Customer Reviews:
Comprehensible.......2006-09-25
Written with humor and very concisely. I love the pictures (comics) Donald Palmer did a great job of introducing Kierkegaard and his philosophy to the masses.
Amazingly Accurate and Fun Portrayal for the Beginner.......2006-05-28
Author/illustrator Palmer brings out Kierkegaard's brilliance in a way accessible to all, simply conveying the complexity of Kierkegaard the person and Kierkegaard the writings while providing a continuous laugh fitting for SK's own serio-comic ironic style. Kierkegaard's the epitome of epigrammatic writing and living, a zealous genius misrepresented by both secularist existentialists as well as respected Christian theologians/teachers who wrongly accuse SK of throwing out objective Christian truth, when really SK's subjectivity IS the evangelical truth of personal relationship with God, not mere external religious tradition. As for the comics in this book, they (as is SK) are HILarious, though probably more so because of the Bible allusions. This book contains a glossary and bibliography, and after this SK intro I'd recommend 'The Essential Kierkegaard' by the editors Hong, then skipping 'Concept of Irony' and starting with 'Either/Or' reading thru the rest of SK's books, which from the outset were written on 2 parallel tracks, one being pseudonymous works (from which it is unfair to attribute quotes to SK) and the other being signed works. P.S.--it's ironic that SK is now associated with the existentialist all-about-self-and-living-in-the-moment philosophies when SK lived so dead to self (his name even means 'graveyard') and with vision, methodically poured himself out in a planned series of books so that his readers entrapped in dead state church religiosity might become aware that they're dead and need to get a life (a self).
Digestible Kierkegaard for Postmodern People.......2006-02-16
Few initially realize that the aesthetic slug which Kierkegaard often decried was he himself. Kierkegaard stuggled with determining, or rather willing, who he would be as a man in books like Either/Or. All of this is what makes him so relevant for postmoderns, existentialism students and even for card-carrying religionists.
The format of the For Beginners series is very inviting and helps make the subject matter less daunting and far from boring, which is the point, and a good reason to use this series' versions whenever getting to know a thinker for the first time. You will get a broad overview of the person's career without getting bogged down too quickly in any one particular life phase. Once you see what it is you appreciate in the career timeline, you can more easily zero in on that selection of books and go from there.
Kierkegaard For Beginners covers the Either/Or argument, the felial Abraham sacrifice delimma and explores Soren's own Christian commitment in a way that will charm and attract even nonchristians as it did me. His inspired figure of the "Knight of Faith" is a fascinating hook and resolves his existentialist concerns heroically.
At the bottom of his writing is the need to account for and deal productively with the bitter anxiety bedrock of the human psyche, and how to resolve that energy and bring it into a sort of freeing self-affirmation by resolving one's will on the issues on which it brings anxiety to bear (thus the "Either/Or" theme elsewhere in title by same name). The comical critique of this is "which breakfast cereal ought I to eat today?!" but the practical application is more in line with "should I renounce playing bridge with the back-stabbing cretins at the moose lodge and take up philosophy/working with kids/see Tibet.") The concern is on changing those things that make one anxious so that they no longer cause anxiety. This said, there is a positive spin on anxiety as the doorbell that "God" rings when he is ready to visit. The feeling of dread, thus, is the threshold over which one comes into contact again with the Divine or whatever makes your life unquestionably, profoundly worthwhile.
This book, as typically the series does, makes the full nature of the life and work roughly, excitingly intelligible in the space of about an hour. No small feat. Definite MUST for Kierkegaard beginners.
Profound Book with Funny Illustrations.......2004-12-29
I don't consider this a comic because the content is too profound to be called a comic. If you understand the content of this book well, the illustrations make you laugh heartily. I find them entertaining.
I would have never understood what Kierkegaard's work is all about if I didn't start with this book because Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) is said to have used more ink than anyone on Earth, having written more than what an average person can read in one lifetime. I would have understood nothing if I had to read several of his major books and try to figure out what they are all about. The author did a great job in summarizing his philosophy.
Though Christianity pervades his work, I do not think his philosophy is about Christianity. Instead I would say that he established a universal philosophy by using concepts of Christianity. In other words, his philosophy can be applied to any area of life in any culture.
One can spend money on a book and let that book sit somewhere, but this type of book becomes valuable when digested with effort. It becomes something money cannot buy.
Didn't Sartre Get his Own Book in this Series?.......2004-09-20
This is a serviceable introduction to the writings and life of Soren Kierkegaard (SK). It hits several of his major works and emphases and does a pretty good job unpacking some difficult concepts (dread, despair, irony etc..). Palmer falls into a common trap, however, of interpreting SK through the lens of the twentieth century existentialists that utilize him. There was a point in the text where I had serious questions whether he had quoted Sartre more than SK himself (it is of note that Palmer also wrote Sartre for Beginners). This leads at times to anachronism in Palmer's presentation and less than full treatment of those ideas that were important to SK but dismissed by those who followed (namely passionate, ironic and devotional theological prose). The illustrations were typical of what I have come to expect from this series: helpful aids for visual learners, occasionally comical (there is a great one on Woody Allen's take on the intro to Sickness Unto Death), but usually a little disappointing, particularly considering the vast reservoir of ironic and comical material availed by SK's sharp wit and various pseudonyms.
