/lit/ - Literature

nope

>>12754424

>>12738872
>tfw my attempt at a kalevala thread died with no replies

>>11978537
case in point

>>11637387
>agreed
Rationalism is cancer (lol Hegel), great men may act "unethically," modernity isn't that great, reverence for something is the mark of a great man
>disagreed
God and Christianity, return to proper belief of the past vs. forge the new values of the future, teleological suspension of the ethical vs. master morality's disregard for slave ethics

Kierkegaard had the reformer's spirit. He was a harsh critic of the Danish church of the time, which he viewed as having lost the genuine spirit of Christianity. Being a Christian no longer meant anything because it didn't require sacrifice, because orthodoxy was valued higher than orthopraxy. Kierkegaard saw this as a sorry state of affairs. He admired men like the apostles and Martin Luther, who suffered for the faith.
Kierkegaard's thought returns to man's standing before God. He is often very anti-intellectual- after all, it was the intellectual current in the church that represented the problem in the church; pastors were professors more than men of God. So faith operates "by virtue of the absurd" rather than rationally, and by means of paradox- to sacrifice is to truly gain, and so on. This is a stark contrast to the rational faith of Aquinas, and Hegel's very rational idealism.
His courtship of Regine led to engagement, which he later broke off, feeling he could not go through with it. This episode is critical to the understanding of Kierkegaard. "It is hard not to find the person to whom one can give oneself, but it is unspeakably hard not to be able to give oneself." This is the position he found himself in. The philosophies of many earlier thinkers lack this emphasis on the personal and on the individual. It all comes down to the individual and his relationship to God and himself. His philosophy will put the fear of God into your heart.
I started him with Fear and Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death. Either/Or is also a good first choice.