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137-574: The Postscript is a sequel to the earlier Philosophical Fragments . The title of the work is ironic because the Postscript is almost five times larger than the Fragments. The Postscript credits "Johannes Climacus" as the author and Kierkegaard as its editor. Like his other pseudonymous works, the Postscript is not a reflection of Kierkegaard's own beliefs. However, unlike his other pseudonymous works, Kierkegaard attaches his name as editor to this work, showing

274-405: A Munchausen . If the credibility of a contemporary is to have any interest for him—and alas! one may be sure that this will create a tremendous sensation, and give occasion for the writing of folios; for this counterfeit earnestness, which asks whether so-and-so is trustworthy instead of whether the inquirer himself has faith, is an excellent mask for spiritual indolence, and for town gossip on

411-537: A preface signed by the name of the pseudonymous author he was using. He began this practice with his unpublished book Johannes Climacus and continued it throughout his writing career. However, he added his own name as the person responsible for publication of Philosophical Fragments , Concluding Unscientific Postscript , The Sickness Unto Death and Practice in Christianity . He also wrote many discourses which he signed with his own name. He began that practice with

548-410: A "sequel in 17 pieces" in his preface. By February 22, 1846, he published a 600-page sequel to his 83-page Fragments . He devoted over 200 pages of Concluding Unscientific Postscript to an explanation of what he meant by Philosophical Fragments . He referred to a quote from Plato's Hippias Major in his Postscript to Philosophical Fragments : "But I must ask you Socrates, what do you suppose

685-527: A European scale—if the credibility of such a witness is to have any significance it must be with respect to the historical fact. But what historical fact? Philosophical Fragments p. 77 if it is the misfortune of the age that it has come to know too much, has forgotten what it means to exist and what inwardness is, then it was important that sin not be conceived in abstract categories, in which it cannot be conceived at all, that is, decisively, because it stands in an essential relation to existing. Therefore it

822-499: A World Order (Read, 1948); The Grass Read , (1955); and Redemption of the Robot (1966)". Read "elaborated a socio-cultural dimension of creative education, offering the notion of greater international understanding and cohesiveness rooted in principles of developing the fully balanced personality through art education. Read argued in Education through Art that "every child, is said to be

959-596: A better one themselves. But his Danish critic attacked him for being the most consistent system-builder among system-builders. In the name of Christian faith Kierkegaard rejected not this or that element in Hegelianism but the whole, referring to it in mockery as the System. So it happens that the issue of system versus the Christian faith has been debated more than a hundred years ago. And that encounter between system and anti-system

1096-449: A bit proudly found my joy in comforting others and in being gentleness itself to them-hiding the terror in my own interior being. So my idea was to give my contemporaries (whether or not they themselves would want to understand) a hint in humorous form (in order to achieve a lighter tone) that a much greater pressure was needed-but then no more; I aimed to keep my heavy burden to myself, as my cross. I have often taken exception to anyone who

1233-631: A book about Kierkegaard's books which used Johannes Climacus as a pseudonym. and Kierkegaardian biographer, Alastair Hannay, discusses Philosophical Fragments 36 times in Søren Kierkegaard , A Biography. Jyrki Kivelä wonders if Kierkegaard's Paradox is David Hume 's miracle . Which comes first existence or essence ? Richard Gravil tries to explain it in his book Existentialism . Kierkegaard says God comes into existence again and again for each single individual. He didn't just come once for all. An early existentialist, Miguel de Unamuno , discussed

1370-476: A choice, and yet it has existed, for it was indeed "himself." The choice here makes two dialectical movements simultaneous-that which is chosen does not exist and comes into existence through the choice-and that which is chosen exists; otherwise it was not a choice. In other words, if what I chose did not exist but came into existence absolutely through the choice, then I did not choose-then I created. But I do not create myself-I choose myself. Therefore, whereas nature

1507-430: A circuitous path, to return to himself! Here we have a striking confirmation of the position that the secret of theology is nothing else than anthropology – the knowledge of God nothing else than a knowledge of man! The Essence of Christianity , Ludwig Feuerbach, 1841 Otto Pfleiderer wrote an assessment of Kierkegaard's views in 1877. He called his work " ascetic individualistic mysticism ." Robert L Perkins wrote

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1644-448: A finite sense, for then this " self " would indeed be something finite that would fall among all the other finite things-but in the absolute sense, and yet he does choose himself and not someone else. This self that he chooses in this way is infinitely concrete, for it is he himself, and yet it is absolutely different from his former self, for he has chosen it absolutely. This self has not existed before, because it came into existence through

1781-409: A general quantification of all life, as it may be seen in the craving for records in sport, in pride in the growth of cities of millions of inhabitants, in respect for the multi-millionaire, in admiration for great political power. Reverence for the quantum is, so to speak, the new version of the worship of the golden calf. It is an inevitable consequence of the objectivist conception of truth: The object

1918-408: A man knows he cannot seek, since he knows it; and what he does not know he cannot seek, since he does not even know for what to seek." The problem for the "Learner" is that he is in "Error", and is ignorant of his Error. He had the truth from birth, he knew who his creator was, but forgot. Kierkegaard calls this Error "Sin". How can he find out that he had vested his life in outer goods rather than

2055-416: A new departure. The Christian revelation is not a set of propositions, but a creative act of the individual who has been prepared to receive it in part by the very discipline of human idealism, and who through this creative act becomes a new creature. But no birth is without birth-pangs and no revelation is without an experience of suffering. The way to Christianity goes through a decision, a crucial decision in

2192-769: A pioneer in the English-speaking world in the use of psychoanalysis as a tool for art and literary criticism. Originally a Freudian, Read came to transfer his allegiance to the analytical psychology of Carl Jung , eventually becoming both publisher and editor-in-chief of Jung's collected works in English. As early as 1949, Read took an interest in the writings of the French Existentialists , particularly those of Jean-Paul Sartre . Although Read never described himself as an existentialist, he did acknowledge that his theories often found support among those who did. Read perhaps

2329-434: A potential neurotic capable of being saved from this prospect, if early, largely inborn, creative abilities were not repressed by conventional Education. Everyone is an artist of some kind whose special abilities, even if almost insignificant, must be encouraged as contributing to an infinite richness of collective life. Read's newly expressed view of an essential 'continuity' of child and adult creativity in everyone represented

