▲ 189 points
back
143 comments
Whenever I see Kierkegaard referenced, I can't help but think of Michael Swaine's comments (1998) on how it influenced Stroustrup as he developed C++:
> Is modesty a virtue in a programming language? Stroustrup thinks so. Invisibility, even. "If you know what language you are using," he says, "there is something wrong. You shouldn't be able to tell." The "you" in this case is the user, I guess. Even Bjarne isn't modest enough to suggest that the programmer shouldn't be able to tell the difference between C++ and Java. But he may be mystical enough. Red Herring notes that Stroustrup's thinking was heavily influenced by the Danish philosopher Sören Kierkegaard. Gosling, as we know, was influenced by an oak tree growing outside his window.
http://collaboration.cmc.ec.gc.ca/science/rpn/biblio/ddj/Web...
When I'm feeling contemplative, I really want to read something continental for the evening. But when I have shit to do, I snap into an analytic frame of mind.
I feel the same way about programming languages; the Kierkegaardian crowd (C++, Perl) are great for evening enjoyment, but I'd prefer something from the more analytic tradition to language design when there's work to be done.
I tend to agree... for me, C++ is a great solution for problems I don't tend to have in my workaday life.
For a lot of what I do (large-scale, scientific computing), C++ is exactly what I need: it's expressive/compact when I need it to be, and its compile-time metaprogramming lets me do things faster in ways no other language can.
For testing and interactive analysis, I can easily use pybind11 to generate bindings. And because python integration is so easy, I can know many other people will be able to use it.
That's the balance I like best.
so you program in prolog or coq when you really need to get stuff done?
I always preferred Kierkegaard's contemporary, N.F.S. Grundtvig. If Kierkegaard was "you have to be a good Christian before you can be a good person," then Grundtvig was, "you have to be a good person before you can be a good Christian." As the ideological founder of the folk high school system in Scandinavia, he's had a long and lasting impact on the importance of education.
My son is named Soren after Kierkegaard. I was a Theology/Philosophy Major and there isn't a single theologian/philosopher that means as much to me.
I figure if I named my son after him he will have to read some of his writing and POSSIBLY gain some thoughts that lead to other thoughts that he will always hold dear.
> if I named my son after him he will have to read
Why am I reminded of Johnny Cash's "A Boy Named Sue"?
( https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/johnnycash/aboynamedsue.html )
Sören/Søren or Soren? They're not the same.
But they are... Unless you want to be pedantic.
I would suggest listening to Hubert Dreyfus's lectures on Kierkegaard. You can find some on youtube[0].Tried to read Kierkegaard before and did't really understand anything. But these lectures give some good context.
I took Dreyfus's Existentialism in Literature and Film class at Berkeley, and it is my favorite class to date. It had a profound effect on my life. It was sad to hear he did earlier this year[1].
The thoughts of Kierkegaard that made him great had nothing to do with religion, so those who are unable to read him due to his religiosity (see other comments) are missing out.
It may seem like hyperbole, but I agree with:
> He was an existentialist a century before Jean-Paul Sarte, more rigorously post-modern than postmodernism, and a theist whose attacks on religion bit far deeper than many of those of today’s new atheists. Kierkegaard is not so much a thinker for our time but a timeless thinker, whose work is pertinent for all ages yet destined to be fully attuned to none.
Ahead of his time? Absolutely. Think about all the men in the news and not in the news toady who use their power over women for sex, and then read this: http://www.readingtheology.com/the-king-and-the-maiden-by-sø...
--
and then read this
I read that and it seemed to end abruptly, so I looked for a full version elsewhere on the internet. No, that's the full version. Why did you link to it? It's like half a story a child would write.
As for men using power for sex, well yeah. That's why we're humans and not still lungfish.
Kierkegaard annoys the crap out out of me, as almost all philosophers do.
But I will say this for the guy: He had humour. A weird, understated, tangled one, but he had it.
Mind you, it is so tied up with his native language and culture, it ought not travel well. And judging by whatever translations I have seen, it hasn't. His worldwide fame is still a mystery to me.
And by the way, correct pronunciation is something like Kierkegore. Fittingly, it means churchyard.
I loved Kierkegaard for his prayers and parables. As for me being a Theological student in grad school his "Practice in Christianity" was read in one sitting at the library, I just picked it off the shelf to see. I ended up buying the same exact library edition on EBay for my birthday. He isn't an easy read but the journey is worth it to understand what he was trying to get across. I always try to get people to read his later works.
