Charmaine Tomas

Agosto 09, 2017

Charmaine Tomas
STEM 111-1A

Soren Kierkegaard

Introduction

Hello guys, Our topic for today is all about a Danish philosopher, theologian, poet, social critic and religious author who is widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher. And this philosopher named Soren Kierkegaard. He wrote critical text on organized religion, Christendom, morality, ethics psychology, and the philosophy of religion, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony and parables. Much of his philosophical works deal with the issues of how one lives as a “single individual”. Giving priority to concrete human reality over abstract thinking and highlighting the importance of personal choice and commitment. He was against literary critics who defined idealist intellectuals and philosopher in his time.

Kierkegaard is an outsider in history of philosophy, His peculiar authorship comprises a baffling array of different narrative points of view and disciplinary subject matter, including aesthetic novels, work psychology and Christian dogmatics, satirical prefaces, philosophical ”scraps” and “postscripts”, literary reviews edifying discourses, Christian polemics, and retrospective self interpretation. His arsenal of rhetoric includes irony, satire, parody, humor, polemic and a dialectical method of “indirect communication” all designed to deepen the reader’s subjective passionate engagement with ultimate existential issues. Like his role models Socrates and Christ, Kierkegaard takes how one lives one’s life to be the prime criterion in being in the truth.

Kierkegaard's closest literary and philosophical models are Plato. Because Kierkegaard’s early work was written under various pseudonyms that he used to present distinctive viewpoints and to interact with each other in complex dialogue. He explored particularly complex problems from different viewpoints, each under a pseudonym. He wrote many Upbuilding Discourses under his own name and dedicated them to the ”single individual” who might want to discover the meaning of his works.

The philosophy of Kierkegaard has been a major influence in the development of 20^th century philosophy, especially existentialism and post modernism. Kierkegaard was a 19^th century Danish Philosopher who has been called “Father of Existentialism”. He measured himself against the model of philosophy which he found in Socrates, Which aims to draw one’s attention not to explanatory systems, But rather to the issue of how one exist. In Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, He argues that “subjectivity is truth” and “truth is subjectivity”

Analysis

Based on my own opinion about the philosophy of Soren Kierkegaard, He wants to give us priority to concrete human reality over abstract thinking and gives priority to our own choice not giving others to decide for ourselves, He wants us to open the minds of each and everyone that the truth is not just a matter of discovering facts, Which involves ourselves on how we can relate oneself to those matters of fact, We can find truth in subjectivity rather than objectivity, Because objectivity is a central philosophical concept, related to reality and truth which have been variously defined by sources. Generally objectivity means the state or quality of being true even outside of a subject’s individual biases, interpretations, and feeling while subjectivity is a central philosophical concept, related to consciousness, agency, personhood, reality, and truth, which have been variously defined by sources. And he wanted to examine “What is meant to be a human being” not as part of some great philosophical system, And on understanding humans. He really did imagine that he understood a little something about human beings; he knows that the longer he exist in this world, the more he realize that we absolutely do not understand one another. He’s ideas about abstract concepts are as invisible when they are made concrete, that is what Soren Kierkegaard wants to point out.