Amazon.com
Kierkegaard: A Biography traces the evolution of a character who himself was made up of many characters of his own creation. Søren Kierkegaard's writings, published under various pseudonyms, were made in response to "collisions" with significant individuals (including his father, his brother, a fiancé whom he rejected, and a prominent Danish bishop). The development of these pseudonymous characters reflect Kierkegaard's growing sense of self, and his discovery of that self as being essentially religious. With considerable mastery of the political, philosophical, and theological conflicts of 19th century Europe, Alastair Hannay's biography also serves as an excellent introduction to Kierkegaard's philosophy and faith. From sentence to sentence, the book is full of small pleasures, particularly Hannay's judiciously employed, humanizing vernacular phrases. (As a young man, "Søren," like so many people, "blamed his father for messing up his life.") And like his subject, Hannay is a shrewd observer of the often-misleading relationship between appearance and reality. For instance, he suggests that "it does seem plausible to suppose that a main motivation behind the huge effort that writers put into their poetic products stems often from a sense of lacking in themselves the very substance that their works appear to convey." --Michael Joseph Gross
Book Description
Written by one of the world's preeminent authorities on Kierkegard, this biography is the first to reveal the delicate imbrication of Kierkegard's life and thought. To grasp the importance and influence of Kierkegaard's thought far beyond his native Denmark, it is necessary to trace the many factors that led this gifted but (according to his headmaster) 'exceedingly childish youth' to grapple with traditional philosophical problems and religious themes in a way that later generations would recognize as amounting to a philosophical revolution. Although Kierkegaard's works are widely tapped and cited they are seldom placed in context. Nor is due attention placed to their chronology. However, perhaps more than the work of any other contributor to the Western philosophical tradition, these writings are so closely meshed with the background and details of the author's life that knowledge of this is indispensible to their content. Alastair Hannay solves these problems by following the chronological sequence of events and focusing on the formative stages of his career from the success of his first, pseudonymous work ^Either/Or through to The Sickness Unto Death and Practice in Christianity. This book offers a powerful narrative account which will be of particular interest to philosophers, literary theorists, intellectual historians, and scholars of religious studies as well as any non-specialist looking for an authoritative guide to the life and work of one of the most original and fascinating figures in Western philosophy. Alastair Hannay is Professor Emeritus in the department of philosophy at the University of Oslo. He is the co-editor of The Cambridge Companion of Kierkegaard (1998) and is also translator of several works by Kierkegaard in Penguin Classics.
Download Description
Written by one of the world's preeminent authorities on Kierkegaard, this biography is the first to reveal the delicate imbrication of Kierkegaard's life and thought. To grasp the importance and influence of Kierkegaard's thought far beyond his native Denmark, it is necessary to trace the many factors that led this gifted but (according to his headmaster) 'exceedingly childish youth' to grapple with traditional philosophical problems and religious themes in a way that later generations would recognize as amounting to a philosophical revolution. This book offers a powerful narrative account which will be of particular interest to philosophers, literary theorists, intellectual historians, and scholars of religious studies as well as any non-specialist looking for an authoritative guide to the life and work of one of the most original and fascinating figures in Western philosophy.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent biography.......2005-04-09
Well written, comprehensive and compelling reading.
It's a little overly technical in places (although this may suit some readers). It also seems to focus a little to much on Kierkegaard's early works- the chapters on his later works e.g. Practice in Christianity, Sickness... and that part of his life feel somewhat more compressed than earlier ones (perhaps it's actually a case of the earlier chapters being too long?)
If you are new to Kierkegaard I would suggest reading Penguin's edition of Kierkegaard's Paper and Journals (edited by Alistair Hannay) first, and then this biography.
Book Description
"The day will come when not only my writings, but precisely my life--the intriguing secret of all the machinery--will be studied and studied." Søren Kierkegaard's remarkable combination of genius and peculiarity made this a fair if arrogant prediction. But Kierkegaard's life has been notoriously hard to study, so complex was the web of fact and fiction in his work. Joakim Garff's biography of Kierkegaard is thus a landmark achievement. A seamless blend of history, philosophy, and psychological insight, all conveyed with novelistic verve, this is the most comprehensive and penetrating account yet written of the life and works of the enigmatic Dane who changed the course of intellectual history.
Garff portrays Kierkegaard not as the all-controlling impresario behind some of the most important works of modern philosophy and religious thought--books credited with founding existentialism and prefiguring postmodernism--but rather as a man whose writings came to control him. Kierkegaard saw himself as a vessel for his writings, a tool in the hand of God, and eventually as a martyr singled out to call for the end of "Christendom." Garff explores the events and relationships that formed Kierkegaard, including his guilt-ridden relationship with his father, his rivalry with his brother, and his famously tortured relationship with his fiancée Regine Olsen. He recreates the squalor and splendor of Golden Age Copenhagen and the intellectual milieu in which Kierkegaard found himself increasingly embattled and mercilessly caricatured.
Acclaimed as a major cultural event on its publication in Denmark in 2000, this book, here presented in an exceptionally crisp and elegant translation, will be the definitive account of Kierkegaard's life for years to come.
Customer Reviews:
On the basis of a bit - a broad judgment that this is the major biography.......2007-03-16
I have read a number of reviews of this book. They are unanimous in acclaiming it the definitive Kierkegaard biography, both in its comprehensiveness and its readability. It tells the story of Kierkegaard's life year by year, with special emphasis on what happens from 1835 when he was twenty- two to his death in 1855. The biography places special emphasis on the literary poetic Kierkegaard. It does not interpret in depth his varied and paradoxical philosophical and religious works. It does however provide the valuable biographical information which can enable us to better understand those works.
Mankind has few geniuses and when they come along they shock us into a new awareness. It is possible to argue that where Kierkegaard most shocked was in his emphasis on the 'lived life' the 'real experience' the 'authentic encounter with God' .And this as opposed to the false, formal and protected encounter.
