/lit/ - Literature

>>22097284
No. I read him while I was a Christian but became atheist shortly afterwards anyway

>>22097287
>became atheist
Why?

his writing is the definition of
>sounds good. doesn't work

In the 10+ years since I first read Kierkegaard, he has been a constant companion and source of succor. I love this little hunchback like you wouldn't believe.

>>22097324
Worked well enough for all of 20c. continental philosophy to be based off him, whether directly or through a twisted game of telephone.

>>22097296
No reason to believe so might as well take the side of what appears to be objective truth. Nothing changed when I stopped believing, I didn’t become any more or less virtuous, my actions were the same. Also the version of Christianity I was raised on was a bit wack, so once I started learning about what actual Christianity was I realized it doesn’t even line up with my values. Once Christianity becomes a dead question to you and you realize that the feeling of needing to believe in it existentially is a delusion then all Kierkegaard’s arguments become pointless. If you imagine his whole faith schtick to be applied to Islam, then you can see how it’s a dead question and there’s no need there to have faith in that because you don’t have a history with Islam and it’s not in your psyche in any way. The longer you disbelieve, the less attracted you are to the idea of faith, I definitely used to have moments where it seemed like a good idea, but now all I get is the occasional dream about Jesus. But then I wake up compare the dream feeling with what I actually know about him and any need to believe evaporates.

>>22097339
I want to read his texts in Russian (with commentaries). Is this a good reading order?

Either / Or
Fear and Trembling
The Concept of Anxiety
The Sickness unto Death
Repetition
Philosophical Fragments
Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments
/collection of Christian discourses/

>>22097548
Definitely start with Either/Or, that's right. I would recommend the Sickness Unto Death next (it has a very 19c Russian literature flavor, especially good if you've read the Karamazov Brothers). Again, you're right: finish with the Postscript — which is one of the best, funniest and most insightful books on the modern age. So:
>Either/Or
>The Sickness Unto Death
>The Concept of Anxiety
>Works of Love
>Repetition
>Fear and Trembling
>Fragments/Postscript
After which you can mess around with whatever else interests you; I like Stages on Life's Way but I don't think it's essential.

You might get burnt out with that reading list, so my pared-down, super essential recommendations are: Either/Or [Book 1: Preface, Diapsalmata, Rotation of Crops and Seducer's Diary only, then all of Book 2]; The Sickness Unto Death; Works of Love; Postscript.

One last thing: Fear and Trembling is a n00b trap. I don't know why it gets recommended as baby's first Kierkegaard, but it shouldn't be. It's a dense and intense meditation on classical heroism and ethics in modern society. The Sickness Unto Death starts off with Kierkegaard talking some bullshit about "relations relating to themselves" — he's half-joking and making fun of Hegel. The rest of the book is not nearly so impenetrable.

>>22097284
Diary of a Seducer made me fuck more bitches so yeah thanks Kierkegaard sama.

>>22097757
I literally fucked a bitch while dressed as the Seducer on Halloween. Kierkegaard was actually a red-pilled PUA.

>>22097805
Of course he was. Dude met his soulmate, made her completely fall in love with him, and then went no way fag.

>>22097284
Fear and Trembling has influenced my thoughts on the nature of faith a lot. Still can’t bring myself to take that leap but I at least respect the conviction he demands of people who claim to have made it themselves.

>>22097757
>>22097805
QRD on Kinkygaard’s game strat?

>>22097962
Stalk a girl for half a year and slowly get into the good graces of her stodgy aunt

>>22097749
Thank you!

>>22097367
Ew, no offense but the objective truth to you is corporate globohomo atheism?

Idk how any reads Aquinas or Plato or Kirkegaard and looks at the ideological mess that is modern atheism and think it’s objective truth. Yikes, sounds awful

>>22098038
Your problem is that you can’t mentally separate your mimetic associations. You could at least try to fathom the possibility of someone not believing in religion of god while also not supporting “corporate globohomo”

>>22097284
Yes, he did. He's my favorite Christian of all time.

>>22097962
Do it ironically

>>22097339
Have you read Thomas J. Millay's books?

Who is your favorite Kierkegaard scholar?

