Search Results (78)

This paper argues that Westphal’s attempt to overcome onto-theology paradoxically collapses back into it—not through conceptual inconsistency but through a structural reinscription of the very hierarchy he seeks to escape. The argument begins by examining Westphal’s understanding of onto-theology and critically assessing his appropriation of Augustine and Kierkegaard (the latter via Levinas), culminating in his affirmation of “God the Almighty.” This critique is particularly warranted given that Westphal elevates Kierkegaard as the paradigmatic figure for overcoming onto-theology. Subsequently, by drawing on Derrida and Caputo, the study introduces an expanded understanding of onto-theology—encompassing the critique of theocentrism and the obsession with purity—to expose the lacunae in Westphal’s approach. While Westphal successfully avoids the production of a God to whom one cannot pray or offer praise, his project nonetheless remains entrapped within the orbit of onto-theology as theocentrism. The paper concludes by indicating that such attempts to overcome onto-theology risk regressing into a theocentric structure, with significant implications for how religious discourse shapes ethical and political life. Ultimately, it highlights that his hermeneutical approach to God remains firmly theological—indeed, all too theological—and unable to transcend the hermeneutics of religious life. Full article

In both T.S Eliot’s poetry and the writings of Søren Kierkegaard, conversion serves as an escape from the noise and din of social life. Similarly, both writers implicitly respond to Hegelian Absolute Idealism’s placement of poetry and religious practice within “picture-thinking,” outside of real knowledge. Conversion appears in both thinkers as a response to the pressures of social life, and as a breakdown in communication between religious adherents and their society. Kierkegaard especially articulates the impossible space of Christians within “Christendom.” This paper takes as its point of comparison Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” reading it through a lens from Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous works. First, I work through the development of anxiety as a social phenomenon in both, before turning to Eliot and Kierkegaard’s depiction of the conversion event as self-obliterative. I then explore the silence after conversion, with a particular interest in the cessation of metaphysical speculation. Full article

This essay explores whether romantic exclusivity is more than a cultural choice, suggesting it might be built into the very structure of love. Turning away from typical sociological or psychological explanations, I place classical philosophy in direct conversation with contemporary thinkers like Natasha McKeever, Christopher Bennett, and Carrie Jenkins to investigate this question. I argue that a synthesis of three distinct philosophical frameworks reveals exclusivity as a structural requirement for romantic love in its deepest sense. First, drawing on Kant, I suggest that love’s demand for a totalizing cognitive synthesis of two lives runs into a transcendental barrier when attempted with more than one person. Second, I use Scheler’s phenomenology to argue that the deep, sustained attention required for love’s unique power of value revelation is inherently diluted across multiple partners. Third, I introduce Schopenhauer’s metaphysics to posit that divided romantic striving contradicts the indivisible nature of the Will. I also briefly touch on how thinkers like Kierkegaard and Levinas reinforce this theme of existential singularity. Taken together, this synthesis does not condemn non-monogamous relationships but reframes the debate. It suggests that what we call “romantic love” may be structurally distinct from other valuable forms of intimacy. The powerful pull toward exclusivity, then, might not be a mere social script but may reflect the fundamental architecture of consciousness, valuation, and being itself. Full article

This article examines how national identity is constructed through religious representations in the poetry of Nikoloz Baratashvili, one of the leading figures of 19th-century Georgian Romanticism. Through a text-centered analysis of four key poems, it explores how a religious memory woven around motifs of sacred silence, divine absence, and sacrificial imagery is transformed into a poetic narrative within a postcolonial context. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of Søren Kierkegaard, Paul Ricoeur, Edward Said, and post-Soviet Georgian thinkers, the study interprets Baratashvili’s poetry as an expression of an existential national narrative. It argues that the poet’s poetics articulate both individual and collective trauma and that the nation is reimagined as a metaphysical community. In this regard, the study offers an interdisciplinary contribution focused on how the Georgian national genealogy is constructed poetically, the role of Orthodox cultural symbolism, and the impact of colonial modernity. Full article

M. O’C. Drury and Norman Malcolm both report that Wittgenstein gave them copies of Samuel Johnson’s Prayers and Meditations, a book that he said he valued highly. Given that Wittgenstein’s commentators have mined the ideas of other religious thinkers he admired (Kierkegaard, Tolstoy, and so on) in order to illuminate his ambiguous thinking about religion, it is perhaps strange that this voiced appreciation of Johnson’s prayers has not been further investigated. The purpose of this paper is to correct that neglect. This is done by way of an exploration of the nature and content of Johnson’s prayers, and an analysis of how these prayers reflect the tormented state of Johnson’s mind and his concerns about indolence, death and judgment. Wittgenstein had noted that Malcolm would only like Johnson’s prayers if he looked at them “from the angle from which I see them”, something which in the context of his letter to Malcolm suggests the very “human” quality of these prayers, and their origin in Johnson’s personal struggles. A description of Wittgenstein’s own struggles (which mirror to some extent those of Johnson in their worries about indolence, judgment, and a guilt that requires confession) can then form the background to an understanding, not just of Wittgenstein’s personal spiritual state of mind, but of his philosophical account of religious belief and the turbulent human passions from which religion arises. Significant points of contact are noted between the respective thinking of Wittgenstein and Johnson, suggestive of new avenues of research that might profitably be explored. Full article