This of course is the major reason why the Existensialists, including the atheist Sartre could find a true predecessor in him.
Kierkegaard 's labors in decrowning Hegel, and in showing the official Church to be at odds with the true experiencing of Christianity were couched in a language, ironic, paradoxical, parabolic and witty. The pseudonymous authors who spoke for various sides of his personality enabled him to express sides of a personality which always wished to remain somewhat hidden, secret and mysterious.
I have read only a small part of this work and am very eager to read more. And this because Kierkegaard like Kafka is one of those thinker- poets one of those supreme individual masters of their own way of writing in the world as to to seem to me as for so many others, a true spiritual forbearer.
the new sk gold standard.......2007-01-18
First published in Denmark in 2000, Joakim Garff's massive and monumental biography of the "melancholy Dane" makes its English debut just in time to commemorate Kierkegaard's death exactly 150 years ago ( November 11, 1855). Anyone who has taken a college freshman class in western civilization or philosophy has a vague familiarity with the name, if not his thought, and some have even dared to tackle his complicated and brilliant work of "indirect" communication via pseudonyms and his later "direct" (and was it ever direct!) communication under his own name. In grad school I took a turn at Kierkegaard, and even now in my office there hangs a poem by him thanks to my wife's calligraphy:
Herr! gieb uns blöde Augen (Lord, give us weak eyes)
für Dinge, die nichts taugen, (for things that do not matter)
und Augen voller Klarheit (and eyes full of clarity)
in alle deine Wahrheit! (in all your truth!)
Kierkegaard prefaced his work The Sickness Unto Death with this prayer-poem.
Although a wild diversity of interpreters from existentialism to deconstructionism has claimed Kierkegaard as their own, and although SK's personality and complex oeuvre present any biographer with an extraordinarily difficult task, Garff shows that he is rightly understood as an artist-poet whose focus was distinctly and deliberately religious. He treats the reader to large doses of SK himself, and reviews all his major writings and journals, focusing on Kierkegaard's life and not really his thought. In this sense he treats Kierkegaard personally rather than intellectually or theologically. He starts with his early years, and proceeds year by year. I would have enjoyed an epilogue that took a stab at Kierkegaard's ecclesiastical, pastoral, and theological legacy. How did a writer in backwater Denmark whose books had print runs of 500 copies (only one of which sold out), whose grave remained unmarked for twenty years after his death, and who barely traveled, emerge as one of the most seminal thinkers of Christian history?
Throughout his short life (1813-1855) Kierkegaard battled a pronounced and chronic melancholia that resulted from a number of factors--his pietistic and stern father, his public humiliation in Copenhagen's rollicking newspaper the Corsair, his sense of victimization, his scathing denunciation of the Church of Denmark's chief bishop (Mynster), and his broken engagement with Regina Olsen. His hypochondria did not help, nor did his estrangement from his lone surviving sibling (his five siblings and mother all died by the time Kierkegaard was about 20). For much of his life, he tells us, through a monumental effort of repression, diversion, and displacement, Kierkegaard distracted and protected himself from his melancholia through his prodigious writing. And there is no doubt that his melancholia served as a fund for enormous artistic creativity and interior reflection (a fact not lost on psychiatrist Peter Kramer in his recent book Against Depression). Writing was his therapy, he once observed: "I saved my life by telling stories." Like Mozart, he just might have been the artistic genius whose sickly body could hardly contain its pulsating brilliance.
What infuriated Kierkegaard was pious pretense, intellectual sophistry, the evisceration of the radical Gospel, and a bourgeois religiosity that tamed Christianity of what he called its "terror." The state-paid clergy, he sneered, derived social and financial gain from the Gospel: "In the splendid cathedral, the high, well-born, highly honored, and worthy Geheime-General-Ober-Hof-Preacher, the chosen darling of the important people, steps before a select circle of the select, and movingly sermonizes on a text chosen by himself, namely, 'God has chosen the lowly and despised of the earth'--and no one laughs" (p. 773). Since no one laughed at the discrepancy between genuine Christianity and the pale imitation of cultural Christendom, Kierkegaard intended to provoke a collision or catastrophe between the two. This was train wreck by design. He was an agitator and pyromaniac who employed his literary brilliance to utilize satire as an act of arson: "I am the one who has set the fire in order to smoke out illusions and trickery" (p. 774).
Garff honors his subject but does not ignore his faults. Kierkegaard could be unctuous, petty, shrill, cynical, inaccessible to anyone he did not care to see, and vindictive. One subject of his lethal pen lamented, "he could make you feel small." His father was one of the wealthiest people in Denmark, and it was not lost on his critics that Kierkegaard never worked while he enjoyed an extravagant lifestyle. But he had little money at his death, and financed most of his own publications. One observer complained that while Jesus cried over Jerusalem, Kierkegaard employed dripping sarcasm to laugh at the church.
There is something like a scorched-earth smell in Kierkegaard. It is hardly news that the church "swarms with many faults" (John Calvin). I rather like the choice of the feminist Catholic writer Joan Chittister who describes herself as a "loyal member of a dysfunctional family." Still, we can thank Kierkegaard for never letting us forget the ideal, how far and so self-servingly we fail it, and forcing us to consider what it might mean for each one of us as a "single individual" whom he addressed.
this book is not absurd .......2006-02-17
K fans-and in this day of badly needed freely speaking Danes, who is not one?-can at last rejoice. Here finally is a book about SK that makes clear the Corsair magazine affair, the matter of K's trousers and thin legs and curved back and how he took his coffee (strong with lots of sugar), the unending engagement to Regine, and oh yes K's attack upon Christendom.
