This study intends to show that the question whether faith can be justified without proofs can be resolved by importing ideas from Kierkegaard’s and Plantinga’s affirmative take on the matter. There is a deep similarity between the way they understand belief in God and belief in Christianity: for both the first is considered universal human knowledge and the second seen as a gift from God. Against the charge that such an understanding is irrational Plantinga offers an externalist epistemological model which (...) allows those beliefs to be warranted. The authors also share the modern idea that there is an objective truth, combining it with the postmodern stance that no method exists which would guarantee access to it. A specific contribution on Kierkegaard’s part to the understanding of the rationality of transitions toward a Christian stage of existence is to show in detail the way in which such transitions are mediated through inwardnes - a perspective akin to Michael Polanyi’s scientific epistemology. One can see in both authors not only a deep commonality of ideas, but also a remarkable way in which their understandings augment each other. Whereas Plantinga’s inquiry contributes to the rational plausibility of a “Justified Faith without Reasons” project, Kierkegaard’s venture balances such a logical-analytic effort with a deep existential inquiry. (shrink)

This article critically investigates the presumption that we are living in a qualitatively new `age of anxiety'. It suggests that most sociologists who address this topic have so far failed to recognize the analytical complexity of the condition of anxiety itself. By examining the possibility of establishing sociological indicators of the prevalence and character of anxiety in contemporary societies, the author argues that the `sociological imagination' has yet to provide a sufficient account of the interrelationship between representations of social problems (...) in the public sphere and the variety of anxieties which individuals may encounter in their `personal troubles of milieu'. (shrink)

In this article, I provide an analysis of the widespread, intellectually fascinating, and existentially challenging phenomenon of self-reflexive anxiety in which we feel threatened by what or who we are. I focus on those cases in which we take an event or action whose possible occurrence we attribute to ourselves to be expressive or constitutive of our identity. As I argue, depending on the kind of event we are dealing with, our descriptive self-conception, our self-esteem, or our evaluative self-conception are (...) at stake. In all cases, we are confronted with a dialectic between self and other, activity and passivity inherent in our personhood or even in our agency. I demonstrate how my analysis is not only of intrinsic value, but it can also help us in achieving a better understanding of self-reflexive emotions in general and ‘traditional’ self-reflexive emotions like shame in particular. (shrink)

In his self-published periodical The Moment, Søren Kierkegaard warns his reader against the possibility of “useless suffering”. Not only that, he urges the reader to make use of her suffering. Taking this caution as a point of departure, I investigate the pseudonymous Johannes Climacus’ deliberations on ethico-religious suffering in the Postscript. I demonstrate that Climacus construes suffering as useful, and with that outlines an economy of suffering that Kierkegaard delineates across his pseudonymous and non-pseudonymous work. The paradigmatic expression of this (...) is the use the subject makes of her suffering in “the moment”, in which suffering is defined according to its relation with the eternal. Suffering is thus a key element of the individual subject’s self-development: The subject is transformed, and transforms herself, in suffering. Finally, I argue that this economy of suffering produces a notion of the subject as actively involved in securing the contribution her suffering can make to her self-transformation. I criticize this notion, showing it renders problematic any ethical or ethico-religious account of the response of the subject to the suffering of the other: The subject is not first and foremost attuned to the other’s suffering, rather she is attuned to the possibility of her own transformation. Suffering becomes in this way both a key exegetical tool for understanding Kierkegaard’s view of the subject and, more significantly, a way to problematize Kierkegaard’s ethical account of the subject’s response to others’ suffering. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that Kierkegaard’s interpretation of Socrates’ daimonion in The Concept of Irony should be read in light of his notion of the demonic in The Concept of Anxiety, and vice ve...