>>22097367
>No reason to believe so might as well take the side of what appears to be objective truth.
lolololol

>>22097548
Which version will you use? What is the translation?

>>22099717
Или–или. Фpaгмeнт из жизни / Пep. c дaт. H. Иcaeвoй, C. Иcaeвa. — M.: Aкaдeмичecкий пpoeкт, 2014.
Cтpaх и тpeпeт / Пep. c дaт. H.B. Иcaeвoй, C.A. Иcaeвa. — 6-e изд. — M.: Aкaдeмичecкий пpoeкт, 2020.
Пoнятиe cтpaхa / Пep. c дaт. H.B. Иcaeвoй, C.A. Иcaeвa. — 5-e изд. — M.: Aкaдeмичecкий пpoeкт, 2020.
Бoлeзнь к cмepти / Пep. c дaт. H.B. Иcaeвoй, C.A. Иcaeвa. — 2-e изд. — M.: Aкaдeмичecкий пpoeкт, 2014.
Пoвтopeниe / Пep. c дaт. П. Г. Гaнзeнa. — M.: Лaбиpинт, 1997.
Филocoфcкиe кpoхи / Пep. Д.A. Лyнгинoй пoд peд. B.Л. Maхлинa. Пpeдиcлoвиe и кoммeнтapии Д.A. Лyнгинoй. — M.: Инcтитyт филocoфии, тeoлoгии и иcтopии cв. Фoмы, 2009.
Зaключитeльнoe нeнayчнoe пocлecлoвиe к «Филocoфcким кpoхaм» / Пep. c дaт. H. Иcaeвoй, C. Иcaeвa. — M.: Aкaдeмичecкий Пpoeкт, 2012.
Бeceды и paзмышлeния / [пep. c дaт. и вcтyпит. cт. A. B. Лызлoвa; вcтyп. cт. o. Aлeкceя Уминcкoгo]. — M. : PИПOЛ клaccик, 2020.

All texts are available on Libgen

>>22097367
>literally experiences divine revelation in the form of dreams
bruh

>>22099831
You can lead a horse to water...

>>22099634
No. I don't really read secondary lit on Kierkegaard, although I took a class with Jonathan Lear in grad school. Part of that rejection comes from K's complex views about authorship and how meditation works in writing.

>The prescription Kierkegaard gives his hypochondriac niece, who spent most of her life depressed and bedridden, might have come from a hale country squire or a modern fresh-airand‐fitness type (he even italicizes the advice, a rare thing for him): “Above all, do not lose your desire to walk; every day walk myself into a state of wellbeing and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.”
>husbands and wives, and now have a European war. But walking is the.thing. “When I am unable to go walking, nothing goes well for me.” Even a letter about walking is better than “the boredom and mediocrity of this best of all possible worlds.”
Is walking the solution

>>22097284
Yeah. His influence on me was not as quick and direct as reading Nietzsche but more recently it's been influencing my thoughts a lot. I used to take people who loved either of them too for granted. They're both genuinely pretty great.

>>22100165
I reflexively hated Nietzsche when I was a teenager because his popularity eclipsed Kierkegaard's, and because that which I read from him seemed very similar to "A" from Either/Or — thus, Kierkegaard was obviously superior if he could not only offer Nietzchean thought (at a young age, predating him) but also transcend and subsume it.

But my wife likes Nietzsche and I think it's time I give him a fair shake. What should I start with? I'm fluent in Attic Greek so his writings on the classics are the most interesting to me.

>>22100245
I'm not sure but I did the unconventional and started with Zarathustra. I am grateful that I did. I think it's not the best starting place for everyone, but I think if you're prepared for it with the right philosophy and religion background it's very rewarding.

>>22100273
Ah, Zarathustra was the thing that reminded me of the Diapsalmata, so it'll be challenging to read it charitably. But it was also the first thing I read by him. I might go with the Birth of Tragedy and see how nutty he gets with the Greeks.

>>22099962
Kierkegaard to cripples: You're fucked, but you already knew that.

Bump

>>22101225
Bump? What do you wanna talk about? I don't think I've ever seen someone bump a /lit/ thread like this one before.