2466-478: A powerful repugnance for the truth of it. Our own existence and the existence of all things outside us must be believed, and cannot be determined in any other way. What is more certain than the end of man, and of what truth is there a more general and better attested knowledge? Nevertheless, no one is wise enough to believe it except the one who, as Moses makes clear, is taught by God himself to number his days. What one believes does not, therefore, have to be proved, and

2603-456: A proposition can be ever so incontrovertibly proven without on that account being believed. There are proofs of truth which are of as little value as the application which can be made of the truths themselves; indeed, one can believe the proof of the proposition without giving approval to the proposition itself. The reasons of a Hume may be ever so cogent, and the refutations of them only assumptions and doubts; thus faith gains and loses equally with

2740-510: A resurrection, without a nativity, without Chartres and Fra Angelico , without wine and wafers, without heaven and hell, without God as judge and without judgment. With philosophical conceptualization, the Trinity is reduced to Kant 's categories of Universality (God the father) Particularity (Christ the Son) and Individuality (The Holy Spirit). The incarnation no longer refers to Christ alone, but only to

2877-478: A semi-serious parody of Kierkegaard's idea of truth as subjectivity by making truth objectivity in 1947. The phrase Everything is relative is spoken emphatically by the very people for whom the atom or its elements are still the ultimate reality. Everything is relative, they say, but at the same time they declare as indubitable truth that the mind is nothing but a product of cerebral processes. This combination of gross objectivism and bottomless subjectivism represents

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3014-425: A servant. But God can't make himself understood because he's completely unlike every other human being. God has not sinned, whereas every human being has. This is a paradox but the ultimate paradox is that a single individual who looks just like everyone else is God. "The thesis that God has existed in human form, was born, grew up; is certainly the paradox in the strictest sense, the absolute paradox." Christianity

3151-462: A synthesis of logically irreconcilable, contradictory principles of thought, which is equally unfortunate from the point of view of philosophical consistency and from that ethical and cultural value. Apart from this last sceptical stage, it must be said that modern spiritual evolution has been taking unambiguously the line of a more or less materialistic objectivism. This chapter of human history could be headed — to parody Kierkegaard's phrase — The object

3288-518: A synthesis' the two opposed models of twentieth-century art education that had predominated until this point...Read did not offer a curriculum but a theoretical defence of the genuine and true. His claims for genuineness and truth were based on the overwhelming evidence of characteristics revealed in his study of child art....From 1946 until his death in 1968 he was president of the Society for Education in Art (SEA),

3425-515: A very plausible demonstration of the eternal validity of the personality. Indeed, even a suicide does not actually will to do away with his self; he, too, wishes-he wishes another form of his self, and this is why we certainly find a suicide who is very convinced of the immortality of the soul, but whose whole being was so ensnared that he believed he would by this step find the absolute form for his spirit. The reason, however, it may seem to an individual as if he could be changed continually and yet remain

3562-502: Is historical . But for Kierkegaard "all coming into existence takes place in freedom ." The disciple freely chooses to follow Christ when the Holy Spirit convinces him that he's a sinner. He finally discloses what this "condition" the "Moment" brings to the individual. He says, "faith has precisely the required character; for in the certainty of belief there is always present a negated uncertainty , in every way corresponding to

3699-435: Is a believer. (This corresponds exactly to the requirement that man must renounce his reason, and on the other hand discloses the only form of authority that corresponds to Faith.) If anyone proposes to believe, i.e., imagines himself to believe, because many good and upright people living here on the hill have believed, i.e., have said that they believed (for no man can control the profession of another further than this; even if

3836-413: Is a desperate sortie (salida). Even so, but it is only by the very desperateness of this sortie that we can win through to hope, to that hope whose vitalizing illusion is of more force than all rational knowledge, and which assures us that there is always something that cannot be reduced to reason. And of reason the same may be said as was said of Christ: that he who is not with it is against it. That which

3973-485: Is a greater difference than between a living animal and its anatomical skeleton. The ancient and modern sceptics may wrap themselves ever so much in the lion skin of Socratic ignorance; nevertheless they betray themselves by their voices and ears. If they know nothing, why does the world need a learned demonstration of it? Their hypocrisy is ridiculous and insolent. Whoever needs so much acumen and eloquence to convince himself of his ignorance, however, must cherish in his heart

4110-410: Is a very short distance indeed. From Hegel to Existentialism , By Robert C. Solomon , Oxford University Press US, 1989 p. 61 Eduard Geismar gave a seminar about the religious thought of Kierkegaard in 1933. He said, "Kierkegaard develops the concept of an existential thinker. The task of such a thinker is to understand himself in his existence, with its uncertainty, its risk and its passion . Socrates

4247-458: Is also a paradox as well as the forgiveness of sins. Kierkegaard is saying that the "Moment" the individual comes in contact with the Paradox is of utmost importance because this is where the decision is made. This is his Either/Or . Either believe or be offended. Reason is attempting to understand the Paradox but comes to its own limit and can't understand what it knows nothing about. how should

Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments - Misplaced Pages Continue

4384-568: Is converted to Christianity by way of a ladder, one rung (virtue) at a time. Kierkegaard believes the individual comes to an understanding with Christ by a leap. Kierkegaard scholar and translator David F. Swenson was the first to translate the book into English in 1936. He called it "Philosophical Chips" in an earlier biography of Kierkegaard published in 1921, and another early translator, Lee Milton Hollander , called it "Philosophic Trifles" in his early translation of portions of Kierkegaard's works in 1923. Kierkegaard hinted that he might write

4521-408: Is created from nothing, whereas I myself as immediate personality am created from nothing, I as free spirit am born out of the principle of contradiction and am born through choosing myself. Kierkegaard leads his reader to consider how a teacher might become a teacher. He says life and its circumstances constitute an occasion for an individual to become a teacher and he in turn becomes an occasion for

4658-469: Is difficult, because he saw art, culture and politics as a single congruent expression of human consciousness. His total work amounts to over 1,000 published titles. Read's book To Hell With Culture deals specifically with his disdain for the term culture and expands on his anarchist view of the artist as artisan, as well as presenting a major analysis of the work of Eric Gill . It was republished by Routledge in 2002. In his philosophical outlook, Read