Garff is learned, witty and a master prose stylist. Under a photo of K's elder brother Peter Christian we read...'Irresolution seems almost to shine forth from the eyes...' A self-promoting K enthusiast named Sommer is described as having the 'zeal of a plagiarist.' One could go on and on, and Garff's observations always seem to hit the mark.
Also wonderfully, there is nothing here about 'the father of existentialism.' Garff tells the life, and leaves the impact on the future to others.
Somewhat ironically, a fun book to read.......2005-10-16
It may seem astonishing to many that a nearly-900 page biography of Soren Kierkegaard would ever be described as riveting, or as a page-turner, but that is exactly what this book by Joakim Garff, translated by Bruce Kirmmse from the original Danish, turns out to be. I first noticed it at the bookstore of my seminary, and, intended only to read through a few pages at the beginning to be somewhat familiar with the text (having a friend who is very into Kierkegaard), I noticed when I next looked up that I was 60 pages into the book, and half an hour late for my next appointment.
As Garff states in his preface, biographies of Kierkegaard are few and far between. Even in his native Danish language, 'biographies of Kierkegaard that have appeared since Georg Brandes' critical portrait was published in 1877 can easily be counted on the fingers of one hand.' Part of this was Kierkegaard's own stated desire that readers read his works, not into his person, and he often published under pseudonyms. However, this is an ironic situation, Garff writes, because Kierkegaard puts so much of himself into his writing that there are definite autobiographical elements. Israel Levin, Kierkegaard's secretary for many years, also recognised the paradoxical situation in dealing with a Kierkegaard biography - 'this is a life so full of contradictions that it will be difficult to get to the bottom of his character.'
One of the things Garff should be credited for is not trying to force a particular paradigm or interpretation on Kierkegaard. We don't discover 'Kierkegaard the existentialist' or 'Kierkegaard the religious rebel' or other such personas here - rather, these elements and more are all interwoven into Garff's text to show a complex and not always comprehensible figure. Garff is neither a true-believer nor an official apologist from any set place - he instead set out 'not only to tell the great stories in Kierkegaard's life but also to scrutinse the minor details and incidental circumstances, the cracks in the granite of genius....'
Kierkegaard was a troubled and troubling figure. His life was very brief for someone with such a prodigious output - he lived only 42 years, and his productive time as an intellectual was really only half that time. Garff organises the biography chronologically, taking a year-by-year approach (after putting Kierkegaard's childhood and adolescence together into one chapter, 1813-1834), each year being devoted to its own chapter. In this fashion, Garff looks much more closely at the events and relationship in Kierkegaard's life (both personal and institutional relationships) rather than systematically looking at themes and ideas in his works.
Garff seems to assume some familiarity with Kierkegaard's works at various points - this is not a critical analysis of Kierkegaard's thinking, nor is it even necessarily descriptive of his work in many cases. However, the biography is accessible to those who do not have much experience with Kierkegaard (and I must count myself among those; I have read a few of Kierkegaard's works, and a few analyses, but would never consider myself an expert on the subject).
As translator Bruce Kirmmse states, the book is done in a rather conversational style with an informal sense about it - it is not a dry and dusty historical tome. Not being familiar with Danish, I cannot but take his word that this is true of the original text by Garff, but given the reading here, one cannot imagine that Garff or the editors would have been happy with it done in any other way had this not been faithful to the original. In keeping with this more informal style, there are endnotes rather than footnotes. There are nearly three dozen illustrations (paintings, photographs, other line-art and maps), an extensive bibliography.
I will dare to say, as ironic as it may be both to the subject of reading the biography of a philosopher as well as to the subject of this particular figure, this was a fun book to read.
Kierkegaard for Everyone.......2005-10-10
A very well written, and readable book. The author does a good job of fleshing out the context in each time period of SK's life. The reader comes to know the people who were important to SK both personally and professionally. And, SK's important writings are put within the context of his life and culture. Garff has a sense of humor, and temperance in his editorializing. You don't have to be a fan of Kierkegaard to enjoy this book.
Book Description
Based on a celebrated TV series, these illuminating portraits bring to life seven famous men in search of God.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent for its purpose, but is limited.......2007-05-25
This is an excellent read, especially for those not familiar with the writings of the people discussed. It is a kind of survey, an easy way to be exposed to a wide range of beliefs on spirituality. However, keep in mind that "spiritual wandings" is only one aspect of each person; there is much more than that to each. If one reads the writings of all these people, one will realize that there is much more to each, and some are very complex. For example, you would have to read a lot by Tolstoy to begin to really understand what his thoughts were, which covered many aspects of life and thought beyond spirituality. I suggest you read the book, then buy others on someone you especially like. Perhaps read a bit about them (the internet is a good source) before reading a bit by them.
barely scratches the surface.......2007-05-19
The writers reviewed here in this work are great men of faith and explorers of truth. If you want to become mildly acquainted with these men, this is an ok start--but little more than an expanded wikipedia biography. These writers are worthy enough to be looked at directly, not through this sort of heavy filter. Go buy their books, not this one.
So Much in So Few Pages.......2006-10-03
That's the value of this classic. It gives you a sophisticated introduction to several great thinkers and prophets who searched for God. Muggeridge was, as others have noted, himself a prophet of the madness of his century and the twenty-first century. Here we have the sort of sensitive and perceptive introduction to great thinkers that induces us to read their original works. For a detailed review, see my blog above for Oct. 3, 2006. (Note: the older hardcover edition I read did not include Dostoevsky.)
