Download or read book The Concept of Existence in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript written by R.H. Johnson and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The writings of Kierkegaard continue to be a fertile source for con temporary philosophical thought. Perhaps the most interesting of his works to a philosopher is the Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments. The Fragments is a brief, algebraic piece in which the author attempts to put forward the central teachings of Christianity in philosophical terminology. The. work is addressed to a reader who has a philosophical bent and who may therefore be tempted to relate to Christianity via such questions as: Can the truth of Christian ity be established? The analysis of the Fragments establishes that this way of relating to Christianity is misguided, since Christianity and phil osophy are categorically different. Having done this, the author turns his attention in the Postscript to the question of how an individual human being can properly establish a relationship to Christianity. In order to become a Christian, one must first of all exist. "Nothing more than thatP' one may be tempted to think. Yet at the very core of the Postscript is the notion that to exist as an individual human being is difficult. The author goes so far as to claim that men have forgotten what it means to exist.

Download or read book Kierkegaard s Concluding Unscientific Postscript written by Søren Kierkegaard and published by Princeton : Princeton University Press, for American Scandinavian foundation. This book was released on 1941 with total page 612 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Besides a sense of personal loss at the death of David F. Swenson on February 11, 1940, I felt dismay that he had left unfinished his translation of the Unscientific Postscript. I had longed to see it published among the first of Kierkegaard's works in English. In the spring of 1935 it did not seem exorbitant to hope that it might be ready for the printer by the end of that year. For in March I learned from Professor Swenson that he had years before "done about two thirds of a rough translation." In 1937/38 he took a sabbatical leave from his university for the sake of finishing this work. Yet after all it was not finished- partly because Professor Swenson was already incapacitated by the illness which eventually resulted in his death; but also because he aimed at a degree of perfection which hardly can be reached by a translator. At one time he expressed to me his suspicion that perhaps, as in the translation of Kant's philosophy, it might require the cooperation of many scholars during several generations before the translation of Kierkegaard's terminology could be definitely settled. I hailed with joy this new apprehension, which promised a speedy conclusion of the work, and in the words of Luther I urged him to "sin boldly."--Editor's pref., p. [ix].

Download or read book Kierkegaard Concluding Unscientific Postscript written by and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-05-28 with total page 583 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript is a classic of existential literature. It concludes the first and richest phase of Kierkegaard's pseudonymous authorship and is the text that philosophers look to first when attempting to define Kierkegaard's own philosophy. Familiar Kierkegaardian themes are introduced in the work, including truth as subjectivity, indirect communication, the leap, and the impossibility of forming a philosophical system for human existence. The Postscript sums up the aims of the preceding pseudonymous works and opens the way to the next part of Kierkegaard's increasingly tempestuous life: it can thus be seen as a cornerstone of his philosophical thought. This volume offers the work in a new and accessible translation by Alastair Hannay, together with an introduction that sets the work in its philosophical and historical contexts.

Download or read book Kierkegaard s Writings VII Volume 7 written by Søren Kierkegaard and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-21 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contains a new translation, with a historical introduction by the translators, of two works written under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus. Through Climacus, Kierkegaard contrasts the paradoxes of Christianity with Greek and modern philosophical thinking. In Philosophical Fragments he begins with Greek Platonic philosophy, exploring the implications of venturing beyond the Socratic understanding of truth acquired through recollection to the Christian experience of acquiring truth through grace. Published in 1844 and not originally planned to appear under the pseudonym Climacus, the book varies in tone and substance from the other works so attributed, but it is dialectically related to them, as well as to the other pseudonymous writings. The central issue of Johannes Climacus is doubt. Probably written between November 1842 and April 1843 but unfinished and published only posthumously, this book was described by Kierkegaard as an attack on modern speculative philosophy by "means of the melancholy irony, which did not consist in any single utterance on the part of Johannes Climacus but in his whole life. . . . Johannes does what we are told to do--he actually doubts everything--he suffers through all the pain of doing that, becomes cunning, almost acquires a bad conscience. When he has gone as far in that direction as he can go and wants to come back, he cannot do so. . . . Now he despairs, his life is wasted, his youth is spent in these deliberations. Life does not acquire any meaning for him, and all this is the fault of philosophy." A note by Kierkegaard suggests how he might have finished the work: "Doubt is conquered not by the system but by faith, just as it is faith that has brought doubt into the world!."