4795-421: Is distinguished by its immediacy, without which it cannot live. Immediacy is opposed to reflection: it is direct apprehension, either by the senses or by intuition, and it is the only means by which we can apprehend “being“. Subjectivity is the truth”, and it is upon this basis that Christianity must be interpreted and believed. The Coat of Many Colors by Herbert Read p. 253 The question as to whether Kierkegaard

4932-406: Is kept vigilant, than in an absolutely perfect world. In such a world, faith is indeed inconceivable. If all the angels united, they would still be able to produce only an approximation, because in historical knowledge an approximation is the only certainty-but also too little on which to build an eternal happiness. Concluding Unscientific Postscript , 1846, Hong translation p. 29-30 Kierkegaard uses

5069-468: Is not a form of knowledge, but a free act, an expression of will , it is not having a relationship with a doctrine but having a relationship with God. Kierkegaard says "Faith, self-active, relates itself to the improbable and the paradox, is self-active in discovering it and in holding it fast at every moment-in order to be able to believe." From the God himself everyone receives the condition who by virtue of

5206-537: Is not only irrational, it is contra-rational. Kierkegaard says: "Poetry is illusion before knowledge; religion illusion after knowledge. Between poetry and religion the worldly wisdom of living plays its comedy. Every individual who does not live either poetically or religiously is a fool" ( Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrif t, chap, iv., sect. 2a, 2, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments ). The same writer tells us that Christianity

5343-415: Is not rational is contra- rational ; and such is hope. By this circuitous route we always arrive at hope in the end. Hegel and his followers accepted Christianity without miracles or any other supernaturalism . Robert Solomon puts it this way: "What is Christianity, "revealed religion," divested of its "figurative thought"? It is a faith without icons, images, stories, and myths, without miracles, without

5480-557: Is otherwise. Instead of the objective uncertainty, there is here the certainty that, viewed objectively, it is the absurd, and this absurdity, held fast in the passion of inwardness, is faith. What, then, is the absurd? The absurd is that the eternal truth has come into existence in time, that God has come into existence, has been born, has grown up, has come into existence exactly as an individual human being, indistinguishable from any other human being. Concluding Unscientific Postscript , Hong p. 209-210 An individual can know what Christianity

5617-561: Is saddened that it took so long to find out that he forgot his soul belonged to God and not to the world, and he "Repents". The "Moment" the Teacher brings the condition the learner experiences a " New Birth ". Kierkegaard says a "change has taken place within him like the change from non-being to being . He calls this change "Conversion". He says, "When one who has experienced birth thinks of himself as born, he conceives this transition from non-being to being. The same principle must also hold in

Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments - Misplaced Pages Continue

5754-467: Is sensible, differs from logical truth, the demonstration of which is rational; and religious truth, the truth of faith, the substance of things hoped for, is not equivalent to moral truth, but superimposes itself upon it. He who affirms a faith built upon a basis of uncertainty does not and cannot lie. And not only do we not believe with reason, nor yet above reason nor below reason, but we believe against reason. Religious faith, it must be repeated yet again,

5891-529: Is something to be attained, actualized, lived. In short, truth is not some objective fact that we can look at disinterestedly, as a spectator in a laboratory. If we mobilize our freedom toward this end, toward self-becoming, we will be using our freedom to bring forth truth." (University of Ottawa Press) Joseph H. Smith (1927-) said that Kierkegaard shifts attention from (objective) truth to a question of function because there are other truths than propositions such as "truth of persons and how that truth corresponds to

6028-418: Is something within him that in relation to everything else is absolute, something whereby he is who he is even if the change he achieved by his wish were the greatest possible. That he is mistaken, I shall show later, but at this point I merely want to find the most abstract expression for this "self" that makes him who he is. And this is nothing other than freedom. By this route it is actually possible to present

6165-404: Is subjectivity). The less objective reliability, the deeper is the possible inwardness. When the paradox itself is the paradox, it thrusts away by virtue of the absurd, and the corresponding passion of inwardness is faith. When Socrates believed that God is, he held fast the objective uncertainty with the entire passion of inwardness, and faith is precisely in this contradiction, in this risk. Now it

6302-431: Is the state of the teleologically suspended person when God tempts him, so also is anxiety the teleologically suspended person's state of mind in that desperate exemption from fulfilling the ethical. When truth is subjective, the inwardness of sin as anxiety in the existing individuality is the greatest possible distance and the most painful distance from the truth. Concluding Unscientific Postscript p. 269 Kierkegaard

6439-495: Is the truth! It cannot, then, be a surprise to see man more and more engulfed in the object, in things, in material being, in economic life, in technics, in a one-sided, quantitative manner of thinking, and in quantitative standards of value. In the sphere of material being the quantum is the only differentiating factor. Material being is merely quantitative being. An objectivist understanding of truth expresses itself, therefore, not merely in terms of practical materialism, but also in

6576-466: Is the truth. Herbert Read summarised Kierkegaard's book in his 1947 text, The Coat of Many Colors : The Unscientific Postscript is but one more voluminous commentary on the main theme of all Kierkegaard’s work, the dilemma which he represented by the phrase “either-or”: either aesthetic immediacy, which includes not only the eudaemonistic search for pleasure, but also despair (the “sickness unto death”) and religious or metaphysical self-explanation; or

6713-402: Is the upshot of all this? As I said a little while ago, it is the scrapings and shavings of argument, cut up into little bits." He could have been thinking about this quote when he wrote this book. Plato was asking "What is beauty?" Kierkegaard asks, "What is Truth?" Kierkegaard had already asked about truth nine days earlier when he published Three Upbuilding Discourses . A mere four days from

6850-460: Is to win him. For it is only in love that the unequal can be made equal, and it is only in equality or unity that an understanding can be effected, and without a perfect understanding the Teacher is not the God, unless the obstacle comes wholly from the side of the learner, in his refusing to realize that which had been made possible for him." God's goal is to make himself understood and, according to Kierkegaard, he has three options. He could elevate

