Chris in VA Posted November 30, 2012 Share Posted November 30, 2012 I don't think I spelled that right, but I'm sure you know who I mean. Can anyone dumb down ANY of the main things he has to offer in his philosophy? I think I've got some of it, but I need to put it simply and in accessible language. I'm esp interested in the despair thing, and the leap thing. LOL--yeah, simple like that. .... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
history_junkie Posted November 30, 2012 Share Posted November 30, 2012 If you can get your hands on Sophie's World, that helped me a lot. It's a fictionalized story of a young girl's encounters with philosophy. Sorry I don't remember much about Kirkegaard off the top of my head! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mrs Mungo Posted November 30, 2012 Share Posted November 30, 2012 The despair thing...let's see...simple version? It is sort of...the existence of God and His relationship to man causes many paradoxes. These paradoxes exist in a symbiotic relationship with one another. When man attempts to explain and/or deny these paradoxes, then you try to explain and/or deny God which leads to despair because we are holding ourselves apart from God. Does that make any sense at all? It may be too simplified to even make sense, lol. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mrs Mungo Posted November 30, 2012 Share Posted November 30, 2012 Expounding-for example, we sort of have to acknowledge our existence in a sort of temporal bubble. That bubble is part of God, but a finite part of the infinite. It is apart from God who is all knowing. Do our choices matter? Does God know what we will choose? Is God leading us? We cannot really know, but we need to know that what we choose *matters*, even if God already knows the outcome. If we don't think our choice matters because of divine knowledge, then we will despair. We must be able to accept the infinite and the finite together at once. Am I helping or making things worse? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris in VA Posted November 30, 2012 Author Share Posted November 30, 2012 Helping! So interesting to me--it's part of Year 4 of Education for Ministry, a course lay people can take thru an Episcopal Seminary. I'm in Year 2, but we all discuss our lessons together when we meet once a week. Year 4 is philosophy/theology, and SK came up last night. (What's cool is that the years are all parallel, so you get a really interesting perspective as each year's students bring their completed lessons to the group discussion-- Year 1 brings their Old Testa. lesson, 2 brings NTesta, 3 brings Church Hist, and 4 brings theology. Last night we looked at the near-sacrifice of Isaac, the beginnings of Matthew, and SK (we don't have anyone in Year 3 this year in the group). Fascinating! But even tho certain names are familiar thru other studies I've done, I am not well-versed in the particulars. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FaithManor Posted November 30, 2012 Share Posted November 30, 2012 Mrs. Mungo did a great job with "Kierkegaard in a nut-shell". Well done - he is not an easy philosopher to explain without a LOT of words. Kierkegaard rallied against organized religion, and in particular, the State Church of Denmark. He regarded God as an entity that was known, in an abstract sense, and yet NOT known in a personal sense. Thus, faith required that the believer needed to constantly pursue regenerating or renewing his/her passion for beliefs that could not be understood. He also believed that at judgment, there would not be any one single event in a person's life that would be the cause of one spiritual outcome or another but that God looked at a person's life as a whole. Much of what SK was troubled with was due to his own troubled childhood. His father, a very pious man, had impregnated SK's mother out of wedlock. They married and went on to have six more children. However, his father never got over his "sin" and believed that not only would God never forgive him for it, but that God would further punish him by taking the lives of all seven children before they reach the age of 34 or the age of Christ at his crucifixtion. The man was desperately depressed and truly believed his children would be "sacrificed" for his sin. Unfortunately, from the time the children were very old at all, he impressed upon them that they would not live long into adulthood and told them why. He painted a picture of a cold, unforgiving God who had a list of sins that could not be overcome and were unpardonable. It was truly unfortunate, but his theory appeared "true" to Soren who never expected to live long and was a rather morose child. Five of his sibs died before they reached 30. He and his older brother Peter were the only Kierkegaard children to live past 34. We do not know a lot about his mother. Knowing his background, helps a little with understanding what Kierkegaard struggled with and how that influenced his beliefs. Faith Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spy Car Posted November 30, 2012 Share Posted November 30, 2012 . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spy Car Posted November 30, 2012 Share Posted November 30, 2012 It is a very unfortunate philosophy that holds man's natural condition is one of "despair." Man's striving for knowledge is a futile pursuit and evidence of hubris, whose only alternative (other than on-going despondency) is a leap into magical thinking. It is anti-rational. Bill Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FaithManor Posted November 30, 2012 Share Posted November 30, 2012 It is a very unfortunate philosophy that holds man's natural condition is one of "despair." Man's striving for knowledge is a futile pursuit and evidence of hubris, whose only alternative (other than on-going despondency) is a leap into magical thinking. It is anti-rational. Bill Very true and I would guess it speaks volumes about the spiritual/emotional condition of his home growing up. I can only imagine what it does to a person's mind to be brainwashed from infancy that you will die young for your father's transgressions. Faith Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mrs Mungo Posted November 30, 2012 Share Posted November 30, 2012 Philosophy is rarely "rational." It is usually religious, spiritual and/or theoretical in nature. But, I don't think religion=magic, so what do I know? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
