Volume 2017, Issue 1

Foregoing a moralistic approach to the figure of Johannes the seducer, the present article seeks to assess his aesthetic project by those criteria outlined in Forførerens Dagbog itself. By closely tracing the thread of performativity in his art, especially as it regards mirroring, the article will demonstrate how Johannes fails to abide by his own aesthetic philosophy at both the narrative and the narratological levels, thus dismantling the diary from within. In particular, it will be argued that the mimetic immediacy of the seducer’s project is inversely proportional to the intimacy it achieves. The article concludes by relating Johannes’ failure to Enten/Eller as a whole and, in turn, to Søren Kierkegaard’s view of Romanticism as well as his own “performance” of the diary in his public life.

In searching Kierkegaard’s authorship for a politics, what emerges most clearly is the negativity of his task: he does not so much write about politics, as lay the foundations for one through his conception of the self. Kierkegaard’s notion of the self challenges the prevailing understanding of selfhood in classical liberal economic models as an egoistic individual engaged in the maximisation of preferences-a vision that entails a community posited on the endless growth of material means to fulfil these preferences. In contrast, Kierkegaard presents a rich and nuanced depiction of the dialectical path of selfhood through immediacy and negativity to faith. The result is a complex understanding of the self in faith as answerable to its own ideals and dependent on the infinite that exceeds it. Such a self also demands a form of community: one that is dialectical and non-teleological, structured by each individual’s responsibility to their better I and the relationality of the self. This model of the self and community, I suggest, holds the potential for a Kierkegaardian politics.

My paper addresses the question whether Kierkegaard’s concept of the self is compatible with or even implies the notion of a prereflective form of selfawareness. I will connect Kierkegaard to the traditions of Idealism (e. g., Fichte) and Romanticism (e. g., Schleiermacher), as analyzed by the so-called “Heidelberg School,” in particular Dieter Henrich and Manfred Frank. While there are many interpretations of Kierkegaard’s concept of the self, especially with regard to The Sickness unto Death (1849), my own approach is unique in that it is based on a closer look at and comparison of Kierkegaard and Schleiermacher. I will argue, in particular, that both authors favor a non-egological model of self-awareness.

What is the purpose of prayer? According to Kierkegaard, “prayer does not change God, but it changes the one who prays.” Whilst much contemporary philosophy of religion focuses on the so-called puzzle of petitionary prayer, less is written about how prayer can change the person who prays. In this paper, I discuss Kierkegaard’s account of prayer in The Sickness unto Death and “An Occasional Discourse on the Occasion of Confession.” Prayer, as it is presented here, allows a person to gain a certain kind of self-knowledge and thereby draw near to God. After outlining Kierkegaard’s account, I draw some comparisons with Harry Frankfurt’s account of the will to demonstrate how prayer might allow for both self-knowledge as well as God-knowledge

This paper analyzes the problem of suffering in Kierkegaard’s thought on the basis of two main parts of his work: pseudonymous writings and upbuilding discourses. The main assumption is that Kierkegaard presents the problem of suffering differently in these two parts: in the pseudonymous writings from the viewpoint of the negative dialectic of paradox, and in the upbuilding discourses in terms of the positive dialectic of upbuilding. Therefore, the problem of suffering is examined separately in both these parts: in the pseudonymous writings as the phenomenology of suffering and in the upbuilding discourses as the hermeneutics of suffering. The most important conclusion is that the experience of suffering in Christianity has a completely positive dimension, because it is radically opposed to the experience of evil. The Christian suffering is in this approach, according to the pattern of Jesus Christ, an effect of the spiritual development of a human being in God and a place of God’s revelation in human existence. This understanding of Christian suffering leads to the discovery of a perspective of affirmative theophilosophy as an original interpretation of the Christian ideal presented by Kierkegaard.

Although Kierkegaard is known to express himself extraordinarily eloquently, at first glance this doesn’t seem to apply to his decidedly religious writings, which appear rather monotonous in many cases. This impression might lead to a one-sided interpretation of the significance of aesthetic devices and aesthetic approaches in Kierkegaard’s works. However, close literary readings of his religious writings reveal to which extent the religious texts are not only committed to ‘the aesthetic’ by applying, integrating and contradicting it-but that they even depend on it with regard to their own functioning.

Seeking to determine what it is that incites Kierkegaard’s enthusiasm during Schelling’s early lectures at Berlin, then what it is that thoroughly extinguishes his hope in months to follow, I establish: first, that the criticisms of Hegel in Schelling’s negative philosophy depend upon Kantian distinctions and reflect Kant’s critical methodology; secondly, that the leveling function Schelling assigns to these distinctions corresponds to the notion of irony as a destructive force found in The Concept of Irony; finally, that Kierkegaard will come to concretize an account that adheres more closely to Kant’s transition from negative to positive than to Schelling’s.