6987-694: Is very relevant to any examination of philosophical theology to-day. Certainly Tillich, who is often critical of Hegel, nearly always speaks in praise of Kierkegaard, and he gives such an important place in his own thinking to the category of existence that he seems at times to be travelling in the Danish thinker's footsteps. The System and the Gospel A Critique Of Paul Tillich by Kenneth Hamilton 1963 MacMillan Press p. 37 Anoop Gupta (b. 1969) discussed Kierkegaard's idea of truth in Kierkegaard's Romantic Legacy: Two Theories of

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7124-448: Is without being a Christian. Kierkegaard says, "By Baptism Christianity gives him a name, and he is a Christian de nomine (by name); but in the decision he becomes a Christian and gives Christianity his name. It would indeed be a ludicrous contradiction if an existing person asked what Christianity is in terms of existence and then spent his whole life deliberating on that-for in that case when should he exist in it?" Belief

7261-586: The 1953 New Year Honours he accepted a knighthood for "services to literature"; this caused Read to be ostracized by most of the anarchist movement. Read was actively opposed to the Franco regime in Spain, and often campaigned on behalf of political prisoners in Spain. He was the chairman of the Freedom Defence Committee founded in 1945. Dividing Read's writings on politics from those on art and culture

7398-492: The Concluding Postscript the question of "the objective problem concerning the truth of Christianity" is dealt with in the first part. Kierkegaard shows that neither historically nor speculatively can we have objective knowledge of Christianity's truth or of its untruth. He says "a logical system is possible, but an existential system is impossible." In 1963 Kenneth Hamilton described Paul Tillich as an individual who

7535-569: The Military Cross (MC) and the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) "for conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty" in 1918. He reached the rank of captain . During the war, Read founded the journal Arts & Letters with Frank Rutter , one of the first literary periodicals to publish work by T. S. Eliot . Read's first volume of poetry was Songs of Chaos , self-published in 1915. His second collection, published in 1919,

7672-604: The inner goods of the Spirit ? A Teacher must bring him the "condition" necessary for understanding the Truth. He explains the whole process this way: In so far as the learner is in Error, but in consequence of his own act (and in no other way can he possibly be in this state, as we have shown above), he might seem to be free; for to be what one is by one's own act is freedom. And yet he is in reality unfree and bound and exiled; for to be free from

7809-407: The "coming-into-existence is a kind of change, but is not a change in essence but in being and is a transition from not existing to existing. But this non-being which the subject of coming into existence leaves behind must itself have some sort of being. He asks his reader to consider whether the necessary can come into existence or if the necessary "Is", since everything that comes into existence

7946-561: The 1990s the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London staged an annual Herbert Read Lecture, which included well-known speakers such as Salman Rushdie . On 11 November 1985, Read was among 16 Great War poets commemorated on a slate stone unveiled in Westminster Abbey 's Poet's Corner . The inscription on the stone was taken from Wilfred Owen 's "Preface" to his poems and reads: "My subject

8083-562: The British edition in English of The Collected Works of C. G. Jung . He was a professor of fine art at Edinburgh University from 1931 to 1933, a lecturer in art at the University of Liverpool (1935-36), Leon Fellow at University of London (1940-42), and Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University (1953-54). The eldest of four children of tenant farmer Herbert Edward Read (1868–1903), and his wife Eliza Strickland, Read

8220-576: The Doctrine of Recollection as an example of how truth was found in Ancient Greek philosophy and is still found in psychotherapy and modern medicine . Both of these sciences are based on questioning the patient, "Learner", in the hope of jogging their memory about past events. The therapist could ask the right question and not realize he has received the answer he was looking for, this is known as Meno's paradox . Kierkegaard puts his paradox this way, "what

8357-409: The God implants himself in human weakness, unless man becomes a new vessel and a new creature! But this becoming, what labors will attend the change, how convulsed with birth-pangs! And the understanding—how precarious, and how close each moment to misunderstanding, when the anguish of guilt seeks to disturb the peace of love! And how rapt in fear; for it is indeed less terrible to fall to the ground when

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8494-546: The Kierkegaardian existentialism should be regarded rather as the exception than the rule in existential philosophizing. And Kierkegaard himself should not be called the father of modern existentialism. The Christian and the World of Unbelief 1957 by Libuse Lukas Miller p. 78 In 1962 Jean T Wilde edited The Search For Being and included an excerpt from Kierkegaard's Concluding Postscript concerning Gotthold Lessing . Wilde says, "In

8631-490: The Pharisee, “in order to justify himself,” asked, “Who is my neighbor?” he presumably thought that this might develop into a very protracted inquiry, so that it would perhaps take a very long time and then perhaps end with the admission that it was impossible to define the concept “ neighbor ” with absolute accuracy – for this very reason he asked the question, to find an escape, to waste time, and to justify himself. But God catches

8768-468: The Reason be able to understand what is absolutely different from itself? If this is not immediately evident, it will become clearer in the light of the consequences; for if the God is absolutely unlike man, then man is absolutely unlike the God; but how could the Reason be expected to understand this? Here we seem to be confronted with a paradox. Merely to obtain the knowledge that the God is unlike him, man needs

8905-565: The Second World War. As it was considered too risky to transport across the Atlantic works of established importance to the national heritage, it was proposed that children’s drawings and paintings should be sent instead. Read, in making his collection, was unexpectedly moved by the expressive power and emotional content of some of the younger artists' works. The experience prompted his special attention to their cultural value, and his engagement of

9042-448: The Self . 2005 (p. 19) Gupta said "what we need to understand is what Kierkegaard means by "truth". He does not think that mere facts (truth) set one free. For example, it is "true" that given certain purities of water and atmospheric pressures, water will boil at one hundred degrees Celsius. Of course, Kierkegaard does not think the realization of this truth will make one free. Rather, truth

9179-517: The Sophists, the learned men of his time, “I know nothing.” Therefore these words were a thorn in their eyes and a scourge on their backs. All of Socrates’ ideas, which were nothing more than expectorations and secretions of his ignorance, seemed as frightful to them as the hair of Medusa’s head, the knob of the Aegis. The ignorance of Socrates was sensibility. But between sensibility and a theoretical proposition

9316-421: The Truth is to be exiled from the Truth, and to be exiled by one's own self is to be bound. But since he is bound by himself, may he not loose his bonds and set himself free? For whatever binds me, the same should be able to set me free when it wills; and since this power is here his own self, he should be able to liberate himself. But first at any rate he must will it. for he forges the chains of his bondage with

