Prefaces ( Danish : Forord ) is a book by Søren Kierkegaard published under the pseudonym Nicolaus Notabene. The meaning of the pseudonym used for Prefaces , Nicholaus Notabene, was best summed up in his work Writing Sampler , where Kierkegaard said twice for emphasis, “Please read the following preface , because it contains things of the utmost importance.” He was trying to tell his critics to read the preface to his books because they have the key to understanding them. Nota bene is Latin for "note well".
120-398: Prefaces was published June 17, 1844, the same date as The Concept of Anxiety (also by a pseudonym: Vigilius Haufniensis). This was the second time Kierkegaard published his works on the same date, (the first being Oct 16, 1843, with the publication of Repetition alongside Three Upbuilding Discourses, 1843 and Fear and Trembling ). Kierkegaard published 14 separate works between
240-404: A big success when it originally entered the world, inasmuch as it began with crucifixion, flogging, and the like. But God knows whether it actually wants to be a big success in the world. I rather think that it is ashamed of itself, like an old man who sees himself rigged out in the latest fashion. Or, more correctly, I think it focuses its wrath against people when it sees this distorted figure that
360-445: A book about a single individual wanting to get married in his book Aladdin . He let a genie make up his mind for him. Kierkegaard points out that Isaac didn't have freedom to choose his wife either. He wrote: Isaac presumably dared with a certain degree of assurance to expect that God would surely choose a wife for him who was young and beautiful and highly regarded by the people and lovable in every way, but nevertheless we lack
480-550: A border area fraught with fate . Repentance and guilt torment forth reconciliation ethically, while dogmatics in this receptivity to the proffered reconciliation, has the historically concrete immediacy with which it begins its discourse in the great dialogue of science . And now what will be the result?" and " Innocence is ignorance , but how is it lost?" The Concept of Anxiety pp. 12, 39 Kierkegaard also writes about an individual's disposition in The Concept of Anxiety . He
600-479: A broadly Kantian thesis that knowledge, experience, and reality are bound and shaped by conditions best understood through philosophical reflection rather than exclusively empirical inquiry. Continental philosophy includes German idealism , phenomenology , existentialism (and its antecedents, such as the thought of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche ), hermeneutics , structuralism , post-structuralism , deconstruction , French feminism , psychoanalytic theory , and
720-480: A broadly Kantian thesis that knowledge , experience , and reality are bound and shaped by conditions best understood through philosophical reflection rather than exclusively empirical inquiry . The history of continental philosophy (taken in the narrower sense of " late modern / contemporary continental philosophy") is usually thought to begin with German idealism . Led by figures like Fichte , Schelling , and later Hegel , German idealism developed out of
840-570: A canonical figure in continental philosophy. Nonetheless, Husserl is also a respected subject of study in the analytic tradition. Husserl's notion of a noema , the non-psychological content of thought, his correspondence with Gottlob Frege , and his investigations into the nature of logic continue to generate interest among analytic philosophers. J. G. Merquior argued that a distinction between analytic and continental philosophies can be first clearly identified with Henri Bergson (1859–1941), whose wariness of science and elevation of intuition paved
960-400: A child at the chancel step, something I indeed know well enough: the history of modern philosophy’s beginning with Descartes , and the philosophical fairy tale about how being and nothing combine their deficiencies so that becoming emerges from it, along with whatever other amazing things happened later in the continuation of the tale, which is very animated and moving although it is not
1080-446: A clear definition and may mark merely a family resemblance across disparate philosophical views. Simon Glendinning has suggested that the term was originally more pejorative than descriptive, functioning as a label for types of western philosophy rejected or disliked by analytic philosophers. Nonetheless, Michael E. Rosen has ventured to identify common themes that typically characterize continental philosophy. The themes derive from
1200-403: A lengthy introduction. The Concept of Anxiety was published on exactly the same date as Prefaces , June 17, 1844. Both books deal with Hegel 's idea of mediation. Mediation is a common thread throughout Kierkegaard's works. His work up to this point was to show that faith was being mediated by knowledge. Here he takes up the questions of sin and guilt. For Kierkegaard, anxiety / dread / angst
1320-509: A life is something more than last evening. But eternity will, of course, also heal all sickness, give hearing to the deaf, give sight to the blind and physical beauty to the deformed; hence it will also heal me. What is my sickness? Depression. Where does this sickness have its seat? In the power of the imagination, and possibility is its nourishment. But eternity takes away possibility. And was not this sickness oppressive enough in time—that I not only suffered but also became guilty of it? After all,
SECTION 10
#17328633306521440-493: A man is guilty, he is infinitely guilty. Therefore, if such an individuality who is educated only by finitude does not get a verdict from the police or a verdict by public opinion to the effect that he is guilty, he becomes of all men the most ridiculous and pitiful, a model of virtue who is a little better than most people but not quite so good as the parson. What help would such a man need in life? Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety , Thomte p. 161 Kierkegaard observes that it
1560-470: A new beginning but that is not known for certain. Friedrich Schelling wrote Philosophical Inquiries into the Essence of Human Freedom in 1809, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel wrote his Science of Logic between 1812 and 1816, and Johann Friedrich Herbart wrote about pedagogy . All of them were discussing how good and evil come into existence. Kierkegaard questioned Hegel and Schelling's emphasis on
1680-513: A paper some observers have described as particularly polemical . Carnap's paper argues that Heidegger's lecture "What Is Metaphysics?" violates logical syntax to create nonsensical pseudo-statements. Moreover, Carnap claimed that many German metaphysicians of the era were similar to Heidegger in writing statements that were syntactically meaningless. With the rise of Nazism , many of Germany's philosophers, especially those of Jewish descent or leftist or liberal political sympathies (such as many in
