Talk:Philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard

Despair

The section on despair is seemingly short. There is alot more too it than that. There are about 6 or 7 different levels of despair, going from not realizing one is in despair, to embracing ones despair. I would do it, but I read Kierkegaard like 3 months ago in class and cant remember anything now. =/. Could osomebody please add to this section?

Clean-up

This page needs clean-up? Oh, wonderful--I love it when I can try to fix a bit and learn a helluva lot at the same time. This is what Wikipedia is all about. Sorry. I had to squee about it somewhere. Hee, excellent. Tamarkot 05:50, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

History

Where is the history portion of the site? I remember it being here before.

--Jmnage 13:29, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Unencyclopedic content

I'm sorry but this seems like someone worked on this as part of an undergraduate philosophy class. It does not seem encyclopedic. And what is with the the pictures of calc books and Groundhog's Day? Definitely not encyclopeic. --jabin1979 26 April 2006

As is the picture under individuality. "Try not to get lost in the crowd."???

Some parts of the article need revision, and to also take into acct his pseudonymous points of view. Poor Yorick 04:14, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Kierkegaard and postmodernism

Has Kierkegaard really been a "major" influence of postmodernism? I realise that nobody is entirely sure about what postmodernism is, but I've read a fair bit written by the ostensibly postmodern theorists, and they don't seem to invoke him all that often. I don't think the notion that truth is subjectivity, for example, is at all postmodern (postmodernism doesn't look for any non-social non-historical grounding for truth - objective, subjective or otherwise). I realise he might have had an indirect influence (via Heidegger, for example), but if you include indirect influences you get a bazillion "major" postmodern influences.

Heidegger was directly influenced by Kierkegaard; parts of Heidegger's Being and Time, esp. the sections on anxiety was pretty much lifted from Kierkegaard. As for pomo, there are lots of books that describe this connection, incl. "Kierkegaard in Post/Modernity", "God, the Gift, and Postmodernism", and "Gift of Death" by Derrida. – Poor Yorick 04:13, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I realise that he had a major influence on Heidegger, but I wouldn't call Heidegger a postmodernist. I would say Heidegger was an influence of postmodernism. Names are only arbitrary, and we can keep pushing their geneology further and further back until they become meaningless. So I think it's best to take a prima facie, 'common person' understanding of the term "postmodernism". I think most people associate this with that 1960s-70s French crowd - Foucault, Derrida, Baudrillard, Lyotard, etc. This group of theorists took up some of Heidegger's ideas, and problematised others. But I think the parts of Heidegger derived from K were the very parts that postmodernism undermined most. Heidegger wanted to construct an alternative grounding in Being, ontology or whatever etc. Postmodernism, however, makes problematic all ultimate foundations. Now I think that it was these very ideas, the ones postmodernism tossed out, that were the ones Heidegger got from K - the individual's subjectivity, existentialist stuff.

As I think Heidegger is himself an influence of postmodernism, this would make K an influence of an influence, which I think is a bit too far removed to call "major". Pushing to this level would make practically everyone a postmodernist. Plato also had an important influence on Heidegger and Derrida. Ralph Waldo Emerson had a huge influence on Nietzche. But does it make sense to describe Plato and Emerson as "important influences of postmodernism?"

I wouldn't call Kierkegaard a postmodernist either and it's not like Kierkegaard founded Postmodernism, goodness no. His work can be seen as both anticipating and critizing postmodernism and he did create new lines of thought that would be later picked up by postmodernists, not just existential categories. Like Sartre and the existentialists who adopted concepts from Kierk, Niet, and Heid; so have the postmodernists. Hell, there's even Postmodern Christianity.. yikes. Especially when K reacts to the social and political mileu of his day, such as in The Present Age and the Corsair Affair, he discusses such pomo concepts like levelling, the masses ("crowd"), and other pomo ideas, which were highly utilized by such philosophers as Caputo, Levinas, and even Derrida. Anyways, there are many references in books and on the web which clearly explicate the connection, more clearly than I. Cheers! Poor Yorick 12:16, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Merge

Shouldn't this be merged with the Kierkegaard article?

The Kierkegaard article is 49kb, this article is 40kb. According to Wikipedia:Article Size, articles more than 50k should be divided. Poor Yorick 05:58, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Мудрая мысль. Только как специалист по Кьеркегору могу сказать одно: слишком много в этой статье ненужной информации, не имеющей никакого отношения к философии датского религиозного мыслителя. Я бы сказал: отсутствие здравого смысла налицо. И никакой логики. Мы ведь, если я понял, ведём речь о философии Кьеркегора, а о постмодернизме, Хайдеггере и прочих реалиях. Их здесь попросту не должно быть. Kordener1855 (talk) 09:12, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Marxist Bias

This analysis of Kierkegaard seems to be based primarily on a Marxist context. Having read most of Kierkegaard's major works, I have yet to detect the level of proto-Marxist thinking that this article seems to imply. I would like to see some specific references in regards to these ideas about mass production and abstraction. Otherwise, I'm going to have to edit the sections that include Marxist interpretations.

The Prodigal 21:33, 17 April 2007 (UTC)The Prodigal

Hello Prodigal. I think the works referred to is Kierkegaard's "Two Ages" or "The Present Age" and "The Moment".

