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I still love Kierkegaard

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Re: I still love Kierkegaard

#31

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

jmcqk6 wrote: post #30
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the other poster stated, this is a snarky dig at Christian doctrine by someone who has never actually examined Christian teaching within the philosophy of religion. I would strongly recommend reading e.g. Richard Swinburne's Responsibility and Atonement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989) for a reasonable depiction of Christian belief in this area. There are atheist critiques of the doctrine of the Atonement,…

>As the other poster stated, this is a snarky dig at Christian doctrine by someone who has never actually examined Christian teaching within the philosophy of religion. That's a pretty bold claim from someone who only knows me from a few comments on a website. Just because I can snark about this, doesn't mean I'm unaware of the things you mention. Though since you called be disingenuous, you must have expected that a…

If you were familiar with actual literature in philosophy of religion, then why didn’t you cite that instead of a copy/pasta? I think it is quite reasonable to doubt the knowledge of the literature of someone who can’t even cite something.

> I have no unmet spiritual needs

A lot of work in philosophy of religion concerning a particular religion, is done by people who find its particular claims interesting (whether they can be defended or attacked) but who are not in the game for "spiritual" reasons. It’s like saying that linguists would only study languages because they have the need to communicate with its speakers; no, most of them just enjoy studying the language as an abstract.

Re: I still love Kierkegaard

#32

Post by StavrosK »

racer-v wrote: post #26
interfixus wrote: post #13

Kierkegaard annoys the crap out out of me, as almost all philosophers do. But I will say this for the guy: He had humour. A weird, understated, tangled one, but he had it. Mind you, it is so tied up with his native language and culture, it ought not travel well. And judging by whatever translations I have seen, it hasn't. His worldwide fame is still a mystery to me. And by the way, correct pronunciation is something…

For a translation of his humor into English, see The Humor of Kierkegaard , ed. Thomas C. Oden. Some of it is laugh-out-loud funny, like his description of the ridiculousness of state religion: "Rather than taking part in official Christianity with the thousandth part of my little-finger nail, I would rather engage in the following display of seriousness. A flag is purchased at a hardware store, it is unfurled; with…

Oh man, I couldn't even understand what he meant, let alone find the humour in it.

Re: I still love Kierkegaard

#33

Post by mschaef »

throwawayjava wrote: post #17
mschaef wrote: post #8

Whenever I see Kierkegaard referenced, I can't help but think of Michael Swaine's comments (1998) on how it influenced Stroustrup as he developed C++: > Is modesty a virtue in a programming language? Stroustrup thinks so. Invisibility, even. "If you know what language you are using," he says, "there is something wrong. You shouldn't be able to tell." The "you" in this case is the user, I guess. Even Bjarne isn't mode…

When I'm feeling contemplative, I really want to read something continental for the evening. But when I have shit to do, I snap into an analytic frame of mind. I feel the same way about programming languages; the Kierkegaardian crowd (C++, Perl) are great for evening enjoyment, but I'd prefer something from the more analytic tradition to language design when there's work to be done.

I tend to agree... for me, C++ is a great solution for problems I don't tend to have in my workaday life.

Re: I still love Kierkegaard

#34

Post by bambax »

coldtea wrote: post #16
bambax wrote: post #4

> Kierkegaard’s greatest illustration of this is his retelling of the story of Abraham and Isaac in Fear and Trembling (1843). Abraham is often held up as a paradigm of faith because he trusted God so much he was prepared to sacrifice his only son on his command. Kierkegaard makes us realize that Abraham acted on faith not because he obeyed a difficult order but because lifting the knife over his son defied all moral…

> And of course Jesus is that exact same myth of child sacrifice (with a twist: he dies but lives again) The twist is in fact a different one -- "sacrifices, dies but lives again" is older. The key is that the victim, normally a scapegoat the city is happy to get rid of, is this time celebrated as to be in the right. This is a turning point in putting the victim as noble (as opposed the punishers as noble), on which…

> The key is that the victim is this time celebrated as to be in the right

Yes, you're absolutely right -- except maybe for the part of "most modern morality"... the Latin dictum "vae victis" was embraced throughout modern times.