Download or read book Concluding Unscientific Postscript written by Søren Kierkegaard and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-12 with total page 599 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contents include: Foreword Editor's Preface Introduction by the Editor Preface Introduction BOOK ONE: The Objective Problem Concerning the Truth of Christianity Introductory Remarks Chapter I: The Historical Point of View 1. The Holy Scriptures 2. The Church 3. The Proof of the Centuries for the Truth of Christianity Chapter II: The Speculative Point of View BOOK TWO: The Subjective Problem, The Relation of the Subject to the Truth of Christianity, The Problem of Becoming a Christian PART ONE: Something About Lessing Chapter I: An Expression of Gratitude Chapter II: Theses Possibly or Actually Attributable to Lessing 1. The subjective existing thinker has regard to the dialectics of the process of communication 2. The existing subjective thinker is in his existential relation to the truth as negative as he is positive; he has a much humor as he has essential pathos; and he is constantly in process of becoming, i.e. he is always striving 3. Lessing has said that accidental historical truths can never serve as proofs for eternal truths of the reason; and that the transition by which it is proposed to base an eternal truth upon historical testimony is a leap 4. Lessing has said that, if God held all truth in His right hand, and in His left the lifelong pursuit of it, he would choose the left hand A. A logical system is possible B. An existential system is possible PART TWO: How the Subjectivity of the Individual Must be Qualified in Order that the Problem May Exist for Him Chapter I: The Task of Becoming Subjective. The conclusion that would be forced upon ethics if the attainment of subjectivity were not the highest task confronting a human being—Considerations left out of account in connection with the closer understanding of this—Examples of thinking directed towards becoming subjective Chapter II: The Subjective Truth, Inwardness; Truth is Subjectivity Appendix. A Glance at the Contemporary Effort in Danish Literature Chapter III: Real or Ethical Subjectivity—The Subjective Thinker 1. Existence and Reality 2. Possibility as higher than Reality—Reality as higher than Possibility—Poetic and Intellectual Ideality—Ethical Ideality 3. The Simultaneity of the Individual Factors of Subjectivity in the Existing Subject—The Constrast between this Simultaneity and the Speculative Process 4. The Subjective Thinker—his Task, his Form, his Style Chapter IV: The Problem of the Fragments: How can an Eternal Happiness be based upon Historical Knowledge? Section I. For Orientation in the Plan of the Fragments 1. That the point of departure was taken in the pagan consciousness, and why 2. The importance of a preliminary agreement concerning what Christianity is, before there can be any question of mediating between Christianity and speculative thought. The absence of such an agreement favors the proposal of medication, while at the same time making any mediation illusory; the presence of such an agreement precludes mediation 3. The problem of the Fragments viewed as a problem, introductory not to Christianity, but to becoming a Christian Section II. The Problem Itself. The eternal happiness of the individual is decided in time through the relationship to something historical, which is furthermore of such a character as to oinclude in its composition that which by virtue of its essence cannot become historical, and must therefore become such by virtue of the absurd A. Existential Pathos 1. The Initial Expression for Existential Pathos: the absolute direction (respect) toward the absolute telos, expressed in action through the transformation of the individual's existence Aesthetic Pathos—The deceptiveness of the principle of mediation—The medieval monastic movement—The simultaneous maintenance of an absolute relationship to the absolute telos and a relative relationship to the relative ends 2. The Essential Expression for Existential pathos: Suffering—Fortune and misforutne as the expression for an aesthetic view of life, in constradistinction to suffering as the expression of a religious view (illustrated by reference to the religious discourse)—The Reality of suffering (humor)—The reality of suffering in the last instance as evidence for the possession by the existing individual of a relationship to an eternal happiness—The illusion of religiosity—The category of Anfechtung—The primary ground and significance of the religious suffering: The dying away from the life of immediacy while still remaining in the finite—An edifying divertisement—Humor as an incognito for religiosity 3. The Decisive Expression for existential pathos: Guilt—That the investigation goes backward instead of forward—The eternal recollection of guilt is the highest expression for the relation between the consciousness of guilt and an eternal happiness—Lower expressions for the consciousness of guilt, and corresponding forms of satisfaction—Self-imposted penance—Humor—The religiosity of hidden inwardness Intermediate Clause between A and B B. The Dilectical 1. The dialectical contradiction which constitutes the breach: to expect an eternal happiness in time through a relationship to something else in time 2. The dialectical constradiction that an eternal happiness is based upon something historical 3. The dialectical contradiction that the historical fact here in question is not a simple historical fact, but is constituted by that which only against its nature can become historical, hence by virtue of the absurd Appendix to B. The retroactive effect of the dialectical upon the pathetic, and the factor simultaneously present in the pathos (a) The consciousness of sin (b) The possibililty of offense (c) The smart of sympathy Chapter V. Conclusion. About Childish Christianity Appendix. For an Understanding with the Reader First and Last Declaration Notes Index Originally published in 1941. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Download or read book Kierkegaard Concluding Unscientific Postscript written by and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-05-28 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript is a classic of existential literature. It concludes the first and richest phase of Kierkegaard's pseudonymous authorship and is the text that philosophers look to first when attempting to define Kierkegaard's own philosophy. Familiar Kierkegaardian themes are introduced in the work, including truth as subjectivity, indirect communication, the leap, and the impossibility of forming a philosophical system for human existence. The Postscript sums up the aims of the preceding pseudonymous works and opens the way to the next part of Kierkegaard's increasingly tempestuous life: it can thus be seen as a cornerstone of his philosophical thought. This volume offers the work in a new and accessible translation by Alastair Hannay, together with an introduction that sets the work in its philosophical and historical contexts.