9453-544: The book Surrealism , published in 1936, which included contributions from André Breton , Hugh Sykes Davies , Paul Éluard , and Georges Hugnet . He also served as a trustee of the Tate Gallery and as a curator at the Victoria & Albert Museum (1922–31), as well as co-founding the Institute of Contemporary Arts with Roland Penrose in 1947. He was one of the earliest English writers to take notice of existentialism , and

9590-424: The case of the new birth. Or is the difficulty increased by the fact that the non-being which precedes the new birth contains more being than the non-being which preceded the first birth ? But who then may be expected to think the new birth?" This is a paradox. When the seed of the oak is planted in earthen vessels, they break asunder; when new wine is poured in old leather bottles, they burst; what must happen when

9727-431: The choice in his first book, Either/Or: Let me make a little psychological observation. We frequently hear people vent their dissatisfaction in a complaint about life; often enough we hear them wishing. Imagine a poor wretch like that; let us skip over the wishes that shed no light here because they involve the utterly accidental. He wishes: Would that I had that man's intellect, or that man's talent etc. Indeed, to go to

9864-498: The cleverest pettifogger and most honorable attorney. Faith is not the work of reason, because faith arises just as little from reason as tasting and seeing does. Hamann’s Socratic Memorabilia , (Compiled for the Boredom of the Public by a Lover of Boredom), A translation and commentary by James C. O’Flaherty, 1967 Johns Hopkins Press p. 167-169 Only one who receives the condition from the God

10001-427: The condition becomes the disciple. (..) For whoever has what he has from the God himself clearly has it at first hand; and he who does not have it from the God himself is not a disciple. (...) if the contemporary disciple gives the condition to the successor, the latter will come to believe in him. He receives the condition from him, and thus the contemporary becomes the object of Faith for the successor; for whoever gives

10138-515: The contemporary would have to hear the story from eyewitnesses. How reliable would they be? The only thing they saw was a lowly servant. The immediate contemporary can "serve as an occasion for the acquirement of historical knowledge", an occasion to help the individual understand himself in the Socratic sense, or the contemporary could have received the condition from God and become a believer. The "condition" comes into existence . Kierkegaard says

10275-432: The content of professed beliefs." He thinks Kierkegaard is talking about the serious person always "having the honest suspicion of thyself." Philosophical Fragments Philosophical Fragments ( Danish title: Philosophiske Smuler eller En Smule Philosophi ; more accurately translated as Philosophical Crumbs ) is a Christian philosophical work written by Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in 1844. It

10412-519: The entire work) of his The End of a War (Faber & Faber, 1933). Read was also interested in the art of writing. He cared deeply about style and structure and summarized his views in English Prose Style (1928), a primer on, and a philosophy of, good writing. The book is considered one of the best on the foundations of the English language, and how those foundations can be and have been used to write English with elegance and distinction. Read

10549-484: The ethical along with the religion of immanence and immediacy and (as its culmination) Christianity apprehended as a paradox. In the Postscript Kierkegaard is chiefly concerned to define the nature of the religious alternative: to make it clear to his readers that it is not a choice between the aesthetic life and any sort of religion, but between true religion and every other possible alternative. And true religion

10686-452: The ethico-religious life that Christianity becomes an intensification of subjectivity and its pathos. Through the discipline of resignation, aiming at an absolute commitment to the highest good, through the discipline of suffering, through the consciousness of guilt, the way leads step by step to a more profound pathos, until by a leap we reach the absolute maximum of subjectivity in the Christian consciousness of sin, with its imperative need for

10823-423: The extreme: Would that I had that man's steadfastness. Wishes of that sort are frequently heard, but have you ever heard a person earnestly wish that he could be someone else? It is so far from being the case that it is particularly characteristic of people called unfortunate individualities that they cling most of all to themselves, that despite all their sufferings they still would not wish to be anybody else for all

10960-698: The family, being tenants rather than owners, had to leave the farm; Read was sent to a school for orphans at Halifax, West Yorkshire , and his mother took a job managing laundry in Leeds, where Read later joined her. Read's studies at the University of Leeds were interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War , during which he served with the Green Howards in France. He was commissioned in January 1915, and received both

11097-463: The help of the God; and now he learns that the God is absolutely different from himself. But if the God and man are absolutely different, this cannot be accounted for on the basis of what man derives from the God, for in so far they are akin. Their unlikeness must therefore be explained by what man derives from himself, or by what he has brought upon his own head. Philosophical Fragments , Swenson p. 34 (see 31-34) Kierkegaard says Reason "collides" with

11234-513: The importance of the Postscript to Kierkegaard's overall authorship. When I began as an author of Either/Or , I no doubt had a far more profound impression of the terror of Christianity than any clergyman in the country. I had a fear and trembling such as perhaps no one else had. Not that I therefore wanted to relinquish Christianity. No, I had another interpretation of it. For one thing I had in fact learned very early that there are men who seem to be selected for suffering, and, for another thing, I

11371-405: The individual is happy and asks for nothing more." Kierkegaard says Christ offers every single individual the "invitation." Kierkegaard explores how a contemporary of Christ and succeeding generations receive the "condition" necessary to understand the Paradox that God has permitted himself to be born and wrapped in swaddling-clothes. A contemporary could have been living abroad and in that case

11508-443: The individual man is the measure for others, but by no means in the Socratic sense that each man is his own measure, neither more nor less. Philosophical Fragments p. 29-30, 32 (See Works of Love , Hong 1995 p. 367-368) Analogy: whoever believes that there is a God and also a providence has an easier time (in preserving the faith), an easier time in definitely gaining the faith (and not an illusion) in an imperfect world, where passion

11645-478: The individual this condition is eo ipso (in fact) the object of Faith, and the God. Philosophical Fragments p. 60-61 Kierkegaard mentioned Johann Georg Hamann (1730-1788) in his book Repetition p. 149 (1843) and this book, Philosophical Fragments (p. 38ff, Swenson), and what Kierkegaard writes is written also by Hamann in his book, Socratic Memorabilia , in this way: The opinion of Socrates can be summarized in these blunt words, when he said to

