Lecture 1: The Life and Work of Kierkegaard as a “Socratic Task”

in the 21st century we live in a complex and fast changing world the experience of each new generation differs radically from that of the previous one for example in the generation of my parents nobody had a computer or a cell phone but today virtually everyone has these things ask yourself how many things you use your computer in your cell phone for and how much time you spend with them you'll get some insight into how different your life is from that of the earlier generation in the past radical changes of this sort took place over centuries now they occur in only a few years these constant changes over time make people feel uneasy or insecure certain practices or traditional things that people have done all their lives suddenly become obsolete this leads to an experience of disorientation and alienation with modern life everything stable seems to slip away and there seems to be nothing fixed to hold on to this is the situation that we face in the 21st century the name is philosopher and religious thinker Soren Kierkegaard saw these changes taking place in the nineteenth century well cured never heard of the internet the iPad or the digital camera nonetheless he had great insight into modernity today we can read his works and they can help us to understand the world around us and our place in it hello and welcome wherever you may be around the world in Asia Africa the Middle East Americas or Europe welcome to the course Soren qohor subjectivity irony in the crisis of modernity my name is John Stewart and I'm a scholar at the Soron cohort Research Center at the Faculty of theology from the University of Copenhagen in this course will examine the thought of Soren Kierkegaard a unique figure who has inspired provoked fascinated and irritated people ever since he walked the streets of Copenhagen we following Pierre Gore's footsteps and see the actual places where he lived and wrote his famous works today scholars argue about whether Kira was a philosopher a theologian an inspirational writer a literary author a psychologist or something else altogether in the end it was a little bit of all these things in his highly creative form of writing makes it difficult to say exactly what genre he was using or what academic field he belonged to this feature of his writing is reflected in the complex history of the reception of his thought his works have been enormous ly influential for a number of different fields for example philosophy theology religious studies literary theory aesthetics and psychology at a single thinker can appeal to people in so many different disciplines is interesting in itself but the truly odd thing about this reception is that he has had an appeal to people who radically disagree among each other and thus represent conflicting positions he's been seen as an advocate of both progressive political views and reactionary ones he's been celebrated as both an existentialist and an essentialist he's been hailed as both a critic of German idealism and a follower of it one explanation for this odd aspect of his reception is that there's something undetermined or open-ended about Karen's writings that allows him in a sense to speak to everyone and in his works rich and diverse as they are one can always seem to find something special that gives one special insight into one's own life and situation I hope that all of you around the world will find this to be true as you begin to read the text for this course I hope that you will find in his text something that speaks to you personally in this class we'll explore how Kehaar deals with the problems associated with relativism the lack of meaning and the crisis of religious faith that are typical of modern life in his famous work the concept of irony from 1841 cohort examines different forms of subjectivism and relativism as they're conceived as criticisms of traditional culture what do we mean by these terms subjectivism and relativism we say for example that a certain law or custom is merely relative in the sense that it's only accepted in one culture or society but rejected in others when we make statements of this sort they're usually critical and intended to undermine the validity of the law or custom at issue in other words if something is merely relative then it doesn't have absolute validity or authority and therefore we can choose to follow it or not this is the way that we're used to talking about things like relativism and subjectivism code refers to these different tendencies under the heading irony why does he use this term sometimes when people today say that something is ironic they mean that it was an unfortunate or fateful event for example in the sense that one might say that when a bad thing happened to a bad person that this is ironic but this isn't what pure [ __ ] means instead when we're ironic about something we say the opposite of what we really mean in the context alerts the listener to this for example here in Copenhagen when we're having bad weather with violent rain or heavy snow I might say it's wonderful weather that we're having since the person addressed knows if the weather at the moment is in fact very poor they immediately know that I don't literally mean what I'm saying but rather that I'm being ironic this is the way irony is commonly used but irony can also be used in a critical manner for example in politics if I disagree with the specific policy or proposed law I might say that's a great policy or that's a great law thereby meaning exactly the opposite it's this critical sense of irony that is the kind of thing that cured has in mind when he associates it with subjectivism and relativism with this kind of irony one can criticize accepted customs and practices and indeed absolutely anything at all in the concept of irony here Hart compares irony in the form used by the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates with modern irony which is represented by the German romantics in his own day in both cases an attempt is made to use critical reflection to call into question traditional beliefs and ways of thinking while care hard is critical of the romantics he has great praise for Socrates indeed he takes Socrates as his model in his attempt to criticize his own Danish culture in its conception of religion in the 19th century by contrast the romantics are seem