As someone who finds Kierkegaard wildly relevant to our current age, I love the final question you ask about where we would possibly go from here. From a bygone passionate aesthetic age to our modern, empty, reflective and ethical one it strikes me as humorous that the answer would be to turn toward religion. Having studied theology and worked as a hospital chaplain, I have some personal experience backing me when I say that mentioning “religious commitment” in the 21st century is a sure fire way to convince whatever stranger you’re talking with that you are either ignorant, dumb or outright insane 😂 but I think the turn to the religious in a slightly less theocentric interpretation involves an affirmation of individuality and personhood that raises the individual over and above the social in a counter-intuitive way (thinking of the teleological suspension of the ethical here). My reading and teaching on Kierkegaard has “convicted” me that commitment without passion (form without substance) can be a starting point for developing passionate commitment, which may be seen as irrational to others but is the sort of insanely reasonable choice only truly understood from the other side (perhaps the other side of the “leap”). What you mention about the cynicism of our modern age is a perfect example to me of how passionate commitment, genuine “action” will not be understood by the crowd who is surely convinced that no genuine choice is possible in a society corrupted by the systemic influence/operation of injustice and hate. In a way, I think Kierkegaard helps me combat some of the cynical, nihilistic detractors from action which quite effectively suppress and depress my hopeful, dreaming and desiring self. It’s so easy these days to compromise on one’s passion and thereby lose one’s self, and yet I think that passion speaks to what is most compelling, unique and lovable in every person I meet. That’s the question I’m always left with after reading Kierkegaard, how can I infuse my every day commitments with real passion while allowing reflection and contemplation to shape those same passions? Thanks for the video and discussion!
Absolutely love these conversations. They must involve tremendous labor to appear so effortless. This is what I wish my college philosophy class had been.
One follower of Kierkegaard was the poet W.H. Auden, and after watching your good video on some of Kierkegaard's philosophy, I have a better understanding of one of my favorite mottos of Auden himself: "criticizing bad literature is not just a waste of time, but it is also bad for the character." And, like you both, I also enjoy reading both Hegel and Kierkegaard. I read Hegel because he doesn't talk to me but because he sounds like he talks to himself in solitude, and I read Kierkegaard because he was a master at indirect communication with his own readers. Thank you both for helping me again to read.
Also, I just wanted to add a thought about the difference in Kierkegaard distinction between the selfish person and the person whom people envy. For me, I see it as a natural event: the sun cycle. The rising of the sun feels like the sun is selfish: hey, look at me with all my brilliant light! And, the sunsetting where some envious people might criticize: oh, look at that sun going down to rest, it gets to have peace and calm, I am so jealous!
Hey, that goes with Satan's speech in Book 4 of John Milton’s =Paradise Lost=!: "O thou that with surpassing Glory crownd, Look'st from thy sole Dominion like the God Of this new World; at whose sight all the Starrs Hide thir diminisht heads; to thee I call, But with no friendly voice, and add thy name O Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams That bring to my remembrance from what state I fell, how glorious once above thy Spheare; Till Pride and worse Ambition threw me down Warring in Heav'n against Heav'ns matchless King: Ah wherefore! he deservd no such return From me, whom he created what I was In that bright eminence, and with his good Upbraided none...:
I can't put into words how much this brightened my afternoon. I really came to understand the concept of otherness from Immanuel Levinas, who's writing really expanded my perspective on concepts like ethics-first phenomenology when confronted with otherness.
"Nostalgia", on the other hand, is interesting because nowadays it has such negative associations, as though some sort of moral weakness. Does feeling discredit recollection? Or vice versa?
You make an interesting reference to flirtation, disapproved by Kierkegaard. Is this disapproval due to the fact that flirting exploits the ambiguity of promises - the difference between someone being promising and someone making a promise? In that case, flirtation is the saboteur of the cherished commitment. In so far as we value reliability and relative predictability, it is inevitable that flirtation - the consciously or unconsciously production of uncertainty - will be experienced at best as superficial and at worst as cruel! Noted Adam Philips.
