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The Monumental Task of Kierkegaard’s Attack upon Christendom

  • Matthew T. Nowachek EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: July 27, 2016
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Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook
From the journal Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook Volume 2016 Issue 1

Abstract

This essay develops the argument that Kierkegaard’s attack upon Christendom in his late writings can be fruitfully understood as a monumental task in two senses: first, as attacking the monuments of Christendom, and particularly those associated with Jakob Peter Mynster and Hans Lassen Martensen, and second, as itself a monument to the existential demand of what Kierkegaard identifies as authentic New Testament Christianity. Towards this end, the notion of the monument is introduced and employed to illuminate the critical and constructive nature of Kierkegaard’s attack. The essay concludes by reflecting on what it would mean to preserve such a Kierkegaardian monument.

Published Online: 2016-7-27
Published in Print: 2016-7-25

© 2016 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Titelei
  2. Preface
  3. Table of Contents
  4. Section 1: Interpreting Kierkegaard: Problems and Perspectives
  5. Kierkegaard on the Power of Love and Despair
  6. Geglaubte Verzweiflung: Wider eine atheistische Lesart Kierkegaards und ihre Ursächlichkeits-Rhetorik
  7. A Figurative Necessity in Dealing with Selfhood in Kierkegaard’s Thinking
  8. Kierkegaard as an Antimodern Moralist: Re-Thinking “Socio-Political” Categories in Recent Kierkegaard Scholarship
  9. Fertile Contradictions: A Reconsideration of “The Seducer’s Diary”
  10. On Separation as the Condition for All Existential Ethics
  11. Reue als Schlüssel zur existentiellen Selbstwerdung. Überlegungen im Anschluss an Kierkegaards Beichtrede von 1847
  12. Section 2: Source-Work Studies
  13. Schleiermacher in the Kierkegaardian Project: Between Socratic Ignorance and Second Immediacy
  14. The Monumental Task of Kierkegaard’s Attack upon Christendom
  15. Section 3: Kierkegaard Reception
  16. Faith in the Mode of Absence: Kierkegaard’s Jewish Readers in 1930s France (Rachel Bespaloff, Benjamin Fondane, Lev Shestov, and Jean Wahl)
  17. Gesellschaft und Kritische Philosophie. Kierkegaards und Jaspers’ Analyse der geistigen Situation Europas im Vergleich
  18. Kierkegaard und das ‚jüdische Denken‘: Die Rezeption Sören Kierkegaards in der jüdischen Moderne im Kontext des Orientalismus
  19. La puissance du don. Le don comme centre de la relation de l’homme avec Dieu, dans les discours édifiants de Kierkegaard, à la lumière de l’herméneutique du don de Jean Paul II
  20. Martin Heidegger Reads Søren Kierkegaard – or What Did He Actually Read?
  21. Section 4: Primary Texts in Translation
  22. Andreas Frederik Beck’s Review of Philosophical Fragments
  23. Abbreviations
  24. List of Contributors
https://doi.org/10.1515/kierke-2016-0111

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Titelei
  2. Preface
  3. Table of Contents
  4. Section 1: Interpreting Kierkegaard: Problems and Perspectives
  5. Kierkegaard on the Power of Love and Despair
  6. Geglaubte Verzweiflung: Wider eine atheistische Lesart Kierkegaards und ihre Ursächlichkeits-Rhetorik
  7. A Figurative Necessity in Dealing with Selfhood in Kierkegaard’s Thinking
  8. Kierkegaard as an Antimodern Moralist: Re-Thinking “Socio-Political” Categories in Recent Kierkegaard Scholarship
  9. Fertile Contradictions: A Reconsideration of “The Seducer’s Diary”
  10. On Separation as the Condition for All Existential Ethics
  11. Reue als Schlüssel zur existentiellen Selbstwerdung. Überlegungen im Anschluss an Kierkegaards Beichtrede von 1847
  12. Section 2: Source-Work Studies
  13. Schleiermacher in the Kierkegaardian Project: Between Socratic Ignorance and Second Immediacy
  14. The Monumental Task of Kierkegaard’s Attack upon Christendom
  15. Section 3: Kierkegaard Reception
  16. Faith in the Mode of Absence: Kierkegaard’s Jewish Readers in 1930s France (Rachel Bespaloff, Benjamin Fondane, Lev Shestov, and Jean Wahl)
  17. Gesellschaft und Kritische Philosophie. Kierkegaards und Jaspers’ Analyse der geistigen Situation Europas im Vergleich
  18. Kierkegaard und das ‚jüdische Denken‘: Die Rezeption Sören Kierkegaards in der jüdischen Moderne im Kontext des Orientalismus
  19. La puissance du don. Le don comme centre de la relation de l’homme avec Dieu, dans les discours édifiants de Kierkegaard, à la lumière de l’herméneutique du don de Jean Paul II
  20. Martin Heidegger Reads Søren Kierkegaard – or What Did He Actually Read?
  21. Section 4: Primary Texts in Translation
  22. Andreas Frederik Beck’s Review of Philosophical Fragments
  23. Abbreviations
  24. List of Contributors
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