1800-434: A person does not first make clear to himself the meaning of "self," it is of no use to say of sin that it is selfishness. Only when the concept of the particular is given can there be any talk of selfishness, however, no science can say what the self is without stating it quite generally. And this is the wonder of life, that each man who is mindful of himself knows what no science knows, since he knows who he himself is, and this
1920-459: A person learn earnestness ?" Kierkegaard and Rosenkranz thought it was a good idea for a person to find out about their own dispositions so he or she can live a happier life. if you cannot control yourself, you will scarcely find anyone else who is able to do it. Especially among woman there are instances of an individual who in anxiety conceives of most trivial bodily functions as sinfulness. A person may smile at this, but no one knows whether
2040-501: A person no longer wishes to be productive, he needs merely to remember the same thing that recollecting he wanted to produce, and production is rendered impossible, or it will become so repulsive to him that the sooner he abandons it the better. All of them were involved with the dialectical question of exactly "how" an individual, or group, or race changes from good to evil or evil to good. Kierkegaard pressed forward with his category of "the single individual." Kierkegaard's Introduction
2160-416: A sharp on the note of the moment; the further back it goes, the more often the repetition, the more sharps there are. For example, if in the present year he experiences an erotic moment, this is augmented by his recollection of it in the previous year etc. … Hope hovers over it as a hope of eternity that fills out the moment. Søren Kierkegaard, 1843, Either/Or Part II , Hong pp. 142–143 Compared with eternity,
2280-573: A similar question in Philosophical Fragments about how one becomes Christian: Is it due to family and personal history or a "decisive resolution"? What is the Christian seeking to gain? Is hope a good and despair an evil to be changed into hope? Is patience a good and impatience an evil that can be transformed? Is the soul a gift for all, or only for the chosen few? Is our future shaped by fate, choice, or both? Kierkegaard answers this way: If
2400-400: A synthesis only when the spirit is posited. The latter synthesis has only two factors, the temporal and the eternal. Where is the third factor? And if there is no third factor, there really is no synthesis, for a synthesis that is a contradiction cannot be completed as a synthesis without a third factor, because the fact that the synthesis is a contradiction asserts that it is not. What, then, is
2520-577: A tale but a purely logical movement. Prefaces p. 45 Vigilius Haufniensis says the same thing in The Concept of Anxiety , How sin came into the world each man understands solely by himself. If he would learn it from another, he would misunderstand it. The only science that can help a little is psychology , yet it admits that it explains nothing, and also that it cannot and will not explain more. If any science could explain it everything would be confused. p. 51 Georg Brandes discussed both Heiberg and Kierkegaard in his 1886 book, Eminent Authors of
SECTION 20
#17328633306522640-400: A totality-category belong essentially in the religious sphere. As soon as the esthetic wants to have something to do with it, this concept becomes dialectical like fortune and misfortune, whereby everything is confused. Esthetically, the dialectic of guilt is this: the individual is without guilt , then guilt and guiltlessness come along as alternating categories of life; at times the individual
2760-442: A very important decision. Neither Goethe nor Oehlenschläger tells the reader if Faust or Alladin was faithful to the one chosen for him, they just end the story. But Isaac's story continued and showed that he was faithful to the choice made for him. Kierkegaard questions: how a person can remain faithful to a choice that is made by others? The others are external powers whereas his spirit is an internal power. All three stories deal with
2880-511: A vision of philosophy closely allied with natural science, progressing through logical analysis. This tradition, which has come to be known broadly as analytic philosophy , became dominant in Britain and the United States from roughly 1930 onward. Russell and Moore made a dismissal of Hegelianism and its philosophical relatives a distinctive part of their new movement. Commenting on the history of
3000-444: A way that earnestness is a higher as well as the deepest expression for what disposition is. Disposition is the earnestness of immediacy, while earnestness, on the other hand, is the acquired originality of disposition, its originality preserved in the responsibility of freedom and its originality affirmed in the enjoyment of blessedness. We are all predisposed to certain actions, some good some evil. Are these habits or sins? "How does
3120-490: Is "freedom's actuality as the possibility of possibility." Kierkegaard uses the example of a man standing on the edge of a tall building or cliff. When the man looks over the edge, he experiences an aversion to the possibility of falling, but at the same time, the man feels a terrifying impulse to throw himself intentionally off the edge. That experience is anxiety or dread because of our complete freedom to choose to either throw oneself off or to stay put. The mere fact that one has
3240-432: Is a flaw, but when I myself confess it, surely one might humor me. When the word “mediation” is merely mentioned everything becomes so magnificent and grandiose that I do not feel well but am oppressed and chafed. Have compassion on me in only this one respect; exempt me from mediation and, what is a necessary consequence, from becoming the innocent occasion that would cause one or another philosophical prattler to repeat, like
3360-450: Is a married man who wants to be a writer. His new wife becomes suspicious and forces him to vow to write only prefaces. It is a series of prefaces for unwritten books, books unwritten because the fictitious Notabene's wife has sworn to divorce him if he ever becomes a writer. But for Notabene writing a preface is just a prelude to an act, it’s “like sharpening a scythe or like tuning a guitar”. He tried flattering his wife by telling her she
3480-558: Is bold confidence in the judgment, which certainly requires that God's judgment penetrate the thought and heart, that is, if it is bold confidence in God's mercy and there words are not a feigned pious expression of one's own thoughtlessness, which does not trust God but is consoled by having ceased to sorrow long ago. If no human being is capable of acquitting himself he is capable of one thing-of indicting himself so terribly that he cannot acquit himself but learns to need mercy. With regard to this, it
3600-399: Is difficult for one person to understand another, because the earnest person always lays the stress on himself. Søren Kierkegaard, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses , Hong p. 339-340 What was the intention of Christianity? Does the concept emerge through definitions and examples? Sin and guilt are both religious categories as far as Kierkegaard is concerned. He wrote: The concept of guilt as