Manifold expressions of a particular critique appear throughout Søren Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous corpus: for Kierkegaard and his pseudonyms faith is categorically not a first immediacy, and it is certainly not the first immediate, the annulment of which concludes the first movement of Hegelian philosophy. Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms make it clear that he holds the Hegelian dogmaticians responsible for the promulgation of this misconception, but when Kierkegaard’s journals and papers are consulted another transgressor emerges: the renowned anti-idealist F.D.E. Schleiermacher. I address the extent (...) to which this particular indictment is justified; over-against Gerhard Schreiber, I argue that this characterization of Schleiermacher’s view of religion is indeed a de facto critique. I begin by presenting and demonstrating the ubiquity of the phenomenon at the heart of Schleiermacher’s conception of perfect God-consciousness, then proceed to apply criticisms raised by Kierkegaardian pseudonyms Judge William, Vigilius Haufniensis, Johannes Climacus, and Anti-Climacus, supplemented with concerns raised by Kierkegaard himself, in order to demonstrate that these criticisms do indeed apply to and problematize Schleiermacher’s view. (shrink)

This article elaborates on Christopher Norris's claim that certain aspects of Derrida's work are amenable to formalisation in modal-logical terms. Norris contends that any adequate analysis of the logic behind Derrida's work must provide an account of the notions of possibility, necessity, and necessary possibility, particularly as they are related to Derrida's notion of iterability. This article examines the further hypothesis that Derrida's understanding of modality, according to which possibilities must be accounted for even if they are never realised, might (...) even better be described in terms of possible worlds. In possible-worlds semantics, the conceptual meaning of a statement is constituted by the set of alternative contexts in which that statement is true. This article argues, however, that possible-worlds semantics would be unthinkable without the experience that one referent can be substituted for another. The possibility of this experience is best described in Derridean terms. Read through Derrida's thought of the trace, the properly semantic substitutions may come to be seen as dependent on the substitution of the thing for itself; on what Derrida calls ‘the substitution of the unique for the unique’. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper examines Tomáš Halík’s Patience With God: The Story of Zacchaeus Continuing in Us in light of Kierkegaard’s insistence upon conversion. Against forms of Christianity which would understand conversion as issuing, of necessity, from a rigorous thinking-through of objective proofs or of the ends of human desire, Kierkegaard insists upon a conversion that passes through offense at the God-man’s scandalous invitation. Though Halík approvingly cites Kierkegaard’s insistence upon a faith worked out in fear and trembling, and, like Kierkegaard, sees (...) contemporaneity with Christ as possible only because of Jesus’ own experience of God-forsakenness, deep differences remain – especially with regard to the necessity of consciousness of sin. This paper will thus consider whether Halík’s ‘patience’ dulls the passion of faith and obscures the decisiveness of the moment, and whether Halík’s portrayal of Christian responsibility as solidarity leads not to Zacchaeus or to Socrates, but to Nicodemus. (shrink)

My aim in this article is to analyse the incrimination of ontology and ontological manifestations in reason, articulated speech and social order and argue that such an incrimination, which is characteristic of traditional philosophy, can be explained as a phenomenon of onto-theology. Then I demonstrate that the ideas of Levinas - and to some degree the Derridean response to them - suffer from residues of onto-theology to the extent that they preserve and promote the assumption that ontology is essentially violent. (...) I claim that the Levinasian priority of ethics over ontology and the Derridean treatment of the opposition ‘ethics vs ontology’ rest on an epochal understanding of being. Such an understanding arrests time and echoes old religious doctrines that traditional philosophy preserved in a secular form and handed down to contemporary philosophical thinking. By charging Levinasian and Derridean ideas with onto-theology, I unveil what I consider to be one of the last dogmas of Occidental thought, i.e. the assumption that self-interest and violence are somehow endemic in the human condition. I suggest that we overcome this assumption, if we truly wish to view the I-Thou relation Other-wise. Key Words: Derrida • ethics • evil • Fall • Hegel • Heidegger • I-Thou • Kant • Kierkegaard • Levinas • ontology • onto-theology. (shrink)

Since the financial crisis of 2008 we have seen a rise in suicides across the world. Greece for example in 2011 saw a sustained increase in suicides of 35.7%. In this article I draw our attention to well-publicized suicides that took place in Greece. I focus on the suicide notes left behind. The suicide notes, I suggest, can be read as offering us a critique of the anxious times in which we find ourselves. They are offering us a critique in (...) two senses: a critique of the way we are being governed ; and a critique of the affirmative ways of responding towards the financial crisis. Consequently these suicide notes can be read as a demand for having a break from this neoliberal logic and organization of life and asking us to re-imagine our social and political realm. In arguing thus, the article draws on Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault, Wendy Brown and others. (shrink)

