This chapter analyses the theology of Soren Kierkegaard. It explains that Kierkegaard was trained in the theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Denmark and was well-versed in the subject, but did not consider himself as a theologian. The chapter suggests that his main theological project was the reintroduction of Christianity into Christendom or the ecclesiastical-sociopolitical established order. Kierkegaard believes that Christianity is not a doctrine but an ‘existence-communication’ and a subjective truth that is to be actualized (...) in existence with the object of existing in it through faith. (shrink)

This collection of essays on Kierkegaard consists of various articles published in academic journals over the course of several decades. They address dominant and consistent themes in Kierkegaard's authorship, demonstrating the importance of these topics for understanding his authorship as a whole and for contemporary discussions of these issues. In particular, these articles seek to bring his thought into conversation with woman and gender studies in contemporary feminist philosophy and hermeneutics as well as other forms of interpretation. Many (...) of the essays appeared in the International Kierkegaard Commentary edited by fellow Kierkegaard scholar, Robert L. Perkins, and it is in his memory that they are dedicated. (shrink)

Sylvia Walsh explores Kierkegaard's understanding of Christianity and the existential mode of thinking theologically appropriate to it in the context of the ...

The pseudonymous works Kierkegaard wrote during the period 1843–46 have been responsible for establishing his reputation as an important philosophical thinker, but for Kierkegaard himself, they were merely preparatory for what he saw as the primary task of his authorship: to elucidate the meaning of what it is to live as a Christian and thus to show his readers how they could become truly Christian. The more overtly religious and specifically Christian works Kierkegaard produced in the period (...) 1847–51 were devoted to this task. In this book Sylvia Walsh focuses on the writings of this later period and locates the key to Kierkegaard’s understanding of Christianity in the “inverse dialectic” that is involved in “living Christianly.” In the book’s four main chapters, Walsh examines in detail how this inverse dialectic operates in the complementary relationship of the negative qualifications of Christian existence—sin, the possibility of offense, self-denial, and suffering—to the positive qualifications—faith, forgiveness, new life/love/hope, and joy and consolation. It was Kierkegaard’s aim, she argues, “to bring the negative qualifications, which he believed had been virtually eliminated in Christendom, once again into view, to provide them with conceptual clarity, and to show their essential relation to, and necessity in, securing a correct understanding and expression of the positive qualifications of Christian existence.”. (shrink)

_Living Poetically_ is the first book to focus primarily on Kierkegaard's existential aesthetics as opposed to traditional aesthetic features of his writings such as the use of pseudonyms, literary techniques and figures, and literary criticism. _Living Poetically_ traces the development of the concept of the poetic in Kierkegaard's writings as that concept is worked out in an ethical-religious perspective in contrast to the aesthetics of early German romanticism and Hegelian idealism. Sylvia Walsh seeks to elucidate what it (...) means, in Kierkegaard's view, to be an authentic poet in the form of a poetic writer and to clarify his own role as a Christian poet and writer as he understood it. Walsh shows that, in spite of strong criticisms made of the poetic in some of his writings, Kierkegaard maintained a fundamentally positive understanding of the poetic as an essential ingredient in ethical and religious forms of life. Walsh thus reclaims Kierkegaard as a poetic thinker and writer from those who would interpret him as an ironic practitioner of an aestheticism devoid of and detached from the ethical-religious as well as from those who view him as rejecting the poetic and aesthetic on ethical or religious grounds. Viewing contemporary postmodern feminism and deconstruction as advocating a romantic mode of living poetically, Walsh concludes with a feminist reading of Kierkegaard that affirms both individuality and relatedness, commonalities and differences between the self and others, men and women, for the fashioning of an authentic mode of living poetically in the present age. (shrink)

