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A Portrait of Spiritlessness in the Age of Leveling

  • Mathias G. Parding
Published/Copyright: July 26, 2018
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Abstract

Since the spirit of the time greatly influences the individual, Kierkegaard becomes increasingly aware of a socio-political environment in which a specific psychological character is molded, namely that of spiritlessness. Consequently, my primary objective in this paper will be to examine how this character manifests itself as a socio-psychological phenomenon in the age of leveling. How does spiritlessness constitute what we can call a pathology of normality as an emblematic despair of the age? In trying to answer this question I hope to clarify the reason for Kierkegaard’s increasingly problematic relation to his time. Since the intimate relationship between the concept of spiritlessness and leveling is given the most systematic account in Two Ages, most of the contributions in this paper will derive from this work.

Online erschienen: 2018-07-26

© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Front matter
  2. Title pages
  3. Preface
  4. Contents
  5. Articles
  6. Section 1: Interpreting Kierkegaard: Problems and Perspectives
  7. There is No Teleological Suspension of the Ethical: Kierkegaard’s Logic Against Religious Justification and Moral Exceptionalism
  8. Kierkegaard on Variation and Thought Experiment
  9. Subjectivity and Ambiguity: Anxiety and Love in Kierkegaard
  10. Faith and Knowledge: Remarks Inspired by Søren Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments
  11. Anti-Climacus’ Inverted Dialectic of Divine Grace and Human Activity
  12. Recognition, Self-Recognition, and God: An Interpretation of The Sickness unto Death as an Existential Theory of Self-Recognition
  13. A Portrait of Spiritlessness in the Age of Leveling
  14. The Reality of Love: An Affirmative Vision of Christianity Based on Kierkegaard’s Interpretation of the Maxim: Love is the Fulfilling of the Law
  15. Section 2: Source–work Studies
  16. Kierkegaard and the Danish Golden Age: The Strengths and Limits of Source-Work Research
  17. From Enthusiasm to Irony: Kierkegaard’s Reception of Norse Mythology and Literature
  18. Die Ausnahme bei Christian Garve und Søren Kierkegaard
  19. Section 3: Kierkegaard Reception
  20. Erkenntnis und Liebe. Zur Nähe und Ferne zwischen Heinrich Barths und Søren Kierkegaards Verständnis von Gemeinschaft
  21. Communication of Existence: Søren Kierkegaard and Gabriel Marcel
  22. Pseudonymous Voices Talking Back: Kierkegaard’s Plural Perspectives and a Wittgensteinian Point of View
  23. Section 4: Primary Texts in Translation
  24. Andreas Frederik Beck’s Review of Kierkegaard’s On the Concept of Irony
  25. Back matter
  26. Abbreviations
  27. List of Contributors
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