Excellent biography.......2006-06-26
Muggeridge gives almost an insiders view of what shaped the lives of these great men of the faith. Its almost like he was there witnessing their lives and tagged along with them in their "good times and bad times".
Elementary, my dear.......2006-01-20
Honestly, I didn't finish this book. I didn't even get very far. It sounds wonderful, a book about some of the greatest Christian minds. It reads like a 4th-graders research paper. Muggeridge inserts so much of his own thoughts and experiences its almost like we're reading his biography. His bios of these brilliant men are muddled, not described chronologically or in any other apparent order. If you want a VERY basic overview of these men, maybe this book is for you. If you actually have the intelligence to read anything written by any of them - this book is far beneath you.
Book Description
Soren Kierkegaard (1813-55), one of the most original thinkers of the nineteenth century, wrote widely on religious, psychological, and literary themes. This book shows how Kierkegaard developed his views in emphatic opposition to prevailing opinions. It describes his reaction to the ethical and religious theories of Kant and Hegel, and it also contrasts his position with doctrines advanced by men like Feuerbach and Marx. Kierkegaard's seminal diagnosis of the human condition, which emphasizes the significance of individual choice, has arguably been his most striking philosophical legacy, particularly for the growth of existentialism. Both that and his arresting but paradoxical conception of religious belief are critically discussed, and Patrick Gardiner concludes this lucid introduction by showing how Kierkegaard has influenced contemporary thought.
Customer Reviews:
The example of the authentic individual .......2005-02-16
Gardiner chooses to focus on Kierkegaard's difficulties and dilemnas in his own time. He tells the story of S.K.'s great renunciation of his Regina( The famous follow- up is his years later remark, " Had I had faith I would have married Regina") and speculates briefly on the motives. But there is tremendously more to be said about this including a question about Kierkegaard's real meaning for what he called ' his thorn in the flesh'. One logical but I agree not very pleasant speculation might have to do with S.K.'s sense of his own physical inadequacy given the terrible insults and sufferings he had been subject to because of his dwarfish physiognimy.
Gardiner outlines Kierkegaard's quarrel with the Church and his effort to define an authentic Christianity based on true inwardness. He also mentions the odd and ironic eulogy by Kierkegaard's older brother at his funeral where he on the one hand praises his brother's writing and on the other condemns him for the very crusade against false Christianity that S.K. dedicated himself to.
The description by Gardiner of Kierkegaard's first major work 'Either-Or' is excellent and he gives a deeper sense of the meaning of the ' aesthetic' and ' ethical ' for Kierkegaard. He too gives a good background to the revolt against Hegelianism, and shows how S.K. was not alone in this in his own time.
The great literary originality, the play between philosophy and literature, the invention of , and focusing on new religious categories are all parts of S.K.'s legacy to the world.
This book gives much, but only skims the surface of a thinker who with every reading is deeper and more complex and more ambiguous.
He is nonetheless for many in the world still , the example not only of the individual as authentic Christian, but the individual as authentic individual. .
Substandard Treatment of Kierkegaard.......2000-10-25
It is rather disappointing that professor Gardiner, who otherwise seems himself to be an astute and conscientious writer, so patently overlooks the essential character of Kierkegaard and Kierkegaard's struggle to exist in the "how" (not the "what") of the truth. Sadly, Gardiner seems to fall victim of becoming almost doctrinaire(!) about Kierkegaard -- quite an irony, esp. considering that SK anticipated such reconstructions by pedantic professors after he was long dead.
I do NOT recommend this book, for many reasons, but esp. since it vainly attempts to consider SK as a mere thinker, using the spurious canons of rational acceptability all too common among Anglophone philosophes who merely play with the truth -- and never dare to actually venture out and live it in their lives.
On the other hand, if you want to read Gardiner -- for Gardiner's sake -- and you wish to refine the game of reconstruction and dour pedantism, buy the book, by all means...
Kierkegaard: past and future master.......2000-02-18
I was introduced to the Great Dane by the sermons of a rigorous Presbyterian pastor, then lent a copy of Gardiner's book by a fellow Jewish student of Kaballah and comparative theology. When I later read Neil Johnson's 1982 the History of Lithium, it struck me, from Peter Gardiner's thoughtful analyses, how tragic it was that Soren died from his own obsessions just as he was reaching his peak, when lithium carbonate had been discovered in his own country and lifetime and- at the time of his death by apoplexy from raging against his Bishop - could have saved him from his manic depression. Not for nothing is he the father of both reformed modern western religion and psychology. The humanists, the secularists and the fanatics who followed him overlooked his eternal truths, the very manner of his tormented death, that, no matter your faith, ethics and personal conduct and responsibility matter above all(as eg Maimonides wrote before him in his commentary on the Mishnah Torah), and acceptance of a spiritual deity is a personal matter and transcending act of faith, never scientifically provable. He, we let the riddle of Abraham's dilemma(sacrificing his son) get at us at our peril.
Customer Reviews:
Marred by an untenable understanding of Kierkegaard's work.......2002-08-12
Walter Lowrie was one of the two key early figures in Kierkegaard studies in the English-speaking world, along with David Swenson. Swenson, teaching at the University of Minnesota, achieved his influence in three ways: 1) important early essays that introduced many in the English speaking world to the thought of Kierkegaard for the first time (collected in the still interesting volume SOMETHING ABOUT KIERKEGAARD), 2) through his translations of some of Kierkegaard's most important works, notably the PHILOSOPHICAL FRAGMENTS and CONCLUDING UNSCIENTIFIC POSTSCRIPTS, and 3) through two of his students, who have in turn exerted massive influence on Kierkegaard studies, Howard Hong and Paul Holmer. Hong and his wife have retranslated nearly all the works of Kierkegaard in a new edition available through Princeton University Press. Holmer, teaching first at the University of Minnesota and then for most of his career at the Yale University Divinity School, directed vastly more doctoral dissertations on Kierkegaard than anyone else.
