Kierkegaard’s Leap • Hacker News Board

Re: Kierkegaard’s Leap

#21

Post by baking » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 4:16 AM UTC

I have long argued that the leap is not "over the chasm of uncertainty" but a "leap into the abyss." I don't have a reference handy to make my point, but it was the conclusion I drew from reading Fear and Trembling many years ago.

EDIT: “Yet Abraham believed, and believed for this life. Yea, if his faith had been only for a future life, he surely would have cast everything away in order to hasten out of this world to which he did not belong. But Abraham's faith was not of this sort, if there be such a faith; for really this is not faith but the furthest possibility of faith which has a presentiment of its object at the extremest limit of the horizon, yet is separated from it by a yawning abyss within which despair carries on its game. But Abraham believed precisely for this life, that he was to grow old in the land, honored by the people, blessed in his generation, remembered forever in Isaac, his dearest thing in life, whom he embraced with a love for which it would be a poor expression to say that he loyally fulfilled the father's duty of loving the son, as indeed is evinced in the words of the summons, "the son whom thou lovest.”

Re: Kierkegaard’s Leap

#22

Post by yesenadam » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 7:25 AM UTC

dwd wrote: post #20

Merrill wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read some of Kierkegaard's works some decades ago. It seemed to me that by his time philosophers had generally concluded that Christian theology, and theology generally, was not worth serious study. And Kierkegaard couldn't accept that he no longer believed it either - Sort of the first of the school of those who argue that God must exist because the alternative is too horrible to contemplate.

Yes, he tried and push theology to a perfect interpretation, but never took the next step of abandoning it in the way Nietzsche did. "God is dead...and we killed him" to paraphrase the madman. While Nietzsche lived later and embraced the nihilism that Kierkegaard couldn't bring himself to acknowledge, he rejected any notion of Darwinian influence in his writing.

I wouldn't say Nietzsche "embraced the nihilism". Embraced atheism, sure. Even The Anti-Christ I think says not a word against Jesus, who he seems to admire, but is aimed against the corruption of Jesus' teachings by priests and the Church. His teacher Schopenhauer–the first atheist modern western philosopher?–has much more of that nihilistic vibe - it would be better not to live, happiness is negative, lasting happiness impossible, the world is essentially annoying and horrible etc. Schopenhauer's also very Buddhisty–even had a bust of Buddha in his house–although I think arrived at his conclusions independently. Nietzsche at least tried to say Yes. Music was very important to both of them–S played flute, Nietzsche piano–and music was even more important in S's philosophy than Nietzsche's. Only through art, especially music, can we escape the miserable pressure of the Will, i.e. unconscious/life force/animal nature. Reading Schopenhauer's main book seems like Freud + Darwin. One of the essays in N's first book is the fascinating Schopenhauer as Educator. The chapters on S and N in Santayana's very readable and funny Egotism in German Philosophy are maybe the best, most insightful thing written about them.

I read a lot of Kierkegaard years ago - for a while he and Nietzsche were my two best friends! I avoided K's christian stuff - way too angsty for me, and over issues that mean nothing to me. (Well, I did have a religious phase where I could agree with him that christians are nowhere near christian enough!) But I love a lot of his other stuff. Maybe my favourite is Either/Or - some parts of it - the aphorisms, Crop Rotation etc. It's very funny stuff. He's either very compressed or extremely long-winded. And the endless whining about Regine gets very tedious..

Re: Kierkegaard’s Leap

#23

Post by goto11 » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 7:25 AM UTC

mikelyons wrote: post #11

nickysielicki wrote: post #2

Missing from this post is The Sickness Unto Death, which I think is the most important of anything he wrote. The book is about what a Christian ought to think of what it means to live and what it means to die. > What if grace doesn’t come as a gift bestowed from beyond, but in moments of self-forgetfulness, moments in which, by whatever means and processes, the Ego simply disappears? Questions about the afterlife are…

> Questions about the afterlife are not answered in this kind of thinking I would argue that questions of the afterlife can be answered in this kind of thinking, specifically practices like long term meditation, self-inquiry, use of entheogens, etc. which can cause direct experience of afterlife, and direct experience of the mechanism behind things like reincarnation. (appeal to authority: my own direct experience)

Not it can't. It can tell you how you imagine the afterlife to be, which is a different thing.

Re: Kierkegaard’s Leap

#24

Post by dwd » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 2:09 PM UTC

yesenadam wrote: post #22

dwd wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, he tried and push theology to a perfect interpretation, but never took the next step of abandoning it in the way Nietzsche did. "God is dead...and we killed him" to paraphrase the madman. While Nietzsche lived later and embraced the nihilism that Kierkegaard couldn't bring himself to acknowledge, he rejected any notion of Darwinian influence in his writing.