The whole envy section reminds me of what John Berger says in "Ways of Seeing" (literally just read finished reading this last night so yah this might be hella recency bias lol) -- he talks about how "publicity" (advertisements) are a direct descendant of the first oil paintings, which was an art form that developed out of the desire for the wealthiest people in Europe to immortalize their status in a visible way. Think portraits of ambassadors and dukes and heiresses etc -- we see these portraits where they're staring at or above the painter (camera) and we're likely to feel distant BECAUSE these rich folks did not mean to stoke envy in the common folks because they didn't need to (their view of themselves was tied with their property, not in a poor person's opinion). Cut to the age of advertisements: heavily borrow imagery from all these paintings to bolster their authority, and these images are now used to sell to the common person the possibility of making their lives better by buying the product -- Berger calls this the invention of "glamour" and it's all based on the envy created from the relationship between the buyer and the image! All this to say, he makes a case that capitalism manufactures and sustains envy to keep itself running and creates conditions for people to live with the feeling that things suck and very little energy to change that, so we live on unfulfilled daydreams and are set up to envy people who seem to be living their dreams -- cool to see this attitude connected to our material history instead of attributing it to human nature (which is what it ~sounds~ like Kierkegaard was getting at but I'm not sure since my only reference is this video LOL).
On the flirting section... My thoughts upon hearing it gathered up a collective that makes sense to me, though rooted in deep grounds! Taking philosophy being the “ love of wisdom ( Sophia) Kiekeguard when coming to the fork in the road, chooses Sophia over his physical bride. ( divided from the Christian faith, thus individual ) . He was all in with Sophia! When he speaks of flirting and gossiping as shallow communication (levelling, logic, reason ) l think he feels those speakers are not all in with Sophia, she is a side mistress. He philosophically very much presents Christian thoughts, especially the Christ figure. ( who was all in with the word of God ) Even the dialogue in the podcast between David and Elle( cause and effect...time frame of social media) tends to package or level out the words before absorbing them in silence the meaning. Thanks ( ps) True , it is much easier for a listener to be silent than the ones staging the discussion. Who is more reactive than reflective? Reflective prior to reactive would be a good recipe in philosophy though the clock rules.
i got a soft spot for him for his reputation being the first Existentialist whether true or not every philosopher needs a myth surrounding him/her otherwise oblivion is the price history demands as time progresses through us all without remorse...
16:02 I dont think that Kierkegaard its looking for a phillosophy of action, rather than a phillosophy of meaning; obviusly, a personal, subjective meaning, one that conflicts the individuals, then, to act. But I dont think, he emphasys nor its pointing for what we call nowadays (after that left-marxist interpretation of Hegel is), a phillosophy of practice. I think that, if Kierkegaard would still living, he may not like that phillosophy (the franckfurt school, the marxism, and all the pragmatist school of thinking). He is in the pursuit of subjective meaning, because, he is a profound crsthian. He wants that cristianity and all the cristhian meaning of life be genuine and conflictive to the individual; then, and just then, we may pass to a practice way of life, but for Kierkegaard its not necesary pass from honesty to practice by a dialectical phillosophy (by a phillosophy of practice); only in the religiuos state, in a religious state of mind, we can have a truly and honest, an authentic meaning of life (this, in consideration of Kierkegaard's opinion). The whole thesis of one of his great works, one that brings the image of the great hero of faith in the Biblie, Abraham, ("the father of faith", as he is call in the book of Hebrews), this biblica hero isn't living in "Fear" and "Trembling" because he believes; truly, genuinly he believes, that brings him genuine confidence in Gods comadment to sacrify his son, Isaac, because basically he proundly have thrust in God. He, in fact, points that, if faith was a matter of acts, the whole scene of Abraham and Isaac would make no sense as the Biblie narrates, and the logic and practical conclusion to considere Abraham as a great hero to the opinion of the world, would be that he effecively sacrified Isaac. So, Kierkegaard is aiming to a genuine and truly cristhian way of living, rather than a "phillosophy of..." (however we can denominate any doctrine of thinking).