>>22102356
i've had anons bump my shitposts

>>22098076
I can but todays atheist is not like that

>>22102356
Bump

>>22097284
I started reading The Sickness Unto Death and it seemed like nonsense so I stopped after five pages.

>>22097284
Can you get anything of substance out of Kierkegaard as an atheist? I’m sure you technically can get something from every author, but is it really worth reading all the way from Either/Or to Postscript if in the end he is just going to say “believe in magic man”?

>>22097367
>might as well take the side of what appears to be objective truth
So believing in a God? Read Aristotle and Aquinas my fren

>>22103671
You might be right. The solution is to become Christian prior to reading.

>>22103605
His letters and calendar (?) are extremely interesting. Maybe he's like Kafka where his personal notes and correspondence are more engaging than his novels

>>22103685
If that’s the case then I don’t see any real reason to read Kierkegaard aside from understanding the opposing point of view. Unfortunate, considering he seems like a bright guy but the religious mind virus is like a rotten wooden foundation.

Bump

>>22103671
Kierkegaard was certainly not an apologist, but if you're into rhetoric and want a taste of what the Christian life really is about when lived properly, in accordance with its fundamentals, he can be an interesting read. Other than for this reason you're better off reading atheist existentialists that build on Kierkegaard's psychology of freedom of will and how your choices form your existence.

I was first drawn to the atheist existentialists as a teen, but never felt satisfied by their philosophy as a whole. Years later I felt drawn to Kierkegaard when I was seeking God, and reading him helped me take the leap of faith, understanding that it is absurd but still a choice, and one that fills the heart with love and a sense of purpose. Make of that what you will.

>>22103671
I started him as an atheist and finished significantly closer to belief in God. That said, his psychosocial commentary (which underpins Either/Or and the Postscript) is hilarious and still bitingly relevant. Stuff like The Sickness Unto Death is great for novelists and literary critics because of how it depicts certain archetypical characters.

On the flip side, something like Fear and Trembling will have little to no value for the staunch atheist.

Yes, significantly

>>22097367
>If you imagine his whole faith schtick to be applied to Islam, then you can see how it’s a dead question and there’s no need there to have faith in that because you don’t have a history with Islam and it’s not in your psyche in any way.
This only makes sense with the false presumption that every position of faith is of equal validity and or that "no faith" is by definition a more viable position than any other.

>>22103671
Kierkegaard has influenced many atheists including but not limited to Sartre.

>>22103671
He was a genius and I’d recommend reading it with such in mind.

All these atheists assume atheists are smart and Christian’s dumb but it’s simply not so. Smart people are few and have a range of views. Dumb people are everywhere and these days they love atheism where they loved Christianity and paganism at one point in the past. But you should frankly realize by now the masses do not matter at all in this conversion and what they believe is irrelevant

>>22103682
debunked daily on here

>>22098076
beyond based
well put

>>22097367
>Definitely used to have moments where it seemed like a good idea, but now all I get is the occasional dream about Jesus.

>>22097367
>but now all I get is the occasional dream about Jesus
Dude literally gets visited by the Unchangeable and the beyond and still isn't convinced.

>>22097284
yeah but probably in a bad way. even though it's not strictly speaking fideism the basic underlying idea is obviously fideism and that leads to exceedingly undesirable conclusions

>>22098076
yeah but atheism and our modern mandatory ideology are deeply intertwined

>>22097367
the very idea of objective truth is born in history alongside Christianity, or at least theism (Plato)

>>22097548
Good god, no, don't start with Either/Or.