3720-447: Is explained by selfishness, one becomes entangled in indistinctness because, on the contrary, it is by sin and in sin that selfishness comes into being. The soul is a self-contradiction between the external and internal, the temporal and eternal. Therefore, the same thing can be both possessed and gained at once. If the soul is this contradiction, it can only be possessed by gaining it, and gained by possessing it. The person who possesses
Prefaces - Misplaced Pages Continue
3840-433: Is guilty of this or that and at times is not guilty. If this or that had not been, the individual would not have become guilty; in other circumstances, one who is not considered as being without guilt would have become guilty. Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript , (1846) Hong p. 525-537 With the help of faith, anxiety brings up the individuality to rest in providence. So it is also in relation to guilt, which
3960-613: Is in Primary sources below. I understand the words of Peter, "To whom shall we go?" to refer to his consciousness of sin. It is this that binds a man to Christianity. And, since it is God, who, through the consciousness of sin, binds every individual person to Christianity, so it must be assumed that he also determines every man's conflicts individually. Journals and Papers of Søren Kierkegaard IX A 310; J820 Croxall translation Meditations from Kierkegaard , p. 119 Many men and women are anxious about whom they should marry and how they will pick
4080-530: Is in this, that a man is to hold fast to his wife and to no other.” Prefaces p. 10 He writes prefaces about “the reading public's” relationship to an author. The author has to “live in public view” once she publishes a book. Notabene then attacks reviewers of books in general, calling them “the highly trusted minions of the most esteemed public, its cupbearers and privy counselors" and the reviewers of his books, Either/Or and Repetition , Johan Ludvig Heiberg and Hans Lassen Martensen in particular. Kierkegaard
4200-450: Is made out to be, then there is probably only one power that knows how to use it with substance and emphasis; that is the power that governs all things. And there is only one language in which it belongs, the language that is used in that council of divinity to which philosophers send delegates no more than landholders do, and from which philosophers receive regular couriers no more than small landholders do. Prefaces p. 35 Nicolaus Notabene
4320-483: Is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." The individual does not relate himself to the ideal through the generation or the state or the century or the market price of human beings in the city where he lives-that is, by these things he is prevented from relating himself to the ideal-but relates himself to it even though he errs in his understanding of it. … Because of
4440-464: Is not concerned with what Eve's sin was, he says it wasn't sensuousness, but he is concerned with how Eve learned that she was a sinner. He says " consciousness presupposes itself." Eve became conscious of her first sin through her choice and Adam became conscious of his first sin through his choice. God's gift to Adam and Eve was the "knowledge of freedom" and they both decided to use it. In Kierkegaard's Journals he said, "the one thing needful" for
4560-429: Is not some sort of this and that, something strange and yet not so strange; its truth is not like Salomon Goldfalb’s opinion : much fore and aft, yes und no also. Nor is faith something everyone has, and something that every cultured person might go beyond. If it can be grasped and held fast by the simplest of people, it is only the more difficult for the cultured to attain. What a wondrous, inspiring, Christian humanity:
4680-431: Is often contrasted with analytic philosophy . There is widespread influence and debate between the analytic and continental traditions; some philosophers see the differences between the two traditions as being based on institutions, relationships, and ideology rather than anything of significant philosophical substance. The distinction has also been drawn as analytic is academic or technical philosophy, while continental
4800-603: Is precisely anxiety, because its ignorance is about nothing. Here there is no knowledge of good and evil etc., but the whole actuality of knowledge projects itself in anxiety as the enormous nothing of ignorance. The Concept of Anxiety , p. 43–44 This "ambiguous power" is discussed further in Kierkegaard's 1847 book Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits and his 1848 book Christian Discourses where he finds himself standing against his own best intentions. The person who
4920-546: Is present, but is immediate, as dreaming. It is in a sense a hostile power, for it constantly disturbs the relation between soul and body, a relation that indeed has persistence and yet does not have endurance, inasmuch as it first receives the latter by the spirit. On the other hand, spirit is a friendly power, since it is precisely that which constitutes the relation. What, then, is man's relation to this ambiguous power? How does spirit relate itself to itself and to its conditionality? It relates itself as anxiety. Do away with itself,
Prefaces - Misplaced Pages Continue
5040-658: Is so, he naturally never gets around to carrying the burden; after all, he cannot even get it to stand still; the moment he wants to turn his back, as it were, in order to pick up the burden, the burden seems to tumble down and he has to stack it up again. Ah, if one looks at people's lives, one often must say in sorrow: They do not themselves know what powers they have; they more or less keep themselves from finding that out, because they are using most of their powers to work against themselves. Soren Kierkegaard, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits Hong p. 295-296 Kierkegaard
5160-461: Is supposed to be Christianity, a perfume-saturated and systematically accommodated and soiree-participating scholarliness, whose whole secret is half measures and then truth to a certain degree-when it sees a radical cure (and only as such is it what it is) transmogrified nowadays into a vaccination, and a person’s relation to it equivalent to having a certificate of vaccination. No, the Christian paradox
5280-612: Is the profundity of the Greek saying know yourself, which too long has been understood in the German way as pure self-consciousness, the airiness of idealism. It is about time to seek to understand it in the Greek way, and then again as the Greeks would have understood it if they had possessed Christian presuppositions. However, the real " self " is posited only by the qualitative leap . In the prior state there can be no question about it. Therefore, when sin