21:43 flirting is the way humanity, in civilization with "proper" manners, approach between each other in order to hace a romantic relation or simply have sex (this more than ever nowadays). So, it is natural to interpret flirting as empty of content in the existential and epysthemological sense; in a phillosophy of languege point of view, the words and the dialogue and all the semantic of flirting is meaningless and empty becauese it doesnt point to its truly purpose, it doesnt refere to what words (and gestures and postures) supposly pretend. But, we need to remember the profound cristhian background of Kierkegaard, because, in the moral sense, it is empty and "bad" just to flirt without comitment; or, it is just "bad" to flirt because, per se, flirting doesnt have content (commitment).
The notion of religion as personal relation with God is peculiar to Protestantism which represents the dissolution of the apparatus of the Catholic Church which until the Reformation *was* "Christianity" - whatever that term denotes today. Worth adding that Kierkegaard's writing on his inner struggle has been influential with puritanical strains of Islam in their interpretation of jihad which can denote both striving for purity in oneself as well as more politically in terms of expanding the Ummah. 'Darwin of the human sciences' Rene Girard accounts for religion in entirely naturalistic terms consistent with biology. His 'Violence and the Sacred' was hailed in Paris as the "first authentically atheistic theory of religion and the sacred"- Girard having concealed his own Catholic faith. He interprets biblical texts as deconstructing/demythifying what he calls the "founding murder" aka Myth: tales of distorted violence told from the standpoint of the cultures that emerged from it - structurally akin to Being or Trace as founding principle - his violence *real* not textual. His religion *technological*, instituting sacrificial mechanisms protecting man from his own violence. Paradoxically, Christianity is *anti-religion* dismantling the sacrificial protections of archaic religion. Thus our age is that of "omnipresent victim" - *anyone* can be the target of a Twitter pile-on. To that extent "Christianity" is a source of violence in undermining the sacrificial rituals that evolved to deflect it on to innocent third parties aka "scapegoats". Only now we persecute others in the name of the victim, accusing *them* of scapegoating, competing to be victims ourselves to gain the ascendancy. Modern culture manufactures victims, says Girard, calling ideology: "machinery for legitimating conflict".
I think there's going to be an inevitable exclusion of biographical names if a 'public intellectual' tries to condense 2500-3000 years of philosophy into 650-700 pages....roughly 4 years per page. You know what's stranger too? I checked the contents page of that book; he doesn't cover Beauvoir outright, and shoehorns her into 'Feminist Philosophy! Not to mention shoehorning all Chinese, Indian and African philosophy into one chapter, the LAST chapter, in a way that breaks the chronology of all previous chapters.
I had noticed that and agree with your you on your other points, but Kierkegaard is generally included in the 'list of greatest philosophers'(We love lists don't we?) so his failure to even 'namedrop' him in the index is still puzzling. I think Russell practically ignored him. fortunatel the 'action philosophers' did not @@fernhausluv44
Yes, and people are so lazy to be trying to understand. If i ask someone to define what science is , even if he was looking on Google, he came with a scientology definition.
This is a poor discussion of an important topic. For a better grasp of Kierkegaard's significance for our 'present age, here are a couple of links: Hubert Dreyfus - czcams.com/video/iAxu6pg7JU0/video.html Also see Chap 6 - I think - in his book (2001) On the Internet, structured by K's remarks on The Present Age. Peter Kreeft = Hegel v Kierkegaard on Individuality - czcams.com/video/9QHNodY8Ki8/video.html
As someone who finds Kierkegaard wildly relevant to our current age, I love the final question you ask about where we would possibly go from here. From a bygone passionate aesthetic age to our modern, empty, reflective and ethical one it strikes me as humorous that the answer would be to turn toward religion. Having studied theology and worked as a hospital chaplain, I have some personal experience backing me when I say that mentioning “religious commitment” in the 21st century is a sure fire way to convince whatever stranger you’re talking with that you are either ignorant, dumb or outright insane 😂 but I think the turn to the religious in a slightly less theocentric interpretation involves an affirmation of individuality and personhood that raises the individual over and above the social in a counter-intuitive way (thinking of the teleological suspension of the ethical here).
