Naked Before God: Kierkegaard’s Liturgical Self
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Jeffrey Hanson
Abstract
The aim of this paper is twofold. First, it seeks to demonstrate how Kierkegaard’s deployment of the idea of earnestness can furnish a sort of tonal “unity” to a narrative understanding of the Kierkegaardian self, which gestures toward a solution to the problem of how a narrative self can be unified over time and over a multiplicity of projects and plans. Second, this paper aims to give further richness to the recent work of Patrick Stokes, who argues that the narrative self needs to be supplemented by what he calls a naked self. This paper then argues that because there are these two dimensions to selfhood—the narrative person and the naked self—the Kierkegaardian individual is in a fundamental way not so much a matter of identity as of contradiction or internal tension.
© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Front matter
- Title pages
- Preface
- Contents
- Articles
- Section 1: Problems and Perspectives in Kierkegaard’s Authorship
- Section 1: Problems and Perspectives in Kierkegaard’s Authorship
- Kierkegaard’s Aesthete in Either/Or: Using Hegelian Mediation in Everyday Life
- Kierkegaard on the Dancers of Faith and of Infinity
- Climacus’ Miracle: Another Look at “the Wonder” in Philosophical Fragments through a Spinozist Lens
- Naked Before God: Kierkegaard’s Liturgical Self
- Das palimpsestische Selbst. Zur Genese, Struktur, Darstellung und Vermittlung von personaler Identität nach Sören Kierkegaard
- Das Verhältnis von Selbstwerdung und Gott bei Sören Kierkegaard. Eine kritische Bestandsaufnahme
- Kierkegaard’s Secret Politics of Anguish and Love
- Kierkegaard as a Thinker of Alienation
- To Be(come) Love Itself: Charity as Acquired Originality
- Section 2: Kierkegaard’s Authorial Strategies
- Section 2: Kierkegaard’s Authorial Strategies
- Pseudonyms? What Pseudonyms? There were no Pseudonyms…
- A Prompter’s Play? Kierkegaard’s Puzzling Portrait of Authorial Withdrawal in “An Occasional Discourse”
- Kierkegaard’s Authorship as Eucharistic Liturgy
- Section 3: Kierkegaardian Resources for Current Debates and Challenges
- Section 3: Kierkegaardian Resources for Current Debates and Challenges
- Defiance Before the Law: Kierkegaard, Kafka, Coetzee
- Existence Philosophy as a Humanism?
- Towards a Kierkegaardian Retreating of the Political
- Weird Allies? Kierkegaard and Object-Oriented Ontology
- Unplug Your Life: Digital Detox Through a Kierkegaardian Lens
- “Out into the Middle of Life”: The Age of Disintegration and Ecological Perspectives in Kierkegaard’s Thought
- Back matter
- Abbreviations
- List of Contributors
Articles in the same Issue
- Front matter
- Title pages
- Preface
- Contents
- Articles
- Section 1: Problems and Perspectives in Kierkegaard’s Authorship
- Section 1: Problems and Perspectives in Kierkegaard’s Authorship
- Kierkegaard’s Aesthete in Either/Or: Using Hegelian Mediation in Everyday Life
- Kierkegaard on the Dancers of Faith and of Infinity
- Climacus’ Miracle: Another Look at “the Wonder” in Philosophical Fragments through a Spinozist Lens
- Naked Before God: Kierkegaard’s Liturgical Self
- Das palimpsestische Selbst. Zur Genese, Struktur, Darstellung und Vermittlung von personaler Identität nach Sören Kierkegaard
- Das Verhältnis von Selbstwerdung und Gott bei Sören Kierkegaard. Eine kritische Bestandsaufnahme
- Kierkegaard’s Secret Politics of Anguish and Love
- Kierkegaard as a Thinker of Alienation
- To Be(come) Love Itself: Charity as Acquired Originality
- Section 2: Kierkegaard’s Authorial Strategies
- Section 2: Kierkegaard’s Authorial Strategies
- Pseudonyms? What Pseudonyms? There were no Pseudonyms…
- A Prompter’s Play? Kierkegaard’s Puzzling Portrait of Authorial Withdrawal in “An Occasional Discourse”
- Kierkegaard’s Authorship as Eucharistic Liturgy
- Section 3: Kierkegaardian Resources for Current Debates and Challenges
- Section 3: Kierkegaardian Resources for Current Debates and Challenges
- Defiance Before the Law: Kierkegaard, Kafka, Coetzee
- Existence Philosophy as a Humanism?
- Towards a Kierkegaardian Retreating of the Political
- Weird Allies? Kierkegaard and Object-Oriented Ontology
- Unplug Your Life: Digital Detox Through a Kierkegaardian Lens
- “Out into the Middle of Life”: The Age of Disintegration and Ecological Perspectives in Kierkegaard’s Thought
- Back matter
- Abbreviations
- List of Contributors