Download or read book Kierkegaard s Concluding Unscientific Postscript written by Rick Anthony Furtak and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-25 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Søren Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript has provoked a lively variety of divergent interpretations for a century and a half. It has been both celebrated and condemned as the chief inspiration for twentieth-century existential thought, as a subversive parody of philosophical argument, as a critique of mass society, as a forerunner of phenomenology and of postmodern relativism, and as an appeal for a renewal of religious commitment. These new essays written by international Kierkegaard scholars offer a plurality of critical approaches to this fundamental text of existential philosophy. They cover hotly debated topics such as the tension between the Socratic-philosophical and the Christian-religious; the identity and personality of Kierkegaard's pseudonym 'Johannes Climacus'; his conceptions of paradoxical faith and of passionate understanding; his relation to his contemporaries and to some of his more distant predecessors; and, last but not least, his pertinence to our present-day concerns.

Download or read book Kierkegaard s Concept of Existence written by Gregor Malantschuk and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The objective of this book is to review the complex of issues in Soren Kierkegaard's concept of existence. It is evident that for Kierkegaard existence is always composed of three elements: namely, the subject, freedom, and the ethical. In the process of clarifying the relation between these three elements in the different stages of existence, the course of the development the individual must go through in order to become the single individual is described. "The study falls into four parts. The first section describes the levels in existence on which as person attempts by his own powers to actualize the ethical ideals; in this stage the center of gravity for a person's effort still lies within the bounds of immanence. The second section describes a person's ethical and religious growth as it develops in relation to a transcendent power, whose highest expression is Christ as the revelation of God. The third section discusses the issues in existence that Kierkegaard himself designated as the most difficult of all for human thought. The last section points to the highest existential position to which philosophy in the broader sense and Christianity respectively can take a person. Kierkegaard utilizes these positions as a standard for evaluating existence within immanence and for Christian existence.

Download or read book Kierkegaard A Biography written by Alastair Hannay and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-05-05 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A 2001 biography of Kierkegaard's life and thoughts written by one of the world's preeminent authorities.

