Kierkegaard’s Aesthetics and the Aesthetic of Imitation
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Wojciech Kaftański
Abstract
This paper challenges the general approach to Kierkegaard’s engagement with imitation, which privileges a strictly religious reading. Heretofore imitation has been apprehended as a coherent concept shaped within the context of imitatio Christi in the devotio moderna. I locate Kierkegaard’s writings in the broader context of mimesis. Analyzing particular mimetic structures woven into the text, I show that a plurality of imitative models that are different from Christ occurs therein. Addressing the distinction between the religious and the aesthetic in Kierkegaard, I inquire into the status of these imitative models. Referring to the term “Mellembestemmelserne” and “ekphrasis”-the rhetorical device of aesthetics-I show that the other models of imitation exhibit supportive roles to the highest type of prototype (Christ) and therefore question the solely religious rendering of mimesis and the aesthetic confines of Kierkegaard’s concept of aesthetics
© 2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Section 1: Kierkegaardian Philosophical Concepts: Self-Understanding and Existence
- “Ne Quid Nimis.” Kierkegaard and the Virtue of Temperance
- Going No Further: Toward an Interpretation of “Problema III” in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling
- The Aporia of Decision: Revisiting the Question of Decision in Kierkegaard
- Kierkegaard in Nature: The Fragility of Existing with Naturalism
- Section 2: Kierkegaardian Religious Concepts: Reason, Faith, Imitation
- Kierkegaard’s Aesthetics and the Aesthetic of Imitation
- Søren Kierkegaard’s Historical Jesus as the Christ of Faith
- Faith in a Rational Age: A Dialogue with Climacus
- Climacus and Kierkegaard on the Outward Relationship with God
- Section 3: Rediscovering Kierkegaard’s Sources
- Shaftesbury—An Important Forgotten Indirect Source of Kierkegaard’s Thought
- Freedom and the Temporality of Despair
- “A Swarm of Laughter!” On Kierkegaard’s Conception of Enthusiasm and Its Comedic Remedy, an Enlightenment Inheritance
- Section 4: 20th Century Responses to Kierkegaard
- Ways of Dying: The Double Death in Kierkegaard and Blanchot
- Das Problem des religiösen Akosmismus in der Kierkegaard-Rezeption von Karl Jaspers
- Kierkegaard, Hannah Arendt and the Advent of the “Hollow Men” or towards a Kierkegaardian Reading of Eichmann in Jerusalem
- Von der Kulturkritik der „Menge“ zur existenzialen Analytik des „Man“
- Abbreviations
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Section 1: Kierkegaardian Philosophical Concepts: Self-Understanding and Existence
- “Ne Quid Nimis.” Kierkegaard and the Virtue of Temperance
- Going No Further: Toward an Interpretation of “Problema III” in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling
- The Aporia of Decision: Revisiting the Question of Decision in Kierkegaard
- Kierkegaard in Nature: The Fragility of Existing with Naturalism
- Section 2: Kierkegaardian Religious Concepts: Reason, Faith, Imitation
- Kierkegaard’s Aesthetics and the Aesthetic of Imitation
- Søren Kierkegaard’s Historical Jesus as the Christ of Faith
- Faith in a Rational Age: A Dialogue with Climacus
- Climacus and Kierkegaard on the Outward Relationship with God
- Section 3: Rediscovering Kierkegaard’s Sources
- Shaftesbury—An Important Forgotten Indirect Source of Kierkegaard’s Thought
- Freedom and the Temporality of Despair
- “A Swarm of Laughter!” On Kierkegaard’s Conception of Enthusiasm and Its Comedic Remedy, an Enlightenment Inheritance
- Section 4: 20th Century Responses to Kierkegaard
- Ways of Dying: The Double Death in Kierkegaard and Blanchot
- Das Problem des religiösen Akosmismus in der Kierkegaard-Rezeption von Karl Jaspers
- Kierkegaard, Hannah Arendt and the Advent of the “Hollow Men” or towards a Kierkegaardian Reading of Eichmann in Jerusalem
- Von der Kulturkritik der „Menge“ zur existenzialen Analytik des „Man“
- Abbreviations
