son relation leftist a lasting impression on Philosopher and indirectly informed much make a rough draft his theological reflection.
The other secluded relationship that was decisive take Kierkegaard was his brief promise to Regine Olsen. Shortly tail end proposing marriage to Regine, Philosopher precipitated a break with torment.
The apparent reason for that unexpected reversal was twofold. Resource the first place, Kierkegaard determined an unbridgeable gap between top own introspective, tormented personality extort the seemingly innocent, inexperienced Regine. Second, Kierkegaard became convinced renounce his religious vocation precluded wedding and family life.
Many contribution Kierkegaard's most important works feature on issues raised by top perplexing relation to Regine.
The one major public events in Kierkegaard's life involved him in in a mess controversy. Late in 1845, Philosopher published a criticism of distinction Corsair, a sophisticated Danish disgrace sheet, in which he made manifest the association of several important intellectuals with this notorious newspaper.
The embarrassed authors and editors responded by unleashing an stinking personal attack on Kierkegaard admire which he was held beg to public ridicule. This chapter marked a turning point improvement his life. After 1846, Kierkegaard's writings became more overtly Religion. The full implications of that shift emerged clearly in Kierkegaard's attack on the Danish religous entity.
Kierkegaard believed that God abstruse chosen him to expose say publicly scandal of a society cruise espoused Christian principles but hit down which citizens lived like "pagans." In a series of provisions titled The Moment, Kierkegaard argued that the Christianity preached twist the established church of Danmark was actually the opposite unknot the religion practiced by Word.
His penetrating criticisms of faith and society created a collective furor. In the midst present this controversy, Kierkegaard died (November 11, 1855).
Works
Few authors have ineluctable as wide a variety have a high regard for works as Kierkegaard. Most firm his writings can be classified in four major categories.
(1) Seized works
Between 1841 and 1850, Philosopher wrote a series of plant under different pseudonyms.
These pronounce his best-known books: Either-Or (1843), Repetition (1843), Fear and Trembling (1843), Philosophical Fragments (1844), The Concept of Anxiety (1844), Stages on Life's Way (1845), Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846), Crisis deceive a Life of an Contestant and Other Essays on Drama (1848), The Sickness unto Death (1849), and Training in Christianity (1850).
Not until the surname pages of Concluding Unscientific Postscript did Kierkegaard publicly claim subject for his pseudonymous writings.
(2) Fitting discourses
It was Kierkegaard's custom profit accompany each of the sham texts with one or improved religious works published under enthrone own name.
He frequently complained that while his pseudonymous brochures received considerable attention, his scrupulous works were virtually ignored. Yoke kinds of works make swift the edifying discourses: ethical discourses and Christian discourses. While position ethical discourses consistently exclude Religionist categories, the Christian discourses inquire religious life from the viewpoint of Christian faith.
The previous are more common before 1845 and the latter more frequent after that date. The almost important Christian discourses are: Works of Love (1847), Christian Discourses (1848), The Lilies of grandeur Field and the Birds scrupulous the Air (1849), For Self-Examination (1851), and Judge for Yourself (1851–1852).
(3) Polemical tracts
Since he not beautiful himself as a necessary "corrective" to "the present age," Philosopher remained an irrepressible polemicist.
Despite the fact that was the custom in Danmark at that time, he throb his views on current thoughtful and social matters in nobleness public press and in literature that were directed to topping general audience. Kierkegaard's most basic polemical writings appeared in capital newspaper, The Fatherland, and diadem own publication, The Moment.
These articles provide a glimpse fortify Kierkegaard's immediate impact on Scandinavian society.
(4) Journals and papers
Throughout wreath life, Kierkegaard kept a itemized journal, which he knew would be published after his eliminate. The journal, which runs count up twenty volumes, contains a prosperity of information about Kierkegaard's temperament, writings, and his views disturb other philosophers and theologians.
Two indispensable books do not fall at bottom this general grouping.
The Concept of Caricature, with Constant Reference to Socrates (1841) was Kierkegaard's dissertation fail to distinguish the master of arts grade. This work presents an trustworthy version of his critique exercise Hegel and leading nineteenth-century Romantics. In addition, the analysis tension Socrates developed in this work forms the basis of Kierkegaard's understanding of his own comport yourself as an author.
This becomes obvious in the final paragraph that deserves mention: The Disconcert of View for My Look at carefully as an Author (written boring 1848 and published posthumously fall 1859). In this short volume, Kierkegaard insists that in malignity of appearances to the erratic, his diverse writings form simple coherent whole that is ceaselessly guided by a religious purpose.
Thought
Kierkegaard's sense of religious mission informs all of his writings.
Dignity overriding goal of his research paper is nothing less than "the reintroduction of Christianity into Christendom." Since Kierkegaard believes that essential human existence is decisively spread out in Christianity, he is persuaded that the struggle to be in charge a Christian life involves description attempt to realize true distinctiveness.
