For anyone contemplating reading Kierkegaard for the first time I would highly recommend starting with his journals.
Reading his daily thoughts, his love of walks, his relationship with Regine and his multitude of feuds with the newspapers and the state church gives a great perspective on his published work. It's also where you will find most of his quotable statements.
"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."
I read some of Kierkegaard's works some decades ago. It seemed to me that by his time philosophers had generally concluded that Christian theology, and theology generally, was not worth serious study. And Kierkegaard couldn't accept that he no longer believed it either - Sort of the first of the school of those who argue that God must exist because the alternative is too horrible to contemplate.
Missing from this post is The Sickness Unto Death, which I think is the most important of anything he wrote. The book is about what a Christian ought to think of what it means to live and what it means to die.
> What if grace doesn’t come as a gift bestowed from beyond, but in moments of self-forgetfulness, moments in which, by whatever means and processes, the Ego simply disappears? Questions about the afterlife are not answered in this kind of thinking, but so what? If one isn’t afraid to live, why should one be afraid to die? And even if one is afraid, again, so what? Our courage and our fear will not change the fact of our dying.
> Oh, but even if Christ had not awakened Lazarus from the dead, is it not true that this sickness, that death itself, was not a sickness unto death? When Christ comes to the grave and cries with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come forth" (11:43), it is evident enough that "this" sickness is not unto death. But even if Christ had not said these words -- merely the fact that He, who is "the resurrection and the life" (11:25), comes to the grave, is not this a sufficient sign that this sickness is not unto death, does not the fact that Christ exists mean that this sickness is not unto death? And what help would it have been to Lazarus to be awakened from the dead, if the thing must end after all with his dying -- how would that have helped Lazarus, if He did not live who is the resurrection and the life for everyone who believes in Him? No, it is not because Lazarus was awakened from the dead, not for this can one say that this sickness is not unto death; but because He lives, therefore this sickness is not unto death. For, humanly speaking, death is the last thing of all; and, humanly speaking, there is hope only so long as there is life. But Christianly understood death is by no means the last thing of all, hence it is only a little event within that which is all, an eternal life; and Christianly understood there is in death infinitely much more hope than merely humanly speaking there is when there not only is life but this life exhibits the fullest health and vigor.
edit: Not removing the original wording, but it's an overstatement to say that Sickness Unto Death could be regarded as Kierkegaard's most important work. It's definitely not. It's just his writing that is most relevant to what the author of this post is talking about.
I don't get the obsession with the fear of death. I'm just not afraid of it. That's not bravado. It just doesn't occur to me to be afraid of it.
I'm afraid of dying, because that's probably going to hurt. I'm afraid of other people dying, because it sucks to live without them. But the idea of my own not-existing-any-more just doesn't fill me with the dread or terror that the quotes you cite seem to take as axiomatic.
It feels like I'm being offered a cure for a disease that they're creating. While "fear of death" is certainly cross-cultural, it doesn't feel to me like it's an inherent part of the human condition. It feels as if Kirkegaard is offering a Christian solution to a Christian problem, and it offers nothing to somebody who hasn't already accepted the basic premises.
> Questions about the afterlife are not answered in this kind of thinking
I would argue that questions of the afterlife can be answered in this kind of thinking, specifically practices like long term meditation, self-inquiry, use of entheogens, etc. which can cause direct experience of afterlife, and direct experience of the mechanism behind things like reincarnation.
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche are the two philosophers who, when I read them, make me realize what a hypocrite I am. My favorite Kierkegaard quote in this vain:
"One must do everything for oneself and for God."
We are all often "performing" in one way or another for others. What would your life look like if you were only performing for yourself and for "God". I don't think it's possible actually, it's more of a goal to strive for.
I have long argued that the leap is not "over the chasm of uncertainty" but a "leap into the abyss." I don't have a reference handy to make my point, but it was the conclusion I drew from reading Fear and Trembling many years ago.
EDIT: “Yet Abraham believed, and believed for this life. Yea, if his faith had been only for a future life, he surely would have cast everything away in order to hasten out of this world to which he did not belong. But Abraham's faith was not of this sort, if there be such a faith; for really this is not faith but the furthest possibility of faith which has a presentiment of its object at the extremest limit of the horizon, yet is separated from it by a yawning abyss within which despair carries on its game. But Abraham believed precisely for this life, that he was to grow old in the land, honored by the people, blessed in his generation, remembered forever in Isaac, his dearest thing in life, whom he embraced with a love for which it would be a poor expression to say that he loyally fulfilled the father's duty of loving the son, as indeed is evinced in the words of the summons, "the son whom thou lovest.”
Moreover, "Fear and Loathing", as a phrase, has been used by many writers, the first (possibly) being Friedrich Nietzsche in The Antichrist. In a Rolling Stone magazine interview, Thompson said: "It came out of my own sense of fear, and [is] a perfect description of that situation to me, however, I have been accused of stealing it from Nietzsche or Kafka or something. It seemed like a natural thing."