5400-404: Is the second thing anxiety discovers. Whoever learns to know his guilt only from the finite is lost in the finite, and finitely the question of whether a man is guilty cannot be determined except in an external, juridical, and most imperfect sense. Whoever learns to know his guilt only by analogy to judgments of the police court and the supreme court never really understands that he is guilty, for if
5520-466: Is the unity of necessity and accidental. … A necessity that is not conscious of itself is eo ipso the accidental in relation to the next moment. Fate, then, is the nothing of anxiety. The Concept of Anxiety p. 96-97 Kierkegaard repeats his synthesis in The Sickness unto Death , linking it to his idea of the "Moment" from Philosophical Fragments . He says, "For the Greeks, the eternal lies behind as
5640-414: Is the “ muse who inspires him,” but she says, “Either a properly married man or …” He “promises not to insist on being an author .” Since he wants to live in the “ literary world” he makes sure he lives up to the “ custom ” of the “ sacred vow ”. “To be an author when one is a married man,” she says, “is downright unfaithfulness, directly contrary to what the pastor said, since the validity of marriage
5760-437: Is time the stronger? Has time the power to separate us eternally? I thought it had only the power to make me unhappy within time but would have to release me the instant I exchange time for eternity and am where she is, for eternally she is continually with me. If so, then what is time? It was that we two did not see each other last evening, and if she found another, it was that we two did not see each other last evening because she
5880-404: Is to be master (it is, of course, he himself) ruins it; such a person works with perhaps scarcely a third of his power in the right place and with more than two-thirds of his power in the wrong place or against himself. Now he gives up working in order to begin to deliberate all over again, now he works in instead of deliberating, now he pulls on the reins in the wrong way, now he wants to do both at
6000-478: The Good ". He wrote about the ideal good versus the actual good that a single individual can do in the following way: "Ethics proposes to bring ideality into actuality. On the other hand, it is not the nature of its movement to raise actuality up into ideality. Ethics points to ideality as a task and assumes that every man possesses the requisite conditions. Thus ethics develops a contradiction, inasmuch as it makes clear both
6120-665: The Open University . American university departments in literature , the fine arts , film , sociology , and political theory have increasingly incorporated ideas and arguments from continental philosophers into their curricula and research. North American Philosophy departments offering courses in Continental Philosophy include the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa , Boston College , Stony Brook University , Vanderbilt University , DePaul University , Villanova University ,
SECTION 50
#17328633306526240-492: The University of Guelph , The New School , Pennsylvania State University , University of Oregon , Emory University , University of Pittsburgh , Duquesne University , the University of Memphis , University of King's College , and Loyola University Chicago . The most prominent organization for continental philosophy in the United States is the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP). Continental philosophy
6360-695: The Vienna Circle and the Frankfurt School ), fled to the English-speaking world. Those philosophers who remained—if they remained in academia at all—had to reconcile themselves to Nazi control of the universities. Others, such as Martin Heidegger , among the most prominent German philosophers to stay in Germany, aligned themselves with Nazism when it came to power. Both before and after World War II there
6480-414: The critical theory of the Frankfurt School as well as branches of Freudian , Hegelian and Western Marxist views. Continental philosophy is often contrasted with analytic philosophy . There is no academic consensus on the definition of continental philosophy. Prior to the twentieth century, the term "continental" was used broadly to refer to philosophy from continental Europe. A different use of
6600-582: The imagination of the individual involved in making the decision, imaginations of guilt and sin and fear and rejection. In Fear and Trembling Abraham had to choose to follow God or call him a monster. In Repetition the Young Man had to choose to get married or to follow his love of writing. Both were "imaginative constructions" created by Kierkegaard that dealt with hope and love . Kierkegaard felt that imaginative constructions should be upbuilding. Kierkegaard wrote about "the nothing of despair", God as
6720-402: The "cultured" in this way, "For the cultured it is truly too little to have to deal with an individual human being, even though that human being is himself. He does not want to be disturbed when he is to be built up, does not want to be reminded of all the trifles, of individuals, of himself, because to forget all this is precisely the upbuilding." Christianity can hardly be said to have been
6840-669: The "essentially human" from another. He opposed the Hegelian idea of mediation, which introduces a "third term" between the individual and the object of desire. Kierkegaard questioned whether teaching begins with prohibition or love—whether Christianity starts with the negative (the works of the flesh) or the positive (the Fruit of the Holy Spirit). He raised these questions as part of the "great dialogue of science," first discussed in his Two Upbuilding Discourses of 1843 in relation to Galatians 3: "There
6960-491: The "first science", ethics , to the "second science", psychology . Historians , psychologists , anthropologists , theologians and philosophers were all in agreement that the past must be preserved if there is to be a future for humankind. These soft sciences were of interest to Kierkegaard only in so far as they related to the progress of Christianity. His preface is followed by his first introduction since he published his thesis , The Concept of Irony . It could mark
7080-514: The 1960s, continental philosophers were only intermittently discussed in British and American universities, despite an influx of continental philosophers, particularly German Jewish students of Nietzsche and Heidegger, to the United States on account of the persecution of the Jews and later World War II ; Hannah Arendt , Herbert Marcuse , Leo Strauss , Theodor W. Adorno , and Walter Kaufmann are probably
7200-678: The Limits of Reason Alone ; his book elevated reason in the realm of Christianity. Many continental philosophers wrote their books in relation to Kant's ideas. Kierkegaard was familiar with Book Two of Kant's book The Conflict of the Good with the Evil Principle for Sovereignty over Man and he made a similar study in this book; however, he might call it the conflict of ethics and anxiety for sovereignty over man. Kierkegaard would replace Kant's term "Good" with "Ethics" and his term "Evil" with "Anxiety about
7320-655: The Nineteenth Century. Literary Portraits Though he started in his general aesthetic views on the career pointed out by Heiberg, he nevertheless struck ere long into his own independent course. Heiberg was only a moralist in the name of true culture and of good taste; Paludan-Muller became one in the name of stern religious discipline. In religious questions, Heiberg had espoused the cause of Hegelian speculative Christianity ; Paludan-Muller became an orthodox theologian. Thus his path for not an inconsiderable distance ran parallel with that of Søren Kierkegaard. Not that he
SECTION 60
#17328633306527440-720: The United Kingdom, North America, and Australia. "Continental philosophy" is thus defined in terms of a family of philosophical traditions and influences rather than a geographic distinction. The issue of geographical specificity has been raised again more recently in post-colonial and decolonial approaches to "continental philosophy", which critically examine the ways that European imperial and colonial projects have influenced academic knowledge production. For this reason, some scholars have advocated for "post-continental philosophy" as an outgrowth of continental philosophy. The term continental philosophy , like analytic philosophy , lacks
7560-402: The actuality of freedom and of spirit is posited, anxiety is canceled. But what then does the nothing of anxiety signify more particularly in paganism. This is fate. Fate is a relation to spirit as external. It is the relation between spirit and something else that is not spirit and to which fate nevertheless stands in a spiritual relation. Fate may also signify exactly the opposite, because it
7680-405: The attention of pedagogs . Imagination can be of assistance but it can also keep an individual from making crucial decisions. But failing to "become honest with yourself so that you do not deceive yourself with imagined power, with which you experience imagined victory in imagined struggle" is how a decision can become an impossibility. What's keeping him from making the decision? Nothing except
7800-610: The beginning but in the fullness of time." Sin has a " coherence in itself". In Philosophical Fragments , Kierkegaard described the Learner in Error before God . Here he questions how the Learner discovers this Error. New sciences were emerging that challenged the conventional ethics of the time as well as the notions of guilt and sin. Kierkegaard described the struggle elegantly. He says: " Ethics and dogmatics struggle over reconciliation in
7920-407: The criminal becomes such a memory expert at rattling off his life that the ideality of recollection is driven away. Really to repent , and especially to repent at once, takes enormous ideality; therefore nature also can help a person, and delayed repentance, which in regard to remembering is negligible, is often the hardest and deepest. The ability to recollect is the condition for all productivity. If
8040-431: The deformed person only has to bear the pain of being deformed, but how terrible if being deformed made him guilty! So when time is over for me, let my last sigh be to you, O God, for my soul's salvation; let the next to last be for her, or let me for the first time be united with her again in the same last sigh! Søren Kierkegaard, Stages on Life's Way pp. 390–391 Walter Lowrie translated The Concept of Dread in 1944. He
8160-444: The despair properly decisive." God grant, that all playwrights compose nothing but tearjerking plays, full of all possible anxiety and horror that would not allow your flabbiness to rest on the cushioned theater seats and let you be perfumed with supranatural power but would horrify you until in the world of actuality you learn to believe in that which you want to believe in only in poetry. Either/Or Part II p. 122 Kierkegaard
8280-434: The difficulty and the impossibility." He was wondering how any existing human being can make any movement in an ideal world. Kierkegaard begins this book with a short preface . By now he expects his readers to be aware that the preface is a key to the meaning of the book. Haufniensis uses the word "generation' several times as well as "epoch" and "era" in his introduction to prepare the reader for his subject. Progress from
8400-527: The distinction in 1945, Russell distinguished "two schools of philosophy, which may be broadly distinguished as the Continental and the British respectively", a division he saw as operative "from the time of Locke"; Russell proposes the following broad points of distinction between Continental and British types of philosophy: Since the 1970s, however, many philosophers in the United States and Britain have taken interest in continental philosophers since Kant, and
8520-450: The doctrine of Atonement to make sense was the "anguished conscience." He wrote, "Remove the anguished conscience, and you may as well close the churches and turn them into dance halls." Kierkegaard says, every person has to find out for him or her self how guilt and sin came into their worlds. Kierkegaard argued about this in both Repetition and Fear and Trembling where he said philosophy must not define faith. He asks his reader,
8640-406: The erotic, even if it was the case that he loved this one chosen of God with all the passion of youth. Freedom was lacking. Either/Or II , Hong p 44 Isaac had expectations, but he didn't have an easy time just because God made his choice for him. Both freedom and anxiety were absent in these examples of three personal choices but ignorance was present because none of them were personally involved in
8760-413: The experience of anxiety. So, anxiety may be a possibility for sin, but anxiety can also be a recognition or realization of one's true identity and freedom. Alternatively, sin exists in the very resolution of anxiety through right and wrong; to embrace anxiety is to not pass judgment. In 1793, forty-one years before Kierkegaard wrote The Concept of Anxiety , Immanuel Kant wrote his book Religion Within
8880-430: The external does not need to gain it, and cannot do so; they can only give it away and see if they can regain it. However, if a person seeking to gain their soul doesn’t understand that gaining patience is the greatest gain, they will never achieve it. The more the world deceives, the more patience wins. This gain is secure, independent of anything external, unlike when a merchant or fisherman sells or catches their goods. In
9000-422: The external world, patience is something extra, needed depending on fortune, and a person becomes its debtor when they seek it. Søren Kierkegaard, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses , Hong p. 163-168 Man is a synthesis of psyche and body , but he is also a synthesis of the temporal and the eternal . In the former, the two factors are psyche and body, and spirit is the third, yet in such a way that one can speak of
9120-499: The first-person perspective (an idea found in divergent forms such as Cartesianism , spiritualism , and Bergsonism ). Most important in this popularization of phenomenology was the author and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre , who called his philosophy existentialism . Another major strain of continental thought is structuralism / post-structuralism . Influenced by the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure , French anthropologists such as Claude Lévi-Strauss began to apply
9240-606: The highest is common for all human beings, and the most fortunately gifted are only the ones subjected to the most rigorous discipline. Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Postscript, 1846, p. 293-294 Hong The Concept of Anxiety The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin ( Danish : Begrebet Angest ) is a philosophical work written by Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in 1844. The original 1944 English translation by Walter Lowrie (now out of print ),
9360-595: The highway-that at least can be repented, and God can at least catch hold of such a criminal. Let us mock God outright, this is always preferable to the debilitating importance with which one wants to demonstrate the existence of God. One demonstrates the existence of God by worship-not by demonstrations. Søren Kierkegaard Concluding Unscientific Postscript , Hong p. 543-545 Kierkegaard questions whether each generation can learn virtues like wonder, love, anxiety, peace, and hope from previous ones, or if every "single individual" must mostly learn these things on their own. He posed
9480-463: The jumbling together of the idea of the state, of sociality, of community, and of society, God can no longer catch hold of the single individual. … The immorality of our age could easily become a fantastical-ethical debilitation, the disintegration of a sensual, soft despair, in which individuals grope as in a dream for a concept of God without feeling any terror in so doing. God in the indefinite. … Let us sin, sin outright, seduce girls, murder men, rob on
9600-607: The last? Was it not the fault of the foolish virgins that they became sure, and went to sleep; while the wise virgins kept awake? But what is it to keep awake? It is uncertainty in fear and trembling. And what is faith but an empty fantasy, if it be not awake? And when faith is not awake, what is it but that same pernicious feeling of security which ruined the foolish virgins? Christian Discourses , Lowrie 1939 p. 219, Meditations from Kierkegaard , Translated and Edited by T.H. Croxall, The Westminster Press, copyright 1955, by W. L. Jenkins p. 56–57 The Brothers Grimm were writing about
9720-457: The life of Paul in great detail, but we do, however, know Paul, which is the main consideration. That is to say, just as the sensate man is distinguishable by his seeing the speck in his brother's eye but not seeing the log in his own, by his rigorously condemning the same fault in others that he lightly forgives in himself, so the mark of a more profound and concerned person is that he judges himself more rigorously, uses all his ingenuity to excuse
9840-573: The minor little affair that everyone else would perhaps disregard-will pass quietly, he, of course, is on watch for nothing. No wonder it is a strain for his soul and his head, because to look for something is good for the eyes, but to look for nothing strains them. And when the eyes look for nothing for a long time they finally see themselves or their own seeing; in the same way the emptiness surrounding me presses my thinking back into myself. Søren Kierkegaard, Stages on Life's Way , Hong p.356-357 Anxiety and nothing always correspond to each other. As soon as
9960-538: The most notable of this wave, arriving in the late 1930s and early 1940s. However, philosophy departments began offering courses in continental philosophy in the late 1960s and 1970s. Continental Philosophy features prominently in a number of British and Irish Philosophy departments, for instance at the University of Essex , Warwick , Newcastle , Sussex , Dundee , Aberdeen (Centre for Modern Thought), and University College Dublin ; as well as Manchester Metropolitan , Kingston , Staffordshire (postgraduate only), and
10080-400: The negative (evil) and aligned himself with Hebart's emphasis on the positive (good). Kierkegaard says "anxiety about sin produces sin" in this book and later says it again: Repentance is a recollection of guilt. From a purely psychological point of view, I really believe that the police aid the criminal in not coming to repent. By continually recounting and repeating his life experiences,
10200-488: The other person but is unable to excuse or forgive himself, indeed, is convinced that the other one is more excusable, because there is always still a possibility, since the only one in relation to whom a person is deprived of this possibility is he himself. Bold confidence is a difficult matter, because it is not exactly synonymous with mental weakness. One may very well stop with it and need not go further by even wishing to judge God, that is, if in other respects bold confidence
10320-801: The past for Christianity's origin, citing Constantine and others as examples. Instead, he emphasizes moving forward. Hegel saw eternity as unfolding in stages, while Kierkegaard created his own system of good in 1847. He brought eternity into relation with his personal guilt in Stages on Life's Way (1845), particularly regarding his anxiety about disclosing himself to Regine Olsen, his fiancée. The healthy individual lives simultaneously in hope and in recollection, and only thereby does his life gain true and substantive continuity. Thus he has hope and therefore does not wish to go backward in time, as do those who live only in recollection. What, then, does recollection do for him, for it certainly must have some influence? It places
10440-625: The past that can only be entered backwards. The category I maintain is repetition, by which eternity is entered forwards." In Edifying Discourses in Diverse Spirits (1847), he explains that Providence guides individuals with two calls: one forward to the good, the other back from evil, through repentance and remorse. These calls work in harmony, not opposition. Kierkegaard also writes in his Journals that life must be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. Christina Rossetti echoed this in her poem Advent . Kierkegaard warns against looking to
10560-461: The philosophical traditions in many European countries have similarly incorporated many aspects of the "analytic" movement. Self-described analytic philosophy flourishes in France, including philosophers such as Jules Vuillemin , Vincent Descombes , Gilles Gaston Granger , François Recanati , and Pascal Engel . Likewise, self-described "continental philosophers" can be found in philosophy departments in
10680-471: The possibility and freedom to do something, even the most terrifying of possibilities, triggers immense feelings of dread. Kierkegaard called this our "dizziness of freedom." Kierkegaard focuses on the first anxiety experienced by man: Adam 's choice to eat from God's forbidden tree of knowledge or not. Since the concepts of good and evil did not come into existence before Adam ate the fruit, Adam had no concept of good and evil, and did not know that eating from
10800-453: The publication of Either/Or on February 20, 1843 and Four Upbuilding Discourses which he published on August 31, 1844. Kierkegaard contrasted one fictional author with another frequently. This book and its companion piece, The Concept of Anxiety , contrasts Notabene, who is mediated by his wife as well as his reviewer, with Haufniensis, who is against his knowledge of sin being mediated by Adam. If mediation were really all that it
10920-408: The right person. The anxious person stands at the crossroads and wonders which way to go. Kierkegaard captured the sentiment in his book Either/Or , which is filled with examples of people at the crossroads. Johann Goethe (1749–1832) was at a crossroads and couldn't make up his mind about what he wanted so he talked to the devil about it in his play Faust . Adam Oehlenschläger (1779–1850) wrote
11040-448: The same time-and during all this he does not move from the spot. During all this, his life comes to a standstill, as it were; he cannot get the task firmly set, so that it stands firm, so that he is able to tear himself away from this work and have his strength available to carry out the task. The task does not become a burden, but he is swamped with the burdensome muddling with the task in order to get it, if possible to stand firm. When this
11160-504: The self of the spirit." (cf. pp. 320–321) If a person now turns back and pursues his definition of "feeling" as the spirit's immediate unity of its sentience and its consciousness (p. 142) and recalls that in the definition of Seelenhaftigkeit [sentience] account has been taken of the unity with the immediate determinants of nature, then by taking all this together he has the conception of a concrete personality. [but, Kierkegaard says] Earnestness and disposition correspond to each other in such
11280-437: The self-consciousness is felt by the subject as his own. It is only this unity that can be called disposition. If the clarity of cognition is lacking, knowledge of the feeling, there exists only the urge of the spirit of nature, the turgidity of immediacy. On the other hand, if feeling is lacking, there remains only the abstract concept that has not reached the last inwardness of the spiritual existence, that has not become one with
11400-540: The single individual, to consider some questions. Can sin and guilt be transferred from one person to another? Is it "an epidemic that spreads like cowpox "? Was every Jewish person responsible for the crucifixion of Christ? Does the single individual find sin in others or in him or herself? He believed in a rigorous self-inspection and at the same time a lenient inspection of others. He put it this way in Four Upbuilding Discourses of 1844 : We do not know
11520-453: The smile will save or destroy, for if the smile contributes not to the opening of the individuality but to the closing of it, such a smile can cause irreparable harm. Søren Kierkegaard Papers V B 53:34 1844 Kierkegaard believed that each generation has its own task and should not concern itself with being everything to previous and future generations. He argued that every generation and individual begins anew, and no generation learns to love or
11640-428: The spirit cannot; lay hold of itself, it cannot, as long as it has itself outside itself. Nor can man sink down into the vegetative, for he is qualified as spirit; flee away from anxiety, he cannot, for he loves it; really love it, he cannot, for he flees from it. Innocence has now reached its uttermost point. It is ignorance; however, it is not an animal brutality but an ignorance qualified as spirit, and as such innocence
11760-475: The structural paradigm to the humanities. In the 1960s and '70s, post-structuralists developed various critiques of structuralism. Post-structuralist thinkers include Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze . After this wave, most of the late 20th century, the tradition has been carried into the 21st century by Quentin Meillassoux , Tristan Garcia , Francois Laruelle , and others. From the early 20th century until
11880-516: The temporal? The Concept of Anxiety p. 85 June 3 Midnight: So once again I am sitting on watch. If I were to say that to a third party, it no doubt would need an explanation, for it is readily understood that the pilot along the coast, the sentinel at the top of the tower, the lookout at the bow of a ship, and the robber in his lair sit and watch because there is something to watch for. But someone sitting alone in his room-for what can he be watching? And someone who anticipates that everything-that is,
12000-592: The term (and its approximate sense) can be found at least as early as 1840, in John Stuart Mill 's 1840 essay on Coleridge , where Mill contrasts the Kantian -influenced thought of "Continental philosophy" and "Continental philosophers" with the English empiricism of Bentham and the 18th century generally. This notion gained prominence in the early 20th century as figures such as Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore advanced
12120-412: The term originated among English-speaking philosophers in the second half of the 20th century, who used it to refer to a range of thinkers and traditions outside the analytic movement . The term continental philosophy may mark merely a family resemblance across disparate philosophical views; Hans-Johann Glock has made a similar argument for analytic philosophy. Simon Glendinning has suggested that
12240-522: The term “continental philosophy” was originally more pejorative than descriptive, functioning as a label for types of western philosophy rejected or disliked by analytic philosophers. The term continental philosophy , in the above sense, was first widely used by English-speaking philosophers to describe university courses in the 1970s, emerging as a collective name for the philosophies then widespread in France and Germany, such as phenomenology, existentialism, structuralism, and post-structuralism. However,
12360-412: The times, that is, the totality of individuals , are philosophical. What a lofty hope for every theological graduate! Prefaces p. 51 Notabene makes fun of Hieberg because Hieberg seems to want to explain everything, just like Hegel . Both want to be mediators of understanding. But Notabene says, My frame, my health, my entire constitution do not lend themselves to mediation . It may well be that this
12480-406: The tree was "evil". What he did know was that God told him not to eat from the tree. The anxiety comes from the fact that God's prohibition itself implies that Adam is free and that he could choose to obey God or not. After Adam ate from the tree, sin was born. So, according to Kierkegaard, anxiety precedes sin. Kierkegaard mentions that anxiety is the presupposition for hereditary sin (which Augustine
12600-415: The unknown is nothing, and death is a nothing. Goethe 's Der Erlkönig and The Bride of Corinth (1797) are also nothing. The single individual has a reality which fiction can never represent. People should learn the difference between imaginary constructions and reality. Many things are hard to understand but Kierkegaard says, "Where understanding despairs, faith is already present in order to make
12720-473: The use of folktales as educational stories to keep individuals from falling into evil hands. Kierkegaard refers to The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was in The Concept of Anxiety (p. 155). Can the "power of the example", or theatre pedagogy , or the theatre of the absurd , help an individual learn how to find the good? Danish folklore was at this time also coming to
12840-605: The way for existentialism . Merquior wrote: "the most prestigious philosophizing in France took a very dissimilar path [from the Anglo-Germanic analytic schools]. One might say it all began with Henri Bergson." An illustration of some important differences between analytic and continental styles of philosophy can be found in Rudolf Carnap 's "Elimination of Metaphysics through Logical Analysis of Language" (1932; "Überwindung der Metaphysik durch Logische Analyse der Sprache"),
12960-629: The word dread in 1924, a Spanish translator used angustia , and Miguel Unamuno , writing in French used agonie while other French translators used angoisse . Rollo May quoted Kierkegaard in his book Meaning of Anxiety , which is the relation between anxiety and freedom. Continental philosophy#History Continental philosophy is an umbrella term for philosophies prominent in continental Europe . Michael E. Rosen has ventured to identify common themes that typically characterize continental philosophy. These themes proposed by Rosen derive from
13080-562: The work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s and was closely linked with romanticism and the revolutionary politics of the Enlightenment . Besides the central figures listed above, important contributors to German idealism also included Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi , Gottlob Ernst Schulze , Karl Leonhard Reinhold , and Friedrich Schleiermacher . As the institutional roots of "continental philosophy" in many cases directly descend from those of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl has always been
13200-447: The world of the spirit. Kierkegaard thinks the "spirit is a hostile and a friendly power at the same time". He wrote: "That anxiety makes its appearance pivotal. Man is a synthesis of the psychical and the physical; however, a synthesis is unthinkable if the two are not united in a third. This third is spirit. In innocence, man is not merely animal, for if he were at any moment of his life merely animal, he would never become man. So spirit
13320-660: Was a growth of interest in German philosophy in France . A new interest in communism translated into an interest in Marx and Hegel, who became for the first time studied extensively in the politically conservative French university system of the Third Republic . At the same time the phenomenological philosophy of Husserl and Heidegger became increasingly influential, perhaps owing to its resonances with French philosophies which placed great stock in
13440-406: Was asked "almost petulantly" why it took him so long to translate the book. Alexander Dru had been working on the book and Charles Williams hoped the book would be published along with The Sickness unto Death , which Lowrie was working on in 1939. Then the war started and Dru was wounded and gave the job over to Lowrie. Lowrie could find "no adequate word to use for Angst . Lee Hollander had used
13560-475: Was complaining because his books weren't being read, they were being mediated. He says, “a rumor carries away the reading public as the muse’s impulse the poet, since like always effects like.” And the rumor was that all theologians should be philosophers. Kierkegaard put it this way. Philosophy makes every theologian into a philosopher and does it so that he can satisfy the demand of the times, which must then be philosophical, which in turn presupposes that
13680-402: Was impressed with the psychological views of Johann Karl Friedrich Rosenkranz who wrote: In Rosenkranz's Psychology there is definition of disposition [ Gemyt ]. On page 322 he says that disposition is the unity of feeling and self-consciousness. Then in preceding presentation he superbly explains "that the feeling unfolds itself to self-consciousness, and vice versa, that the content of
13800-425: Was in any way influenced by this solitary thinker. He cherished but little sympathy for him, and was repelled by his broad, unclassical form, for whose merits he had no comprehension, and whose inner harmony with the mind of the author he did not perceive. It was the general spirit of the times which produced the intellectual harmony of these two solitary chastisers of their contemporaries. p. 321 Kierkegaard speaks of
13920-518: Was interested in how an individual can keep faith awake and hope alive. Prayer: Thou my God and Father! The question of my salvation concerns no other being but me-and thee. Should there then not remain uncertainty in fear and trembling until the last, I being what I am, and thou what thou art, I on earth, thou in heaven-a difference infinitely great-I a sinner, thou the Holy One? Should there not, ought there not, must there not, be fear and trembling till
14040-568: Was named The Concept of Dread. The Concept of Anxiety was dedicated "to the late professor Poul Martin Møller ". Kierkegaard used the pseudonym Vigilius Haufniensis (which, according to Josiah Thompson , is the Latin transcription for "the Watchman" of Copenhagen ) for The Concept of Anxiety . All of Kierkegaard's books have either a preface, dedication, or prayer at the beginning. This book includes
14160-513: Was out somewhere else. And whose fault was that? Yes, the fault was mine. But would I or could I nevertheless act in any other way than I have acted if the first is assumed to have happened? No! I regret the first. From that moment on, I have acted according to the most honest deliberation and to the best of my ability, as I also had done the first, until I perceived my error. But does eternity speak so frivolously about guilt? At least time does not; it will no doubt still teach what it has taught me, that
14280-479: Was the first to call peccatum originale , "original sin"). However, Kierkegaard mentions that anxiety is a way for humanity to be saved as well. Anxiety informs us of our choices, our self-awareness and personal responsibility, and brings us from a state of un-self-conscious immediacy to self-conscious reflection. ( Jean-Paul Sartre calls these terms pre-reflective consciousness and reflective consciousness.) An individual becomes truly aware of their potential through
14400-484: Was the prohibition itself not to eat of the tree of knowledge that gave birth to sin in Adam. The prohibition predisposes that which breaks forth in Adam's qualitative leap . He questions the doctrine of Original Sin , also called Ancestral sin ., "The doctrine that Adam and Christ correspond to each other confuses things. Christ alone is an individual who is more than an individual . For this reason he does not come in
#651348