11782-448: The knowledge of the Unknown . If Reason and God have a happy encounter the individual comes to be a believer. If the collision results in an unhappy encounter the Reason is Offended. The Reason says that the Paradox is absurd and can get no meaning from the encounter. But when "Reason yielded itself while the Paradox bestowed itself, and the understanding is consummated in that happy passion,

11919-422: The learner from the captivity into which he had plunged himself, and no captivity is so terrible and so impossible to break, as that in which the individual keeps himself. And still we have not said all that is necessary; for by his self-imposed bondage the learner has brought upon himself a burden of guilt, and when the Teacher gives him the condition and the Truth he constitutes himself an Atonement , taking away

12056-406: The learner to help the learner forget the misunderstanding. God could show himself to the learner and cause him to forget his Error while contemplating God's presence. Both options are rejected on the basis of equality . How can God make himself equal to man? Only by becoming man himself, but not a king, or a leader of an established order, no, for equality's sake he must become one of the humblest,

12193-419: The learner to learn something. Socrates was such a teacher as this. But what about God? What would be the occasion that moved him to become a Teacher? God is moved by love but his love is unhappy. He wants to make himself understood just like a teacher but He's teaching something that doesn't come to an individual from the known world but from a world that is Unknown. "His love is a love of the learner, and his aim

12330-424: The mountains tremble at the voice of the God, than to sit at table with him as an equal; and yet it is the God's concern precisely to have it so. Philosophical Fragments p. 27 How many an individual has not asked, “What is truth?” and at bottom hoped that it would be a long time before the truth would come so close to him that in the same instant it would determine what it was his duty to do at that moment. When

12467-468: The one whom he sent, the truth." (John 14:6 The Bible) That is, only then do I in truth know the truth, when it becomes a life in me. Therefore Christ compares truth to food and appropriating it to eating, just as, physically, food by being appropriated (assimilated) becomes the life sustenance, so also, spiritually, truth is both the giver of life and the sustenance of life, is life. Practice in Christianity , Hong 1991 p. 206 But Kierkegaard went deeply into

12604-461: The other has endured, borne, suffered all for the Faith, an outsider cannot get beyond what he says about himself, for a lie can be stretched precisely as far as the truth—in the eyes of men, but not in the sight of God), then he is a fool, and it is essentially indifferent whether he believes on account of his own and perhaps a widely held opinion about what good and upright people believe, or believes

12741-445: The philosophical thesis that there is no God other than humanity. Spirit, that is, humanity made absolute, is God, which is to say that there is nothing other than humanity … What is left after the philosophical conceptualization of religion? To the orthodox Christian, nothing is left, save some terminology which has been emptied of its traditional significance. From Hegel's gutted Christianity to Heine and Nietzsche 's aesthetic atheism

12878-408: The place of man, and thinks of himself as this other being can and should think of him; he thinks of himself, not with his own thinking power, but with man's. In the scheme of his revelation God must have reference not to himself, but to man's power of comprehension. That which comes from God to man, comes to man only from man in God, that is, only from the ideal nature of man to the phenomenal man, from

13015-538: The point of becoming a Christian because the single individual must choose to become a Christian in freedom. Kierkegaard says, either believe or be offended. But choose. Philosophers and Historians tend to try to prove Christianity rather than teach belief in Christ through faith. Kierkegaard says, "As long as I keep my hold on the proof, i.e., continue to demonstrate, the existence does not come out, if for no other reason than that I am engaged in proving it; but when I let

13152-421: The point of becoming a Christian. In the fact that education is pressed upon me, and in the measure that it is pressed, I press in turn upon this age ; but I am not a teacher, only a fellow student." And again, "Once and for all I must earnestly beg the kind reader always to bear in mente (in mind) that the thought behind the whole work is: what it means to become a Christian." He can only bring an individual to

13289-409: The proof go, the existence is there." (...) "unless we hold fast to the Socratic doctrine of Recollection, and to his principle that every individual man is Man , Sextus Empiricus stands ready to make the transition involved in "teaching" not only difficult but impossible; and Protagoras will begin where Sextus Empiricus leaves off, maintaining that man is the measure of all things, in the sense that

13426-418: The publication of Philosophical Fragments, he published The Concept of Anxiety . Kierkegaard wrote his books in reaction to both Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel as well as the philosophic-historical use of speculation in regard to Christianity. Schlegel published a book bearing the same title as Kierkegaard's, Philosophical Fragments in 1799. Kierkegaard always wrote

13563-578: The publication of a collection of his anarchist writings, A One-Man Manifesto and other writings for Freedom Press , edited by David Goodway. Since then, more of his work has been republished and there was a Herbert Read Conference , at Tate Britain in June 2004. The library at the Cyprus College of Art is named after him, as is the art gallery at the University for the Creative Arts at Canterbury . Until

13700-440: The reader with a question, to picture the ideal as a possibility . From Socrates he has learned to keep the reader at a distance, to throw him back on his individual responsibility, to compel him to find his own way to a solution. Kierkegaard does not merely talk about self-reliance; his entire literary art is devoted to the promotion of self-reliance." Jean-Paul Sartre vehemently disagreed with Kierkegaard's subjective ideas. He

13837-408: The relation between faith and reason in relation to Kierkegaard's "Postscript" to this book. just as there is logical truth, opposed to error, and moral truth, opposed to falsehood, so there is also aesthetic truth or verisimilitude, which is opposed to extravagance, and religious truth or hope, which is opposed to the inquietude of absolute despair. For esthetic verisimilitude, the expression of which

13974-403: The religious. Socrates is considered an authoritative voice in the philosophic community so Kierkegaard begins with his ideas. He developed the doctrine of recollection which Kierkegaard makes use of in his explanation of Truth and ignorance . His aim is to advance beyond Socrates, who was interested in finite truth, to another Teacher who explained Eternal Truth. The Enlightenment movement

14111-544: The renamed ATG, in which capacity he had a platform for addressing UNESCO ....On the basis of such representation Read, with others, succeeded in establishing the International Society for Education through Art (INSEA) as an executive arm of UNESCO in 1954." Following his death in 1968, Read was probably neglected due to the increasing predominance in academia of theories of art, including Marxism, which discounted his ideas. Yet his work continued to have influence. It

