Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- 1 The Joy of Kierkegaard
- 2 Kierkegaard's Canon: The Constitution of the Bible and of the Authorship in Concluding Unscientific Postscript
- 3 The Apostle, the Genius and the Monkey: Reflections on Kierkegaard's ‘The Mirror of the Word’
- 4 Your Wish Is My Command: The Peril and Promise of the Bible as ‘Letter from the Beloved’
- 5 The Lesson of Eternity: The Figure of the Teacher in Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments
- 6 Cities of the Dead: The Relation of Person and Polis in Kierkegaard's Works of Love
- 7 Adam's Angest: The Language of Myth and the Myth of Language
- 8 Beyond a Joke: Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript as a Comic Book
- 9 ‘Sarah Is the Hero’: Kierkegaard's Reading of Tobit in Fear and Trembling
- 10 How Edifying Is Upbuilding? Paul and Kierkegaard in Dialogue
- 11 Forgiving the Unforgivable: Kierkegaard, Derrida and the Scandal of Forgiveness
- Bibliography
- Index of Biblical References
- Index of Authors
1 - The Joy of Kierkegaard
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- 1 The Joy of Kierkegaard
- 2 Kierkegaard's Canon: The Constitution of the Bible and of the Authorship in Concluding Unscientific Postscript
- 3 The Apostle, the Genius and the Monkey: Reflections on Kierkegaard's ‘The Mirror of the Word’
- 4 Your Wish Is My Command: The Peril and Promise of the Bible as ‘Letter from the Beloved’
- 5 The Lesson of Eternity: The Figure of the Teacher in Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments
- 6 Cities of the Dead: The Relation of Person and Polis in Kierkegaard's Works of Love
- 7 Adam's Angest: The Language of Myth and the Myth of Language
- 8 Beyond a Joke: Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript as a Comic Book
- 9 ‘Sarah Is the Hero’: Kierkegaard's Reading of Tobit in Fear and Trembling
- 10 How Edifying Is Upbuilding? Paul and Kierkegaard in Dialogue
- 11 Forgiving the Unforgivable: Kierkegaard, Derrida and the Scandal of Forgiveness
- Bibliography
- Index of Biblical References
- Index of Authors
Summary
The title of this chapter and this book, ‘The Joy of Kierkegaard’, is the same as that of a module that I once taught at a leading British university. As part of the process of getting the module accepted, I had to present the paper work for the proposed module to the relevant Faculty committee. The philosophers present fell off their chairs laughing. ‘That'll be the shortest module ever taught’, they chortled. ‘Well’, I replied, ‘if that's what you think, that's all the more reason why I should teach it. Why don't you all enrol and you might learn something?’ Needless to say, they did not take me up on this, but the module went ahead and was much appreciated by the students.
At one level, of course, their reaction was quite understandable. The melancholy Dane, the father of existentialism, inventor of angst, favourite philosopher of anguished teenagers, the writer of The Concept of Dread, Sickness unto Death and The Gospel of Suffering—these stereotypes hardly convey a bundle of fun. To be fair, a casual, or even a more than casual, reading of the journals with their constant allusions to suffering and misunderstanding and isolation tends to bear this out.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Joy of KierkegaardEssays on Kierkegaard as a Biblical Reader, pp. 1 - 13Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2012