My reading and teaching on Kierkegaard has “convicted” me that commitment without passion (form without substance) can be a starting point for developing passionate commitment, which may be seen as irrational to others but is the sort of insanely reasonable choice only truly understood from the other side (perhaps the other side of the “leap”). What you mention about the cynicism of our modern age is a perfect example to me of how passionate commitment, genuine “action” will not be understood by the crowd who is surely convinced that no genuine choice is possible in a society corrupted by the systemic influence/operation of injustice and hate.
In a way, I think Kierkegaard helps me combat some of the cynical, nihilistic detractors from action which quite effectively suppress and depress my hopeful, dreaming and desiring self. It’s so easy these days to compromise on one’s passion and thereby lose one’s self, and yet I think that passion speaks to what is most compelling, unique and lovable in every person I meet. That’s the question I’m always left with after reading Kierkegaard, how can I infuse my every day commitments with real passion while allowing reflection and contemplation to shape those same passions?
Thanks for the video and discussion!
I love how much you both make philosophy feel like gossip
;) www.overthinkpodcast.com/episodes/episode-49
You guys have a great dynamic, thanks for the vid.
my two favourite professors
two legends
Two reflective, pondering, bookish UNITS.@@bourdieufan7433
Absolutely love these conversations. They must involve tremendous labor to appear so effortless. This is what I wish my college philosophy class had been.
Brilliant. Yoked to more episodes like this 😂
One follower of Kierkegaard was the poet W.H. Auden, and after watching your good video on some of Kierkegaard's philosophy, I have a better understanding of one of my favorite mottos of Auden himself: "criticizing bad literature is not just a waste of time, but it is also bad for the character." And, like you both, I also enjoy reading both Hegel and Kierkegaard. I read Hegel because he doesn't talk to me but because he sounds like he talks to himself in solitude, and I read Kierkegaard because he was a master at indirect communication with his own readers. Thank you both for helping me again to read.
Also, I just wanted to add a thought about the difference in Kierkegaard distinction between the selfish person and the person whom people envy. For me, I see it as a natural event: the sun cycle. The rising of the sun feels like the sun is selfish: hey, look at me with all my brilliant light! And, the sunsetting where some envious people might criticize: oh, look at that sun going down to rest, it gets to have peace and calm, I am so jealous!
Hey, that goes with Satan's speech in Book 4 of John Milton’s =Paradise Lost=!:
"O thou that with surpassing Glory crownd,
Look'st from thy sole Dominion like the God
Of this new World; at whose sight all the Starrs
Hide thir diminisht heads; to thee I call,
But with no friendly voice, and add thy name
O Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams
That bring to my remembrance from what state
I fell, how glorious once above thy Spheare;
Till Pride and worse Ambition threw me down
Warring in Heav'n against Heav'ns matchless King:
Ah wherefore! he deservd no such return
From me, whom he created what I was
In that bright eminence, and with his good
Upbraided none...:
I can't put into words how much this brightened my afternoon. I really came to understand the concept of otherness from Immanuel Levinas, who's writing really expanded my perspective on concepts like ethics-first phenomenology when confronted with otherness.
"Nostalgia", on the other hand, is interesting because nowadays it has such negative associations, as though some sort of moral weakness. Does feeling discredit recollection? Or vice versa?
Great Conversation!
Agreed! :) Honestly just dying for a Kierkegaard reading group right abt nw tbh.
34:31 Magistral conclusion on Kierkegaard's thoughts. I like the whole video and the whole discussion and points of views.
"We live in a world without the right action". That's true. We get lost in thoughts.
Thanks
But, a stimulating discussion. I enjoy this sort of exchange.
You guys are so cool I almost feel the world is alright :))) cheers
Wonderful! Can you say more about the book you were working on about information and meaning?
You make an interesting reference to flirtation, disapproved by Kierkegaard. Is this disapproval due to the fact that flirting exploits the ambiguity of promises - the difference between someone being promising and someone making a promise? In that case, flirtation is the saboteur of the cherished commitment.
In so far as we value reliability and relative predictability, it is inevitable that flirtation - the consciously or unconsciously production of uncertainty - will be experienced at best as superficial and at worst as cruel! Noted Adam Philips.