14248-402: The same, as if his innermost being were an algebraic symbol that could signify anything whatever it is assumed to be, is that he is in a wrong position, that he has not chosen himself, does not have a concept of it, and yet there is in his folly an acknowledgment of the eternal validity of his personality. But for him who is in a proper position things take another course. He chooses himself-not in

14385-433: The species to the individual. Thus, between the divine revelation and the so-called human reason or nature, there is no other than an illusory distinction; – the contents of the divine revelation are of human origin, for they have proceeded not from God as God, but from God as determined by human reason, human wants, that is, directly from human reason and human wants. And so in revelation man goes out of himself, in order, by

14522-410: The strength of his freedom , since he exists in it without compulsion; and thus his bonds grow strong, and all his powers unite to make him the slave of sin . -- What now shall we call such a Teacher , one who restores the lost condition and gives the learner the Truth? Let us call him Saviour , for he saves the learner from his bondage and from himself; let us call him Redeemer , for he redeems

14659-707: The temporal moment; faith is an existential leap. The necessity of this leap is what gives offense to man and to all human idealism. Eduard Geismar, Lectures on the Religious Thought of Soren Kierkegaard , p. 57 Augsburg Publishing House, Minneapolis 1937 Walter Lowrie characterized Kierkegaard's authorship up to Concluding Postscript as first "Away from the Aesthetical" and then the works ascribed to Johannes Climacus as "Away from Speculation". Emil Brunner mentioned Kierkegaard 51 times in his 1937 book Man in Revolt and wrote

14796-415: The theory of children's creativity with seriousness matching his devotion to the avant-garde. This work both changed fundamentally his own life’s work throughout his remaining 25 years and provided art education with a rationale of unprecedented lucidity and persuasiveness. Key books and pamphlets resulted: Education through Art (Read, 1943); The Education of Free Men (Read, 1944); Culture and Education in

14933-427: The uncertainty of coming into existence. Faith believes what it does not see..." Through the objective uncertainty and ignorance the paradox thrusts away in the inwardness of the existing person. But since the paradox is not in itself the paradox, it does not thrust away intensely enough. For without risk, no faith; the more risk, the more faith. The more objective reliability, the less inwardness (since inwardness

15070-416: The understanding; he cannot reveal to man whatever he will, but only what is adapted to man, what is commensurate with his nature such as it actually is; he reveals what he must reveal, if his revelation is to be a revelation for man, and not for some other kind of being. Now what God thinks in relation to man is determined by the idea of man – it has arisen out of reflection on human nature. God puts himself in

15207-404: The wise in their foolishness, and Christ imprisoned the questioner in the answer that contained the task. So it is with all Christ’s answers. Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love p. 96-97 The truth is within me, that is, when I am truly within myself (not untruthfully outside myself), the truth, if it is there, is a being, a life. Therefore it says, "This is eternal life, to know the only true God and

15344-437: The world. That is because such people are very close to the truth, and they feel the eternal validity of the personality not in its blessing but in its torment, even if they have retained this totally abstract expression for the joy in it; that they prefer to go on being themselves. But the person with many wishes is nevertheless continually of the opinion that he would be himself even if everything were changed. Consequently, there

15481-404: The wrath impending upon that of which the learner has made himself guilty . Such a Teacher the learner will never be able to forget. For the moment he forgets him he sinks back again into himself, just as one who while in original possession of the condition forgot that God exists, and thereby sank into bondage. Philosophical Fragments , Swenson p. 12-13 Now he owes everything to his Teacher but

15618-462: The writing of Two Upbuilding Discourses in 1843. He divides his book into five major sections: Later, in his Concluding Unscientific Postscript Kierkegaard said "The Issue in Fragments is an Introductory Issue, Not to Christianity but to Becoming a Christian." Kierkegaard uses familiar Christian vocabulary to develop his own method for arriving at Truth. He presents two views, the Socratic and

15755-655: Was Hegelian and had no room in his system for faith. Kierkegaard seemed to rely on faith at the expense of the intellect . He developed the idea of bad faith . His idea is relative to Kierkegaard's idea of the Moment. If a situation (occasion for Kierkegaard) makes an individual aware of his authentic self and the individual fails to choose that self that constitutes bad faith. Sartre was against Kierkegaard's view that God can only be approached subjectively. Herbert Read Sir Herbert Edward Read , DSO , MC ( / r iː d / ; 4 December 1893 – 12 June 1968)

15892-498: Was a champion of modern British artists such as Paul Nash , Ben Nicholson , Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth . He became associated with Nash's contemporary arts group Unit One. Read was professor of fine arts at the University of Edinburgh (1931–33) and editor of The Burlington Magazine (1933–38). He was one of the organisers of the London International Surrealist Exhibition in 1936 and editor of

16029-510: Was a sinner in the strictest sense and then promptly got busy terrifying others. Here is where Concluding Postscript comes in. — Søren Kierkegaard, Journal and Papers, VI 6444 (Pap. X1 A541) (1849) (Either/Or Part II, Hong, p. 451-452) Eduard Geismar was an early lecturer on the works of Soren Kierkegaard. He gave lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary in March 1936 and states this about Johannes Climacus: Johannes Climacus has so delineated

16166-503: Was also a close observer of imagism. He published a novel, The Green Child . He contributed to the Criterion (1922–39) and he was for many years a regular art critic for The Listener . While W. B. Yeats chose many poets of the Great War generation for The Oxford Book of Modern Verse (1936), Read arguably stood out among his peers by virtue of the 17-page excerpt (nearly half of

16303-429: Was an English art historian , poet, literary critic and philosopher, best known for numerous books on art, which included influential volumes on the role of art in education. Read was co-founder of the Institute of Contemporary Arts . As well as being a prominent English anarchist , he was one of the earliest English writers to take notice of existentialism . He was co-editor with Michael Fordham and Gerhard Adler of

16440-466: Was an existentialist was brought up by Libuse Lukas Miller. She wrote the following in 1957: Kierkegaard, who is falsely hailed as the father of modern existentialism, used the existential “dialectic” never as an end in itself but always as an offensive and defensive weapon in a battle on behalf of the Christian faith deliberately planned to meet what he thought were the special apologetic and evangelistic needs of his historical situation, and, therefore,