The pseudonymous works Kierkegaard wrote during the period 1843–46 have been responsible for establishing his reputation as an important philosophical thinker, but for Kierkegaard himself, they were merely preparatory for what he saw as the primary task of his authorship: to elucidate the meaning of what it is to live as a Christian and thus to show his readers how they could become truly Christian. The more overtly religious and specifically Christian works Kierkegaard produced in the period (...) 1847–51 were devoted to this task. In this book Sylvia Walsh focuses on the writings of this later period and locates the key to Kierkegaard’s understanding of Christianity in the “inverse dialectic” that is involved in “living Christianly.” In the book’s four main chapters, Walsh examines in detail how this inverse dialectic operates in the complementary relationship of the negative qualifications of Christian existence—sin, the possibility of offense, self-denial, and suffering—to the positive qualifications—faith, forgiveness, new life/love/hope, and joy and consolation. It was Kierkegaard’s aim, she argues, “to bring the negative qualifications, which he believed had been virtually eliminated in Christendom, once again into view, to provide them with conceptual clarity, and to show their essential relation to, and necessity in, securing a correct understanding and expression of the positive qualifications of Christian existence.”. (shrink)

No thinker has reflected more deeply on the role of religion in human life than Søren Kierkegaard, who produced in little more than a decade an astonishing number of works devoted to an analysis of the kind of personality, character, and spiritual qualities needed to become an authentic human being or self. Understanding religion to consist essentially as an inward, passionate, personal relation to God or the eternal, Kierkegaard depicts the art of living religiously as a self through (...) the creation of a kaleidoscope of poetic figures who exemplify the constituents of selfhood or the lack thereof. The present study seeks to bring Kierkegaard into conversation with contemporary empirical psychology and virtue ethics, highlighting spiritual dimensions of human existence in his thought that are inaccessible to empirical measurement, as well as challenging on religious grounds the claim that he is a virtue ethicist in continuity with the classical and medieval virtue tradition. (shrink)

In this rich and resonant work, Soren Kierkegaard reflects poetically and philosophically on the biblical story of God's command to Abraham, that he sacrifice his son Isaac as a test of faith. Was Abraham's proposed action morally and religiously justified or murder? Is there an absolute duty to God? Was Abraham justified in remaining silent? In pondering these questions, Kierkegaard presents faith as a paradox that cannot be understood by reason and conventional morality, and he challenges the universalist (...) ethics and immanental philosophy of modern German idealism, especially as represented by Kant and Hegel. This volume, first published in 2006, presents the first new English translation for twenty years, by Sylvia Walsh, together with an introduction by C. Stephen Evans which examines the ethical and religious issues raised by the text. (shrink)

Unlike many of the major figures in Western philosophy, Kierkegaard explores many issues of interest to feminist theorists today. Moreover, he does so in a style—labyrinthine, many-voiced, multilayered, adverse to authority—that adumbrates _écriture féminine_. A major question probed in the volume is whether Kierkegaard's writings are misogynist, ambivalent, or essentialist in their views of women and the feminine or whether, in some important and vital ways, they are liberatory and empowering for feminists and women trying to free themselves (...) from the maze of patriarchal constructs. The essays also show how the three existence-spheres—aesthetic, ethical, and religious—articulated in Kierkegaard's authorship inscribe different modalities of the sexual relation: seduction for the aesthetic, marriage for the ethical, and absence from commerce with the other sex for the religious. Contributors are Sylviane Agacinski, Wanda Warren Berry, Birgit Bertung, Jane Duran, Leslie A. Howe, Céline Léon, Tamsin Lorraine, Robert L. Perkins, Mark L. Taylor, Sylvia Walsh, and Julia Watkin. (shrink)

Søren Kierkegaard's 13 communion discourses constitute a distinct genre among the various forms of religious writing composed by Kierkegaard. Originally published at different times and places, Kierkegaard himself believed that these discourses served as a unifying element in his work and were crucial for understanding his religious thought and philosophy as a whole. Written in an intensely personal liturgical context, the communion discourses prepare the reader for participation in this rite by emphasizing the appropriate posture for forgiveness (...) of sins and confession. (shrink)

