Introducing Kierkegaard

And finally, David Lodge’s Therapy (Penguin, 1996) is an amusing and moving novel about a successful but unhappy man who studies the works of Kierkegaard and finds them

Jacques Derrida’s The Gift of Death,

Kierkegaard wrote 35 books,

The way he organized language was as important to him as what he had to say – another reason why reading Kierkegaard is always worthwhile. Most of us will read Kierkegaard for his extraordinary ideas and insights.

Kierkegaard always maintained that he was an “author without authority”. He is our postmodern contemporary by recognizing that authorial meaning is “deferred”, “ironic” or “dialogic” – never permanently stable and never “closed”

Logical concepts can tell you nothing about really important subjects – such as how to lead your life. Kierkegaard seems a typically postmodern anti-essentialist.

Kierkegaard is praised today for being in line with the tradition of “anti-philosophers” which began with Socrates and currently ends with “postmodern” philosophy. Kierkegaard distrusted essentialist metaphysics.

Karl Jaspers thought that Kierkegaard’s Christianity was too negative.

THERE IS SOMETHING RATHER SUSPECT ABOUT “WILLED BELIEF” …
BELIEF IS NOT A CONCLUSION BUT A RESOLUTION.

Being a “Christian” is a life commitment to one’s personal relationship with God, not just passive obedience to a set of conventional rules and doctrines. A