His earlier books can drive a person crazy on one hand and his thoughts will never leave you on the other. Fear and Trembling is written from as a non-believer, Johannes DE SILENTIO, trying to understand God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. The conclusion after 160 pages? He still had no idea. That journey of thought through the book 20 years later still travels with me. I'm okay not understanding or having an opinion on everything. That unusual for Theologian students (Not professors). Faith doesn't always = understanding or a complete knowledge. Now is important and those around you are. (Also helps to think that way after my 15 year old sister passed away from brain cancer and my son at 12 from bone cancer)
Also the BIG one for me was the idea of the Demonic Despair where a person's identity was in the tragic absurdness of themselves when not whole. Once we understand that we alone are responsible for having an identity in our experiences and to something higher then us lead me to a conversation with my mom. My mom is now an Licensed Counselor and her final thesis was based on Soren's "Acts of Love."
Thanks for your comments. Does Kierkegaard by any chance suggest a way out of this “Demonic Despair”? A path to follow to find “an identity in our experiences and to something higher than us”?
For a translation of his humor into English, see The Humor of Kierkegaard, ed. Thomas C. Oden. Some of it is laugh-out-loud funny, like his description of the ridiculousness of state religion:
"Rather than taking part in official Christianity with the thousandth part of my little-finger nail, I would rather engage in the following display of seriousness. A flag is purchased at a hardware store, it is unfurled; with great reverence I approach it, lift up three fingers and swear fidelity to the flag. Thereupon, rigged out in a cocked hat, a cartridge-belt and sword (all from the hardware store), I mount a hobbyhorse, proposing in union with others to make an attack upon the enemy, with contempt for the mortal danger into which I am evidently casting myself, with the seriousness of one who knows what it signifies to have sworn fidelity to the flag."
Kierkegaard's "Attack upon 'Christendom'" [277-78]
Oh man, I couldn't even understand what he meant, let alone find the humour in it.
why would a philosopher be annoying. confusing, certainly, but annoying?
Socrates was annoying enough to get himself poisoned.
Is it really right to call him a philosopher? I would more fairly consider him a "writer", in the vein of (though nothing like) a GK Chesterton -- capable of opining on philosophical topics but with none of the rigour or fairness expected of an actual philosopher.
Can I ask which philosophers don't annoy you?
Not the OP but to me a non-annoying philosopher would be someone like Russell, Quine or Dennett.
A good philosopher takes the time to define terms, explain the problem clearly, explain other possible views on the matter in a fair and accurate way, then explain their own view as clearly as possible, and then ideally pre-emptively discuss several possible objections or misunderstandings. A good philosopher understands that the subject matter at hand is already very difficult, and therefore the philosopher has an obligation to be clear.
There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
given memories, things, and time.
Reading Kierkegaard was one of the low points of my philosophy studies. K writes in such a rambling, self-indulgent, muddle-headed way. Every few hundred pages there might be a small gem, but for me it was not anywhere near worth digging through all the refuse for.
As far as proto-existentialists go, give me Leopardi over Kierkegaard any day.
> K writes in such a rambling, self-indulgent, muddle-headed way.
When he chose to, it was on purpose. He was wholly capable of writing clearly. Nesting levels of meta-text, intentionally adopting a different authorial voice as a metatextual gambit, etc. were all pretty new things when he was alive.
They're trite or annoying now, but it's still important to know that he wasn't just being a whiny prat. They're signs that maybe you should or should not take this or that particular penname totally seriously. ('johannes silentio' was super prolix, etc. )
I blame the professor's reading material.
Read Soren K. when he was writing with his own name. I taught the Philosophy class on Kierkegaard every semester, because our Philosophy Chair hated him so much. We ended up being good friends and he now actually enjoys S.K. now.
S.K. is the most influential and impacting philosopher of the 20th Century (Arguably but I'm pretty sure I'm right). You might not like what you know of him but he took over almost all the theological/philosophy thought by storm 50 years after his death. Heck there were no English translations till the 1940s. He went from a forgotten Danish philosopher to the founder of Existentialism. Hegel never even knew he was alive let alone read his rebuke to his system of philosophy, but S.K. surpassed all of his contemporaries.
I cannot but appreciate the reference to Leopardi. His poetics is lucid and implacably rational, while the aesthetics of the language is fascinating, both in prose and in the poems. Definitely one of my favourite authors.
"Don't be a little Soren"
-- Old professor of mine.
Soren K. was beloved and his funeral was HUGE. BUT Soren got out trolled and he became the meme of his era.
SO I have no clue about Kierkegaard, in India very few people know about him. Having seen the discussion here, I am fascinated to learn more about him and his ideas. What will be a good place for me to start? Any books or articles that are recommended?
The Present Age. Short, witty and fun.
https://www.amazon.com/Present-Age-Rebellion-Harperperennial...
I still prefer Hegel, particularly his Philosophy of Right.