misty.warden Posted November 30, 2012 Share Posted November 30, 2012 The gist that I got from a philosophy of religion class segment on him was that he thought that in order to be living according to the will of God, he had to pretty much be a hermit because he deserved the suffering, including being socially awkward and having what was probably scoliosis. He was engaged and basically treated his fiancee like crap so she would break up with him because he thought that he couldn't serve God if he was focused on a temporal happiness like marriage, a notion he later recanted and regretted. He also hated that being born in Denmark automatically made one a member of the church, which I can't remember exactly which one at the moment, because it didn't require any faith and people were being lazy about learning what God wanted besides nominal membership. disclaimer: this class was 3 years ago and was a survey, these are personal recollections and inferences, not scholarly interpretations of his writings. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cindy in the NH Woods Posted December 2, 2012 Share Posted December 2, 2012 Last night we looked at the near-sacrifice of Isaac, Kirkegaard's *Fear and Trembling* starts with this conundrum. Worth a read! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kalanamak Posted December 2, 2012 Share Posted December 2, 2012 Kirkegaard's *Fear and Trembling* I knew a whimpy dog named Kirkegaard. Look at him cross-eyed and he would sink down a couple inches and start shivering. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sbgrace Posted December 2, 2012 Share Posted December 2, 2012 I asked my husband to reply as he's read so much Kirkegaard: You asked for his main philsophy. One of his main purposes in writing was to reintroduce Christianity or what it means to be a Christian back into Christendom. As somone mentioned upthread the situation was a state church and people who considered themselves Christian simply by being born in that country. He emphasizes living the Christian lfe rather than just professing it. I've read a lot of his writings. For Self Examination/Judge for Yourself was life changing for me. It is a calling for a more authentic Christian life. I echo Fear and Trembling as one to read. It has the most powerful description of the near sacrifice of Isaac that I have ever heard or read. It also addresses the leap. You get the point where you must take a leap of faith and decide to follow or not follow Christ. He's emphasizing the personal decision aspect of Christianity. This may seem obvious to us but it's important in the climate of the state church. When everyone assumes they are a Christian there is no leap of faith. I tend to read more on his writings for Christian edification. I've not read enough of Sickness Unto Death to really summarize his views on despair. I wouldn't start with that one if you're going to read any Kirkegaard though. It's a hard read. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Belacqua Posted December 2, 2012 Share Posted December 2, 2012 Ok, am I the only one old (and pitiful) enough to be reminded of the Family Ties episode (a 1980s sitcom, for all you whippersnappers) in which the dad asks his younger daughter to explain Kirkegaard? She rolls her eyes and hands him a book titled Existentialism For Dads. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
azucena Posted December 3, 2012 Share Posted December 3, 2012 Some other points to make about him: * While he published some devotional books under his own name, his most famous works were published under pseudonyms (like "Johannes de silentio"). The reason was his belief that each person must have an individual encounter with God; and that that encounter was best provoked by a kind of Socratic questioning. In his works, he rebelled against not only the state church of Denmark, but the hyper-generalizing philosophy of Hegel and other German philosophers of the time. * He believed that human life was divided into three "stages of life's way": the aesthetic (living for sensual pleasure, like Mozart's Don Giovanni); the ethical (living according to a set of rules that applied to everyone - more praiseworthy than the first stage, but still not adequate); and the religious (called by God and in an individual relationship with him, as Abraham was; and perhaps incomprehensible to others, as Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac might seem to us). * He was indeed a depressive! But he was an acute observer of his times, and he has inspired a number of not-quite-as-depressing authors. In particular, Walker Percy's early works, The Moviegoer and The Last Gentleman, were inspired by him. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LibraryLover Posted December 3, 2012 Share Posted December 3, 2012 Lurve you all, esp Mrs Mungo and Spy Car. lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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