Lowrie, on the other hand, has exerted his influence on Kierkegaard studies in two ways: his two biographies of Kierkegaard and his translations of most of his works. Swenson was a gifted and careful translator, with a profound knowledge of Danish and an appreciation for its subtleties. Lowrie, on the other hand, learned Danish very late in life. His work on Kierkegaard was, in fact, more or less his retirement project. Lowrie had been the minister of a large and prestigious church, and was quite well off financially through marriage. This is significant in that it allowed him, when he discovered references to Kierkegaard in the work of German theologians in his mid-sixties, to subsidize his own research into Kierkegaard. This meant not only going to Denmark to study Danish, but obtaining all the various editions of Kierkegaard's works in Danish, as well as all relevant contemporary works, many of which were not available in American research libraries. As a result, Lowrie was able to make possible a degree of Kierkegaard research in America that might otherwise have been impossible.
Unfortunately, Lowrie remained until the end merely a gifted amateur. He learned Danish, but was never its master, and his translations, as opposed to those of Swenson, were of a much lower quality than one might desire of a figure the stature of Kierkegaard. To be fair, Lowrie felt that the goal of the first generation of Kierkegaard scholars was to get SK's works out in the public as quickly as possible, and then let subsequent generations retranslate them. In effect, because of Swenson's unfortunately early death, this is what happened.
All of this is a long intro to say that both Lowrie's full length biography and this shorter version of the biography are well meaning but profoundly flawed books, and are not only unreliable guides to the thought of Kierkegaard but provide misleading ways of looking at Kierkegaard's work as a whole. For instance, Lowrie treats all of Kierkegaard's works as if their primary value is in illuminating the life of Kierkegaard than his thought. This is seen in the almost obsessive manner in which Lowrie continually relates every possible event in Kierkegaard's life to his broken engagement with Regina Olson. In fact, the broken engagement illumines surprisingly little of Kierkegaard's thought.
So, while I think that anyone studying Kierkegaard should feel the greatest appreciation of the debt we in the English-speaking world owe to Lowrie's pioneering efforts, both his biographies and his translations should be avoided. Unfortunately, we have yet to see the appearance in English of a truly first rate biography of Kierkegaard. Bruce Kirmmse's books are more narrowly focused but are otherwise superb (perhaps the finest works on Kierkegaard in English). Alastair Hannay has recently published a solid scholarly biography that is marred by a sometimes impenetrable, impossibly dry prose. Nonetheless, it can provide a far more reliable guide to Kierkegaard's life than this biography by Lowrie.
the dramatic life of an absorbing Dane.......2000-06-13
Lowrie gives his version of Kierkegaard's life - the only version I really know. That said, his telling of the Kierkegaard story is supplemented by many quotations from Kierkegaard's journals and his books, many of which contained veiled autobiography.
Lowrie's assessment of Kierkegaard's motivations and his sense for the dramatic and important moments of this man's life is indisputable. By my understanding, Lowrie was primary in bringing Kierkegaard into the English language and the wider culture. Bravo, an excellent job which remains a worthwhile and engaging read.
Book Description
In Kierkegaard in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Kierkegaard's life and ideas, and explains their influence on man's struggle to understand his existence in the world. The book also includes selections from Kierkegaard's work; a brief list of suggested reading for those who wish to push further; and chronologies that place Kierkegaard within his own age and in the broader scheme of philosophy.
Customer Reviews:
In the spirit of Kierkegaard? .......2007-07-12
What would Kierkegaard have thought about this book?
He would have perhaps appreciated Stathern's humor, his narrative skill, his quickness of mind, his emphasizing Kierkegaard's thought as directed not to abstraction but to 'lived life.' But he probably would have resented the effort to reduce the complexities of his thought, their contradictions and dialectical intricacies to easily digestible form.
For Kierkegaard 'difficulty' in itself has a value, and the path of the true truth seeker is not one which can be achieved readily, easily without suffering.
The essence of Kierkegaard can only be found in confronting his own complex, and highly qualified prose.
I like Strathern's books very much, but it seems to me here he chose a subject not especially amenable to this kind of treatment.
False assertions and erroneous conclusions abound.......2003-10-11
This book was dismal. Not only did the author fail to address Kierkegaards main ideas, he completely rewrote who Kierkegaard was disregarding or not knowing that Kierkegaard had responded to many of his "insightful" critiques. There were many false assertions in this book, but I will only list two.
(1) Paul asserts that Kierkegaard believed that humans should ethically cease to procreate so that God's work could be finished. Where did Kierkegaard ever say this? Paul draws this notion from Kierkegaard's decision to remain single in order to devote himself to writing. Kierkegaard would never have made such an idiotic absolute statement about something that he would see as relative to one's walk with God. This is one example that shows a gross misinterpretation and misunderstanding of Kierkegaard. This bias colors the whole reading experience.
(2) Paul asserts that in Kierkegaard's description of despair, Kierkegaard contradicts himself by asserting being as opposed to becoming. One can easily see the synthesis of the two if one has but a little knowledge of Christianity. An individual in him or herself is becoming and is not yet finished. An individual in God is a finished work, aka being. God according to scipture is the author and finisher of a believers faith. A believer in time is becoming. A believer in eternity is complete. Paul's confusion comes from making becoming and being logically opposed (infinite becoming vs eternal being?). Kierkegaard sees one leading to the other.