Start with Fear and Trembling, Purity of Heart, and The Sickness Unto Death. After that, the rest of his work will make a lot more sense. Either/Or is early work and kind of a mess, he gets much better at articulating his ideas later

>>22103605
Keep going. The opening is deliberately obtuse, but it gets really good. His explanation of the forms of despair is really insightful, one of the most helpful concepts I've ever read

>>22097367
>No reason to believe so might as well take the side of what appears to be objective truth.
How do you determine what objective truth is?
>Nothing changed when I stopped believing, I didn’t become any more or less virtuous, my actions were the same
How can you measure that your actions are the same from the standpoint of your new, non-believing stance? You *think* and assume they're the same but you're grounding that assumption already from your non-believing perspective; you'd basically have to go back to believing *again* to be able to precisely chart what changed.
>Also the version of Christianity I was raised on was a bit wack, so once I started learning about what actual Christianity was I realized it doesn’t even line up with my values
So you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. You acknowledge that the version of Christianity you grew up with was "wack" and discard the whole of it. Or, confusingly from your writing, you're saying you still held on to the "wack" version and are dismissing normal Christianity for not conforming to the wackiness. What?
>Once Christianity becomes a dead question to you and you realize that the feeling of needing to believe in it existentially is a delusion then all Kierkegaard’s arguments become pointless.
But the stupidity of this is thinking you've solved anything by coming to the conclusion that Christianity is a "dead question." What this is implicitly is sidestepping the issue and claiming victory when you've done no more than lazily admit your own ignorance and reveal that you aren't willing to put in the effort to truly study and engage with Christ. It's in fact the most "living" question which you call dead that we strive towards.
>If you imagine his whole faith schtick to be applied to Islam, then you can see how it’s a dead question and there’s no need there to have faith in that because you don’t have a history with Islam and it’s not in your psyche in any way.
It doesn't have anything to do with Islam because we're talking about Christ as the revelation and as God and it is with *that* question that Kierkegaard is struggling. Bringing up Islam is pointless and doesn't do anything to dismiss the struggle.
>The longer you disbelieve, the less attracted you are to the idea of faith, I definitely used to have moments where it seemed like a good idea, but now all I get is the occasional dream about Jesus.
Do you see that there? You say that the longer the disbelief continues, the less attracted you are to faith: that's movement. That's movement towards something and it isn't something that's completely inert. That movement is the development out of which the impossibility of faith becomes possible.

Bump

>>22106486
>>22099831
>>22099941
>>22106451
they aren't visions or whatever, it is literally just me thinking about it while asleep

>>22106529
>Start with Fear and Trembling

>>22097749
One last thing: Fear and Trembling is a n00b trap. I don't know why it gets recommended as baby's first Kierkegaard

>>22097284
Yeah, he set me straight about what it means to be religious.

>>22106557
based

>>22098076
Based. You have successfully diagnosed one of the biggest problems of lit discourse.

>>22099831
>>22106451
>>22106486
Do you retards not understand the nature of the unconscious? Christianity really is a form of mental infancy…

>>22107923
I'm assuming OP is not a complete midwit. F&T isn't particularly difficult and contains one of, if not the, most important ideas in Kierkegaard's writings. It's also frankly a good introduction to his discursive and repetitive writing style, which makes it a better entry point than Either/Or. If someone gets filtered by F&T, they're probably not going to enjoy anything else

>>22097367
>Nothing changed when I stopped believing, I didn’t become any more or less virtuous, my actions were the same.
You're missing the point if you think Christian religiosity works in the same way other religions do. It's not about making you virtuous. You can't and never will be virtuous before God by your own merits. You can be before men, but at that point you wouldn't need religion if you think it's all you.
>Also the version of Christianity I was raised on was a bit wack, so once I started learning about what actual Christianity was I realized it doesn’t even line up with my values. Once Christianity becomes a dead question to you and you realize that the feeling of needing to believe in it existentially is a delusion then all Kierkegaard’s arguments become pointless.
So in other words you never really believed in Christ, just a picture of Christ painted by your church. Many such cases!
>If you imagine his whole faith schtick to be applied to Islam, then you can see how it’s a dead question and there’s no need there to have faith in that because you don’t have a history with Islam and it’s not in your psyche in any way. The longer you disbelieve, the less attracted you are to the idea of faith
It became a dead question to you because you were approaching it from the wrong angle to begin with and didn't bother to look further. You also have the presupposition that all religions are equally as likely to be true but any research into it will show Christianity compared to others is fairly likely to be true, at least more so than say Buddhism and Islam. Islam makes the claim Jesus never died on a cross 600 years after Christ, but the writings of the New Testament, having various authors who were contemporaries of Christ, all agree on his death on a cross. Which religion is more likely to be true?
>The longer you disbelieve, the less attracted you are to the idea of faith
That's called hardening your heart.
>but now all I get is the occasional dream about Jesus. But then I wake up compare the dream feeling with what I actually know about him and any need to believe evaporates.
There's a verse in the book of Proverbs which tells you to trust the Lord and not rely on your own understanding. I suggest you try it out since he reoccurs in your dreams.

