EXISTENTIAL DIMENSIONS IN KIERKEGAARD'S PERCEPTION OF SELF

The self as an entity of being and becoming, is revealed as a dynamic process of constant change. The nature of this process as well as the structure of the self in Kierkegaard’s philosophy takes more than one shape as his thought evolves. This may be somewhat surprising. Isnʼt the self’s structure and its lineation essentially constant, while the content alone is the changing ingredient? This is not the case in Kierkegaard’s philosophy, where the very formation of the self changes (along with its content). In this paper I elaborate on Kierkegaard’s early view of the self’s structure. I, then emphasize the dramatic change we find in Sickness unto Death, where the self is changed in both structure and content.

Forum Philosophicum, 2013

International Philosophical Quarterly, 2004

In the context of the contemporary emergence of a “postmodern Kierkegaard,” I take issue with the idea that Kierkegaardian thought involves an anti-essentialist rejection of ontology. I argue that Kierkegaard’s keynote existential analysis is paralleled by, if not tacitly set within, a less developed yet explicit ontology of human being. This “subjective ontology” is at once an ontology of the existing subject, and a subjectization of ontology. Thus, the essay has two aims. First, I seek to revive and further debate surrounding the structure of the Kierkegaardian self, by tracing something of its dynamic three-fold relational structure and various metaphysical polarities. Accordingly, spirit, anxiety and despair are understood in their ontological dimensions, and not just as existential possibilities. Second, I propose a way of bringing together Kierkegaardian existentiality (the three stages) with the ontology (the three relations). Despite important asymmetries between these two structures, the unity of Kierkegaard’s approach can only be appreciated through viewing them synoptically.

The Cross of the Self: Reading Kierkegaard as the Single Individual Abstract: Trying to enter Kierkegaard’s thought has been likened to entering a hall of mirrors. One hardly knows where to turn or what to take one’s bearings from, for although one seems to spy one’s host just around the next corner, what one finds around the turn instead is just another confused and distorted reflection. We can see the roots of this problem in the fact that, according to Kierkegaard, his entire authorship was devoted to a single idea, but this idea could not be directly communicated, whereas scholarship must do so. In this paper I argue that to solve this difficulty we must approach Kierkegaard with the required pathos, or the imaginative simulation of it; that this allows us to grasp the duplexity of “the single individual” in the appropriate way; and I demonstrate the fruitfulness of this approach by applying it to Fear and Trembling, aiming to clarify its central message and the nature of faith.

Kierkegaard in Process, 2016

Kierkegaard (writing under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus) famously uses this description of the self at the beginning of The Sickness unto Death (SUD) but since this definition is rather convoluted it will be the purpose of this essay to analyse how this concept of 'the self' is depicted throughout Kierkegaard's works and how these works proved extremely influential to Heidegger's formulation of Dasein. I will start with an analysis of the opening section of The Sickness unto Death in which the pseudonymous author Anti-Climacus articulates his conception of the self and the importance of spirit in formulating this conception. Secondly I shall analyse how Haufniensis's views of the self in The Concept of Anxiety (CA) compare with those of Anti-Climcaus and show how these two similar conceptions can provide a good outline of Kierkegaard's thought. Next I will give a summary of the concept of Dasein that Heidegger describes in Being and Time and discuss how influential Kierkegaard's definition of the self was in Heidegger's thought. Finally I shall aim to show how the idea of the subjective self as a relation of the infinite and the finite persists through Kierkegaard's other books (namely Fear and Trembling (FT)) and how this relates to Dasein.

Having transcended the mythical conception of time, the European philosophical thinking set on the trajectory of establishing subjecthood. The ‗agape personalism‘ of Ocepek and Milbank (among others) ensued, building primarily on the emphasis on the individual and his relatedness to himself and to Other. The legacy of S. Kierkegaard and his strand of theological existentialism has been and may continue to be a valuable resource for developing the agape personalism in our striving to bring about an existential revolution on the inner-personal as well as inter-personal levels. This becomes most obvious upon reading his masterpiece in theological anthropology, The Sickness unto Death. Kierkegaard here grounds authentic subjectivity in a double relatedness of a human individual‘s self – as self relates to itself and as this relatedness relates to Other in faith.

The Heythrop Journal, 2007

Paper focuses on two, essentially connected, things: the very way of Kierkegaard’s intellectual work on the one hand and his vision of the subject on the other hand. The author argues that Kierkegaard practiced a kind of therapy by his writings to be defined as existential rehabilitation of the Present. Trying to clarify then the concept of the subject underlying such a therapy the author shows to what extent Kierkegaard’s vision of the subject breaks with the concept of the subject characteristic to the classical modernity/the Enlightenment. Keywords: existential rehabilitation of the Present, indirect communication, existential reduction, author, antinomic subject, the a-hermeneutic.

2005

This thesis attempts to explore a theological anthropology devised principally from a theological reading of the works of Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855). It is argued that Kierkegaard's writings testify to the modem fixation upon the 'self', whilst proposing a theological anthropology that constitutes an attempted recovery from the modem drive for self-possession via isolated introspection. It is the failure of the self to grasp itself through self-reflection that engenders the dialectics of `anxiety', `melancholy', and `despair' which potentially initiate the self s authentic self-becoming `before God'. Kierkegaard's works are thus read as negatively transcribing the failure of the modem self to authenticate itself whilst positively indicating towards a relational theological anthropology which re-situates authentic selfconsciousness in relation to an Other. However, the decisive point for selfhood is that the ̀ other' before whom one stands is th...

Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2015

We may correctly say that Søren Kierkegaard is one of the most influential Christian-religious thinkers of the modern era, but are we equally justified in categorizing his writings as foundationally religious? This paper challenges a prevailing exclusive-theological interpretation that contends that Kierkegaard principally writes from a Christian dogmatic viewpoint. I argue that Kierkegaard’s religion is better understood as an outcome of his philosophical analysis of human nature. Conclusively, we should appreciate Kierkegaard first as a philosopher, whose aim is the explication of human subjectivity, and not primarily as an orator of Christian orthodoxy.