This book is a waste of time. Paul does not understand Kierkegaard as well as he would like his reader to believe. According to Paul, it is amazing that Kierkegaard had some good ideas mixed in with all of his rubbish. Unfortunately, Paul's book is pretty much pure rubish.
Don't waste your hour and a half.......2001-07-24
The timelines and bibliography are good. Otherwise, I would say this book reminds me of an offhand attempt to dispose of a topic the author has little interest in or sympathy for. Just to make the series complete. Shallow. If you want to read a much better Kierkegaard intro, try Donald D. Palmer's Kierkegaard for Beginners. It takes a little longer than 90 minutes, but it's written with gusto.
Danger, Will Robertson.......2000-07-27
This book should have CAUTION written on it, as it is dangerous. Let me give you a few examples:
1) On page 7 it says, "Kierkegaard wasn't really a philosopher at all. At least not in the academic sense." If we say that academic philosophy does not recognize Kierkegaard as a philosopher we must also recognize that Kierkegaard thinks academic philosophy is a nest of charlatans and liars who have no right to judge his work. For Kierkegaard, Socrates is the paradigmatic philosopher. Imagine, for a moment, Plato's dialogue Protagoras. There is Socrates, who receives no money for teaching because he has nothing to teach. There are, on the other hand, the sophists, who claim to be able to teach the Sciences, real knowledge, in return for pay. Who does the academic philosopher resemble: Socrates or the sophist? Who does Kierkegaard more resemble? If Kierkegaard is not a philosopher, how is Socrates one? Certainly, Kierkegaard never claimed to be a philosopher (despite his Doctorate in Philosophy), calling himself a poet, but it must always be remembered that this is because he holds academic philosophers in contempt.
2) On page 8 is the claim that Kierkegaard invented existentialism, a claim about as absurd as Socrates invented philosophy or Jesus, Christianity. Sartre invented existentialism and then enlisted "precursors" to support the claim that he hadn't. Existentialism is one interpretation of Kierkegaard's work and is probably not the best one. Now that Post-Modernism is all the rage, Kierkegaard is being seen as Post-Modern (see Both-And by Michael Strawser). The problem is that what you bring to Kierkegaard is what you get out of him and if you are looking for existentialism in Kierkegaard, you will find it, whether its there or not.
3) In the chapter on "Life and Works" one of the most pervasive and difficult to dispell error about Kierkegaard is presented as fact. The author describes the pseudonymous authorship as Kierkegaard's attempt to disguise himself. This is true enough. The problem is that a pseudonym did nothing, in a small town like Copenhagen, to disguise his identity. Everybody in town knew who the author of Either/Or was. So clearly to say as the author did, "Once again Kierkegaard found himself in a pickle. . . .Put simply he wanted to hide behind a pseudonym, yet at the same time he wished to make it obvious it was a pseudonym"(p. 35) is disingenuous. Hello, I think everybody is going to figure out that A and B are not real names. I don't think he needs to signal people that these are pseudonyms. So what has Kierkegaard got to hide. Himself. He is trying to get free of his own history. He creates, not just pseudonyms, but characters which themselves embody philosophical ideas. By coming to understand the expressions, concerns and moods of these characters, a careful reader comes to understand a philosophical idea (for instance, in either /Or A embodies the aesthetic existence sphere and B the ethical sphere). There is a danger therefore in talking too much about Regine Olsen or Michael P. Kierkegaard as the source or meaning of Kierkegaard's pseudonymous works. Then one has a source for pat answers about Kierkegaard's meaning with no real interpretive depth. As long as one continues talking about Kierkegaard upbringing or his engagement one risks a surface interpretation displacing any hope of a deeper understanding.
I suggest Douglas Mullen's book Self-deception and cowardice in the Present Age, or Parables of Kierkegaard by Thomas Oden as alternatives.
Another interesting study by Paul Strathern.......1999-08-31
Strathern is a master at this kind of work, which mixes biography, critical analysis, historical context and humor all in a concise, informative & entertaining package. He lists a time line for the philosopher, his place in world/philosophic history & a selection of works for furthur reading. This series of books by Strathern is a wonderful course in Philosophy 101 without ever having to go to college, all presented in plain, easy to understand English without being bogged down with philosophy's often confusing vernacular. If you are expecting an in-depth review or complete analysis of the philosopher's life & work, read another book. This is meant to be a quick, concise overview & that's just what it provides. There's suggested readings listed in the back for people who want to investigate Kierkegaard's life & works more thoroughly.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent one- volume selection of the journals.......2006-05-18
The 'Journals' of Kierkegaard are not simply the testing - ground for many of his ideas and projects, they are the life- record which indicates his mood and feeling. He began them in 1833 when he was twenty, and wrote them to the end of his life. They served in a way as his most important and trusted friend. In them he contemplated important life- decisions. They are an important supplement to his most important works, and contain many of his most original thoughts and aphorisms.
To give a real feeling of the Journals I will quote one of the most famous passages at some length. It was written in 1843.
" . What I really need is to be clear about what I am to do, not what I must know, except in the way knowledge must precede all action. It is a question of understanding my destiny, of seeing what the Deity really wants me to do; the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die. And what use here would it be if I were to discover a so-called objective truth, or if I worked my way through the philosophers' systems and were able to call them all to account on request, point out inconsistencies in every single circle? And what use here would it be to be able to work out a theory of the state, and put all the pieces from so many places into one whole, construct a world which, again, I myself did not inhabit but merely held up for others to see? What use would it be to be able to propound the meaning of Christianity, to explain many separate facts, if it had no deeper meaning for myself and for my life? "
In this passage Kierkegaard contemplates and fleshes out his own life- mission. Note how rich the passage is in the figurative 'as if 'language which so enriched his writing. Note too how the writing despite its somewhat awkward mode of motion makes definite progress towards a wise and turning- point life decision."
