/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.3775026]

How readable is Kirkegaard? I'm interested in getting into his thought, but I'm not ready for another really dense, difficult writer. Should I skip him over for now or is he pretty readable?

[Anonymous No.3775028]

His work got letters in it that combine into words, if you understand the words you can read it.

[Anonymous No.3775031]

Very approachable. Kierkegaard is witty, funny, and writing about utter despair and how to cope. He's not writing treatises. Do it.

[Anonymous No.3775040]

>Is it an excellence in your love that it can love only what is extraordinary, what is rare? If it were love’s merit to love the extraordinary then God would be perplexed, for to Him there is nothing that is extraordinary. The merit of being able to love only the extraordinary is an objection, not against that which is extraordinary and not against love, but against that love which can love only that which is extraordinary. Perfection in the object of love is not perfection in the love. Erotic love is determined by the object of love; friendship is determined by the object of love; only love of one’s neighbor is determined by love. Therefore genuine love is recognizable by this, that its object is without any qualifications of difference, which means that this love is recognizable only by love.

[Anonymous No.3775048]

>>3775040

I love you, you glorious Danish bastard.

[Anonymous No.3775146]

>>3775040
Love for the sake of love only. Charming! If you want something about love in philosophy, Plato's Symposium gives a slightly more realistic and way more entertaining reading. The merit of Kierkegaard lies in his existential view of Christianity providing a deeper understanding of its crises of faith, so I wouldn't recommend reading him like you read a work of apologetics.

[Anonymous No.3775159]

>>3775146
>Love for the sake of love only. Charming!

Nietzsche criticized Christianity a lot but it one passage he said that loving all of humanity for God's sake is the most beautiful sentiment a human being has yet expressed.

It's not just "charming", it's one of the fundamental thoughts of Christianity and a lot of theology and worship that went into deifying that thought.

[Anonymous No.3775178]

>>3775146
>so I wouldn't recommend reading him like you read a work of apologetics.

All of Kierkegaard's work is apologetics. It's the people that read him leisurely for his wit and the vanity of "deep thoughts" that read him wrongly.
"Christianly speaking, everything ought to serve for edification" he says in regard to one of his own works in the preface. You don't think the main point of his work is to defend Christianity? He labours much in attacking the hypocrisies of the philosophers and clergyman of his time, but he did it in the service of what he called being a "true Christian".

[Anonymous No.3775204]

>>3775178
although saying that he does attack apologetics as a way of making faith "intellectual" and dodging what you called its crises.
But I think this is a criticism of particular apologetics, not against the form itself of which I think he is a practitioner of.

>Take all the skeptics who have difficulties with Christianity and all the apologists who strive to defend it, and see how the whole thing is a false alarm. The difficulties are simply introduced by God in order to make sure that he can become the object of faith. This is why Christianity is paradox; this explains the contradictions in Scripture. But the intellectual approach wants to abolish faith. It has no inkling of God’s sovereignty nor what the requirement of faith means.

>It is claimed that arguments against Christianity arise from doubt. This is a complete misunderstanding. The arguments against Christianity arise out of rebellion, out of a reluctance to obey. The battle against objections is but shadow-boxing, because it is intellectual combat with doubt instead of ethical combat against mutiny.

[Anonymous No.3775212]

>>3775159
Nietzsche also said Jesus was an "idiot" (like in Dostoyevsky's Idiot), the type of human being who neither denies nor affirms the world, simply ignoring it and living for his own "inner world" (the Kingdom of Heaven is within and etc). But I'm afraid this thread is about Kierkegaard and not Nietzsche.

>>3775178
>You don't think the main point of his work is to defend Christianity?

Not at all, despite obviously doing it. I'm not saying you should discard his defense of Christianity either, but that it is preferable to read him firstly from a psychological rather theological perspective. That is, provided you're willing to study existentialism and not merely another philosopher's opinion about what Christianism really means.

[Anonymous No.3775220]

>>3775212
>psychological rather theological perspective.

I don't think you can separate the two in Kierkegaard.

>and not merely another philosopher's opinion about what Christianism really means.

Kierkegaard called himself a "religious poet", I see him more as trying to unravel the mysteries and difficulties of the believer than as a philosopher trying to explain something.

[Anonymous No.3775271]

>>3775026
His views are firmly rooted in his religion.
If you have a different religion, or none, the majority of his more profound ideas will not apply to you or your life.

But he's an enjoyable read nonetheless.

[Anonymous No.3775273]

>>3775220
>separate the two in Kierkegaard

You can separate them in your reading of him though, that's what I'm saying.

[. No.3776253]

Seems like you already got some discussion going, and I don't know where I can get in, but I just wanted to say a few things.

1.
One of the most common mistakes is to assume that you can know what Kierkegaard meant. He writes so much under pseudonyms that it can be hard to get a good foothold under him. You might say that the 'real' Kierkegaard is the works published under his own name, which is the Christian theology scribblings.

The existentialist part of his thought also involves seeing yourself from the outside, so it would only be natural if Kierkegaard could see the inherently pointlessness in putting his name behind even this (Kierkegaard knew it more than we do). Also, if we were only to put credit to the works with his name on, what about the others then? An other objection would be that Kierkegaard writes so much of angst and despair, and how the one with the truest faith has equal 'despair, doubt' (my translation skills hold me back here), he would be a very special Christian, if you only define him as that. I mean, if you say Kierkegaard is a Christian writer, then most of the other 'Christians' in Denmark at that time, weren't Christians at all. In my opinion, you can see Kierkegaard as waking up having the strongest faith one day, but being in the deepest doubt the next day.

2.
Kierkegaard's works can be viewed, roughly, in two ways. As existentialist, and as a criticism of Hegel. So, read up on what Hegel did, he thought he had 'ended philosophy', and there actually was some philosophic stagnation in the time between Hegel and Kierkegaard.

3.
Kierkegaard is excellent for philosophy concerning the identity of the modern (and postmodern) person. Choices are abundant in our society, and so much of Kierkegaard is about choices, either / or.

On an ending note, I would say that Kierkegaard has an amazing way of (I don't know how to translate this from Danish, "indlevelse" and "udlevelse") immersing himself into life.

[. No.3776263]

>>3776253
>cont.

He can immerse himself into life, but he can't 'live his life'.

Anyway, to OP, Kierkegaard can be extremely hard to work with, on an academic level, since there are so many layers, but there's also a lot of easily readable work, some of it fiction.

I would recommend anyone to read as much Kierkegaard as possible.
"Fear and Trembling" can be interesting, it's short and contains some clear existentialist writings. "Either/Or" has some great stories in it, the seducers diary for example. "In Vino Veritas" (much like Platos symposium) is amazing, there is one part in it that actually explains the entirety of Kierkegaards life.
"Sickness Unto Death" can be a bit rough, I read it when i was depressed, and it might have strengthened it, all those words about how angst is invertible. There is also some great stuff in the last pages of it, very specific for the postmodern man.

[Anonymous No.3776303]

>>3775040

Do all his works read so convoluted?