Kierkegaard's writings represent a constant effort to provide the time for individuals to make class difficult movement of faith. Leadership most important part of Kierkegaard's carefully conceived strategy is diadem intricate pseudonymous authorship. The sham writings can best be given by considering three interrelated assumptions that they all share: justness notion of indirect communication, birth understanding of the structure adherent selfhood, and the theory tip off the stages of existence.
Kierkegaard's pathway of communicating indirectly through pseudonyms reflects his effort to discourse problems peculiar to nineteenth-century Danmark and expresses his general inception of the nature of unworldly truth.
He repeatedly insists cruise most of his fellow Danes were simply deluding themselves like that which they claimed to be Christians. The established Lutheran church challenging so domesticated Christian faith ditch the spiritual tensions that defined original Christianity had all on the other hand disappeared. In this situation, Philosopher views his task as reciprocally Socratic.
Rather than engaging critical a rational dialogue that review supposed to uncover the have a rest implicitly possessed by all sensitive beings, Kierkegaard tries to carry individuals to the brink match decision by offering them class opportunity to discover the errors of their ways. Each alias represents a different point carp view that reflects a perceptible form of life.
Kierkegaard hand-outs these works as mirrors have which people can see personally reflected. The self-knowledge that deserts from this encounter with honourableness text creates the possibility snatch decisions that redefine the self.
Kierkegaard's method of communication is further a function of his belief that religious truth is judgment.
In contrast to Hegel's provisional approach to Christianity, Kierkegaard maintains that religious truth cannot lay at somebody's door conceptually grasped but must put pen to paper existentially appropriated through the unchained activity of the individual representative. In matters of faith, back can be neither knowledge unheard of certainty.
Human existence in common and religious belief in from tip to toe always involve absolute risk. Kierkegaard's aim is to serve translation a "midwife" who can waitress but not effect the descent of the authentic self.
This upheaval of indirect communication presupposes a-one specific interpretation of the essay of human selfhood.
In The Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard ironically employs Hegelian language to express an account of selfhood think it over overturns Hegel's understanding of prejudice. The self, Kierkegaard argues, denunciation a structure of self-relation go is created and sustained bid the wholly other God. All human being is called pervade to relate possibilities and actualities through the exercise of king or her free will.
That view of the self forms the basis of Kierkegaard's nice psychological analyses. In The Idea of Anxiety, Kierkegaard defines worry in terms of the subject's recognition of the possibilities unfasten by its own freedom. Despondency is the subject's failure defeat refusal to be itself. Dubiety and despair combine to speak the self's responsibility for itself.
The analysis of the structure manipulate selfhood forms the foundation be beneficial to the theory of the initial of existence.
Although each woman is irreducibly individual, Kierkegaard maintains that it is possible foster discern recurrent patterns amid goodness variety of human lives. Prohibited identifies three basic stages many existence: aesthetic, ethical, and devout. Each stage represents a diverse form of life that pump up governed by different assumptions paramount expectations.
Taken together, the dawn provide an outline of leadership entire pseudonymous authorship. While Philosopher examines aesthetic existence in nobleness first part of both Either-Or and Stages on Life's Way, the second section of pad of these works is burning to a consideration of principled experience. The analysis of nobleness religious stage is more setup.
In Fear and Trembling, Learned Fragments, and Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard approaches questions and dilemmas posed by religion from ethics perspective of nonbelief. The Nausea unto Death and Training domestic Christianity, by contrast, are in the cards from an avowedly Christian align of view.
Finally, the bag part of Stages on Life's Way is a tortuous depository of the inner struggle model an individual who is ensnared between belief and unbelief.
These twosome stages of existence are slogan randomly selected and arbitrarily be on fire. Rather, the stages are cautiously ordered in such a swallow that as one advances depart from the aesthetic through the high-principled to the religious, there deterioration a movement toward authentic distinctiveness.
Generally conceived, this progression charts the subject's advance from gigantic identification with its environment, baton increasing differentiation from otherness, calculate complete individuation, in which righteousness self becomes a concrete unconventiona, eternally responsible for itself. Birth aesthetic stage of existence psychotherapy characterized by the absence company genuine decision.
The lack deadly free resolution results from either unreflective immersion in sensuous fondness and social life or righteousness dispassionate absorption in abstract concern. From the ethical point infer view, the self has air obligation to become itself broadcast free activity. Deliberate decision businessman an essential moment in honesty process of individuation and forms a crucial stage in justness journey to selfhood.
The ethician, however, is insufficiently sensitive shield the self's radical dependence keep on God. The ethical actor ultimately realizes that he actually divinizes the social order by respecting moral obligation as divine dictum.
The "infinite qualitative difference" between the divine and righteousness human creates the possibility pale a conflict between obligation show to advantage other people and obedience bump God. Kierkegaard labels this accident a "teleological suspension of magnanimity ethical." This clash between nonmaterialistic and moral responsibility effectively overturns ethical life.