> Kierkegaard’s greatest illustration of this is his retelling of the story of Abraham and Isaac in Fear and Trembling (1843). Abraham is often held up as a paradigm of faith because he trusted God so much he was prepared to sacrifice his only son on his command. Kierkegaard makes us realize that Abraham acted on faith not because he obeyed a difficult order but because lifting the knife over his son defied all morality and reason. No reasonable man would have done what Abraham did. (...) So when Abraham took his leap of faith, he took leave of reason and morality.
I don't know if Kierkegaard actually said any of this, but it's wrong. Child sacrifice is as old as time. Many myths or actual rituals involved killing one's own children. It's found in most ancient cultures from the Middle East to the Americas.
It was therefore not "irrational" to do so, but, rather, quite reasonable and normal (if horrible), esp. in dire times.
The innovation found in some books of the Bible was just the opposite: to declare that child sacrifice is in fact bad and should be avoided.
And of course Jesus is that exact same myth of child sacrifice (with a twist: he dies but lives again).
> And of course Jesus is that exact same myth of child sacrifice (with a twist: he dies but lives again).
The twist is more complex than that: it is God sacrificing his own Son, which is also Him, in place of all sacrifices. God becomes the scapegoat.
Rene Girard talks about this idea in this interview:
>God sacrificing his own Son, which is also Him, in place of all sacrifices.
The twist is more complex than that.
God is sacrificing his own son, which is also him, to himself, in order to satisfy rules that he himself also put in place so that he doesn't have to send people he created and loves infinitely to be tortured forever in a place he created because they broke rules they couldn't understand with consequences they couldn't comprehend.
edit: I copied my previous comment to be in reply to jmcqk6 where it makes more sense -- sorry I actually signed up for an account here just to say it so this is my first post and I wasn't sure how to "mention" someone?
>And of course Jesus is that exact same myth of child sacrifice (with a twist: he dies but lives again)
The twist is in fact a different one -- "sacrifices, dies but lives again" is older.
The key is that the victim, normally a scapegoat the city is happy to get rid of, is this time celebrated as to be in the right. This is a turning point in putting the victim as noble (as opposed the punishers as noble), on which most of modern morality is based on (Old Testament-following puritans aside).
> The key is that the victim is this time celebrated as to be in the right
Yes, you're absolutely right -- except maybe for the part of "most modern morality"... the Latin dictum "vae victis" was embraced throughout modern times.
That said, having the victim come back from the dead is kind of cheating.
Abrams experience foreshadowed Christ he continued to be led by God, even to the offering of his only (God given) son, still faithful to Gods promise to him.
The 'twist' is that to establish the new covenant, God provided the sacrifice and that Christ wasn't a victim, but had the power -> No man takes my life, but I lay it down...etc etc
Fear and Trembling was written under the name of Johannes DE SILENTIO. S.K. was writing under the view point of a non-believer trying to figure out God requesting Abraham to sacrifice his son. S.K. was a Christian and a Theologian and was trying to voice the opposition.
Like in mostly everything, the Bible is ambiguous about child sacrifice. A lesser known character, Jephthah, committed child sacrifice after wining a battle with the help of god, and in that case there was no scapegoat as in Isaac's tale.
The account of Jephthah is vastly different than of Abraham; though neither indicate any ambiguity on God's stance regarding child sacrifice.
Judges 11 1) The Spirit of the Lord had already come upon Jephthah before he made his vow; showing that God was already intending to give him victory. (v29) 2) Jephthah rashly made a vow to God of his own accord, which was never affirmed by God nor required by God. (v30-31)
Even on a surface level reading of the passage, it would be difficult to defend that it was ever God's desire that Jephthah sacrifice his daughter. And, if he knew the character of God as proclaimed by God himself in Exodus 34:6-7, he could have repented and received grace and he still would have had his daughter.
and meanwhile, anything related to Moloch, It-Who-Feeds-On-Children, is 10000% bad and should be destroyed on sight.
Søren has always kind of put me off to philosophy and existentialism. Creating foundations within religion as matter of fact then using it as a principal to state everything is meaningless... my mind couldn't make the connection.
You might be interested in André Comte-Sponville who takes pretty much the opposite direction on the same journey. What remains of Kierkegaard and Spinoza when you remove Christianity as a foundation of ethics.
Exactly. It's noncommittal, inconsistent and still at the mercy and vulnerability of magical thinking. The positive part was watering-down ideas enough to be palatable to those whom were predominantly religious. Reality is too much for most people to accept, so they lie to themselves and each other.
Fear and Trembling reads like the fan of an aging rock band trying to convince a bored listener that the comeback album really is as good as the old material if they just listen to it enough times.
I cannot imagine being impressed by the contorted peregrinations of its attempt at gaslighting.