In this rich and resonant work, Soren Kierkegaard reflects poetically and philosophically on the biblical story of God's command to Abraham, that he sacrifice his son Isaac as a test of faith. Was Abraham's proposed action morally and religiously justified or murder? Is there an absolute duty to God? Was Abraham justified in remaining silent? In pondering these questions, Kierkegaard presents faith as a paradox that cannot be understood by reason and conventional morality, and he challenges the universalist (...) ethics and immanental philosophy of modern German idealism, especially as represented by Kant and Hegel. This volume presents the first new English translation for twenty years, by Sylvia Walsh, together with an introduction by C. Stephen Evans which examines the ethical and religious issues raised by the text. (shrink)

Collected critical essays analyzing Kierkegaard’s work in regards to theology and social-moral thought. Kierkegaard’s God and the Good Life focuses on faith and love, two central topics in Kierkegaard’s writings, to grapple with complex questions at the intersection of religion and ethics. Here, leading scholars reflect on Kierkegaard’s understanding of God, the religious life, and what it means to exist ethically. The contributors then shift to psychology, hope, knowledge, and the emotions as they offer critical and (...) constructive readings for contemporary philosophical debates in the philosophy of religion, moral philosophy, and epistemology. Together, they show how Kierkegaard continues to be an important resource for understandings of religious existence, public discourse, social life, and how to live virtuously. “All in all, the editors of this volume have put together a thoughtful and sometimes provocative collection of essays by a number of Kierkegaard scholars and philosophers for the reader’s consideration.... The volume undoubtedly makes a contribution to contemporary philosophical debates in the philosophy of religion, moral philosophy, and epistemology, especially with regard to the importance of faith and love for leading a good and meaningful human life.” —International Journal for Philosophy of Religion “Invites the reader to think anew about what Kierkegaard was saying and what we can learn from him in the context of our time, particularly what it means to become a Christian in terms of the moral task of love and living a life worthy of a human being.” —Sylvia Walsh, translator of Kierkegaard’s Discourses at the Communion on Fridays. (shrink)

Several readers of Kierkegaard have proposed that his works are a good source for contemporary investigations of virtues, especially theistic and Christian ones. Sylvia Walsh has recently offered several arguments to cast doubt on the thesis that Kierkegaard can be profitably read as a “virtue ethicist.” Examination of her arguments helps to clarify what virtues, as excellent traits of human character, can be in a moral outlook that ascribes deep sin and moral helplessness to human beings and (...) their existence and salvation entirely to God’s grace. The examination also clarifies the relationship between virtues and character and between the practices of virtue ethics and character ethics. Such clarification also may provide a bridge of communication between Kierkegaard scholarship and scholars of virtue ethics beyond the theistic communities. In particular, I’ll argue that a character ethics that is not a virtue ethics would be suboptimal as an aid to the formation of Christian wisdom and sanctification. Kierkegaard’s character ethics is a virtue ethics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Søren Kierkegaard and the Word(s): Essays on Hermeneutics and CommunicationGeorge ConnellPoul Houe and Gordon D. Marino. editors. Søren Kierkegaard and the Word(s): Essays on Hermeneutics and Communication. Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel, 2003. Pp. 299. Paper, kr. 375,–Though many associate Kierkegaard with isolated individuality, Kierkegaard scholars are rather gregarious. Four times since 1985, Kierkegaard devotees from all the inhabited continents have gathered at St. (...) Olaf College for several days of intense paper reading. Since it is difficult to keep a handle on so much material presented orally and because many were not able to attend, it is a commendable service that Houe and Marino have edited and published many of the papers delivered at the 2001 conference, just as they had previously published essays from 1998 conference and C. Stephen Evans and I had published essays from the 1989 conference.This volume reflects its origins in several ways. First, the essays are unusually brief compared to most journal articles (around ten pages each). While this is an agreeable format when listening to many papers in a single day, I do think that many of these essays are rather rushed and less than fully developed. Accordingly, the reader of these essays may well feel stimulated by interpretive suggestions rather than satisfied by thoroughly worked out treatments.Second, the essays are quite diverse, as conference papers tend to be, even when, as in this case, a preferred theme—hermeneutics and communication—was stated in advance. Since, as Alastair Hannay notes in the opening keynote essay, "hermeneutics" is used in a wide variety of ways, this theme really did not limit participants to any significant degree. Essays in this volume look variously at Kierkegaard's practice of hermeneutics (especially in reference to the Bible), at our predicament of interpreting Kierkegaard's notoriously elusive and cryptic pseudonymous works, at hermeneutics as our existential disposition as sense-making creature thrust into an ambiguous world, at hermeneutics as a quasi-Hegelian project of engulfing particularity without remainder in a totalizing whole, and, in contrast, at radical hermeneutics (a term coined by John Caputo and applied to Kierkegaard) as an interpretive approach that refuses the consolations and consonances of its Gadamerian cousin. As the use of "hermeneutics" varies, we hear that Kierkegaard is both an exemplary hermeneuticist and "the ultimate non-hermeneuticist." And in a number of essays, the issue of hermeneutics only seems to come up in the vacuous sense that the author offers a reading of some Kierkegaardian text or texts.The wide variety of essays included here reflects itself in the unsatisfactory final article in which Poul Houe makes a thoroughly desultory attempt at pulling the various articles together. I've tried my hand at writing such a piece, so I feel empathy for Houe's plight. But the paragraph per essay tour of the book is so hurried and so perfunctory that I wonder what purpose it really serves in this case.Though widely varying in topic and approach, most of the essays in the volume are quite good, if tantalizingly short. Given that there are twenty-five essays in the volume, it is not possible to summarize them here. But several observations are in order. First, it is especially nice to see five essays by Danish scholars included in this book. The community of Kierkegaard scholars has increasingly come to appreciate that viewing him in terms of his local context can be quite illuminating. American scholars have done excellent work along these lines, but clearly Danes have a crucial role to play in this interpretive task. Second, there have been heated disagreements in Kierkegaard circles over how to place Kierkegaard in reference to philosophical postmodernism. That polemic is in evidence in this volume as well. Several essays, most notably that of David Goicoechea, affiliate [End Page 502] Kierkegaard with postmodernist refusals of the totalizing understandings. In contrast, Sylvia Walsh juxtaposes Kierkegaard's "erotic hermeneutics," which treats its phenomenon with amorous tenderness, with Derrida's deconstructive approach to interpretation, which Walsh sees as a violent expression of the will to power. Christopher Simpson tries to reconcile these divisions by reading Kierkegaardian faith as an attractive... (shrink)