to represent a typical modern kind of problem that we just mentioned subjectivism relativism nihilism alienation lack of meaning and so forth is the modern movements of existentialism post structuralism and post modernism reveal the issues the key word address are still among the central problems of philosophy today at the end of his life here who are looking back on his work what did his task was a Socratic task moreover he says quote the only analogy I had before me is Socrates what did he mean by this it seems to have taken Socrates or would say his own version of Socrates is his personal model in his own life in his writings he took himself to be doing something like what Socrates was doing with his philosophy so in order to understand what Karen meant by this we first need to see how he understood Socrates and what he took Socrates to stand for once we've identified the key elements of key roads understanding of the character and philosophy of Socrates then we can try to say how he tried to make use of these in his own work the obvious place to start with this is with key words book the concept of irony which contains his most detailed explanation of the figure of Socrates in this first lecture we want to make a start at this today will first look at key words early life his family background and his education at the school of civic virtue here in Copenhagen well then turn to the concept of irony and try to understand its structure an argumentative strategy finally we'll have a look at a couple of Plato's dialogues the Euthyphro and the apology in which we'll see some of the key elements of Socrates is philosophy portrayed specifically we'll have a look at the following themes Socrates is irony Socrates is ability to reduce his dialogue partner to what's called a pariah or being at a loss Socrates is relation to the Sophists Socrates is self understanding as the gadfly of Athens Socrates is diamond or personal spirit and finally soccer tases art of midwifery or my eunuchs our goal here is to understand these ideas in the original context of Socrates as thought as or trade my play-doh then we'll go on to see how key heart understands them and appropriates them for his own purposes søren kierkegaard was born here in copenhagen on May the 5th 1813 he came into the world on in a house that stood here in new tour unfortunately the house was destroyed in 1908 but we can see it portrayed in pictures from the period the building stood next door to the dominant structure on the square the courthouse with the large neoclassical columns gerhard lived during the rich period and danish cultural life that's usually referred to as the Danish Golden Age this was the period when people such as the fairytale author Hans Christian Andersen and the physicist Hans Christian ørsted flourished Copenhagen was a relatively small town at the time and all these figures knew each other and mutually enriched each other's work for example K Hertz first book from the papers of one still living was published in 1838 and was the criticism of a novel by Hans Christian Andersen although this was a rich cultural period in Denmark with regard to economics at the time of key words birth Copenhagen was a poor city in an impoverished country in the year when he was born the Danish state had gone bankrupt there were only a few people who could preserve their property in these difficult times Karin's father a man named Michael Peterson Kierkegaard was one of these few he bought a house on new tour in 1809 a couple of years before cohorts birth Michael Peterson Kehoe was born into a very poor family he came from jet land to Copenhagen when he was 12 years old in Copenhagen he became an apprentice in a wool business of his own uncles and after about 10 years he became independent and had his own business he was extremely successful and in time became rich corrodes mother and as Soren Sutherland was the father's second wife she was the maid servant in the father's house and they married 13 months after the death of his father's first wife her father was a profoundly religious man and cured was raised in the tradition of Lutheran Christianity the stamp the character of Quijote and his elder brother Peter Christian Kierkegaard who went on to study theology and became a leading pastor and later bishop in the Danish Church we've killed was a boy his nickname around the house was the fork the reason for this was that one day when he was asked what he wanted to be grew up he replied a fork when asked why a fork he responded then I could spear anything I wanted on the dinner table when he was then asked but what if we were to come after you he replied then I'll spear you the story evidence is the fact that the young cured was a provocative lad who enjoyed getting the better of people so in care hard was the youngest of seven children all of the Cure's brothers and sisters died at a fairly young age with the sole exception of his elder brother peter christian the early deaths of the siblings caused a shadow of melancholy to hover over the cohort home by 1834 when kid was just 21 years old only he his brother peter christian and his father remained all of the others five brothers and sisters and his mother were dead this is the school where killer first learned Latin and Greek and developed his interest in the classics the school of civic virtue was founded in 1789 misses school for the sons of wealthy bourgeois families Karen attended the school from 1821 to 1830 when he was admitted to the University of Copenhagen the school was an intensive one that focused on classical education in Latin Greek and Hebrew it was here that keyword learned ancient Greek and developed a love for Greek culture and literature during his time at the school he studied in Greek Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and some of Herodotus histories and some of the New Testament most importantly he also read some of the dialogues of the Greek philosopher Plato specifically the Euthyphro the apology and the credo he also read another important source of the life and teachings of Socrates namely Xenophon's memorabilia of Socrates it was presumably here that Keffer first made the acquaintance of the figure of Socrates who would fascinate him for the rest of his life but looking back at his time at the school killer probably didn't have so many fond memories by all accounts he didn't have