The purpose of this article is to rethink the relationship between Kierkegaard and the Enlightenment by looking at his reaction to Henrik Nicolai Clausen (1793-1877). Certainly, Kierkegaard did not display a historical-critical study of theology in his authorship such as that of Clausen, but nevertheless we can trace a line that runs from Clausen to Kierkegaard that tracks their strong focus and emphasis on the New Testament, self-appropriation, works after inner faith, critique of speculation, the limits of historical research and the positivity of Christianity. For Kierkegaard, Clausen was an important figure in revising the understanding of Christianity in 19th-century Denmark.

The present article explores the possible influence of Schleiermacher on Kierkegaard based primarily on a reading of the famous journal entry AA:13, in which the young Kierkegaard declares “Philosophy and Christianity can never be united.” It is argued that Kierkegaard’s reflections here and later constitute a part of an ongoing critical discussion with a number of Danish thinkers who were likewise interested in the issue of the relation of philosophy to Christianity or knowledge to faith. Schleiermacher’s thought can thus be seen to have passed through a Danish filter, which is the primary context for Kierkegaard’s engagement with it.

By the spring of 1843, Kierkegaard’s Christology had changed fundamentally: he now attributed paradoxicality to the person of Jesus Christ. This essay presents a critical reconsideration of two of the most influential attempts within Kierkegaard research-those of Hayo Gerdes and Hermann Fischer-to explain the roots and background of Kierkegaard’s paradox Christology. Against these views, this essay will argue that the project undertaken in Kierkegaard’s Climacus writings had a different starting-point, namely, his reading of David Friedrich Strauss’ Christian Doctrine [Glaubenslehre].

This article discusses the reception of Søren Kierkegaard in Lithuania. Kierkegaard was introduced into Lithuania in the 1970’s through an extract from Either/Or and immediately received attention from the young upcoming scholar Arvydas Šliogeris. However, due to the politically charged preference for Marxism-Leninism, it is not surprising that the interest in Kierkegaard could gather pace only after Lithuania regained independence in 1990. Since then five books by Kierkegaard have been translated and published.

This paper investigates the concept and the experience of conscience as an interface of aesthetic, ethical, and religious aspects of Kierkegaard’s existential approach, while criticizing his reductionist definition of ‘aesthetics’ and the opposition he draws between ethics and aesthetics. A comparison of Kierkegaard’s theory of indirect ‘existence’-communication with Martin Buber’s philosophy of dialogue shows that Kierkegaard overlooks three crucial moments of truly liberating, conscientious communication, including the dialogical dynamics of becoming-oneself vis-à-vis the Other.

Based on Paul Ricoeur’s concept of ipseity and the role of promising for constituting selfhood as non-identical permanence in time, the article revisits the controversy whether or not the young man in Repetition experiences a repetition of the self. Considering Hans Lipps’s notion of the radical openness of a promise based on solicitude as much as Ricoeur’s “fundamental promise” to be faithful to oneself, two different perspectives are provided in order to interpret the young man’s break with his fiancée. According to both perspectives it can coherently be claimed that in the realm of ethical selfhood as depicted by Ricoeur in Oneself as Another and The Course of Recognition, the young man non-identically repeats his self.

In his literary works as well as his published journals and papers, Imre Kertész develops a philosophy of existence inspired by the experience of Auschwitz and of the communist regime in Hungary. Questioning human existence under the hold of the forms of totalitarianism developed in the twentieth century, which make man a simple function of the system or supernumerary being, Kertész’s works develop a radical philosophy of existence (or non-existence) in quest of subjectivity, interiority and ethics. Reader of Kierkegaard, Kertész also revives some of the fundamental themes of Kierkegaardian philosophy of existence underestimated by existentialist philosophers.

This article provides an English translation of Hans Lassen Martensen’s “The Present Religious Crisis” from 1842. In this work Martensen outlines two important trends that were much discussed at the time. The first part of his article is dedicated to the Anabaptist movement in Denmark, which was in open conflict with the Danish State Church about the question of infant baptism. In the second part, Martensen treats the work of the left Hegelian David Friedrich Strauss and his followers, who regarded the gospel accounts of the life of Jesus as, by and large, myths. Although polar opposites, these two movements are, for Martensen, symptoms of the religious confusion of the day. Martensen attempts to defend the Danish State Church in the face of these criticisms. Kierkegaard seems to refer to Martensen’s article in his “Public Confession,” where he refers to the rise of sects in Denmark and makes explicit reference to both the Anabaptists and the Straussians. Like Martensen, he is at pains to distance himself from Strauss and his followers. Martensen’s article also represents a landmark in the history of the Danish Hegel reception since it signals the alarm about the new Straussian trend.

This descriptive bibliography deals with Kierkegaard literature published between 2005 and 2013, with focus on books written in Western European languages.