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Kierkegaard existentialism summary
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Kierkegaard existentialism summary
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Kierkegaards View on Faith
Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher in the mid 1800s. He is known to be the father of existentialism and was at least 70 years ahead of his time. Kierkegaard set out to attack Kant’s rational ethics and make attacks on the Christianity of our day. He poses the question, how do we understand faith? He states that faith equals the absurd. In “Fear and Trembling”, he uses the story of Abraham and his son Isaac to show an example of faith as the absurd. The story of God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac signifies a break in the theory that ethics and religion go hand in hand. He shows how the ethical and the religious can be completely different. “I by no means conclude that faith is something inferior but rather that it is the highest, also that it is dishonest of philosophy to give something else in its place and to disparage faith” (Fear and Trembling, 12).
To Kierkegaard, the whole biblical story is a paradox. “Thinking about Abraham is another matter, however; then I am shattered. I am constantly aware of the prodigious paradox that is the content of Abraham’s life, I am constantly repelled, and, despite all its passion, my thought cannot penetrate it, cannot get ahead by a hairsbreadth” (Fear and Trembling, 12). Faith to Kierkegaard is even paradoxical. “Precisely because resignation is antecedent, faith is no esthetic emotion but something far higher; it is not the spontaneous inclination of the heart but the paradox of existence” (Fear and Trembling, 19). Under the ethical, Abraham was going to commit murder. Kierkegaard uses an example of a preacher going to him after the murder and screaming, “You despicable man, you scum of society, what devil has so possessed you that you want to murder your son” (Fear and Trembling, 10). He knows that murder cannot be ethically disclosed and wonders how that can be faith. Under the absurdity of faith, Abraham’s crime of murder becomes a merited duty to his Creator. “The ethical expression for what Abraham did is that he meant to murder Isaac; the religious expression is that he meant to sacrifice Isaac” (Fear and Trembling, 11). Abraham had to suspend his duty to the universal, or the ethical in order to carry out his duty to God. The Christian must make an existential leap out of the universal to acquire faith. This ultimately means that faith is higher than the un...
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...f Pure Reason, 616). Kant places religion within the rational realm. He starts with the rational individual which is living in an absolute moral society. The moral law is based upon religion. “...and I maintain, consequently, that unless moral laws are laid at the basis or used as a guide, there can be no theology of reason at all” (Critique of Pure Reason, 613). To Kant, a society’s commitment to absolute morality, moral law, and the church was the rational world’s meaning for religion.
Kierkegaard argued against Kant that rationalism was lacking where religion was concerned. Kierkegaard fought that religion had nothing to do with rationalism, but everything to do with an individual relationship with God. The individual is free to maintain an intimate relationship with God which comes with faith as the absurd. Unlike Kant, Kierkegaard sees moral rationalism in society, but religion has nothing to do with it. It is a completely different subject that cannot be mixed with moral reason. He states that religion belongs only to the person seeking religion and overpowers all things rational. Kierkegaard places religious philosophy beyond the context of rationalism completely.
Kierkegaard, Søren, Howard V. Hong, Edna H. Hong, and Søren Kierkegaard. Philosophical Fragments, Johannes Climacus. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1985. Print.
The notion of slavery, as unpleasant as it is, must nonetheless be examined to understand the hardships that were caused in the lives of enslaved African-Americans. Without a doubt, conditions that the slaves lived under could be easily described as intolerable and inhumane. As painful as the slave's treatment by the masters was, it proved to be more unbearable for the women who were enslaved. Why did the women suffer a grimmer fate as slaves? The answer lies in the readings, Harriet Jacob's Incidents in the life of a Slave Girl and Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative which both imply that sexual abuse, jealous mistresses', and loss of children caused the female slaves to endure a more dreadful and hard life in captivity.
In 1861, Harriet Jacobs published her book “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.” The story is based in Southern United States of America during the time before Jacob escaped from slavery in 1835 (Reilly 649). Jacobs uses the name Linda Brent as a pseudonym (Reilly 649) and describes her experience as a female slave through a first person narration. The purpose of the selections featured in Kevin Reilly's, “Worlds of History,” is to show the victimization and emotional suffering female slaves feel against their white masters vs. the physical pain a male slave endures.
“The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wishes me to do; the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die” (Kierkegaard 95). Søren Kierkegaard was a clear supporter of expressing our own personality. He wanted us to take the time to find our true selves. Even though he acknowledged there were social systems in our society, he still believed we were our own individual human being. The only way to make sense of our life and find our individuality is to embrace our faith in God. Kierkegaard wanted human beings to be able to exercise their freedom. Human beings should not postpone their choices simply because they do not know the universal truth. As humans we cannot postpone our choices because we will never
In Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, the author subjects the reader to a dystopian slave narrative based on a true story of a woman’s struggle for self-identity, self-preservation and freedom. This non-fictional personal account chronicles the journey of Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897) life of servitude and degradation in the state of North Carolina to the shackle-free promise land of liberty in the North. The reoccurring theme throughout that I strive to exploit is how the women’s sphere, known as the Cult of True Womanhood (Domesticity), is a corrupt concept that is full of white bias and privilege that has been compromised by the harsh oppression of slavery’s racial barrier. Women and the female race are falling for man’s
“[Kant] fails… to show that there would be any contradiction, any logical (not to say physical) impossibility, in the adoption by all rational beings of the most outrageously immoral rules of conduct. All he shows is that the consequences of their universal adoption would be such as no one would choose to incur.”