Difficile à lire, connu de réputation pour ses objections aux Méditations de Descartes, sa réhabilitation d'Épicure et des atomes, voire le caractère ambigu de ses relations avec les "libertins", Pierre Gassendi est un personnage un peu flou dans notre galerie de portraits imaginaire. Il fut cependant un auteur important, lu, connu, approuvé ou critiqué dans toute l'Europe, surtout par les savants qui voulaient fonder efficacement leur physique moderne sans renier pour autant les acquis des anciens. Les études réunies ici ont (...) cherché comme la trace et le reflet de l'œuvre de Gassendi dans les écrits d'autres auteurs qui ont vécu de son temps et jusqu'à la fin des Lumières - non seulement en France -, mais aussi en Angleterre (comme Walter Charleton, John Locke, David Hume ou Robert Boyle), en Hollande (professeurs d'Université), en Allemagne (Leibniz), en Pologne (Sociniens et "libertins"), en Italie du Nord (comme le jésuite milanais Thommaso Ceva), en Italie du Sud (comme le fondateur de l'Accademia degli Investiganti Tommaso Cornelio ou Giambattista Vico), en Espagne enfin (comme le médecin Martínez). Aujourd'hui encore Gassendi fait des adeptes parmi ceux que séduisent les chemins non battus de l'effort gratuit et de l'érudition austère, ceux que ravit absolument une certaine esthétique baroque de l'esprit pur. (shrink)

USA. Monograph examining the dilemmas of power (incl. Workplace power) and ethics in business management - demonstrates manifestations of power in sciences, business and political power, shows the channels for its control in human relations, and analyses creative uses in negotiation, etc.

This article discusses how the concept of a fair finite lottery can best be extended to denumerably infinite lotteries. Techniques and ideas from non-standard analysis are brought to bear on the problem.