Introduction to Kierkegaard , livre ebook

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73 pages

English

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An Introduction to Kierkegaard is an accessible introduction to one of the most influential philosophers of the nineteenth century. Peter Vardy is an internationally known scholar with several bestselling titles.Søren Kierkegaard died in Copenhagen, Denmark, at the age of forty-two in 1855. His writings had little influence in his lifetime and after his death; even with the translation of some of his works into German, he was barely known. Yet today, he is internationally accepted as one of the world's greatest thinkers and is often considered the father of existentialism. The purposes of this book are very similar to Kierkegaard's own purposes, namely:• to help you think through the meaning and purpose of your life and what Christianity means today• to reintroduce Christianity into a world that has largely forgotten what the word means• to show the limitation of reason and modern philosophyHere, Peter Vardy makes Kierkegaard's often complex and difficult thinking accessible to a wide audience. He sketches a few of the central themes of Kierkegaard's thought and gives the reader a feeling for the way he approaches problems and some sense of the breadth of his work. This revised and expanded edition is an ideal introduction to Kierkegaard for both students and the general reader.

Sujets

Philosophie et théologie

Philosophy of religion

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Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	01 décembre 2008
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781441244062
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0461€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Copyright © Peter Vardy 1996, 2008
Published by Baker Academic
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.bakeracademic.com
Ebook edition created 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN 978-1-4412-4406-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
The Scripture quotations on pp. 3–4, 69 and 71 are taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952 and 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
The Scripture quotations on pp. 20, 24, 79 and 96–7 are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
This book is dedicated to
‘that solitary individual’
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Preface
Abbreviations
Introduction
1 Kierkegaard’s life
2 Faith and reason
3 The nature of truth
4 The aesthetic stage
5 The ethical stage
6 The religious stage
7 Ethics and the relationship to God
8 The truth of the God-relationship
9 Works of love
10 Inter-religious dialogue
11 Kierkegaard and the Church
Further reading
Index
About the Author
Preface
For 25 years I have taught an undergraduate course in Kierkegaard at Heythrop College, the largely Jesuit-run specialist philosophy and theology college of the University of London. It is a very special place, combining the highest standards of academic rigour and openmindedness with a clear faith orientation. Many students throughout the years have influenced me with their passion and interest in Kierkegaard and the connections they have made between Kierkegaard and many other philosophers, theologians and psychologists, but I am particularly grateful to Charlotte Fowler, Rob Hampson, John Handford and Felicity McCutcheon.
My mother, Christa Lund Vardy, was Danish and left me with a great admiration for all that this small country has achieved. She died in 1975 and one of my regrets is not to have been able to share with her something of what Kierkegaard has taught me. On a personal level he has influenced me more than any other thinker.
Dr Peter Vardy
Abbreviations
AC
Attack upon Christendom , tr. Walter Lowrie
CA
The Concept of Anxiety , tr. Reidar Thompte
CUP
Concluding Unscientific Postscript , tr. Walter Lowrie and David Swenson
ED
Eighteen Edifying Discourses , tr. Walter Lowrie (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
EO
Either/Or , tr. David and Lillian Swenson
FSE
For Self-Examination , tr. Walter Lowrie
FT
Fear and Trembling , tr. Alistair Hannay (Harmondsworth: Penguin)
J
Journals , tr. Howard and Edna Hong
PF
Philosophical Fragments , tr. David Swenson
PH
Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing , tr. Douglas Steere (New York: Harper Torchbooks)
SD
The Sickness unto Death , tr. Walter Lowrie
SLW
Stages on Life’s Way , tr. Howard and Edna Hong
TC
Training in Christianity , tr. Walter Lowrie
WL
Works of Love , tr. Howard and Edna Hong
Except where indicated, all of the above editions are published by Princeton University Press.
Introduction
At one level, Kierkegaard’s aim is straightforward: to strip you, the reader, naked at two in the morning, to sit you in front of a mirror and to force you to think about your life. His books are addressed to ‘that solitary individual’ who may be willing to listen to what he says and to ask questions about his or her own life. He demands a willingness for self-examination, which many usually seek to avoid; he demands a willingness to take off the masks which everyone wears in everyday life and to be ruthlessly honest about what is true and false. Kierkegaard considers that we are all prone to self-deceit and he gives us his readers no peace until we can see ourselves truthfully, as a prelude to making decisions about the manner in which we should live.