>>22097284
he pushed me towards Fideism, so I can give him that

>>22106557
>>22108241
None of this is the point. The point is I have no existential desire or need to believe in Christianity, so Kierkegaard’s writings fall flat. It doesn’t matter if you try to change my opinion on its doctrines or convince me that it’s 5% more likely to be true than I previously thought. I simply don’t care, I don’t privilege it over any other hypothesis, and since you can’t prove it and it doesn’t have any practical effect whether I believe or not, it doesn’t have any privilege over other hypotheses. You only privilege it because you were raised in its culture, which you know but refuse to admit. No doctrinal detail about faith will change that.

>>22097367
>but now all I get is the occasional dream about Jesus
>doesn't believe

Bro you are literally Jonah from the old testament. Should you be swallowed by a giant fish, turn yourself back to God

>>22108383
I’ve had dreams about Archimedes and Leibniz too, it doesn’t mean anything. I’ve had a lot more dreams about my dead grandfather than Jesus. None of them indicate any bullshit like he’a talking to me from the afterlife or whatever. I’ve had dreams where Jesus was a good feeling and I’ve had a dream where Jesus turned into Satan.

>>22108352
>You only privilege it because you were raised in its culture, which you know but refuse to admit
No, I am struggling with my belief in it *in spite of* its cultural prominence and ubiquity, such that at one point I delved into other religions and traditions (Islam, Buddhism, Jainism, the Desert Fathers and their ascetic martyrdom, and at some points atheism) in order to distance myself from modern Christianity's perversions and the creeping influence of what it is *not*. I had to *leave* the culture, per se, in order to find it again, renewed and purified of its dissolution. I don't privilege anything except the profound knowledge of what Christianity is in its unfolding perfection and completion as I hold it in consciousness.
>I don’t privilege it over any other hypothesis
It isn't a hypothesis. We aren't talking science. This isn't games or empiricism or reduction or pointing-out: what this is is pure thought and contemplation of divinity, which you shy away from. The Desert Fathers strode into the desert to starve themselves before what they believed in, sleeping upright in thorns and crawling upon hard stones, and you dismiss all this as mere "hypothesis" as if all of it's settled and science will handle it.

>>22108418
It literally is a hypothesis. You can’t arrive at the idea of Jesus dying on the cross through pure reason. It’s a historical event that is supposed to have taken place, that subjects it to scientific reasoning. If “contemplating the divine” requires no hypothesis, then I don’t need to believe in Christianity to do it.

>>22108427
There isn't a hypothesis because there is nothing to be solved. Reason for and with faith is beyond what science can do: as soon as science tries to touch reason-in-faith, reason-in-faith vanishes. There's no hypothesis. You either believe Jesus died and was resurrected or you don't. There is nothing to prove. Do you think if science were to prove the resurrection never happened in *its* realm of pointing-out and proving that it would prove anything about the nature of the resurrection or its unfolding essence?

>>22108435
>. You either believe Jesus died and was resurrected or you don't.
That’s literally a fucking hypothesis moron
>Do you think if science were to prove the resurrection never happened in *its* realm of pointing-out and proving that it would prove anything about the nature of the resurrection or its unfolding essence?
Yes

>>22108446
It isn't. It's not testable. It can't be proven. It's unfalsifiable. It's nothing that science can touch. The Resurrection is the safest, most distant, and furthest object from science. The Resurrection qua Resurrection is the end of science and the beginning of faith-in-and-for-reason.

>>22108457
>The Resurrection is the safest, most distant, and furthest object from science.
No it isn’t. The probability of it being true can be tested because the evidence for it is physical documents written by humans who lived in the physical world.
>The Resurrection qua Resurrection is the end of science and the beginning of faith-in-and-for-reason.
So do you believe that Jesus was actually resurrected or do you just believe in a fairy tale that took place in some platonic realm?