This article seeks to elaborate the step of epistemological affirmation that exists within every movement of learning. My epistemological method is rooted in philosophical hermeneutics in contrast to empirical or rationalist traditions. I argue that any movement of learning is based upon an entry into a hermeneutical circle: one is thrown into, or leaps into, an interpretation which in some sense has to be temporarily affirmed or adopted in order to be either absorbed and integrated, or overcome and rejected. I (...) illustrate this process through a retrieval of the concept of submission in pedagogy, particularly with reference to submission in Eastern traditions, as well as pre-modern Christian thought. These other traditions are introduced to contrast with the modern liberal Western perspective in which the role of submission has been almost entirely lost. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop a phenomenological account of social anxiety disorder (SAD) as a disturbance of lived time through an analysis of first-person accounts informed by Minkowski’s notion of disordered temporality. The core psychopathology of the patient, I argue, is a constricted sense of relational time. Instead of the ordinary sense of a taken-for-granted shared future, the patient experiences time as running a predetermined course toward their social death. This manifests itself in a relational life lived as if it (...) might end at any moment or has already done so. Patients describe the end of their current relationships as self-evident and struggle against it by attempting to evade its immediate occurrence and to postpone it into the less eminent future. At times, patients succumb to passivity and self-blame, revelatory of a sense of an entirely lacking relational future. This phenomenological conceptualization provides an alternative to the predominant cognitive-behavioral (CBT) account of SAD. The CBT approach conceptualizes the core disorder as a set of dysfunctional beliefs about other people’s opinion of the patient. The phenomenological account elucidates a part of the subjective background on which these beliefs come to make sense to the patient. Further, with its concept of social death, the phenomenological account captures the existential contexts, which makes the intensity of the patient’s fear of rejection comprehensible. This way of understanding the patient and their psychopathology has important implications for diagnostic and psychotherapeutic practice. (shrink)

Current philosophical and legal bioethical reflection on reprogenetics provides little more than a rationalization of the interests of science. There are two reasons for this. First, bioethicists attempt to address ethical issues in a “language of precision” that characterizes science, and this works against analogical and narratological modes of discourse that have traditionally provided guidance for understanding human nature and purpose. Second, the current ethical and legal debate is framed by a public/private distinction that banishes robust norms to the private (...) realm, and leaves a minimalist public discourse of harm avoidance that is insufficient for regulating the science. In this essay, I argue that Mark Hanson's account of anxiety provides a valuable starting point for addressing deficiencies in the current philosophical and legal debate, and it highlights the need for a theological discourse on genetic enhancements. Through an assessment of Joel Shumann's criticism of the public/private distinction, I show how the needed theological discourse should be situated in the context of robust communities, and how such a communitarian inter-ethic is compatible with a variant of liberalism. Finally, I critically assess James Keenan's account of virtue and perfection, in order to outline what a sufficient discourse on reproductive and genetic enhancements requires. (shrink)

RésuméJe soutiens, à travers Heidegger, que la notion de τὸ ἐξαίφνης dans le Parménide ne signifie pas l’éternité, ou une trace d’éternité dans le temps, mais implique plutôt une conception primordiale du temps. Dans la déduction numéro deux, la relation entre la stasis et la kinesis devient problématique à cause de la notion de τὸ νῦν. Cela conduit Parménide, dans la déduction numéro trois, à poser la notion de τὸ ἐξαίφνης pour résoudre cette relation problématique, ce qui implique une conception (...) primordiale du temps. (shrink)

