Kierkegaard's God and the Good Life

Description

Kierkegaard's God and the Good Life focuses on faith and love, two central topics in Kierkegaard's writings, to grapple with complex questions at the intersection of religion and ethics. Here, leading scholars reflect on Kierkegaard's understanding of God, the religious life, and what it means to exist ethically. The contributors then shift to psychology, hope, knowledge, and the emotions as they offer critical and constructive readings for contemporary philosophical debates in the philosophy of religion, moral philosophy, and epistemology. Together, they show how Kierkegaard continues to be an important resource for understandings of religious existence, public discourse, social life, and how to live virtuously.

Abbreviations for Books by Kierkegaard
Introduction

Part One: Faith and Love
1. Love as the End of Human Existence / Sharon Krishek
2. Love Is the Highest Good / Michael Strawser
3. Erotic Wisdom: On God, Passion, Faith, and Falling in Love / Pia Søltoft
4. The Integration of Neighbor-Love and Special Loves in Kierkegaard and von Hildebrand / John J. Davenport
5. Kierkegaard, Weil, and Agapic Moral Fideism / Mark A. Tietjen

Part Two: Moral Psychology and Ethical Existence
6. Kierkegaard's Virtues? Humility and Gratitude as the Grounds of Contentment, Patience, and Hope in Kierkegaard's Moral Psychology / John Lippitt
7. The Heart of Knowledge: Kierkegaard on Passion and Understanding / Rick Anthony Furtak
8. From Hegel to Google: Kierkegaard and the Perils of "the System" / Christopher B. Barnett
9. An Ethics for Adults? Kierkegaard and the Ambiguity of Exaltation / Stephen Minister

Part Three: Existence Before God
10. Difficult Faith and Living Well / Edward F. Mooney
11. Kierkegaard and the Early Church on Christian Knowledge and Its Existential Implications / M.G. Piety
12. Thunderstruck: Divine Irony in Kierkegaard's Job / Grant Julin
13. Kierkegaard and Pentecostal Philosophy / J. Aaron Simmons

Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Éthique et morale
• Philosophie de la religion
• Moral Philosophy
• Religious
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Philosophy of religion
• Ethics

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 11 septembre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9780253029485
• Langue: English