>>22108462
>So do you believe that Jesus was actually resurrected
I am not there yet nor do I know if I will ever be, i.e., my thought is an infinite movement that oscillates between belief and disbelief, and that is the only truth of my developing belief. I don't know how else to answer you.
You ask me if I truly believe: the answer is the unfolding of that belief in its uncertainty is the only truth in just this belief; and that divided uncertainty is the only impetus to continue holding onto the belief in the Resurrection, i.e., the belief in the Resurrection only sustains itself by also containing within itself disbelief.

>>22108480
Ok, well my uncertainty is just uncertainty, and my disbelief is just disbelief.

>>22108491
You say you dreamed of Jesus; something in you wants to come to Him. You say your uncertainty is just uncertainty: that uncertainty already contains within itself its opposite, i.e., certainty. You say disbelief: if we remove "dis-", then we find belief. You are confused and unenlightened, and your adamant tone in proclaiming the certainty of your uncertainty and disbelief means you are, in reality, on your way or are completely on the path of belief.

>>22108502
>uncertainty already contains within itself its opposite
They are two states of consciousness. Calling them “opposites” is arbitrary, and there’s no psychological reason why one should become the other when left to itself.
>You say disbelief: if we remove "dis-", then we find belief
yeah, if we substitute disbelief for what it’s not, it’s no longer disbelief, amazing.
>You are confused and unenlightened
I’m not confused at all.
>your adamant tone in proclaiming the certainty of your uncertainty and disbelief means you are, in reality, on your way or are completely on the path of belief
Or maybe it doesn’t, and my adamance of my disbelief actually means that I don’t believe.

>>22108525
You're throwing around two different states of mind: uncertainty and disbelief. We'll posit the former as agnosticism and the latter as atheism. You've confused them together. You can certainly be certain of your uncertainty ON ITS OWN SIDE, and certain of your disbelief ON ITS SIDE, but you can't be certain of both at the same time. That is your confusion. You cannot leap from uncertainty to disbelief: you either proclaim that you don't know or you proclaim that you do know and that there is nothing.
>and there’s no psychological reason why one should become the other when left to itself.
Nothing is ever "left to itself." It is already part of the other that it's separated from. Your disbelief is merely the lowest form of belief: if you really wanted to leave the dialectic, you simply would've said, "I don't have an opinion on belief." But your disbelief is already an act of believing; the least form of belief which has already taken a stance in the *negative* direction of believing, i.e., I believe in my own unbelief, ergo, a certainty of your own belief in disbelief.

>>22108543
first of all, I was not the one who started talking about "uncertainty", you were. if I'm "uncertain" it's because I have no certainty that christianity is true , not because I am confused or unsettled. .
>Nothing is ever "left to itself." It is already part of the other that it's separated from
you're right, I'm continually comparing each state, and always finding that disbelief wins out. my disbelief actually gets stronger.
>I believe in my own unbelief, ergo, a certainty of your own belief in disbelief.
ok, so why should this progress to disbelief in my disbelief? perhaps I'm a stable person. and seeing as I've already believed in belief, and then transferred to disbelief of my belief, and then belief of my disbelief, and then disbelief of my disbelief, and then belief of my disbelief finally, then even if I do go back to belief in my belief, who is to say I won't just restart the cycle and become an atheist again?

>The point is I have no existential desire or need to believe in Christianity, so Kierkegaard’s writings fall flat.
Kierkegaard is Kierkegaard and Christianity is Christianity. You can't know what is or isn't an existential need if you don't try it.
> I don’t privilege it over any other hypothesis
Can't apply the scientific method to the resurrection. You cannot come to believe it by reason or testing, and the earliest believers were well aware of that.
>it doesn’t have any practical effect whether I believe or not
It'd cease to be belief if you're looking for evidence only to dismiss it when God is silent and you expect him to be silent. "Belief" as understood biblically has little to do with believing in a rational proposition, but rather belief means to trust in a being, namely, God, the way you have an intimate trust with another person.
>>22108352
>You only privilege it because you were raised in its culture, which you know but refuse to admit
Not so, in fact I was an atheist up until about four years ago, and precisely because I tried to come to rational conclusions about God.