Recent conceptual developments in psychiatric diagnosis have the potential for catastrophic results, particularly for Christians in the mental health field, but also for all persons who have a vested interest in the identification and treatment of mental disorder. I explore these theoretical developments by focusing on the manner in which dysphoria has been situated in the dominant contemporary system of psychiatric nosology, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition. I target for discussion, primarily, two specific consequences of (...) dysphoria’s new place in contemporary psychiatry, namely, the explicit depathologizing of Pedophilia and the introduction of “Gender Dysphoria” as a new diagnostic category. Although Pedophilia and Gender Dysphoria share the characteristic of not being designated as mental disorders by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), they interestingly differ insofar as a sufficient degree of dysphoria is believed to have the ability to transform Pedophilia from a “condition” to a psychiatric disorder (namely, “Pedophilic Disorder”), while no amount of dysphoria, it is believed, is capable of transforming the diagnosis of Gender Dysphoria into an explicit psychiatric disorder. I trace some of the likely motivations for the APA’s having made these changes, discuss some of these changes’ untoward theoretical and practical consequences, and attempt to forge a coherent path to a more general theory of psychopathology. (shrink)

Present knowledge of evolutionary history challenges traditional concepts of the Christian salvation history. In order to overcome these challenges, theology needs to articulate a wider, more open and more universal approach to the understanding of God's salvific action. One way of doing this is to employ the notion of “deep incarnation” suggested by Danish theologian Niels Henrik Gregersen. His suggestion may also blur the lines that mark a sharp distinction between the history of creation and the history of salvation, in (...) a way that safeguards some of the basic tenets of classical theology. (shrink)

My concern in this essay is not so much with the invisible work or hidden labor produced by neoliberalism, but rather with what Joseph Pieper describes as an emerging culture of “total work”. More than the sheer number of hours of work, Pieper diagnoses a transformation in the way we view work. Work has become the exclusive point of reference for how we see and define ourselves. We are, Pieper feared, increasingly incapable of seeing beyond the working self. The human (...) being has become the human worker. Historically, the ideal of leisure offered a counter vision to this tendency. Michael Oakeshott notes that while human beings must attend to the necessities for survival, they are most especially distinguished by their capacity for leisure—by an ability to pursue questions, conversations, and explorations that transcend the realm of production and consumption. To overlook and exclude leisurely pursuits is to diminish our humanity. (shrink)

Zygon®, Volume 56, Issue 4, Page 820-845, December 2021.

The aim of this paper is to analyze those passages of the Black Notebooks where Heidegger mentions Søren Kierkegaard and to see how Heidegger interprets Kierkegaard’s impact on his own philosophical thought. The paper intends to clarify whether, and to what extent, Heidegger’s rejection of an existentialist reading of his early thought is plausible and justified. The conclusions reached will be twofold. First, Heidegger tries to reinterpret his existential analytic by using the approach he has developed in his work after (...) Being and Time. In so doing, Heidegger tries to understate or diminish the Kierkegaardian background of his analytic of existence. Second, Heidegger’s retrospective self-interpretation argues for a continuity between the approach he develops in Being and Time and that which he calls the question of ‘the truth of beyng’. In so doing, he does not recognize the inconsistencies and mismatches that characterize his thought during the transition from the existential analytic to the philosophy of the event. The passages dealing with Kierkegaard in the Black Notebooks are important sources that allow us to note how problematic Heidegger’s self-interpretation is. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article explores the influence and reception of the Kierkegaardian self in modern theology, focusing on the philosopher Martin Heidegger and the theologian Eberhard Jüngel. In an attempt to transcend the atheistic philosophy of modernity, Eberhard Jüngel responded to the active, choosing self of modernity, as propounded Heidegger, by proposing an account of existence that is instead passive before God. However, as Heidegger’s philosophy itself is deeply in debt to Kierkegaard’s account of existence, Jüngel’s response to this active, choosing self (...) both echoes and is radically distant from Kierkegaard’s account of selfhood, wishing to have transformative faith in God but to move away from the individual relationship to God to a more communal, relational model. This article explores the debt that these thinkers have to Kierkegaard, and whether, in changing the active repetition of faith for the passivity of relational faith, Jüngel manages to overcome his own debt to Kierkegaard’s account of the self before God. (shrink)