many friends which was probably due to the fact that he had a tendency to tease and and Hagin eyes his fellow students with a superior intellect he enjoyed demonstrating his cleverness by soundly refuting the arguments of his classmates and making them look silly unfortunately since he wasn't the largest boy in the class his provocations had the negative consequence that he occasionally was beaten by others for the humiliation that they had suffered at his hands in any case these negative experiences didn't prevent him from returning to the school later in life to teach Latin care Hart's book the concept of irony is divided into two large parts part one is entitled the position of Socrates viewed as irony and this part he compares the picture of Socrates that's presented by the three main ancient sources Plato Xenophon and Aristophanes as we know Plato and Xenophon were both students of Socrates who wrote dialogues in which they presented the beloved teacher as the main speaker Aristophanes by contrast parodied Socrates in a humorous manner in the comedy the clouds the view that he would consistently urges throughout his analysis is that Socrates doesn't have any philosophical doctrine or theory but rather he merely contradicts or refutes what others say without presenting anything positive in his own name in this sense socrates represents a negative destructive force Keffer doesn't mean that Socrates is negative in the sense that we mean today when we talk of someone for example having a negative disposition that is someone who's pessimistic rather Socrates is negative in the sense that he refuses to present a positive thesis or doctrine with concrete positive content his undertaking is negative insofar as it's designed to undermine the position of others in the first part of the work he wants to establish that this interpretation of Socrates is in fact well grounded in the ancient sources themselves this first part of the work is followed by an appendix called Hegel's you of Socrates this review refers to the treatment of Socrates by the German philosopher Hegel in his lectures Hegel's interpretation of Socrates and his role in the development of philosophy and culture was profoundly influential at the time guru knew this and made a careful study of Hegel's different accounts of Socrates which he critically built on in the concept of irony so in order to understand cohorts picture of Socrates we also have to have some insight into Hegel's interpretation and killer's response to it this will be the subject of the second video lecture part 2 of codes work is simply entitled the concept of irony it's here that Kyra treats the modern form of irony in the German romantics while Socratic irony was given a generally positive treatment the romantics are criticized is using irony in the service of relativism or nihilism their goal is simply to undermine bourgeois society but there's no truth or deeper meaning that they wish to propose to replace it the final short section of the work is entitled irony as a controlled element the truth of irony this section has been quite controversial in the secondary literature it seems to be a keywords presentation of his own view of the proper and appropriate use of irony clearly it's impossible to go back to ancient Athens and use irony in the same way that Socrates did since the historical and cultural background has changed so radically since his time romantic irony is likewise no alternative given coverts criticism of that in the pages that precede this section so instead he suggests a limited form of irony which he believes is the most appropriate in his own day the central focus of attention in most of the concept of irony is without a doubt Socrates but it was not just in the concept of irony they cared examined the teachings of this philosopher rather he was fascinated with the figure of Socrates when we returned to throughout his life what was it about the ancient Greek philosopher that interested Kierkegaard and what's meant by Socratic irony Socrates lived in H nathan's in the 5th century BC and his work has been recorded in the form of dialogues by a student playroom in 399 BC Socrates was brought up on charges by his fellow Athenians and sentenced to death the dialogue the apology is an account of his trial and the dialogue the Phaedo is an account of his final hours and his execution by drinking hemlock Socrates spent much of his time walking around the city and talking with people he went to people who claim to know something about some specific area and asked him about it claiming to be ignorant he begged his discussion partners to enlighten him on whatever topic they claimed to know something about thus he would begin a dialogue with them what's known as Socratic irony usually appears at the beginning of these exchanges when Socrates gets his interlocutor to explain something to him or to give a definition of something one can see this illustrated in the dialogue of the Euthyphro in this work socrates goes to the courthouse in Athens to stand trial but the charge is raised against him there he meets an acquaintance Euthyphro the to greet and ask each other what business they have at court to Socrates his astonishment Euthyphro explains that he's bringing charges against his own father needless to say this is something very unusual especially in ancient Greece where respect for one's father was a highly cherished and time by you Socrates can immediately see the obvious contradiction between the love and respect that one owes one's father and Euthyphro action but instead of pointing out this contradiction he pretends to assume that there must be something that he has not understood and that Euthyphro must have some special knowledge into this matter Socrates explains quote good heavens of course most people have no idea Euthyphro what the rights of such a case are I imagine and it isn't everyone who may take such a course of action but only one who is far advanced in wisdom this sounds like a compliment in the years of Euthyphro who fails to see the irony in it and so he responds self competently far indeed Socrates Euthyphro goes on to assure Socrates that he is in fact an expert in such things and Socrates seems to assent to this one can also see soccer Socrates is irony at the end of the dialogue when Euthyphro grows tired of Socrates is refuting every answers that he gives