Extrait

KIERKEGAARD S GOD AND THE GOOD LIFE
INDIANA SERIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
Merold Westphal, editor
KIERKEGAARD S GOD AND THE GOOD LIFE
Edited by Stephen Minister, J. Aaron Simmons, and Michael Strawser
Indiana University Press
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
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2017 by Indiana University Press
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
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Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Minster, Stephen [date], editor.
Title: Kierkegaard s God and the good life / edited by Stephen Minster, J. Aaron Simmons, and Michael Strawser.
Description: Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 2017. | Series: Indiana series in the philosophy of religion | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017005117 (print) | LCCN 2017033279 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253029485 (eb) | ISBN 9780253029249 (cl : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253029362 (pr : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Kierkegaard, S ren, 1813-1855. | Religion. | Ethics.
Classification: LCC B4377 (ebook) | LCC B4377 .K5123 2017 (print) | DDC 198/.9-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017005117
1 2 3 4 5 22 21 20 19 18 17
To our students, who contribute to the good life by reminding us that standing before God always means facing the others that we see .
Contents
Introduction
List of Abbreviations
Part I. Faith and Love
1 Love as the End of Human Existence / Sharon Krishek
2 Love Is the Highest Good / Michael Strawser
3 Erotic Wisdom: On God, Passion, Faith, and Falling in Love / Pia S ltoft
4 The Integration of Neighbor-Love and Special Loves in Kierkegaard and von Hildebrand / John J. Davenport
5 Kierkegaard, Weil, and Agapic Moral Fideism / Mark A. Tietjen
Part II. Moral Psychology and Ethical Existence
6 Kierkegaard s Virtues? Humility and Gratitude as the Grounds of Contentment, Patience, and Hope in Kierkegaard s Moral Psychology / John Lippitt
7 The Heart of Knowledge: Kierkegaard on Passion and Understanding / Rick Anthony Furtak
8 From Hegel to Google: Kierkegaard and the Perils of the System / Christopher B. Barnett
9 An Ethics for Adults? Kierkegaard and the Ambiguity of Exaltation / Stephen Minister
Part III. Existence Before God
10 Difficult Faith and Living Well / Edward F. Mooney
11 Kierkegaard and the Early Church on Christian Knowledge and Its Existential Implications / M. G. Piety
12 Thunderstruck: Divine Irony in Kierkegaard s Job / Grant Julin
13 Kierkegaard and Pentecostal Philosophy / J. Aaron Simmons
Bibliography
Index
Introduction
Stephen Minister, J. Aaron Simmons, and Michael Strawser
T HE CONTRIBUTORS TO Kierkegaard s God and the Good Life offer new essays dealing with the complex questions that lie at the intersection of religion and ethics. These essays are timely since many people, both inside and outside of academia, now view the relationship between moral action and thinking about God as deeply problematic. This volume was conceived and organized to respond to two sites where this problematic relationship is evident in contemporary society.
First, within Kierkegaardian scholarship, there is a current trend to downplay the orthodox religious aspects of Kierkegaard s thought in order to make his philosophy more relevant to contemporary trends in philosophical inquiry and research in religious studies. For example, Jacques Derrida, Mark Dooley, Stephen Shakespeare, Mark C. Taylor, and John D. Caputo have in various ways suggested that Kierkegaard is more radical than is often realized by the Kierkegaard establishment. Instead of merely bringing Christianity back to Christendom, as Kierkegaard said of his authorship, Kierkegaard s work stands as a challenge to theism, rejecting classical modes of transcendence, and offers new ways of inhabiting the world after the death of God.
Second, in the contemporary nonacademic world there is an increasingly prominent intersection between religious existence and social life. Global Pentecostalism, renewed interest in Catholicism due to the influence of Pope Francis, increased attention to the dynamics of Islam, and emerging religious trends, some of which are even on display in certain strands of atheism, all refuse to be matters of merely theological interest; instead they impact social and political contexts.
In light of these two realities, this volume offers a sustained and multifaceted reflection on how the work of that peculiar Dane, S ren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), offers profound resources for contemporary existence, not despite his religious commitments, but precisely because of them. The contributors to this book do not aim to critique the work of Derrida, Shakespeare, Dooley, and so on, but instead they aim to think in conversation with such new directions in Kierkegaard scholarship and to offer reasons to think that there are no simple answers when it comes to understanding Kierkegaard s complex, theologically oriented authorship and its ethical impact. Similarly, this volume does not set out to offer a prescriptive vision for how to navigate the complicated intersection of religion and ethics in a globalized world. However, it does attempt to think about why such an intersection is so complicated, why it might be inevitable, and what a faithful and ethical response to it might involve.
Accordingly, this volume offers critical and constructive contributions by leading Kierkegaard scholars to contemporary philosophical debates in the philosophy of religion, moral philosophy, and epistemology while demonstrating that Kierkegaard continues to be an important resource for religious existence, public discourse, and social life. No single book can do everything, especially not when undertaking such complex issues of human embodied life. We do hope, though, that this volume makes a significant stride toward overcoming any facile view of Kierkegaard as being either irrelevant regarding such issues (due to the mistaken, but still widespread, interpretation of Kierkegaard as being an irrational fideist with no concern for social existence) or even dangerous for social life itself (due to the also mistaken, but still occasionally found, view of Kierkegaard as being an immoralist).
The book unfolds as follows.
The chapters that make up part 1 , Faith and Love, demonstrate collectively that without love, the good life is inconceivable, and that without God, humans would be unable to love. The authors of these chapters take Kierkegaard s Works of Love to be of utmost importance for this study, and the relevance of this text is shown morally, phenomenologically, and theologically. Along the way, Kierkegaard is brought into dialogue with Leo Tolstoy, Anders Nygren, Dietrich von Hildebrand, and Simone Weil. Two central themes from Works of Love emerge as dominant here. First, the contributors strive to illuminate Kierkegaard s view that just as the quiet lake originates deep down in hidden springs no eye has seen, so also does a person s love originate even more deeply in God s love (WL, 9). Second, they work to appreciate Kierkegaard s claim in the conclusion to Works of Love that to love people is the only thing worth living for, and without this love you are not really living (WL, 375), a claim that is directly addressed in the first two contributions.
In chapter 1 , Love As the End of Human Existence, Sharon Krishek argues for the centrality of love to human flourishing by considering Kierkegaard s Works of Love as a corrective to the life lived by Ivan Ilyich in Tolstoy s novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich . Specifically, Krishek applies Kierkegaard s metaphorical account of love as a quiet lake originating from a hidden spring to show that Ivan s life fails by not developing the love potential that exists within him and all human beings. In this way Krishek uses Tolstoy s text to identify the problem and Kierkegaard s text to identify the solution. Thus, our understanding of both texts is enhanced through this interpretation, as the problem of a wrongly lived life-even when on the surface everything seems fine-can be solved through actualizing the love-potential that is part of our human nature and originates, albeit mysteriously, from God. Using a Kierkegaardian lens, Krishek presents a detailed analysis of The Death of Ivan Ilyich to show readers how, even at the point of death, Ivan s life can be redeemed through realizing his relationship to God and fulfilling his potential to love.
The theme of love s primacy for the good life is continued by Michael Strawser in chapter 2 , Love Is the Highest Good. Here Strawser analyzes Kierkegaard s most specific analysis of the good in An Occasional Discourse in Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits . In this writing, Kierkegaard maintains that purity of heart involves willing only one thing, and that one thing to be willed is the good. Strawser reads this discourse together with Works of Love to argue that the good that makes one pure of heart should be understood as love. While acknowledging the hidden, and thus mysterious, origin of love in God, Strawser focuses on the relationship to the other and attempts to show how the problems of a theological reading can be avoided by considering the phenomenology of love. Thus Strawse