The Moment and Inwardness
I. Introduction
In The Concept of Anxiety, S�ren Kierkegaard deals with human anxiety about the possibility posed by freedom as it relates to sinfulness and spiritual progress. This paper will show that Kierkegaard?s concept of the moment and his prescription for inwardness, both in the context of spirituality, are connected. Importantly, inwardness depends on the moment and the possibility of transition that does not take place in time, transition that seems sudden if spotted from a temporal perspective. First, this paper will make sense of Kierkegaard?s concepts of time, eternity, and the moment, which will be an interpretation taken from his discussion at the first part of chapter three. Second, it will explain what his concept of inwardness is and what it means for human life, which will be based on text from chapter four, section two, subsection two (?Freedom Lost Pneumatically?). Finally, it will use those points to explain the connection between the moment and inwardness and then point out the importance of that connection.
II. Time, Eternity, and the Moment
Time and eternity are important concepts that correspond to the finite and infinite aspects of human life. Time is the realm occupied by the human body, the human psyche, and all worldly affairs. In everyday thought people spatialize the events in this finite realm in terms of the past, present, and future. Eternity is the realm of the spirit that synthesizes the body and psyche, and spirit is the aspect of human life that belongs to the infinite. Kierkegaard thinks of eternity strictly in an infinite sense and wants to avoid regarding as eternity the indefinite passing of time.
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...s nature. One angle on this is that abstracting the moment from spirituality, namely, to focus on the temporal moment involving worldly affairs, is to prevent spiritual inwardness to be reached. Another angle is to understand that with spirit it is possible to understand the future with an immediate sense of its possibility to go about life as an earnest task, which means that one does not need to be anxious about the future and idly waiting for it to come in order to understand human possibility.
Finally, it should be added that since spirituality is best regarded from the immediacy of the moment, understanding the moment helps one understand Kierkegaard?s goal in this work of preparing his readers for understanding the leap of faith.
Bibliography
Kierkegaard, S�ren. The Concept of Anxiety. Trans. Reidar Thomte. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980.
Take a minute to relax. Enjoy the lightness, or surprising heaviness, of the paper, the crispness of the ink, and the regularity of the type. There are over four pages in this stack, brimming with the answer to some question, proposed about subjects that are necessarily personal in nature. All of philosophy is personal, but some philosophers may deny this. Discussed here are philosophers that would not be that silly. Two proto-existentialists, Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, were keen observers of humanity, and yet their conclusions were different enough to seem contradictory. Discussed here will be Nietzsche’s “preparatory human being” and Kierkegaard’s “knight of faith”. Both are archetypal human beings that exist in accordance to their respective philosopher’s values, and as such, each serve different functions and have different qualities. Both serve the same purpose, though. The free spirit and the knight of faith are both human beings that brace themselves against the implosion of the god concept in western society.
Simone Weil’s essay “The Iliad: or Poem of Force” places importance on human interaction, the grounding, empathic, human relations which are rare, fleeting, and necessary. She claims Force to be a governing factor in all human interaction, and the ‘thingness’, which force prescribes to humans, as a dangerous, uncontrollable factor of human existence. In order to overcome force, one must direct all their attention towards recognizing others suffering. In her other essay, “Attention and Will,” Weil discusses religious attention as the most important. She claims that one must practice a passive attention to God in order to reach a divinity beyond reality itself which holds truth.
Let us not confuse or conflate the spiritual with the physical: they are inseparable, but they are not interchangeable. Do not allow wishful thinking to lead to delusions. To grasp the idea of prosperity and self-worth
How to live one’s life is a question faced by any human being with relatively normal cognitive functioning. Some find beauty in every day life, reveling in something as simple as the gentle shaking of leaves dancing to the whispered song of the wind, or waking up to someone they have decided to spend the rest of their lives with. Others only see the mundane and the tedious, growing bitter and resentful as a relentless existential crisis latches on to the deepest parts of their psyche, casting a grim and ominous shadow over every thought and action. This probing question of how to live is at the forefront of Soren Kierkegaard’s “Either/Or: A Fragment of Life.” The aforementioned views are, indeed, reflected in the fragmented perspectives provided by Kierkegaard’s fictional characters, “A” and “Judge Wilhelm,” who perhaps reflect Kierkegaard’s own divided views. Love and companionship are at the crux of how to live for both A and Wilhelm, despite the glaring contrast between A’s calls for a hedonistic,
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In a society where watching horror movies is considered a social norm, it is less than surprising that the horror industry makes approximately 500 million dollars with the haunted attractions and 400 million dollars at the box office each year, according to Sonya Chudgar’s article “Blood Money: How the Horror Industry Makes a Killing.” Stephen King, a best-selling writer, screenwriter, columnist, producer and director, who is also well-known as a writer of horror fiction, describes the role that horror movies play in the world. He refers to this role as a “dirty job” (King), and suggests that the job is favorable in that horror movies expose us to malevolence and immorality or tense situations in order to suppress our primal instincts of demanding
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Friedrich Nietzsche is a German philosopher who lived in 1844 to 1900, and his proposition on eternal recurrence was one of his most discussed works. The concept states that the world is eternally self – destroying, then self – creating, over time. He radicalizes the Christian concept of eternity and combines it with simple reasoning to come up with an innovative concept. This paper will discuss in detail what eternal recurrence is and the implications of such a concept on free spirits, and whether adopting such a belief will make a person’s life better or not. The paper will then proceed to offer a response to criticism on Nietzsche’s proposition. The text to be used is the second edition of ‘Existentialism: Basic Writings’ by Charles Guignon and Derk Pereboom. This book offers good rudimentary synopsis of the four major proponents of existentialism: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, and Kierkegaard, with excerpts from Husserl and Hegel aimed at giving a better explanation on the origin of existentialism. The author offers a simplified explanation on the various philosophical concepts by the philosophers mentioned above, making it easier to understand than would have been possible if one was reading the original works. The specific area of interest from the book is the area that covers Nietzsche’s Gay Science, as it offers insight on his concept of eternal recurrence.
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occurring in the present moment, which can be developed through the practice of meditation and