[+] [-] dwd|6 years ago|reply
Reading his daily thoughts, his love of walks, his relationship with Regine and his multitude of feuds with the newspapers and the state church gives a great perspective on his published work. It's also where you will find most of his quotable statements.
"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."
[+] [-] Merrill|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Errancer|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nickysielicki|6 years ago|reply
> What if grace doesn’t come as a gift bestowed from beyond, but in moments of self-forgetfulness, moments in which, by whatever means and processes, the Ego simply disappears? Questions about the afterlife are not answered in this kind of thinking, but so what? If one isn’t afraid to live, why should one be afraid to die? And even if one is afraid, again, so what? Our courage and our fear will not change the fact of our dying.
https://www.naturalthinker.net/trl/texts/Kierkegaard,Soren/T...
> Oh, but even if Christ had not awakened Lazarus from the dead, is it not true that this sickness, that death itself, was not a sickness unto death? When Christ comes to the grave and cries with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come forth" (11:43), it is evident enough that "this" sickness is not unto death. But even if Christ had not said these words -- merely the fact that He, who is "the resurrection and the life" (11:25), comes to the grave, is not this a sufficient sign that this sickness is not unto death, does not the fact that Christ exists mean that this sickness is not unto death? And what help would it have been to Lazarus to be awakened from the dead, if the thing must end after all with his dying -- how would that have helped Lazarus, if He did not live who is the resurrection and the life for everyone who believes in Him? No, it is not because Lazarus was awakened from the dead, not for this can one say that this sickness is not unto death; but because He lives, therefore this sickness is not unto death. For, humanly speaking, death is the last thing of all; and, humanly speaking, there is hope only so long as there is life. But Christianly understood death is by no means the last thing of all, hence it is only a little event within that which is all, an eternal life; and Christianly understood there is in death infinitely much more hope than merely humanly speaking there is when there not only is life but this life exhibits the fullest health and vigor.
edit: Not removing the original wording, but it's an overstatement to say that Sickness Unto Death could be regarded as Kierkegaard's most important work. It's definitely not. It's just his writing that is most relevant to what the author of this post is talking about.
[+] [-] jfengel|6 years ago|reply
I'm afraid of dying, because that's probably going to hurt. I'm afraid of other people dying, because it sucks to live without them. But the idea of my own not-existing-any-more just doesn't fill me with the dread or terror that the quotes you cite seem to take as axiomatic.
It feels like I'm being offered a cure for a disease that they're creating. While "fear of death" is certainly cross-cultural, it doesn't feel to me like it's an inherent part of the human condition. It feels as if Kirkegaard is offering a Christian solution to a Christian problem, and it offers nothing to somebody who hasn't already accepted the basic premises.
[+] [-] wry_discontent|6 years ago|reply
This is very reminiscent of Buddhist thinking. Did Kierkegaard write at all about Buddhism?
[+] [-] mikelyons|6 years ago|reply
I would argue that questions of the afterlife can be answered in this kind of thinking, specifically practices like long term meditation, self-inquiry, use of entheogens, etc. which can cause direct experience of afterlife, and direct experience of the mechanism behind things like reincarnation.
(appeal to authority: my own direct experience)
[+] [-] hacknat|6 years ago|reply
"One must do everything for oneself and for God."
We are all often "performing" in one way or another for others. What would your life look like if you were only performing for yourself and for "God". I don't think it's possible actually, it's more of a goal to strive for.
Nietzsche's:
"I live in my own house
I've never copied nobody even half
And at any master that lacks the grace
to laugh at himself - I laugh."
[+] [-] baking|6 years ago|reply
EDIT: “Yet Abraham believed, and believed for this life. Yea, if his faith had been only for a future life, he surely would have cast everything away in order to hasten out of this world to which he did not belong. But Abraham's faith was not of this sort, if there be such a faith; for really this is not faith but the furthest possibility of faith which has a presentiment of its object at the extremest limit of the horizon, yet is separated from it by a yawning abyss within which despair carries on its game. But Abraham believed precisely for this life, that he was to grow old in the land, honored by the people, blessed in his generation, remembered forever in Isaac, his dearest thing in life, whom he embraced with a love for which it would be a poor expression to say that he loyally fulfilled the father's duty of loving the son, as indeed is evinced in the words of the summons, "the son whom thou lovest.”
[+] [-] galaxyLogic|6 years ago|reply
Makes we wonder did that inspire Hunter S Thompson to name his book "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"?
[+] [-] cristoperb|6 years ago|reply
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+55&versio...
[+] [-] qntty|6 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_and_Loathing_in_Las_Vegas...
[+] [-] notonyournelly|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coldtea|6 years ago|reply