Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations and forms of reference
- Dedication
- Introduction: Kierkegaard and philosophy
- 1 Existence
- 2 Anxiety
- 3 The good
- 4 The infinite qualitative difference and the absolute paradox
- Epilogue: The Christian witness and the simple wise man of ancient times
- Notes
- Guide to further reading
- Index
Introduction: Kierkegaard and philosophy
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations and forms of reference
- Dedication
- Introduction: Kierkegaard and philosophy
- 1 Existence
- 2 Anxiety
- 3 The good
- 4 The infinite qualitative difference and the absolute paradox
- Epilogue: The Christian witness and the simple wise man of ancient times
- Notes
- Guide to further reading
- Index
Summary
To speak of “the philosophy of Kierkegaard” is, it may be said, problematic. It is not simply that Kierkegaard did not offer a rounded “philosophy”, in the sense of a conceptually grounded and logically consistent worldview. Whether in the analytic or in the continental tradition of philosophy, many of those considered to be leading philosophers of the twentieth century would stand with Kierkegaard in their resistance to the systematic ambitions of some versions of philosophy. Nor is the hesitation about naming Kierkegaard “a philosopher” confined to those from within analytic philosophy who continue to be dubious about the credentials of continental philosophy in general, although there are aspects of Kierkegaard that analytic philosophers may find even more off-putting than what repels them in a Heidegger or a Sartre. Nor is the question even one as to whether Kierkegaard himself was really concerned about philosophy, its history and its problems, in the way that such revolutionary figures as Marx and Nietzsche in the nineteenth century and Heidegger, Wittgenstein and Derrida in the twentieth were. What, then, is the problem?
Before attempting to answer this question, it has to be conceded that there are, undeniably, “fragments of philosophy” in Kierkegaard, including scattered claims about logic, arguments contesting important philosophical positions concerning the limits of knowledge or the nature of ethics, forays into the history of ideas, reflections on aesthetics, adumbrations of phenomenological description and so on.
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- Information
- The Philosophy of Kierkegaard , pp. 1 - 11Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2005