Download or read book Commentary on Kierkegaard s Concluding Unscientific Postscript written by Niels Thulstrup and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first comprehensive commentary on Soren Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript the eminent Kierkegaard specialist Niels Thulstrup clarifies the book's intricate allusions to the thought and literature of its own and past ages. A central work both in Kierkegaard's authorship and in the history of philosophy, the Postscript breaks completely with a long tradition of religious and philosophical thought. In his introduction and commentary, presented here in translation from the Danish, Professor Thulstrup explains this break and the unique relationship of the work to Kierkegaard's other books. Originally published in 1984. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Download or read book The Anti Christianity of Kierkegaard written by Herbert M. Garelick and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Kierkegaard s Writings XII Volume I written by Søren Kierkegaard and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-21 with total page 643 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Philosophical Fragments the pseudonymous author Johannes Climacus explored the question: What is required in order to go beyond Socratic recollection of eternal ideas already possessed by the learner? Written as an afterword to this work, Concluding Unscientific Postscript is on one level a philosophical jest, yet on another it is Climacus's characterization of the subjective thinker's relation to the truth of Christianity. At once ironic, humorous, and polemical, this work takes on the "unscientific" form of a mimical-pathetical-dialectical compilation of ideas. Whereas the movement in the earlier pseudonymous writings is away from the aesthetic, the movement in Postscript is away from speculative thought. Kierkegaard intended Postscript to be his concluding work as an author. The subsequent "second authorship" after The Corsair Affair made Postscript the turning point in the entire authorship. Part One of the text volume examines the truth of Christianity as an objective issue, Part Two the subjective issue of what is involved for the individual in becoming a Christian, and the volume ends with an addendum in which Kierkegaard acknowledges and explains his relation to the pseudonymous authors and their writings. The second volume contains the scholarly apparatus, including a key to references and selected entries from Kierkegaard's journals and papers.

Download or read book Being and Existence in Kierkegaard s Pseudonymous Works written by John W. Elrod and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-08 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this study John W. Elrod demonstrates that Kierkegaard's pseudonymous writings have an ontological foundation that unites the disparate elements of these books. The descriptions of the different stages of human development are not fully understandable, the author argues, without an awareness of the role played by this ontology in Kierkegaard's analysis of human existence. Kierkegaard contends that the self is a synthesis of finitude and infinitude, body and soul, reality and ideality, necessity and possibility, and time and eternity. Each of these syntheses reveals a particular and unique aspect of individual being not disclosed in the others. Part One shows that ontology is central to the discussion of the self in the pseudonyms. The author notes that spirit, as a synthesis of the expressions of the self, develops as consciousness and freedom. In Part Two he indicates the relationship between notions of being and existence. He notes that existence, in Kierkegaard's thought, grows out of the life of the spirit; the different stages of existence are concrete modes that develop in the spirit's striving to unify the self as a synthesis. These existential expressions of spirit are dialectically related, in that each step requires the preceding stages of spiritual development. Originally published in 1975. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Download or read book Becoming a Self written by Merold Westphal and published by Purdue University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The titles in this series present well-edited basic texts to be used in courses and seminars and for teachers looking for a succinct exposition of the results of recent research. Each volume in the series presents the fundamental ideas of a great philosopher by means of a very thorough and up-to-date commentary on one important text. The edition and explanation of the text give insight into the whole of the oeuvre, of which it is an integral part.

Download or read book Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments written by Robert L. Perkins and published by Mercer University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The International Kierkegaard Commentary-For the first time in English the world community of scholars systematically assembled and presented the results of recent research in the vast literature of Søren Kierkegaard. Based on the definitive English edition of Kierkegaard's works by Princeton University Press, this series of commentaries addresses all the published texts of the influential Danish philosopher and theologian. This is volume 12 in a series of commentaries based upon the definitive translations of Kierkegaard's writings published by Princeton University Press, 1980ff.

Download or read book Kierkegaard s Fragments and Postscript written by C. Stephen Evans and published by Humanities Press International. This book was released on 1983 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Confusion of the Spheres written by Genia Schönbaumsfeld and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-03-11 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cursory allusions to the relation between Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein are common in philosophical literature, but there has been little in the way of serious and comprehensive commentary on the relationship of their ideas. Genia Schönbaumsfeld closes this gap and offers new readings of Kierkegaard's and Wittgenstein's conceptions of philosophy and religious belief. Chapter one documents Kierkegaard's influence on Wittgenstein, while chapters two and three provide trenchant criticisms of two prominent attempts to compare the two thinkers, those by D. Z. Phillips and James Conant. In chapter four, Schönbaumsfeld develops Kierkegaard's and Wittgenstein's concerted criticisms of certain standard conceptions of religious belief, and defends their own positive conception against the common charges of 'irrationalism' and 'fideism'. As well as contributing to contemporary debate about how to read Kierkegaard's and Wittgenstein's work, A Confusion of the Spheres addresses issues which not only concern scholars of Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard, but anyone interested in the philosophy of religion, or the ethical aspects of philosophical practice as such.