That doughnut shaped vase on the shelf ruined my focus too many times 😐
The whole envy section reminds me of what John Berger says in "Ways of Seeing" (literally just read finished reading this last night so yah this might be hella recency bias lol) -- he talks about how "publicity" (advertisements) are a direct descendant of the first oil paintings, which was an art form that developed out of the desire for the wealthiest people in Europe to immortalize their status in a visible way. Think portraits of ambassadors and dukes and heiresses etc -- we see these portraits where they're staring at or above the painter (camera) and we're likely to feel distant BECAUSE these rich folks did not mean to stoke envy in the common folks because they didn't need to (their view of themselves was tied with their property, not in a poor person's opinion). Cut to the age of advertisements: heavily borrow imagery from all these paintings to bolster their authority, and these images are now used to sell to the common person the possibility of making their lives better by buying the product -- Berger calls this the invention of "glamour" and it's all based on the envy created from the relationship between the buyer and the image!
All this to say, he makes a case that capitalism manufactures and sustains envy to keep itself running and creates conditions for people to live with the feeling that things suck and very little energy to change that, so we live on unfulfilled daydreams and are set up to envy people who seem to be living their dreams -- cool to see this attitude connected to our material history instead of attributing it to human nature (which is what it ~sounds~ like Kierkegaard was getting at but I'm not sure since my only reference is this video LOL).
"Deplatforming" is a terrifyingly technocratic term. It is said so blithely.
Please make videos on Rene Descartes too.
Great discussion at end. Highlights when Winston Churchill states socialism is the gospel of envy!!
What a terrible thing to take from it, also probably shouldn’t positively quote genociders
On the flirting section... My thoughts upon hearing it gathered up a collective that makes sense to me, though rooted in deep grounds!
Taking philosophy being the “ love of wisdom ( Sophia) Kiekeguard when coming to the fork in the road, chooses Sophia over his physical bride. ( divided from the Christian faith, thus individual ) . He was all in with Sophia!
When he speaks of flirting and gossiping as shallow communication (levelling, logic, reason ) l think he feels those speakers are not all in with Sophia, she is a side mistress. He philosophically very much presents Christian thoughts, especially the Christ figure. ( who was all in with the word of God )
Even the dialogue in the podcast between David and Elle( cause and effect...time frame of social media) tends to package or level out the words before absorbing them in silence the meaning.
Thanks
( ps) True , it is much easier for a listener to be silent than the ones staging the discussion. Who is more reactive than reflective? Reflective prior to reactive would be a good recipe in philosophy though the clock rules.
I actually see the unwillingness to distinguish between love and debauchery as puritanical.
i got a soft spot for him for his reputation being the first Existentialist whether true or not every philosopher needs a myth surrounding him/her otherwise oblivion is the price history demands as time progresses through us all without remorse...
The Corsaren (Corsair) was the newspaper that satirized SK.
“Only someone who knows how to remain essentially silent can really talk” sounds like an edgy Facebook post
throw me to the wolves and ill come back saying i am the storm lol
sounds like you dont understand the quote more like it
16:02 I dont think that Kierkegaard its looking for a phillosophy of action, rather than a phillosophy of meaning; obviusly, a personal, subjective meaning, one that conflicts the individuals, then, to act. But I dont think, he emphasys nor its pointing for what we call nowadays (after that left-marxist interpretation of Hegel is), a phillosophy of practice. I think that, if Kierkegaard would still living, he may not like that phillosophy (the franckfurt school, the marxism, and all the pragmatist school of thinking). He is in the pursuit of subjective meaning, because, he is a profound crsthian. He wants that cristianity and all the cristhian meaning of life be genuine and conflictive to the individual; then, and just then, we may pass to a practice way of life, but for Kierkegaard its not necesary pass from honesty to practice by a dialectical phillosophy (by a phillosophy of practice); only in the religiuos state, in a religious state of mind, we can have a truly and honest, an authentic meaning of life (this, in consideration of Kierkegaard's opinion).
The whole thesis of one of his great works, one that brings the image of the great hero of faith in the Biblie, Abraham, ("the father of faith", as he is call in the book of Hebrews), this biblica hero isn't living in "Fear" and "Trembling" because he believes; truly, genuinly he believes, that brings him genuine confidence in Gods comadment to sacrify his son, Isaac, because basically he proundly have thrust in God. He, in fact, points that, if faith was a matter of acts, the whole scene of Abraham and Isaac would make no sense as the Biblie narrates, and the logic and practical conclusion to considere Abraham as a great hero to the opinion of the world, would be that he effecively sacrified Isaac.