Police vehicle pursuits are inherently dangerous, rapidly evolving, and require police coordination to safely stop and arrest the suspect. Interviews of three US police officers were conducted and the descriptive phenomenological psychological method was used to analyze their naïve accounts of their lived-experiences. The psychological constituents of the experience of leading a successful chase and capture of a fleeing criminal found are: Alert to Possible Car Chase, Suspect Identified, Anxiety and Excitement About the Chase, Awareness of Primary Chase Role, Radio (...) Coordination with Others to Take Actions to Stop the Suspect, Ongoing Evaluation of Chase Situation and Persistence, Reading the Suspect’s Driving Behaviors, Car Chase Transition to a Coordinated Physical Capture, and Making Sense of the Experience Through Inquiry. Insights garnered from this study may be useful to police, policy makers, trainers and others interested in emergency and crisis decision-making. (shrink)

Although Disney films are sometimes denigrated as popular or “low” art forms, this article argues that they often engage deeply with, and thereby communicate, significant moral truths. The capitalistic enterprise of contemporary modern cinema demands that cinematic moral pedagogy be sublimated into non-partisan forms, often by substituting secular proxies for otherwise divine or spiritual components. By adapting Søren Kierkegaard’s tripartite existential anthropology of the self, I analyze the subjective experiences of the protagonists in three recent animated fairy tales—Disney’s Frozen, Moana, (...) and Tangled—to demonstrate how these princess movies bridge the imaginative gap between the mundane and the divine. (shrink)

What are the freedom-relevant conditions necessary for someone to be a morally responsible person? I examine several key authors beginning with Harry Frankfurt that have contributed to this debate in recent years, and then look back to the writings or Søren Kierkegaard to provide a solution to the debate. In this project I investigate the claims of semi-compatibilism and argue that while its proponents have identified a fundamental question concerning free will and moral responsibility—namely, that the agential properties necessary for (...) moral responsibility ascriptions are found in scenarios where the agent acts on her own as opposed to her action resulting from freedom undermining external causes such as manipulation, phobias, etc.—they have failed to show that the freedom-relevant agential properties identified in those actual-sequence scenarios are compatible with causal determinism. My argument is that only a voluntarist-libertarian theory can adequately account for the kinds of cases that the semicompatibilist identify. I argue that there are three freedom-relevant conditions necessary for someone to be a morally responsible person: a hierarchical understanding of human desires [specifically and mental states generally], an incompatibilist (non-deterministic) understanding of human action, and a historical understanding of character development. The ability to reflect critically about one’s own desires and emotions, and thus to have a kind of self-knowledge and understanding with regard to the springs of one’s own actions, is required to make it possible for the agent to be the “source” of her own actions and character. The non-deterministic understanding of human action is needed for a similar reason: if determinism is true, then every action a person performs can be ultimately traced to and exhaustively explained in terms of factors outside the agent’s control, thus making the agent’s responsibility for his actions an illusion. And finally,human nature must be such that, over time, one’s choices leave a dispositional residue self-understanding and motivation in the person’s self, out of which, in mature understanding and motivation, the person acts as a fully responsible agent. (shrink)

A mysterious remark to Friedrich Waismann on 30 December 1929 marks the only occasion where Wittgenstein refers to both Heidegger and Kierkegaard. Yet although this has generated much controversy, little attention has been paid to the charge of nonsense that Wittgenstein here appears to bring against Heidegger; thus, the supporting argument that may be latent has not been unearthed. Through analysis of this remark, Wittgenstein's arguments in the Tractatus and 'A Lecture on Ethics', and Heidegger's account of anxiety (Angst) in (...) Being and Time, I argue that we can extract an argument against the central question of Heidegger's philosophy: the question of being. To understand this, I examine the Kierkegaardian ideas employed by Wittgenstein and Heidegger and attempt to show that this argument can be partly understood in Kierkegaardian terms. I further argue that examining what Heidegger means by 'being' (Sein) shows that Wittgenstein's argument does not meet its target. (shrink)

The scope of this article is to explore a body of literature that deals with the concepts of transgression, evil and festival to construct an alternative theoretical framework for violence. For the purpose of this work, the radicalisation of western-born young Muslims and so-called Islamic State's executions will be taken into consideration. The works of Bataille, Foucault, De Sade and Caillois will be the primary focus of this article. This article suggests using non-traditional criminological sources to create an alternative narrative, (...) aimed at adding a different dimension to the conversations around radicalisation and beheadings. (shrink)