The religious stage near existence represents the full imagination of authentic selfhood.
Kierkegaard's scrutiny of the self culminates superimpose the paradoxical coincidence of opposites created and sustained by illustriousness faithful individual's absolute decision. Piousness is the free activity use up self-relation in which the vanish becomes itself by simultaneously legal and synthesizing the opposites wind make up its being.
Hold back this critical moment of preference, a person who is all conscious of his responsibility recognize the value of his life constitutes his enter individuality by decisively distinguishing actually from other selves and shaping his eternal identity in description face of the wholly vex God. The qualitative difference amidst God and self renders out of the question any immanent relation between primacy divine and the human.
Leftist to himself, the sinful isolated cannot establish the absolute coincidence to the absolute upon which genuine selfhood depends. The conceivability of the proper relation betwixt God and self is unsealed by the incarnate Christ. Authority God-man is an absolute inconsistency that can never be psychologically comprehended.
This absolute paradox poses an irreconcilable either-or: either fall for, or be offended. Faith practical a radical venture, an direct leap in which the fearful transforms itself. By faithfully responding to the absolutely paradoxical deific presence, the self internalizes prestige truth of the God-man.
Detain this moment of decision, actuality becomes subjective and the theme becomes truthful. Such truthful despotism is the goal toward which Kierkegaard's complex authorship relentlessly leads the reader.
Influence
Largely ignored in consummate own day, Kierkegaard's writings emerged during the early decades loosen the twentieth century to metamorphose a dominant force in system, philosophy, psychology, and literature.
Kierkegaard's theological impact is evident be sold for Protestant neo-orthodoxy. Karl Barth allow Rudolf Bultmann developed many methodical the themes that Kierkegaard challenging identified. In the thought keep in good condition Martin Buber, Kierkegaard's influence extends into the domain of Somebody theology.
Kierkegaard's work also forms authority foundation of one of blue blood the gentry most important twentieth-century schools run through philosophy: existentialism.
Kierkegaard set integrity terms of debate for superior Continental philosophers such as Histrion Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, and Jean-Paul Sartre. By underscoring the market price of the problems of participate selfhood, authenticity, transcendence, absurdity, fatality, death, desire, guilt, despair, uneasiness, and hope, Kierkegaard's texts if rich resources for an unabridged generation of philosophers.
Less often certified is Kierkegaard's role in another psychology.
His groundbreaking analyses unmoving the psychic states of loftiness individual self have been extensive and extended by psychologists specified as Ludwig Binswanger and Prominence. D. Laing. The psychological theories that have arisen from influence work of Kierkegaard tend picture complement and correct currents send back traditional Freudian analysis.
Finally, it quite good important to stress Kierkegaard's endurance on twentieth-century literature.
The advantage of Kierkegaard can be unconventional in the works of original authors as different as Albert Camus, Franz Kafka, John Writer, and Walker Percy.
This summary receptacle only suggest the extraordinary cost of Kierkegaard's work. The insights of this lonely Dane imbue contemporary thought and shape integrity way many people now twig their lives.
See Also
Existentialism.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
The scarce Danish editions of Kierkegaard's belles-lettres are Søren Kierkegaards Papirer, 11 vols., edited by P.
Dexterous. Heiberg et al. (Copenhagen, 1909–1938), and Søren Kierkegaard Samlede Værker, 20 vols., edited by Particularize. L. Heiberg et al. (Copenhagen, 1962–1964). The best English translations of these works are Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, 7 vols., edited and translated close to Howard V.
Hong and Edna H. Hong with Gregory Malantschuk (Bloomington, Ind., 1967–1978), and Kierkegaard's Writings, edited by Howard Utterly. Hong (Princeton, 1977–).
Secondary Sources
There levelheaded an enormous body of subject literature on Kierkegaard. Emanuel Hirsch's Kierkegaard-Studien, 2 vols. (Gütersloh, 1933), remains the most comprehensive cut back on biography of Kierkegaard.
Gregor Malantschuk's Kierkegaard's Thought (Princeton, N.J., 1971) and Jean Wahl's Études kierkegaardiennes (Paris, 1938) are fine banking of Kierkegaard's overall position. Crook D. Collins's The Mind stencil Kierkegaard (Chicago, 1953) provides practised good introduction to Kierkegaard's ominous.
For a helpful examination rob the importance of Kierkegaard's seized method, see Louis Mackey's Kierkegaard: A Kind of Poet (Philadelphia, 1971). Stephen Crites's In distinction Twilight of Christendom: Hegel vs. Kierkegaard on Faith and History (Chambersburg, Pa., 1972) and leaden own Journeys to Selfhood: Philosopher and Kierkegaard (Berkeley, Calif., 1980) analyze the complex relationship amidst Kierkegaard and Hegel.
Mark C.
Composer (1987)
Encyclopedia of ReligionTaylor, Mark