“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.” Lets go back to when men valued thought, for they valued its effect on the world, lets go back and take a look at the father of Christian Existentialism, Søren Kierkegaard. Søren Kierkegaard was born to a father who inflicted strict and rigorous religious teaching upon his children. His father felt this was necessary because of his sinful habit that resulted in an affair with his 1st wife’s maid. Kierkegaard, after a broken engagement with his love, was handed over to a life of severe melancholy. Yet as a result of both his personal pain and brilliant mind, a literary life few could surpass, and wisdom of thought (does that make sense) ensued. …show more content…
His philosophies began with the three stages that every man goes through. The first stage was the aesthetic stage, in this stage, each person pursues sensuousness, fulfilling their selfish desires. This is where the majority of people dwell for their entire lives. The second stage is the ethical stage, it is found by man choosing out of their will to leave the aesthetic stage. In the second stage, people move from personal preference to embracing universal conduct rules. They acquire a sense of moral sense responsibility and submits himself to the law. He also becomes guilty and is aware that he is finite and estranged from God. Next comes the highest stage, a stage that cannot be reached by mere thought, but by a decisive act of commitment, this must be reached by the leap of faith, this subjective matter in which the person exercising passion is necessary. This is the religious stage. In taking the leap of faith, the person lands in the lap of God. Kierkegaard’s views of God are basically the exact views of the Christian God, a God who is omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, and loving, just to name a few of His attributes. Kierkegaard most beautifully says of God, “God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but He does what is still more wonderful: He makes saints out of …show more content…
His answer was summarized in three words, Fear and Trembling. This is something that he spent an immense amount of time answering, and his answers can be condensed into the example that he gave from the Old Testament in the Bible. He gives Christians an example in which to follow, in the patriarch Abraham. The example that Abraham gives, and we are to follow, is found in how Abraham responds to the command to kill his son. For man, especially a father, this command is unfathomable, yet because God wanted to test Abraham (give better reasoning), he told him to sacrifice his son. Kierkegaard looks at Genesis 22:2, it says, “He said, ‘Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.’” He notes the unbearable precision in the command, when God says “take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love (emphasis added)” Kierkegaard also takes a close look at the beginning of the next verse, it says, “So Abraham rose early in the morning.” He notes that some men take this excerpt to men that Abraham was rising early to faithfully carry out his duty. And while that has some truth to it, it is not complete, Kierkegaard emphasizes the fact that he rose early, not because he got a great night of sleep, rather that he wrestled with this command in
I. Soeren Kierkegaard, a famous theologian of the 19th Century, wrote Fear and Trembling in 1843 in response to Hegelianism. Kierkegaard takes on the pseudonymous role of Jonannes de Silentio and speaks on modern peoples' attitudes toward doubt and faith. He believes humans are creatures entrenched in reason and doubt but not in the same sense as Descartes, a French mathematician, scientist and philosopher. Descartes doubted everything he had ever learned; his way of thinking is called hyperbolic or Cartesian doubt. According to his philosophy, within the world of ideas there is clearance sale; everybody has a shop
He tries to explain his point of view of Hell so we can have an idea of what and how is the afterlife. Every bad decision or action will be paid up in hell. Everyone in hell is divided based on the relationship between the offense committed and the punishments deserved. He wants people to understand and identify themselves with the importance of life and a person’s relationship with God. Based on committing good actions and decisions, we must leave to look for salvation in the afterlife. The action of doing the right thing is what lead you to better outcomes and fewer punishments in the
Soren Kierkegaard is a Danish philosopher and theologian who attempted to deliver his existentialist point of views. Specifically, Kierkegaard emphasizes the need for humans to take responsibility for their actions and go beyond their “socially imposed identities” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). According to his earliest major work “Either/Or,” he suggests humans are reluctantly stuck between two spheres of life that they must choose between: aesthetic or ethical. He delves into what constitutes a life as either and suggests the practicalities associated with each choice. He stresses the importance of being responsible for the truth and living according to the truth we’ve committed to. In addition, the existential choice can be
As I sat in the desk of my afternoon class, “Intro to Philosophy 1101,” I longed to be outside with my fellow colleagues enjoying the winter air as it turned to spring. Instead of sitting on the grassy lawn, I sat confined behind the jail-resembling cinder block walls of the classroom. My professor’s lesson contradicts the atmosphere of the classroom as she mumbles about, “Existentialism” and how it is “a philosophy emphasizing individual existence, freedom, and choice that influenced many diverse writers in the 19th and 20th centuries.” (Funk & Wagnalls 1.) At the time, I did not notice a significance to the lesson, but while reading pieces of literature in English, I understand the purpose of existentialism and how apparent it is in written works. Writings such as “Raj Bohemian,” “The Lottery,” and “Good Country People” all show evidence of an attitude of choice. The term itself suggests one major theme: the stress on the concrete individual existence and, consequently, on subjectivity, individual freedom, and choice. (Funk & Wagnalls 1.) The use of existentialism shapes the characters’ such as the Narrator in “Raj
Topic #1 Jean-Jacques Rousseau makes the provocative claim that the transfer of sovereignty involves in the election of representatives signifies a loss of freedom: "The instant a people chooses representatives, it is no longer free." (On the Social Contract, p.103) Do you agree with Rousseau?