16577-515: Was as anti-Hegel as Kierkegaard was. He was referring to Kierkegaard's distrust of system builders which he discussed in The Concluding Unscientific Postscript (p. 13-15, 106-112.) The first total opponent of Hegel's standpoint was Soren Kierkegaard, father of modern existentialism. Hegel had many critics in his lifetime, but they were mostly those who attacked his system because they believed that they could construct

16714-596: Was born at Muscoates Grange, near Nunnington , about four miles south of Kirkbymoorside in the North Riding of Yorkshire . In Herbert Read- The Stream and the Source (1972), George Woodcock wrote: "rural memories are long... nearly sixty years after Read's father... had died and the family had left Muscoates, I heard it said that 'the Reads were snobs'. They employed a governess (and) rode to hounds..." After his father's death,

16851-670: Was called Naked Warriors , and drew on his experiences fighting in the trenches of the First World War. His work, which shows the influence of Imagism and the Metaphysical poets , was mainly in free verse . His Collected Poems appeared in 1946. As a critic of literature, Read mainly concerned himself with the English Romantic poets (for example, The True Voice of Feeling: Studies in English Romantic Poetry , 1953) but

16988-500: Was close to the European idealist traditions represented by Friedrich Schelling , Johann Gottlieb Fichte , and Samuel Taylor Coleridge , believing that reality as it is experienced by the human mind was as much a product of the human mind as any external or objective actuality. In other words, the mind is not a camera recording the reality it perceives through the eyes; it is also a projector throwing out its own reality. This meant that art

17125-413: Was conscious of having sinned much and therefore supposed that Christianity had to appear to me in the form of this terror. But how cruel and false of you, I thought, if you use it to terrify others, perhaps upset every so many happy, loving lives that may very well be truly Christian. It was as alien as it could possibly be to my nature to want to terrify others, and therefore I both sadly and perhaps also

17262-531: Was criticized by his former teacher and pastor Hans Lassen Martensen , he concludes from Kierkegaard's writing, here and in Concluding Unscientific Postscript , that he's saying an individual can be saved without the help of the Church. Martensen believed 19th century Socialism would destroy individuality , but regarded Kierkegaard's emphasis on the single individual as too one-sided. Kierkegaard

17399-420: Was good that the work was a psychological inquiry, which in itself makes clear that sin cannot find a place in the system, presumably just like immortality, faith, the paradox, and other such concepts that essentially related to existing, just what systematic thinking ignores. The expression "anxiety" does not lead one to think of paragraph pomposity but rather of existence inwardness. Just as " fear and trembling "

17536-586: Was his Form in Modern Poetry , which he published in 1932. In 1951, literary critic A. S. Collins said of Read: "In his poetry he burnt the white ecstasy of intellect, terse poetry of austere beauty retaining much of his earliest Imagist style." This style was evident in Read's earliest collection, Eclogues 1914-18. Politically, Read considered himself an anarchist, albeit in the English quietist tradition of Edward Carpenter and William Morris . Nevertheless, in

17673-468: Was influenced by his mentors T. E. Hulme , F. S. Flint , Marianne Moore and W. C. Williams , believing "true poetry was never speech but always a song", quoted with the rest of his definition 'What is a Poem' in his 1926 essay of that name (in his endword to his Collected Poems of 1966). Read's Phases of English Poetry was an evolutionary study seeking to answer metaphysical rather than pragmatic questions. Read's definitive guide to poetry however,

17810-500: Was intent on combining concepts of God, nature, knowledge and man into one world view. Kierkegaard was a counter-Enlightenment writer. He believed that knowledge of God was a "condition" that only "the God" can give and the "Moment" God gives the condition to the Learner has "decisive significance". He uses the category of the single individual to help those seeking to become Christians. He says, "I am he who himself has been educated to

17947-539: Was not, as many Marxists believed, simply a product of a bourgeois society, but a psychological process that had evolved simultaneously with the evolution of consciousness. Art was, therefore, a biological phenomenon, a view that frequently pitted Read against Marxist critics such as Anthony Blunt in the 1930s. Read, in this respect, was influenced by developments in German art psychology . His Idealist background also led Read towards an interest in psychoanalysis . Read became

18084-404: Was responding to Hegelian writers such as Ludwig Feuerbach and David Strauss who emphasized the objective nature of God. God is just man's idea. Man is an object to God, before God perceptibly imparts himself to man; he thinks of man; he determines his action in accordance with the nature of man and his needs. God is indeed free in will; he can reveal himself or not; but he is not free as to

18221-648: Was strongly influenced by proto-existentialist thinker Max Stirner . From 1953 to 1954 Read served as the Norton Professor at Harvard University . In that final year, he gave the A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts at the National Gallery of Art . For the academic year 1964–65 and again in 1965, he was a Fellow on the faculty at the Center for Advanced Studies of Wesleyan University . Read's conception of poetry

18358-399: Was such an existential thinker. … from Socrates he has learned his method of communication, the indirect method. From Socrates he has learned to abstain from giving the reader and objective result to memorize, a systematic scheme for arrangement in paragraphs, all of which is relevant only to objective science , but irrelevant to existential thought. From Socrates he has learned to confront

18495-472: Was the closest England came to an existentialist theorist of the European tradition. Read developed a strong interest in the subject of education and particularly in art education . Read's anarchism was influenced by William Godwin , Peter Kropotkin and Max Stirner . Read "became deeply interested in children's drawings and paintings after having been invited to collect works for an exhibition of British art that would tour allied and neutral countries during

18632-408: Was the second of three works written under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus; the other two were De omnibus dubitandum est in 1841 and Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments in 1846. Kierkegaardian scholars D. Anthony Storm and Walter Lowrie believe Kierkegaard could be referring to Johannes Climacus , a seventh-century Christian monk who believed that an individual

18769-414: Was through Read's writings on anarchism that Murray Bookchin was inspired in the mid-1960s to explore the connections between anarchism and ecology. In 1971, a collection of his writings on anarchism and politics was republished, Anarchy and Order, with an introduction by Howard Zinn . In the 1990s, there was a revival of interest in him following a major exhibition in 1993 at Leeds City Art Gallery and

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