On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates
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IV. Special Area: Literary
Social Criticism
4. Secondary Readings
Søren
Kierkegaard. Part one of
On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates.
Supporting References:
- McDonald, William, "Søren Kierkegaard", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
Søren Kierkegaard
First published Tue Dec 3, 1996;
substantive revision Fri Jul 27, 2012
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (b. 1813, d.
1855) was a profound and prolific writer in the Danish “golden age”
of intellectual and artistic activity. His work crosses the
boundaries of philosophy, theology, psychology, literary criticism,
devotional literature and fiction. Kierkegaard brought this potent
mixture of discourses to bear as social critique and for the purpose
of renewing Christian faith within Christendom. At the same time he
made many original conceptual contributions to each of the
disciplines he employed. He is known as the “father of
existentialism”, but at least as important are his critiques of
Hegel and of the German romantics, his contributions to the
development of modernism, his literary experimentation, his vivid
re-presentation of biblical figures to bring out their modern
relevance, his invention of key concepts which have been explored and
redeployed by thinkers ever since, his interventions in contemporary
Danish church politics, and his fervent attempts to analyse and
revitalise Christian faith.
- Birch, Dinah. "Kierkegaard, Søren Aabye." The Oxford Companion to English Literature. : Oxford University Press, 2009. Oxford Reference. 2009. Date Accessed 22 Aug. 2013
The following
focuses on the author and not the text.
“Kierkegaard, Søren Aabye (1813–55) Danish philosopher and
theologian, born in Copenhagen, educated at the University of
Copenhagen. Although he is now chiefly remembered as having initiated
existentialist trends in modern philosophy (e.g. Concluding
Unscientific Postscript, trans. W. Lowrie and D. F. Swenson,
1941), he also wrote on religious, psychological, or literary
subjects (e.g. The Concept of Dread and Fear and
Trembling, both trans. W. Lowrie, 1944). His satirical gifts are
demonstrated in his essay on The Present Age (trans. A. Dru,
1962), reminiscent of Thomas
*Carlyle's polemics. His various writings have
common features: a distrust of dogma and an emphasis on
particularity; an imaginative concern with the forms under which
human character and motivation manifest themselves; and a passionate
belief in the value of individual choice, rather than passive
acquiescence in established opinions and norms. His insistence on
personal decision, unmediated by artificial reasoning, lay at the
root of his rejection of *Hegel.
He saw in Hegelianism a philosophy which obliterated, in the name of
metaphysical demonstrations, the subjective commitment and ‘risk’
in every valid act of faith. To all such speculative attempts to
conceal or explain away what is central to human existence as
genuinely understood and known, Kierkegaard opposed the concept of
authentic choice, which stakes everything on a belief which cannot be
proved, but which is maintained in the face of all intellectual
uncertainty. This idea finds expression in the religious sphere, but
it also applies to other kinds of experience, including the ethical.
Some of Kierkegaard's most penetrating psychological observations
occur in his descriptions of the ‘leap of faith’ and in his
analyses of the state of ‘dread’ (Angst) which precedes
and accompanies it. The emphasis on freedom as a condition which both
fascinates and repels links his philosophical ideas and the doctrines
of his existentialist successors. His ideas have influenced literary
figures as diverse as W.
H. *Auden, Franz
*Kafka, Rainer
Maria *Rilke, and John
*Updike. See existentialism;
see also Alastair Hannay, Kierkegaard: A Biography (new edn,
2003).”
- PAUL MUENCH “Kierkegaard’s Socratic Point of View”
http://www.cas.umt.edu/phil/faculty/muench/papers/ksocpv.blackwells.htm
- a
- a
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