For secondary resources, I recommend Bruce Kirmmse's Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark, where it discusses his politics; and Karl Lowith's From Hegel to Nietzsche for an explicit comparison of Kierkegaard and Marx. Cheers, Poor Yorick 21:54, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Kierkegaard and Socrates

I edited the sentence concerning the relationship between Kierkegaard and Socrates to read: "He measured himself against the model of philosophy which he found in Socrates, which aims to draw one's attention not to explanatory systems, but rather to the issue of how one is existing."

Then there was this bit of confusion involving Poor Yorick and edit conflicts. In the end Poor Yorick ended up putting this in the article: "He measured himself against the model of philosophy which he found in Socrates and preferred a philosophy that was fragmented and made deep insights, without committing to an encompassing all-explaining system."

This is almost, but not quite, identical to what was there before I did my edit. I'm not sure if that was intentional or not, since there were some edit conflicts involved. Be that as may, I'm going to go back to my version. "Deep insights" is decidedly vague. And I don't know where Kierkegaard praises a fragmented philosophy, or where Socrates says anything about whether philosophy should be fragmented or not, or where Kierkegaard attributes the idea of fragmented philosophy to Socrates. On the other hand, he does go on about existence and Socrates and the Socratic attention to existence. This happens in various places, but I can reference the CUP. (Do we need page numbers? There's a longish bit about Socrates and existence, as contrasted with speculation, on pp.204-210 in the Hong&Hong edition.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Flyingricepaddy (talk • contribs) 05:56, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it was a bit distracting to make sure the Two Ages note was in there, while not forgetting your contribution. Keep on editing! Poor Yorick 06:40, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

The article claims that "Kierkegaard uses the same idea that Socrates used in his own writings". It is well known by students of philosophy that if Socrates ever wrote anything down, we have never discovered it. So while a minor factual inaccuracy, it casts doubt upon the accuracy of this section (I am not knowledgeable enough to fix this). I have added a disputed flag for this statement. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fatesurge (talk • contribs) 00:44, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Section on Despair

I just expanded the section on despair to include the several types of despair and where one would find them. Feel free to clean it up if my prose seems opaque. Its hard to avoid and still do Kiekegaard justice. - Entity49 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Entity49 (talk • contribs) 05:59, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Individuality

The section on individuality has a paragraph on Kierkegaard's view of the modern age. However, Kierkegaard wasn't around during the modern age. Comments about "media" and "mass production" are misleading because one gets a sense that it was Kierkegaard who said this. Perhaps, write what Kierkegaard said about the public and then create your own web-page containing your own views of the topic. I know too little about Kierkegaard to add his real views, but I get the sense that the views are those of the author and not those of a 19th century philosopher. Maybe quote him to support this argument.

Cacozelia (talk) 03:01, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Kierkegaard indeed wrote about "media" and "mass production" in his work The Present Age. Here's an excerpt of that work: [1] Poor Yorick (talk) 04:25, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Instead, the Self or ability for the self to be created from a relation to the Absolute or God (the Self can only be realized through a relation to God) arises as a relation between the relation of the Finite and Infinite relating back to the human. This would be a positive relation.

This paragraph makes no sense to me. The prose is poor, and "relation" is repeated in what seems a redundant manner.

Forbidden fruit

In the "dread" section, a paragraph is spent discussing how original sin was generated when Adam ate the apple...wasn't it his wife who took the mortal munch? Telos (talk) 21:56, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Nice catch! Except, you know how the men of old exercised a patriarchal attitude towards women (this rib stuff and such), putting the responsibility on the men. Kierkegaard did his best, but that one he missed, obviously... ... said: Rursus (bork²) 21:04, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Computers

Text says (section Alienation):

But humans are not robots or computer programs or amoebae— humans...

Did he really say so? Or should we try to reformulate the text so as to fit Kierkegaards time, in order to not allege thoughts that he never had (or?)? ... said: Rursus (bork²) 11:02, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Good article

Besides the above criticism, this article is very good. It treats Kierkegaard philosophy very well, and I would only hope that more theologically oriented articles would treat the topic like this article does. ... said: Rursus (bork²) 21:01, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

The neutrality of this article is disputed

Isn't the person who put the tag on the article supposed to explain why the tag is there? 11614soup 18:48, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

That is correct. I have removed it. --Saddhiyama (talk) 19:37, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Vedic system

I would be interested in seeing some primary source material related to Kierkegaard and the Vedic system of the four aims of life. I think they should be removed. 11614soup 03:08, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Removed explanation

User:Mattghg has removed an explanation which, although anachronistic, perfectly describes Kierkegaard's take upon objective and subjective truths. Since he did not describe his edit with a summary, I cannot know why he removed the explanation. Although Kierkegaard may not have thought of these very examples, some examples are useful in describing Kierkegaard's thought. I mean he perfectly understood that on certain issues there is a clash between science and religion, although science cannot refute purely theological assertions. So, I want some input about this deletion since imho the examples given, while not rendering Kierkegaard's Zeitgeist, do throw light upon a theme of his thinking. Of course, a reliable source explicitly relating similar examples to Kierkegaard's thought would be better than the examples chosen by me. Tgeorgescu (talk) 00:08, 24 August 2013 (UTC)