That said, having the victim come back from the dead is kind of cheating.

Re: I still love Kierkegaard

#35

Post by mtremsal »

kraig911 wrote: post #12

Søren has always kind of put me off to philosophy and existentialism. Creating foundations within religion as matter of fact then using it as a principal to state everything is meaningless... my mind couldn't make the connection.

You might be interested in André Comte-Sponville who takes pretty much the opposite direction on the same journey. What remains of Kierkegaard and Spinoza when you remove Christianity as a foundation of ethics.

Re: I still love Kierkegaard

#36

Post by runesoerensen »

mirimir wrote: post #27
runesoerensen wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> still at the mercy and vulnerability of magical thinking What magical thinking are you referring to?

religion = magical thinking

Well that's a silly thing to say. For the record, Kierkegaard doesn't claim to know or try to prove that god exist. Doubting is a crucial part of believing, and literally requires a "leap of faith" according to Kierkegaard. That's one of the major things that separates religious belief from for instance scientific knowledge. Also:

"Christian dogma, according to Kierkegaard, embodies paradoxes which are offensive to reason. The central paradox is the assertion that the eternal, infinite, transcendent God simultaneously became incarnated as a temporal, finite, human being (Jesus). There are two possible attitudes we can adopt to this assertion, viz. we can have faith, or we can take offense. What we cannot do, according to Kierkegaard, is believe by virtue of reason. If we choose faith we must suspend our reason in order to believe in something higher than reason. In fact we must believe by virtue of the absurd." https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kierkegaard/

Re: I still love Kierkegaard

#37

Post by quantumofmalice »

jmcqk6 wrote: post #14
quantumofmalice wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And of course Jesus is that exact same myth of child sacrifice (with a twist: he dies but lives again). The twist is more complex than that: it is God sacrificing his own Son, which is also Him, in place of all sacrifices. God becomes the scapegoat. Rene Girard talks about this idea in this interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNkSBy5wWDk

>God sacrificing his own Son, which is also Him, in place of all sacrifices. The twist is more complex than that. God is sacrificing his own son, which is also him, to himself, in order to satisfy rules that he himself also put in place so that he doesn't have to send people he created and loves infinitely to be tortured forever in a place he created because they broke rules they couldn't understand with consequences…

I highly recommend watching Jordan Peterson's lecture series on the bible stories.

You are doing yourself a huge disservice by thinking about religion in this way.

Re: I still love Kierkegaard

#38

Post by qntty »

interfixus wrote: post #13

Kierkegaard annoys the crap out out of me, as almost all philosophers do. But I will say this for the guy: He had humour. A weird, understated, tangled one, but he had it. Mind you, it is so tied up with his native language and culture, it ought not travel well. And judging by whatever translations I have seen, it hasn't. His worldwide fame is still a mystery to me. And by the way, correct pronunciation is something…

Can I ask which philosophers don't annoy you?

Re: I still love Kierkegaard

#39

Post by throwawayjava »

StavrosK wrote: post #32
racer-v wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a translation of his humor into English, see The Humor of Kierkegaard , ed. Thomas C. Oden. Some of it is laugh-out-loud funny, like his description of the ridiculousness of state religion: "Rather than taking part in official Christianity with the thousandth part of my little-finger nail, I would rather engage in the following display of seriousness. A flag is purchased at a hardware store, it is unfurled; with…

Oh man, I couldn't even understand what he meant, let alone find the humour in it.

Yeah, translations need to take into account changes in writing style over the centuries in addition to changes in language.

Here's the joke in "modern English":

Instead of joining the state's church, I propose instead the following. I will buy a flag, a uniform, a gun, and one of those battery-powered toy jeeps that little kids drive around their yards. Then, with grave seriousness, I will declare my faith in God's protection, furl out my flag, and call for the members of the state's church to follow me into battle. I will then hop in my toy jeep and begin driving toward the battle field.

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