He believes that bad people always affect to good people. Therefore, the good people are afraid to help others, and they tend to be silent in some undecided situations. Basically, those good people are scared of doing good things because there is less trust in this world nowadays. Human beings try to treat others in evil ways to get benefit for themselves. Therefore, before helping someone, people will think carefully the result. Otherwise, they will get in trouble for their good actions.
Since, faith is the paradox whereby the single individual’s inner ethical is higher than the outer universal ethical, therefore the single individual preforms the absolute duty to God. When the single individual carries out his absolute duty to God it can not be allowed to be interceded and thus the absolute duty cannot be understood nor communicated in the universal. If there was the possibility of faith being communicated than, this according to Kierkegaard would not be faith in its true essence, but rather simply religious trial.
In Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard differentiates between the subject as the knower, and the world (object) as the known: the only way we know the world is through ourselves. Kierkegaard emphasizes the importance of "how" the subject is related to the truth,
How does the individual assure himself that he is justified? In Soren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, Abraham, found in a paradox between two ethical duties, is confronted with this question. He has ethical duties to be faithful to God and also to his son, Isaac. He believes that God demands him to sacrifice Isaac. But, Abraham, firmly adhering to his faith, submitted to what he believed was the will of God. By using his perspective and that of his alternative guise, Johannes de Silentio, Kierkegaard concentrates on the story of Abraham in such a way that his audience must choose between two extremes. Either Abraham is insane or he is justified in saying he will kill Isaac.
Kierkegaard’s position on faith is represented with the Knight of infinite resignation and the Knight of faith. The Knight of faith is regarded as the one who believes in that which is absurd. For, he is the knight that is able to believe in the things that are
In his famous work Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard declares that “no person has a right to delude others into the belief that faith is something of no great significance, or that it is an easy matter, whereas it is the greatest and most difficult of all things.” The difficulty of faith lies in the requirement of sacrifice. The story of Abraham’s near sacrifice of his beloved son, Isaac, is what Kierkegaard utilizes to demonstrate how costly faith in God is. Here is a man, who after seventy years of waiting for God’s promise of offspring finally received his son, is commanded by God to slay his promised son with no stated reason for doing so. Kierkegaard, in attempting to experience what Abraham might have experienced in those moments, cries, “Now all is lost, God demands Isaac, I shall sacrifice him, and with him all my joy – but for all that, God is love and will remain so for me.” What bold words! The cost
Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Friedrich Nietzsche are both prominent figures of Modern Political thought even though they lived more than a hundred years apart from each other. Rousseau and Nietzsche tend to differ from each other in terms of their views on what we now call “globalization”.
There is no philosophical individual if there is no leap towards word of mouth. Kierkegaard exemplifies such mocking rhapsodies in his piece “Fear and Trembling”. Scattered within are multiple insults shot at individuals whom he wills deserving of it. Breezily crucifying ill-mannered beliefs, and rendering hopeless their application, Kierkegaard makes his first deprecatory stop at the gate of objective and speculative philosophy. Objective thinkers are swerved by Kierkegaard as he states “ When a cellar-dweller plays this game everyone thinks it is ridiculous...ridiculous for the greatest man in the world to do it.” (Kierkegaard 32). A conclusion can be drawn that the philosopher sees objective values as a tool with which existence can be understood an incorrect and confusing fantasy for “who is to write or complete such a system ?” (Kierkegaard 29). Declaring the objective thinkers self-equating of one to the whole, a method attainable by any man and comical in his eyes. His criticism of the aforementioned scholars doesn 't stop here as he follows with a like-minded observation of objective Christianity. He preludes that individuals seeking to understand Christianity through objective evidence, are not true believers for “ Herein lies the scholar’s exalted equanimity as well as the comedy of his parrot-like pedantry.” (Kierkegaard 34) The man who attains faith in this manner must remain mindful of the dragon at the door which waits to devour it (Kierkegaard 35). Kierkegaard
Starting with Kierkegaard, it is best to understand that he has a deep fulfillment to God and that he feels is the absolute. This absolute is to live in the realm of a paradox and that paradox is proving the existence of God and experiencing it for yourself. To understand this is to go through the different stages, of aesthetic, moral and religious. The aesthetic is all about the individual and focuses on oneself as an individual. The moral is having to be antagonistic towards yourself in
Kierkegaard's works are not straightforward proclamations of his philosophy: he wrote under pseudonyms and assumed the persona of these fictional characters in his writing. Thus, one must be careful when attributing a particular position to Kierkegaard -- often the view is advanced by a pseudonym, so various inferential processes must be applied in order to substantiate a claim that Kierkegaard really meant any statement.