>>22108557
Because *that* is the dialectical unfolding with which we are all involved.
>who is to say I won't just restart the cycle and become an atheist again?
Exactly. Exactly. Finally: and to think I was writing this all for nothing. You understand me now and know intuitively yourself this is a cycle. What I am trying to convince you of is not to believe, but to understand that the strengthening of your disbelief even unto utter, permanent-seeming atheism is only part of the eventual cycle that is already pointing you again towards belief. What we are certain of only is our unfolding of belief, which already inherently contains, in fact actually *needs*, disbelief in order to develop and progress.

>>22108567
even if the cycle does perpetuate itself arbitrarily and doesn't come to rest (which it obviously has come to rest), the only reason the cycle should continue is if I keep thinking about Christianity. the fact that I simply ignore christianity more and more evidences that the cycle is over. the fact that every time I think about Christianity I decide it's not worth my time means I think about less and less and the whole thing gets less impetus.

>>22097284
watchdominion.org

>>22108576
But it hasn't thought. And again, this isn't to convince you: I'm merely pointing out what we all can observe and see:
1. You've posted in a thread about Kierkegaard and Christianity.
2. You wrote a huge post about the certainty of your uncertainty and disbelief.
3. You continue to engage with me and others in the thread in order to proclaim how adamant your belief in unbelief is.
What we have here I wouldn't chalk up to someone whose mind is passive and has finally come to rest with respect to Christianity. We observe here a mind that is *working on convincing itself of its own adamant disbelief in belief*, i.e., we find a mind here urged to oppose what is opposite to it, belief, in the sense that it feels the need to struggle still against belief.
You are here and we observe this continual engagement. This engagement is only with yourself in the way you engage with me and others. Ergo, your mind is not at rest.

>Americans arguing about atheism again

>>22098076
The problem is that “corporate globohomo” is what naturally arises from widespread disavowal of traditional religion.

On what basis do you form your disapproval of “corporate globohomo”?

>>22097367
I lost the ability to believe in Christianity (or any religion) around the time I was 12. More specifically, I lost the ability to believe in anything mere humans had to say about higher beings. I mean, how could they know? So, agnosticism is the only answer.

>>22109535
We are our best bet of knowing what divinity is and if or how we contain it. What, are you going to consult your local neighborhood cat about God?

>>22097284

curious question
when i read him, i found it very very interesting how many things id already read somewhere else by later authors had been already discussed in kierkegaards work

>>22109700
I'm not going to consult anything you retard. Because nothing can be consulted. We are not "our best bet of knowing what divinity is", we know nothing and have no ability to know more than nothing. That's all there is to it.

>>22109727
But that's just not true. The Notion of divinity is already something we can locate in ourselves. Don't ever call me an idiot again, swine.

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Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, and Nietzsche all present the situation of a "godful" or "godless" worldview. Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky both understood that faith in Christ was something that couldn't be predicated on a notion of falsifiability apart from the historicity of Jesus and the crucifixion (which most scholars agree upon as having happened, so it's not really an issue for the Christian).

Both of them understood, in different ways, the ramifications of Dostoevsky's aphorism, "if there is no God, everything is permitted", which means to say that the moral, epistemological, and anthropological framework that Christians presupposes can all be freely discarded if there is no God. Nietzsche understood this too, but where Kierky and Dosto saw this as having horrifying implications and clung to Christ all the more because of it, Nietzsche embraced the "badlands of atheism" to formulate his theories on Will to Power and the Ubermensch. Really, it comes down to which outlook you think is suitable for both yourself as an individual and collectively as a society going forward.

When I read Fear and Trembling, it gave me a more profound understanding of the notion that faith is not something I can wrap up in a few syllogisms or academic papers: it is a lived and constantly reaffirming experience that must remain ever active in order to survive, which is why Kierkegaard was so disillusioned with the institutional Danish church of his time in the first place.

All of this to say, that Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky have been the two most influential philosophers in deepening my faith. As Dostoevsky said, to which I assent as well,

> "It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt."