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Fear and Trembling

4DQSAR

4DQSAR

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“If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair?”

-Soren Kierkegaard

With all dure respect Soren - FUNNY!
 
Kierkegaard was an unusually vunerable person which is why so many people skip over his work. He was a devoit Christian which I suspect also means his philosophy is sometimes seen as tainted but almost every existensist philosopher based their own works on his seeing life as essentially pointless.

It took Camus to point out that while it may be the case, then surely living ITSELF is the only meaning of life. That we all die but that doesn't mean we shouldn't enjoy whatever time we have.
 
Kierkegaard thought Christ's only purpose was to suffer and die for him and his community. He's a sadist. Christ comes to judge not to nudge your thinking.
 
Surely you mean masochist?

He didn't demand others suffer, he simply tried to understand his own suffering.
 
He demanded Christ suffer and die. "His only purpose". I will say I only skimmed through his books. But that stuck out.
 
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4DQSAR said:
“If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair?”

-Soren Kierkegaard

With all dure respect Soren - FUNNY!
Click to expand...
I don't even understand what he's even trying to say here. Although, admittedly, I harbor heavy Eastern principles. Life is despair... it is also other things. Yin and Yang. Light cannot exist without dark. Happiness, brilliance, and prosperity cannot exist without despair, ignorance and suffering. Thats just how the universe works. Duality pervades all. Kierkegaard is so emo.
 
4DQSAR said:
“If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair?”

-Soren Kierkegaard

With all dure respect Soren - FUNNY!
Click to expand...
I love me some kierkegaard
 
Shrooms00087 said:
He demanded Christ suffer and die. "His only purpose". I will say I only skimmed through his books. But that stuck out.
Click to expand...

But surely that happened a couple of millenia ago so do you mean past tense i.e. 'Christ suffered and died'?
 
Maybe man I just remembered a a passage I didn't like in his book I bought and barely read and perhaps barely understood. I should've kept my fingers quiet.
 
As I noted, Kierkegaard's important role was not in writing for a general readership but for being the first existentialist. Camus, de Beauvoir and Sartre were all inspired by his work but all disagreed with his conclusions. But being first to ask the question not from a position of certaintly but from a position of total uncertainty might be what later philosphers saw as the important thing.

Simply pronouncing 'god is dead' may sound more compelling, but even the wording does somewhat suggest Nietzsche hadn't really considered that some faiths don't have A god but rather a pantheon.

IF the Hundu panthion turns out to be true, don't ask Parvati how the birth went.
 
4DQSAR said:
Simply pronouncing 'god is dead' may sound more compelling, but even the wording does somewhat suggest Nietzsche hadn't really considered that some faiths don't have A god but rather a pantheon.
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I think Nietzsche was well aware of pantheons, and in particular the Greek/Roman pantheon.

I mean, his first book, The Birth of Tragedy centres on the opposition between Apollo and Dionysus. That's just for starters. He was trained as a classicist and philologist.

He also had some exposure to the Vedic/Hindu and Buddhist traditions, partly through Schopenhauer, although from what I understand the translations and understanding of Eastern texts in the West were fairly off the mark at the time.

Nevertheless, I still reckon you're onto something in terms of thinking about Nietzsche's death of God alongside the notion of pantheon. Given his admiration for the Greeks, I think Nietzsche might say by all means invoke the pantheon as a way of affirming the forces in this world, as opposed to worshipping or prostrating oneself before gods that are not of this world, but beyond. For Nietzsche, 'living for the afterlife' was a trap - rather we should say 'yes' to the present life.

I admire Kierkegaard. I'm not exactly a Christian but I find him quite convincing when he talks about the leap of faith in Fear and Trembling. And yeah, as noted, he kind of gave birth to existentialism, which deserves major kudos imo. He misunderstood Hegel, but then, didn't everyone? And even then, his misunderstandings led to some important ideas and innovations! Having said all that, there's still quite a lot of his work that I haven't read.
 
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