Slavery was a horrible institution that dehumanized a race of people. Female slave bondage was different from that of men. It wasn't less severe, but it was different. The sexual abuse, child bearing, and child care responsibilities affected the females's pattern of resistance and how they conducted their lives. Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, demonstrates the different role that women slaves had and the struggles that were caused from having to cope with sexual abuse.
In Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard stresses the importance of becoming a “self”. He explains the dangers of despair and of society. According to Kierkegaard, the “self ” is a synthesis of the finite and the infinite and of possibility and necessity. In order to become a “self”, a person must find and keep a balance between these states of being. The self is who a person is meant to be, no more and no less. A person should not attempt to become more than he or she is able to be, because he or she will always be chasing something that is unattainable. When a person does this, Kierkegaard says they are in infinitude’s despair. Whether people want to believe it or not, people are not equal in the eyes of the world. A person with one arm will never be as great of a guitar player as Clapton or Satriani. A blind person will not be able to play tennis as well people with vision. We should take Franklins advice that, “you can do anything you set your mind to” with a grain of salt, and realize that while we may be able t...
Maintaining positive engagement in health management is important to the overall function of the older adult (Arbesman & Mosley, 2012). As natural aging takes its toll on an older adult, utilizing occupational therapy can help mitigate the effects on an individual’s quality of life. As Cronin and Mandich (2016) state, “adults over 80 is the fastest-growing segment of the American population” (p. 407). Therefore, it is imperative to implement effective programs to address this population and support the occupational engagement of older
Cooley, S., Deitch, I., Harper, M., Hinrichsen, G., Lopez, M., & Molinari, V. (1998). What practioners should know about working with older adults. American Psychological Association, Retrieved from http://www.nova.edu/gec/forms/practitioners_older_adults.pdf
For Badiou, Kierkegaard’s theory of radical choice presents a way of understanding the process involved in the subject’s encounter with the truth-event by providing an understanding of the “connection … between choice as a cut in time and the eternity of truth as subjective truth” (LW, 425). Understanding how the ahistorical can take on a subjective form is key to enabling us to have a fuller understanding of how rational thought can “take on the historicity of the Absolute” (LW, 426). Key to this reading of Kierkegaard is Badiou’s shift from Being and Event to Logic of Worlds, whereas in the former Badiou was concerned mainly with the articulation of truth in an examination of abstract ontology; in the latter Badiou realizes he needs to provide an account that “thought and truth must not simply account for their being, but also for their appearing, which is say for their existence” (LW,
In today’s modern western society, it has become increasingly popular to not identify with any religion, namely Christianity. The outlook that people have today on the existence of God and the role that He plays in our world has changed drastically since the Enlightenment Period. Many look solely to the concept of reason, or the phenomenon that allows human beings to use their senses to draw conclusions about the world around them, to try and understand the environment that they live in. However, there are some that look to faith, or the concept of believing in a higher power as the reason for our existence. Being that this is a fundamental issue for humanity, there have been many attempts to explain what role each concept plays. It is my belief that faith and reason are both needed to gain knowledge for three reasons: first, both concepts coexist with one another; second, each deals with separate realms of reality, and third, one without the other can lead to cases of extremism.
While Kant’s theory may seem “overly optimistic” (Johnson, 2008) now, it was ruled as acceptable and rational behavior then. Kant believed that any moral or ethical decision could be achieved with consistent behavior. While judgment was based on reason, morals were based on rational choices made by human beings (Freeman, 2000). A human’s brain is the most advanced in the animal kingdom. Not only do human beings work on instinct, but they have the ability to sort out situations in order to make a decision. This includes weighing the pros and cons of decisions that could be made and how they affect others either positively or negatively. This is called rational thought. Kant believed that any human being able to rationalize a decision before it was made had the ability to be a morally just person (Freeman, 2000). There were certain things that made the decision moral, and he called it the “Categorical Imperative” (Johnson, 2008). If someone was immoral they violated this CI and were considered irrational. The CI is said to be an automatic response which was part of Kant’s argument that all people were deserving of respect. This automatic response to rational thinking is where he is considered, now, to be “overly optimistic” (Johnson, 2008).
Now, Kierkegaard understands the tragic hero to operate within the ethical, he states: “the tragic hero is great because of his moral virtue.” Again one sees the dicotemy between great men in these two works, Kierkegaard’s tragic hero operates within the ethical while Hegel’s operates above the ethical, and, indeed changes the nature of ethics itself through his
For Immanuel Kant, reason can neither deny nor confirm the existence of God. We can generate the idea of God, but we cannot prove or disprove God's existence. He suggests to abandon the traditions of religion which were rooted in the morality of the past. Religion itself adds to the true faith a set of doctrinal (dogmas and beliefs) and behavioral (ceremonies and rituals) elements that make it less pure, but make the practice of morality easier. We then come to believe that what God commands is to believe in certain dogmas and to conform to certain rituals. He proposes that there should be an absolute and pure state of morality. Morality depends on the individual who can accept absolute morality and can share it to the society so that it may too can become religious. Institutional religion is not necessary for Kant if the society will