So, Kierkegaard is aiming to a genuine and truly cristhian way of living, rather than a "phillosophy of..." (however we can denominate any doctrine of thinking).
21:43 flirting is the way humanity, in civilization with "proper" manners, approach between each other in order to hace a romantic relation or simply have sex (this more than ever nowadays). So, it is natural to interpret flirting as empty of content in the existential and epysthemological sense; in a phillosophy of languege point of view, the words and the dialogue and all the semantic of flirting is meaningless and empty becauese it doesnt point to its truly purpose, it doesnt refere to what words (and gestures and postures) supposly pretend. But, we need to remember the profound cristhian background of Kierkegaard, because, in the moral sense, it is empty and "bad" just to flirt without comitment; or, it is just "bad" to flirt because, per se, flirting doesnt have content (commitment).
The notion of religion as personal relation with God is peculiar to Protestantism which represents the dissolution of the apparatus of the Catholic Church which until the Reformation *was* "Christianity" - whatever that term denotes today. Worth adding that Kierkegaard's writing on his inner struggle has been influential with puritanical strains of Islam in their interpretation of jihad which can denote both striving for purity in oneself as well as more politically in terms of expanding the Ummah.
'Darwin of the human sciences' Rene Girard accounts for religion in entirely naturalistic terms consistent with biology. His 'Violence and the Sacred' was hailed in Paris as the "first authentically atheistic theory of religion and the sacred"- Girard having concealed his own Catholic faith. He interprets biblical texts as deconstructing/demythifying what he calls the "founding murder" aka Myth: tales of distorted violence told from the standpoint of the cultures that emerged from it - structurally akin to Being or Trace as founding principle - his violence *real* not textual. His religion *technological*, instituting sacrificial mechanisms protecting man from his own violence. Paradoxically, Christianity is *anti-religion* dismantling the sacrificial protections of archaic religion. Thus our age is that of "omnipresent victim" - *anyone* can be the target of a Twitter pile-on. To that extent "Christianity" is a source of violence in undermining the sacrificial rituals that evolved to deflect it on to innocent third parties aka "scapegoats". Only now we persecute others in the name of the victim, accusing *them* of scapegoating, competing to be victims ourselves to gain the ascendancy. Modern culture manufactures victims, says Girard, calling ideology: "machinery for legitimating conflict".
Kierkegaard single handedly cancel modern philosophy, my favourite philosopher.
Grayling's History of Philosophy does not even mention Kierkegaard. puzzling
I think there's going to be an inevitable exclusion of biographical names if a 'public intellectual' tries to condense 2500-3000 years of philosophy into 650-700 pages....roughly 4 years per page. You know what's stranger too? I checked the contents page of that book; he doesn't cover Beauvoir outright, and shoehorns her into 'Feminist Philosophy! Not to mention shoehorning all Chinese, Indian and African philosophy into one chapter, the LAST chapter, in a way that breaks the chronology of all previous chapters.
I had noticed that and agree with your you on your other points, but Kierkegaard is generally included in the 'list of greatest philosophers'(We love lists don't we?) so his failure to even 'namedrop' him in the index is still puzzling. I think Russell practically ignored him. fortunatel the 'action philosophers' did not
@@fernhausluv44
Yes, and people are so lazy to be trying to understand. If i ask someone to define what science is , even if he was looking on Google, he came with a scientology definition.
The Sermon on the Mount says it all.
This is a poor discussion of an important topic. For a better grasp of Kierkegaard's significance for our 'present age, here are a couple of links:
Hubert Dreyfus - czcams.com/video/iAxu6pg7JU0/video.html Also see Chap 6 - I think - in his book (2001) On the Internet, structured by K's remarks on The Present Age.
Peter Kreeft = Hegel v Kierkegaard on Individuality - czcams.com/video/9QHNodY8Ki8/video.html
What did you find poor about it?