In J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, the young wizard Harry discovers the mirror of Erisaid. This is a remarkable magical mirror; those who stare into it will see nothing less than the deepest desires of their hearts. It does not necessarily reveal the future. It reveals what the person yearns for most and this desire may or may not be satisfied in the future. The mirror enables people to confront and to address their desires, to ask whether or not this is what they should desire or what they really want to desire, and it gives them an opportunity to change the direction of their lives. Professor Dumbledore, Harry Potter’s inspiration and guide, says to him that those who look into the mirror and sees nothing else but themselves, just as they are, would have nothing more to desire and would be truly happy. Kierkegaard would have approved of the mirror as it would at least force you and I to engage with reality.
It might seem from this that Kierkegaard is a psychologist – and so he is, well before Freud or Jung. However, he is also a brilliant philosopher and Christian theologian. He brings the three disciplines together in a remarkable way. Yet, though he is a philosopher, theologian and psychologist, there is also a sense in which he would have rejected all these disciplines. This is because they can be used to objectify knowledge so that it ceases to relate to the individual. In their technicalities, cleverness and desire to develop a complete and coherent account of what it is to be human, they lose sight of the real experience of humanity and become ‘untrue’ and irrelevant in a sense. In all his writings he is passionately committed to communicate from heart to heart, to help ‘his reader’, that person who reads his works at a distance in time and place, to think deeply about his or her life and to make decisions about how to live – and how to die.
Kierkegaard has been described by many as ‘the father of existentialism’. This is misleading. Existentialism was a twentieth-century movement particularly influenced by Jean-Paul Sartre which emphasized personal autonomy, individual freedom and the capacity for individual choice. In that Kierkegaard was concerned with the individual and with philosophy that related to life, the description of him as ‘the father of existentialism’ may be relevant, but for many existentialists, truth depends on the individual and Kierkegaard would have rejected this. Kierkegaard was a philosophical realist maintaining a correspondence theory of truth in the classical tradition; as such, his work can illuminate the debate between realism and non-realism in contemporary philosophy. His great philosophical opponent was Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831). Hegel saw truth emerging through history as a result of the dialectical process. A view was put forward (a thesis) and this view met strong opposition from those who rejected it entirely and who put forward a totally opposed view (the antithesis). Initially these views appeared irreconcilable but, Hegel held, they became reconciled over time (the synthesis). As the new synthesis was accepted it became in effect a new thesis, which would provoke an antithesis . . . and so the process continued.
Hegel’s philosophical nickname was ‘Both/And’ since he held that two seemingly contradictory statements can both be true. He was the forerunner of philosophies which claim that truth depends on the situation, that it is not absolute but relative. Kierkegaard saw himself, by contrast with Hegel, as ‘Either/Or’ – either statements are true or they are false, depending on whether or not they correspond to the state of affairs which they describe, not on how those affairs are perceived. This is a traditional realist position and one of great contemporary relevance.
Kierkegaard challenged and criticized the Christian milieu in which he lived, but he did not really address the issue of other world religions and their truth-claims. His work can and should be applied to the issue of contemporary inter-religious dialogue, however, and this book will attempt to do so.
Today, there is real interest in Kierkegaard’s approach from a range of different countries and cultures. His philosophy is seen to have enduring and widespread relevance, but it is not a simple approach, it is not possible to say, ‘Read this book by Kierkegaard and you will be clear about his argument’. His many books and articles are written from multitudes of perspectives, often under pseudonyms and sometimes under layers of pseudonyms. He makes considerable demands on the reader just because his message is that the search for truth and meaning demands personal engagement and struggle. There are no easy answers, so Kierkegaard does not try to package his teachings to make them accessible and palatable. The greatest demand is that the reader should have an interest in his or her own life and how it is lived. This, for Kierkegaard, is the starting point of good philosophy. The word ‘philosophy’ means ‘love of wisdom’ and wisdom can only be gained through experience and reflection. Any so-called philosophy which does not engage the individual, reflect the life they have experienced and affect the life they go on to live is no more than tiddly-winks – a game that may pass the time but is of no more significance than that. He was critical of much of the philosophy of his time, and would have been even more critical of much contemporary philosophy, as it failed to engage with real life. He looked back to the model of the great Greek philosophers, who saw philosophy as an essentially practical discipline – the sorting and drawing together of experience to provide truths about how life should be lived, how countries should b