A superb one-volume distillation of Kierkegaard's journals.......2004-02-07
Along with an older and somewhat smaller one-volume edition by Alexander Dru (worth seeking out, but very difficult to find), this provides readers of Kierkegaard's works a usable collection of highlights from his massive and exceedingly important JOURNALS AND PAPERS. Although this volume runs to over 700 pages, it does not represent a tenth of the complete edition in Danish.
There are many reasons for someone to read in Kierkegaard's journals. He used his journals for dry runs for many ideas that later cropped up in his various books and discourses. He often presents these ideas in a more straightforward manner than he would in his books. But he also often writes things that he did not intend to be seen by the public in his lifetime. Make no mistake about it: Kierkegaard definitely wrote these journals with the assumption that they would later be read by others in published form. But the knowledge that this would only come after his death freed him from any form of constraint, not that even here he is terribly forthcoming.
Reading the journals is also essential because it is the only way to get a truly balanced picture of his literary career and life. For instance, the caricature of Kierkegaard is of a soul who unhappily engaged in a Quixotic battle with the Danish Lutheran church in the final years of his life. The image is of an unhappy, isolated, tormented soul who never finds his rest. In fact, from the journals we find a person who has achieved a great deal of personal peace and a quiet contentment. This cannot be drawn from the books he published in his lifetime, but only from the journals. For all these reasons, anyone interested in Kierkegaard will profit enormously from these pages.
My lone complaint is that Alastair Hannay is not the most gifted prose stylist in the world. I have read just about all his words in English (all dealing with Kierkegaard or translations of Kierkegaard), and while I have no doubt about his accuracy as a translator, I have no confidence in his literary abilities. As a result, the volume--like the other volumes he has translated for Penguin--is highly serviceable, but not something that will thrill and inspire.
I should mention that Amazon shows a Princeton University Press edition of the JOURNALS scheduled to appear in the fall of 2004. I do not know very much about this edition. I am assuming that it is a single volume edition, but I have no idea how extensive of an edition this will be. Princeton's publications of Kierkegaard's works tend to be somewhat schizophrenic. While their edition of Kierkegaard's works are likely to be the standard edition for a very long time to come, they also produce some odd collections that seem to be targeted at a more popular audience. Perhaps their edition will be scholarly (my hope). Either way, this excellent volume by Penguin will either serve if the Princeton is unhelpful, or a useful alternative if it is successful.
Average customer rating:
- what a great diary
- A Smattering of SK's Voluminous Journal Entries
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The Diary Of Soren Kierkegaard
Soren Kierkegaard
Manufacturer: Citadel
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ASIN: 0806502517
Release Date: 1998-08-31 |
Book Description
Soren Kierkegaard, who was born in Denmark and died there at the age of forty-two, is regarded by many as the father of existentialist thinking. During his lifetime the Hegelian theologian he reacted against the Hegelian theologists in Denmark, denounced organized religion and held that the act of choice by an individual was all-important.
The Diary covers the important elements in Kierkegaard's life, including his childhood, his relations with his father, the influence of other writers on him, his broken engagement (which had a far-reaching effect on the rest of his life), and his celebrated quarrel with the Church.
Kierkegaard's writings are important because he is almost the first European writer to take a modern, analytical, psychological approach to religion. Proust, Joyce, and Aldous Huxley were only a few of the modern writers influenced by the Dane; and Jean-Paul Sartre's philosophy of existentialism is based on his thinking.
Customer Reviews:
what a great diary.......2001-03-10
Well it isn't really a diary. It's more like reading his philosophy, but more intimate. Even though I like his philosophy, I preferred this the most. In this, he doesn't make subtle hints about his father and Regine. He completely bares his relationship with them and it's rather heartbreaking. Also
Kierkegaard has a fresh sarcastic wit that I wasn't expecting.
A Smattering of SK's Voluminous Journal Entries.......2000-10-25
This highly condnsed anthology of some of SK's journey entries provides a good overview of many of the key events which shaped his life, as well as his own reflections about these events. Worth reading in conjunction with other works.
Book Description
Soren Kierkegaard's influence has been felt in many areas of human thought from theology to psychology. The nearly one hundred of his prayers gathered here from published works and private papers, not only illuminate his own life of prayer, but speak to the concerns of Christians today.
The second part of the volume is a reinterpretation of the life and thought of Kierkegaard. Long regarded as primarily a poet or a philosopher, Kierkegaard is revealed as a fundamentally religious thinker whose central problem was that of becoming a Christian, of realizing personal existence. Perry D. LeFevre's penetrating analysis takes the reader to the religious center of Kierkegaard's world.
Customer Reviews:
Authenticity.......2005-08-15
If only more Christians sought God as authentically and deeply as Kierkegaard did. The prayers that are prayed here are not meant to impress the reader or to demonstrate theological insights(though they most assuredly do), but are simply the product of a man who wanted nothing other than to know and please God.
An inspirational and thought-provoking collection of prayers.......1998-07-06
I have actually only read excerpts found in the book Devotional Classics. I was so moved and affected my the prayers including in that book, that I have been searching for the entire book. The prayers are insightful and thought provoking. They would make a terrific daily devotional.
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