This paper offers a philosophical account of the specific form of romantic love underlying the ideal of love-based marriages. Rather than examining the institution of marriage, it considers marriage as the promise of infinite love between finite persons. Although this promise may seem irrational, even those who never formally marry still invoke phrases like ‘I love you forever’. In three steps, this paper explores what we could possibly mean by infinite love and how it can be rationally promised throughout a finite life. First, I trace the concept of infinite love back to the metaphysical discussions surrounding the emergence of the love-based marriage among German Idealists and Jena Romanticists. Next, drawing on John Searle’s speech act theory, I examine how the ideal of infinite love can be articulated as a promise. Finally, I turn to early existentialist thought—particularly the notions of passion (Lidenskab, Leidenschaft), repetition (Gjentagelsen, Wiederkehr), and the moment (Øjeblik, Augenblick) as developed by Kierkegaard and Nietzsche—to justify the meaning of the marital promise. In short, I propose that instead of interpreting the marital promise as a description of an expected reality, we should approach it as a passionate necessity that discloses the world in a fundamentally indeterminate way. By reframing the marital promise in this light, I aim to show that marital love is compatible both with the ideal of personal autonomy and with an alternative conception of rationality and temporality. Full article

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Christian pacifist who believed Jesus Christ taught nonviolence, yet Bonhoeffer was involved in a conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler. How did Bonhoeffer justify to himself his participation in the plot? This essay makes the argument that Bonhoeffer, influenced by Soren Kierkegaard, distinguishes between ethics and acts of faith, suggesting the possibility that Bonhoeffer believed he was responding in faithful obedience to the direct call of God to participate in the plot despite the fact that this conflicted with the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount. Full article

The Protestant Reformation’s insistence on forensic justification developed the distinct concepts of justification and sanctification. The alien righteousness of Christ is all that is needed to justify the sinner rather than the co-operating of good works as proclaimed by The Roman Catholic Church at The Council of Trent. The justification/sanctification spilt leads to a practical problem among Protestants: what is the purpose of good works if the believer is already justified? In this paper, I argue Søren Kierkegaard’s theological anthropology aids us with the bifurcation of justification and sanctification. I start with examining the components of Kierkegaardian anthropology, showing the dynamic nature of humans as beings in process. All humans have a spirit which pushes them to actualize themselves. Second, I describe Kierkegaard’s view of humans as a negative unity, living outside of faith in the life of sin. Third, I explain humans as a positive unity—those who have posited faith. Lastly, I demonstrate how Kierkegaard’s anthropology shows that all humans will do something with their existence. The sinner sins, while the justified does good deeds. Kierkegaardian anthropology shows that sanctification is a necessary result of justification, not a necessary cause of justification. Full article

This paper seeks to make a modest contribution to the ongoing Kierkegaardian discussion concerning the spiritual nature of love relationships, particularly those involving romantic elements. It introduces patience as a key element in understanding the love of the spirit, diverging from perspectives commonly found in recent Anglophone Kierkegaardian literature. Since, in Kierkegaard’s works, the spirit is conceived as an intermediary being positioned between time and eternity, I argue that the spirit’s love must be approached through patience, which is the concrete space where time and eternity intertwine. The argument unfolds in three steps: first, I present Kierkegaard’s understanding of human love as a work, highlighting the significance of the neighbor, which refers to the mode of loving rather than the object of love; second, I outline the challenges inherent in Kierkegaard’s conception of love and propose an approach that emphasizes the dialectic between transcendence and immanence; third, I argue that patience is the concrete means by which this dialectic unfolds within the individual’s existence. Full article

The main thesis presented in this article rejects the identification of the “death of God” idea with atheism. Atheism is a metaphysical claim stating that the signifier God has no signified. By contrast, the “death of God” notion conveys a moment of crisis in believers’ lives where the God that had been present in their lives is dead. The “death of God” idea led, on the one hand, to the negation of God’s relevance in human life, as presented by Nietzsche, and, on the other, to its perception as a constitutive moment for religion itself due to God’s presence in the believer’s inner life, as outlined by Kierkegaard, Simone Weil, and others. Both approaches agree on the crucial role of religiosity, whether or not it has a transcendent object. This analysis challenges the dichotomy claiming that, on the one hand, believers cannot accept the idea of the death of God and, on the other hand, those who endorse the death of God negate the idea of religiosity. Full article

