En garde for Kirkegaard!

[The Comedian]

I've been wanting to read some more Kirkegaard lately. I read Fear and Trembling many years ago and liked it a lot. But I'm at a loss as to what to read next. I'm thinking of tacking Either/Or (at least volume 1), but that idea is just whim more than anything else.

Anyone have any other suggestions?

[The Comedian]

Anyone read Kirkegaard?

[YesNo]

I don't know anything about Kierkegaard, but I was curious what others might suggest to read as well. And with a little discussion I might even get tempted to read it.

[NikolaiI]

I've read some, just a bit. I liked it okay, but I prefer Fichte probably.

[edit:] I haven't read enough to recommend anything, but I think I've heard good things about Either/Or.

[Jack of Hearts]

Yech for Kierkegaard. Have "Diary of a Seducer" on the desk right now, which supposedly deals with the 'aesthetic' stage of his theory.

But Fear and Trembling was the most interesting, if only for the teleological suspension of the ethical.

But mostly don't like Kierkegaard.






J

[Ohmyscience]

Reading Sickness unto death a while back. I find his views on religion very authentic, personal, and sober. While I can't agree with his discourse on despair, I have never found such despair and clarity from someone who was so deeply religious. He seems to have the best defense for being religious; and not necessarily religion. Rather than to treat scripture as truth, if I understood him correctly, it should treated more as purpose and art.

[cafolini]

I read (I might say suffer) a lot of Kierkegaard when I was young. I was most amazed by his maddening indifference to communication.
"God gave me freedom of thought. Why would I care about freedom of speech."
Many have compared the madman with Nietzsche, claiming that he said the same idiocy and highly misinterpreting both. The Danish was ultimately for Aristotelian ethics and religion. Nietzsche was for the autonihilistic future of religion, which Freud later practically plagiarized in The future of an illusion.

[Gladys]

I've been wanting to read some more Kirkegaard lately.

Long ago, I read just about all Kierkegaard's religious writing, and bits and pieces from the philosophical. For a short and easy introduction, I would particularly recommend the 1850 Edifying Discourse: The Woman Who Was a Sinner (http://books.google.com.au/books?id=mJkEAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA89&dq=%22the+woman+who+was+a+sinner%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=1vqUT_TGIuzPmAX3scjsAQ&ved=0CGUQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=%22the%20woman%20who%20was%20a%20sinner%22&f=false).

My own favourites are the 1847 Works of Love and the 1848 Christian Discourses . The Journals are an excellent read. And, if you happen to be fluent in a dozen languages, you might enjoy the 1849 The Sickness Unto Death. Kierkegaard's intricate logic, massive sentences and surpassing insight make reading a challenge.


I was most amazed by his maddening indifference to communication. "God gave me freedom of thought. Why would I care about freedom of speech."

It not so much Kierkegaard's indifference to communication as his frustration at shallowness in the writing and oratory of contemporaries.

[cafolini]

Gladys. When I write something in a thread, every bit of what I write is part of the meaning. Please don't be selective in quoting me. It lacks my context in many respects.
Shallowness was always there and it's still there. There was never lack of opportunity to bank on it.

[Gladys]

Incidentally Henrik Ibsen’s play Brand, written in verse, is an engrossing expose of Kierkegaard's philosophical asperity. The young priest Brand and his wife Agnes are heroic, yet outrageous, in their ‘naught or all’ struggle of the will, in the face of death. Wiki describes the play as verse tragedy, but I see it as a glorious and jubilant drama.

It's obvious that in Brand and Agnes, Ibsen portrays the becoming Christian of Soren Kierkegaard, the unordained priest who died a decade before the publication of ‘Brand’. Disclaiming knowledge of Kierkegaard, Ibsen once said he "had read very little and understood even less".


IBSEN'S 1865 PLAY "BRAND" - TRANSLATED BY FYDELL EDMUND GARRET (http://www.archive.org/stream/lyricspoemsfromi00ibseiala/lyricspoemsfromi00ibseiala_djvu.txt)

[OrphanPip]

I have a collection of excerpts and stuff from his major writings hanging around somewhere, I had it for a philosophy course in college something like 7 years ago. I find him interesting, but his lasting legacy is his existential Christianity and his discussion of faith.

As an aside, Kierkegaard seemed to have been a generally miserable person who couldn't get along with anyone.

[Gladys]

As an aside, Kierkegaard seemed to be a generally miserable person who couldn't get along with anyone.

In Ibsen's play Brand, the namesake priest is stoned by his own parishioners, before being annihilated in an avalanche with his mad gypsy sister.

Harold Bloom ranks Kierkegaard among the five greatest minds of Western civilisation.

[The Comedian]

Thanks all for the feedback. I remember when I was in college Kierkegaard was held in high regard. But recently, I felt a general silence about him in philosophical circles.

I think I'm going to give Either/Or a try. It's a long work, in two volumes, so I think I'll work on the first volume to determine if the second is worth a shot. Besides, Volume 1 has "Diary of a Seducer" in it -- it's often extracted and published separately.

Maybe I'll post a review/thread about it once I'm knee-deep in Christian existentialism.

[IntravenousJava]

I see you posted this some time ago, but I only joined the site today. If you remain interested in reading Kierkegaard, I strongly recommend Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments. The Sickness Unto Death is also a worthwhile read.

[Gladys]

If you remain interested in reading Kierkegaard, I strongly recommend Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments.

I found this the easiest read among his strictly philosophical works.

[Theunderground]

Its astonishing the lenghts that ropey old lonely decadents will use writing and intellectual gymnastics to justify their own madcap subjectivity. Nietzsche,sartre,huysaymans,muhammed,marx et al. These authors are dead!
The sickness unto death was an interesting psycholgical study,but jumps to all the wrong conclusions. These guys because they gleaned a few profound insights and maxims became elevated to 'priesthood'. What ever happened to reading for pleasure?

[IntravenousJava]

Its astonishing the lenghts that ropey old lonely decadents will use writing and intellectual gymnastics to justify their own madcap subjectivity. What ever happened to reading for pleasure?

Thanks to my own madcap subjectivity, I'm able to derive pleasure from a wide variety of literary flavors...

[The Comedian]

"Whatever happened to reading for pleasure?"
I read philosophy for pleasure. But with that pleasure comes a lot of other things too: wisdom, reflection, participating in the historical debates of long-ago minds. . . . . I like all that stuff. In fact, I get so much pleasure from it that I post on internet forums about it! I just can't keep from blabberin' on and on about his irrelevant stuff. I guess you can think of it as a lot like video games, chess, athletic sports, fishin' & huntin', driving a fast car, collecting antiques. . . .as far a pleasure goes, it's the same. But really, really different too. ;)

I'll have to check out that Postscript sometime. I got Either/Or volume one lined up right now.

[/dev/null]

I would go with:

1st: Either/Or Volume 1 + Repetition
2nd: Either/Or Volume 2 + Upbuilding Discourses
3rd: Fear and Trembling

All of it published in 1843 (first year publishing anything other than the thesis).