Kierkegaard

Notes “What those ancient Greeks (who, after all, did have a bit of understanding of philosophy) assumed to be the task for an entire lifetime because expertise in doubting is not acquired in days or weeks; what was attained by the old, veteran combatant (==who had preserved the equilibrium of doubt through every seductive snare, fearlessly denying the certainty of the senses and of thought, uncompromisingly defying the anxiety of self-love and the flattering advances of sympathy==)—in our times, this is where everyone begins.” Abraham: “Lord in heave, I thank you; it is after all better that he believe me to be a monster than that he should lose faith in you.” What provokes such dedication to a thing so terrible? SK asks: what sin could be more frightful than this? “No one who was great in the world shall be forgotten, but everyone was great in his own way, and everyone in proportion to the greatness of what he loved.” “the power whose strength is weakness, great through the wisdom whose secret is foolishness, whose form is madness, great through the love that is hatred of oneself.” “The entire content of his life is contained in this love, and yet the situation is such that it would be impossible for this to become a reality, impossible for it to be translated from ideality to reality.” “Only inferior natures forget themselves and become something new.” “For only in infinite resignation do I become transparent to myself in my eternal validity, and only then can there be talk of grasping existence by virtue of faith.” “By virtue of the absurd…” ==“Thus, then, my intention in telling the story of Abraham is to extract from it, in the form of problems, the dialectical element it contains, so that we might see what an enormous paradox faith is, a paradox that is capable of turning a murder into a holy act that is well-pleasing to God, a paradox that restores Isaac to Abraham, which no thinking can master, because faith begins precisely at the point where thinking leaves off."== (end of the Preliminary in the Problemata). In Problema I, extended discussion of the sacrifice of a daughter for ’the good of the whole community’ and what a hero that makes the father, and even moreso the fiancé. Not heroic! What the fuck! In Problema I re: a peasant more or less and approaching the King’s chamber. See page 77 for full context. “On the contrary, he should find joy in observing every rule of decorum with happy and confident enthusiasm, which is precisely what will make him openhearted and cheerful.” Difficult to suppress the chortle I made at this. Get real. “It is far more difficult to receive than to give—that is, if one has had the courage to do without and has not proven a coward in the hour of need.” Review I picked this up because it is at one point referenced in God, Human, Animal, Machine, and then I also saw it referenced in Carl Roger’s On Becoming a Person, which I was thumbing through in the bookstore the other day. I picked this up with little knowledge of Kierkegaard beyond those two citations, other than a vague awareness of his status as a philosopher/theologian. ...