Comprehending Fear and Trembling is no small task: the best that can be done is to pull at one thread at a time to slowly illuminate the whole. One such thread is the Fatherhood of God. Kierkegaard gave the pseudonymous Fear and Trembling with his left hand and the Upbuilding Discourses with his right hand. What can we conclude about the interplay between Fear and Trembling and these discourses? One outcome is a movement toward the Fatherhood of God. The anxiety of walking with Abraham to Moriah is supposed to lead the reader to maturely consider what it might mean to live in the world confident of the presence and purpose of God the Father. I propose we see Abraham holding not an “eschatological faith”, but a faith in Fatherly providence. Kierkegaard understood his own complex life as held together by the Fatherly kindness of God or God’s Governance. Full article

This paper aims to show how Kierkegaard’s attack upon Christendom still works today to contrast current forms of conformism disguised under the appearance of new secular religions. I will start with considering Kierkegaard’s concept of conformism as a form of despair. As such, conformism is incompatible with Christianity, as well as with the development of a true Self. Secondly, I will focus on the current religious scene in Western Europe. While Christianity has become a minority in society, new secular religions have arisen and, along with them, new compelling narratives. Mainstream environmentalism appears to be one of these. Finally, I will try to show how Kierkegaard’s arguments against Christendom can be also applied to environmental propaganda. Full article

This essay assesses the relevance of Søren Kierkegaard’s non-pseudonymous, edifying writings for considering themes of desire, detachment, and humility within the religious context of Christian spiritual formation. Building on the argument of recent scholars who identify in Kierkegaard’s writings an account of a fundamental desire for God “implanted” in the human being, I explore the influence of this vision on Kierkegaard’s depiction of desire and detachment in his “Discourses on the Lilies and the Birds”. I then turn to how this relates to the perspective of humility that emerges from Kierkegaard’s reflections on the biblical story of “the widow’s mite”. In each case, these edifying writings aim to stir the reader into a process of interrogating faulty self-perceptions based on arbitrary measures of value. I read this mode of communication as able to initiate a “counter-experience”, provoking the reader to reorient her horizon of prior self-valuations so she might come to recognize the hidden significance of things and, ultimately, achieve a more accurate sense of oneself in relation to the authentic source of the self’s desire. Insofar as this reorientation of the self informs the practice of detachment or the development of humility, people might experience this same process in diverse ways. In this respect, the relevance of Kierkegaard’s edifying writings for reflecting on Christian spirituality is not that they provide a thoroughgoing account of detachment or humility that should replace the insights of various spiritual traditions. Rather, I argue that his discourses—when read alongside these traditions—offer a supplemental resource for reflecting on how our positionalities, dispositions, and proximate contexts will inform the divergent ways we might experience the practice of detachment or the manifestation of humility in each new life circumstance. Full article

Christian universalism, or the theory of universal salvation, is increasingly popular among religious thinkers. A small group of scholars has put forward the contentious claim that Kierkegaard was a universalist, despite that he refers in places to the idea of eternal damnation as essential to Christianity. This paper examines the evidence both for and against the view that Kierkegaard was a universalist and concludes that despite Kierkegaard’s occasional references to the importance of the idea of eternal damnation to Christianity, there is reason to believe that Kierkegaard may have been a universalist, both in terms of the substance of his thought, including two unequivocal statements in his journals that he believed everyone would eventually be saved and in terms of his rhetorical style which prioritizes the effect his writings would have on the reader over the literal truth of the views they present. Full article

The nature and practice of Christianity is a major, if not the primary, topic in Kierkegaard’s authorship. What it means to live a Christian life is a persistent topic in many of his major works, and yet, he spends most of his authorship criticizing traditional ways of practicing Christianity. While his critique of institutionalized Christianity and merciless unmasking of the hypocrisy of self-proclaimed Christians is rather clear, namely that they are not actually Christian, it is more difficult to get a clear idea of Kierkegaard’s alternative. What is a true and sincere Christian life for Kierkegaard? The argument of this article is that Kierkegaard’s famous existential approach to Christianity amounts to a secularization of Christianity and as such can be seen as a critical development of and not a rejection of the Enlightenment critique of religion. The article uses Kant as an advocate of the Enlightenment critique of religion that Kierkegaard inherits and develops critically, and after having examined Kierkegaard’s existential dialectics, an outline of Kant’s transcendental approach is, presented against which Kierkegaard’s existential alternative is examined in more detail. Kierkegaard’s existential approach is radical with its insistence on “that single individual” and on the existential challenges of human freedom that Kant banned from his analysis of both morality and faith. While Kant presents us with the transcendental possibility of faith, Kierkegaard is concerned with the existential reality of faith. It is argued that Kierkegaard’s existential analysis of faith helps us to find the connection between radical individual choice and the rational morality that is not always evident in Enlightenment—and especially Kantian—accounts of morality. Full article