I wouldn't say Nietzsche "embraced the nihilism". Embraced atheism, sure. Even The Anti-Christ I think says not a word against Jesus, who he seems to admire, but is aimed against the corruption of Jesus' teachings by priests and the Church. His teacher Schopenhauer–the first atheist modern western philosopher?–has much more of that nihilistic vibe - it would be better not to live, happiness is negative, lasting happi…

I agree that he didn't reject life and living, just that he was of the mind that there is no overriding meaning to it. I tend to think of a nihilist as someone like Dawkins. It's not just that there is no god, but that there's no point to life except what you make of it.

I also read Kierkegaard and Nietzsche in my youth and went through a stage of intensely studying Christianity, falling out with the local churches as basically missing the point, (the time when I most felt a kinship with Kierkegaard) before ultimately rejecting religion entirely.

Re: Kierkegaard’s Leap

#25

Post by mikelyons » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 2:41 PM UTC

goto11 wrote: post #23

mikelyons wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Questions about the afterlife are not answered in this kind of thinking I would argue that questions of the afterlife can be answered in this kind of thinking, specifically practices like long term meditation, self-inquiry, use of entheogens, etc. which can cause direct experience of afterlife, and direct experience of the mechanism behind things like reincarnation. (appeal to authority: my own direct experience)

Not it can't. It can tell you how you imagine the afterlife to be, which is a different thing.

Are you saying everything is fundamentally just imagination?

Re: Kierkegaard’s Leap

#26

Post by jfengel » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 6:51 PM UTC

nickysielicki wrote: post #17

jfengel wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get the obsession with the fear of death. I'm just not afraid of it. That's not bravado. It just doesn't occur to me to be afraid of it. I'm afraid of dying , because that's probably going to hurt. I'm afraid of other people dying, because it sucks to live without them. But the idea of my own not-existing-any-more just doesn't fill me with the dread or terror that the quotes you cite seem to take as axiomatic…

He addresses this sort of question in the intro: > So it is that Christianity has taught the Christian to think dauntlessly of everything earthly and worldly, including death. It is almost as though the Christian must be puffed up because of this proud elevation above everything men commonly call misfortune, above that which men commonly call the greatest evil. But then in turn Christianity has discovered an evil whi…

... and in turn about not fearing a lot of the other things that ordinary people are afraid of. That makes a lot of sense, thanks.

As a sibling comment suggests, it offers a vaguely similar deal to Buddhism in being able to dispatch worldly fears. I don't really buy it myself, but I can see why people might.

Re: Kierkegaard’s Leap

#27

Post by yesenadam » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 8:48 PM UTC

dwd wrote: post #24

yesenadam wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say Nietzsche "embraced the nihilism". Embraced atheism, sure. Even The Anti-Christ I think says not a word against Jesus, who he seems to admire, but is aimed against the corruption of Jesus' teachings by priests and the Church. His teacher Schopenhauer–the first atheist modern western philosopher?–has much more of that nihilistic vibe - it would be better not to live, happiness is negative, lasting happi…

I agree that he didn't reject life and living, just that he was of the mind that there is no overriding meaning to it. I tend to think of a nihilist as someone like Dawkins. It's not just that there is no god, but that there's no point to life except what you make of it. I also read Kierkegaard and Nietzsche in my youth and went through a stage of intensely studying Christianity, falling out with the local churches a…

Dawkins?! Then you must think of every atheist as a nihilist, and the term doesn't mean much then. I don't think that's what's meant by the word, at all.

Anyway, meaning is not something things have in isolation–it is always meaning to someone. Like what's the meaning of a painting? (apart from in peoples' minds) A written word is a squiggle, but means something to someone that speaks the language. I think the nihilist/existentialist angst is from people in the generation or two after christianity, not having that cosy pre-defined meaning to their lives, of everything being god's plan. Like a child, used to the parents deciding what to do, what are the rules, punishments, structures, moving out of home and feeling...abandoned, empty. I (like almost everyone I know here in Australia) was brought up without being taught a religion, never had that loss of faith or feeling of lack or meaninglessness. Hmm well, not true, aged about 20 I had a mild 'existential crisis', wondering about the meaning of life, and learnt that it's silly (and dangerous) expecting there to be the meaning of life out there like a rock. Nihilists stop there, thinking that in "there's no meaning in X" they've captured the essential truth about things, and torture themselves with the abyss. A bit like the contemporary goth thing, thinking that seeing the meaningless, desolation, emptiness of things is wisdom. I started reading E.M. Cioran essays a year or two ago, but couldn't stand him; it was full of this vibe; going on about what a superior wisdom his ultra-bleak, desolate view of things has, as if he's better than any happy person because so miserable. Occasionally I hear some intelligent person talking as if an intelligent person must be unhappy, as if it's a given. Maybe it's from the existentialist message filtering down and being taken for wisdom. Maybe Sartre is to blame for that.