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I still love Kierkegaard

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Re: I still love Kierkegaard

#41

Post by eevilspock »

jyriand wrote: post #40

I would suggest listening to Hubert Dreyfus's lectures on Kierkegaard. You can find some on youtube[0].Tried to read Kierkegaard before and did't really understand anything. But these lectures give some good context. [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKIWraaouu4

I took Dreyfus's Existentialism in Literature and Film class at Berkeley, and it is my favorite class to date. It had a profound effect on my life. It was sad to hear he did earlier this year[1].

The thoughts of Kierkegaard that made him great had nothing to do with religion, so those who are unable to read him due to his religiosity (see other comments) are missing out.

It may seem like hyperbole, but I agree with:

> He was an existentialist a century before Jean-Paul Sarte, more rigorously post-modern than postmodernism, and a theist whose attacks on religion bit far deeper than many of those of today’s new atheists. Kierkegaard is not so much a thinker for our time but a timeless thinker, whose work is pertinent for all ages yet destined to be fully attuned to none.

Ahead of his time? Absolutely. Think about all the men in the news and not in the news toady who use their power over women for sex, and then read this: http://www.readingtheology.com/the-king-and-the-maiden-by-sø...

--

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14259009

Re: I still love Kierkegaard

#42

Post by racer-v »

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.

The comparison is to a ritual that feels very important and profound to those involved, but to an outside observer is clearly a childish imitation of the real thing (like a hobby-horse):

http://www.oldbike.eu/museum/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/1920...

https://www.istockphoto.com/vector/victorian-boy-riding-his-...

Re: I still love Kierkegaard

#43

Post by coldtea »

jmcqk6 wrote: post #23
coldtea wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not "more complex". That's the high school kind of "religion is absurd" reaction, and is a naive literal reading that even the people of the bible era were above. The key is that there are no "rules that he himself also put in place" etc. (as he doesn't exist and even if he did it wouldn't matter). The rules were formed by people (obviously) and codify societal practices and philosophies towards morality and r…

I was raised in one of those places where Old Testament beliefs are still championed and they believe in a literal bible. They absolutely believe as I described it, though they would not connect those beliefs together like I did. There are millions of Christians like this in the US alone, let alone the rest of the world. I'm not sure what you're trying to push with your interpretation of christianity, but it's certai…

>There are millions of Christians like this in the US alone, let alone the rest of the world. I'm not sure what you're trying to push with your interpretation of christianity, but it's certainly not common, given that it assumes their god doesn't exist.

What I'm getting at is that it doesn't have to assume their god doesn't exist, as this is a negligible detail (implementation detail) on the respective worldview and its results in everyday life, culture, etc (not in the coarse grained debates in the US 15th-21th centuries, but in the course of 2 millennia of European and global history).

Re: I still love Kierkegaard

#44

Post by charcoal23 »

jmcqk6 wrote: post #23
coldtea wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not "more complex". That's the high school kind of "religion is absurd" reaction, and is a naive literal reading that even the people of the bible era were above. The key is that there are no "rules that he himself also put in place" etc. (as he doesn't exist and even if he did it wouldn't matter). The rules were formed by people (obviously) and codify societal practices and philosophies towards morality and r…

I was raised in one of those places where Old Testament beliefs are still championed and they believe in a literal bible. They absolutely believe as I described it, though they would not connect those beliefs together like I did. There are millions of Christians like this in the US alone, let alone the rest of the world. I'm not sure what you're trying to push with your interpretation of christianity, but it's certai…

I was also raised in a fundamentalist / evangelical church. I'll back you up on this as your interpretation is completely correct. coldtea's interpretation would be completely alien in any of the churches of my youth. In the United States at least, it would be completely alien outside of academia.

Re: I still love Kierkegaard

#45

Post by coldtea »

bambax wrote: post #34
coldtea wrote: post #16

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 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.

>the Latin dictum "vae victis" was embraced throughout modern times.

Indeed, but that was and will always going to be (including in modern times).

What Christianity did was shape a morality where this was increasingly considered bad (as opposed to "just the way of the world"), not shape a world where this was eliminated.

This has a large effect on many practices and beliefs.

Re: I still love Kierkegaard

#46

Post by T_D_K »

throwawayjava wrote: post #39
StavrosK wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Maybe I'm slow, but I still don't get it. Is he saying that members of the state's church will follow him blindly (making them out to be dumb / sheeple)? Or is he saying that even such a ridiculous sight is less ridiculous than the church? Maybe he's satirizing the state's enthusiasm for war? I feel like I'm missing context here. Or maybe this is why people say his humor is weird...

Re: I still love Kierkegaard

#47

Post by charcoal23 »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #28
jmcqk6 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

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,…

The "snarky dig" is an accurate description of what American fundamentalists / evangelicals believe. If you want to complain about that particular bit of theology, you're complaining to the wrong person.

Re: I still love Kierkegaard

#48

Post by jmcqk6 »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #31
jmcqk6 wrote: post #30

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. 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 th…

Well it wasn't copy/pasta, nor was I trying to make some theological point. But given the latter part of your comment, you're very keen on reading many things into what I type here that I've not said. So I'll just let you continue to have both sides of the conversation.

Re: I still love Kierkegaard

#49

Post by Apocryphon »

jmcqk6 wrote: post #23
coldtea wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not "more complex". That's the high school kind of "religion is absurd" reaction, and is a naive literal reading that even the people of the bible era were above. The key is that there are no "rules that he himself also put in place" etc. (as he doesn't exist and even if he did it wouldn't matter). The rules were formed by people (obviously) and codify societal practices and philosophies towards morality and r…

I was raised in one of those places where Old Testament beliefs are still championed and they believe in a literal bible. They absolutely believe as I described it, though they would not connect those beliefs together like I did. There are millions of Christians like this in the US alone, let alone the rest of the world. I'm not sure what you're trying to push with your interpretation of christianity, but it's certai…

Biblical literalism and fundamentalism are a relatively new innovation developed in the past century and half. Taking a deeply complex work like the Bible and attempting to read it "literally" just spawns more approaches and complications; it doesn't mean that fundamentalists have discovered the one approach that's true to the text.

Re: I still love Kierkegaard

#50

Post by Apocryphon »

jmcqk6 wrote: post #25
doulos wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can complain about the problem or be grateful for the Solution. The outcomes remain and the choice is ours.

Or you can say "that's absurd" and move on with your life.

As for Kierkegaard, he did all three.
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