and suddenly runs off pretending to have an urgent appointment as InterPro hastens away socrates feigns a great disappointment since he thought that he was going to learn something about piety from Euthyphro Socrates seems almost a HECO Euthyphro saying that without his instruction he's condemned to live in the ignorance of his own views for the rest of his life by claiming not to know anything himself in by getting Euthyphro to boast about having expert knowledge Socrates is free to ask Euthyphro questions pretending to want to learn from him Euthyphro would look silly if after having claimed to be an expert he refused to answer him maybe you happen to know someone like youth of room someone who claims to be a big expert about something but really who doesn't know very much although they're very proud of their knowledge what Socrates realized was that it was easy to get people like this talking when one flattered them for their expertise so in this way the Socratic dialogue is initiated Socrates in irony is a key factor in this process at first glance he seems to be ironic first about not knowing anything since clearly the ensuing discussion demonstrates the he in fact knows something about the topic and second about granting that Euthyphro does know something or is an expert Kara was fascinated by this since he saw in his own Danish Society of the 19th century people like Euthyphro who claimed to have knowledge about things about which they were in fact ignorant he was intrigued by Socrates his use of irony to bait these people so that they would fail once they began to explain what they thought that they had understood in addition to irony another important element of the Socratic dialogue for key reward is what is known as a pariah this is a greek word which means simply being at a loss or being unable to answer Socrates brings Euthyphro and his other interlocutors to a state of a Perea in the course of the dialogue Socrates asks Euthyphro for a definition of piety which Euthyphro gives but then upon Socrates is cross-examination they both agreed that this is not satisfactory and so Socrates asked for a better definition the same thing happens with the second definition the third and so on so that in the end no real definition to a result is achieved losing patience with Socrates and seeing that he's beginning to look more and more foolish Euthyphro suddenly claims that he has an urgent appointment and he runs off thus the dialogue itself ends in a Perea since no definition of piety has ever agreed to for this reason it is said that this is one of Plato's operatic dialogues that is one of the dialogues that ends with no definitive conclusion to the question under examination now usually when one writes a philosophical treatise or tract the goal is to demonstrate a specific thesis to establish a specific point the procedure of Socrates is in this regard very unusual since it doesn't establish anything at all rather the result is purely negative all that the reader has learned is that a handful of definitions of piety that have been proposed or incorrect but the reader still doesn't know what piety is no positive definition has survived the process of critical examination this procedure appealed to give heard very much it he enjoyed seeing in Socrates a thinker of negativity in this sense Socrates his goal was not to establish a positive doctrine but merely to call into question what he saw before himself he wanted to get others to reconsider their long-held views by pointing out that they arrested on uncertain foundations five years after the concept of irony cured returns to this feature of Socrates is philosophizing in his journal JJ quote the fact that several of Plato's dialogues end without result has a far deeper reason than I had earlier thud it makes the reader or listener self active her heart was fascinated by the fact that although Socrates was only doing something negative he nonetheless made other people reflective and reconsider certain aspects of their beliefs and lives in the 5th century BC there were in Athens at the time a number of travelling scholars of rhetoric who would give lessons to the sons of rich families for a fee these figures were known as the Sophos they claimed to be able to teach useful skills such as public speaking logical reasoning and argumentation along with providing general knowledge of the different fields like some lawyers today these figures had a somewhat shady reputation at the time for being able to twist words and to win cases for implausible or even wrongful positions they were eloquent speakers who could seduce people with language they were interested not so much in the truth as in winning the argument since Socrates was often seen in the streets apparently giving instruction to young men he was associated with the Sophos by many of the people of Athens and thus one of the charges leveled against him is that he makes the weaker argument the stronger since this is what the Sophists were known to do but Socrates vehemently rejects this association he points out that unlike this office he doesn't claim to know anything and thus doesn't teach anything the young men come to listen to his discussion simply because they find it amusing to see him interrogate people in his own special way since Socrates doesn't teach anything he never demands any kind of fee in contrast to the Sophists who lived from the fees that they receive for their instruction Keir horde was attentive to Socrates is polemic with the Sophists which is portrayed in many of the dialogues of Plato he saw many people in the Copenhagen of his own day whom he regarded as modern versions of the Sophists they claimed to know something about Christianity and to teach this while benefiting materially from their positions in the church while they enjoyed a comfortable life with financial security they taught a version of Christianity that care who are found to be deeply problematic cured was this inspired by Socrates his method to try to undermine these self-satisfied and overly competent overly confident people Socrates's procedure of questioning people irritated in a number of his fellow citizens who felt publicly humiliated especially when Socrates would refute them in front of a crowd of bemused young men so some of his enemies raise charges against him and he was forced to defend himself in a trial but when asked to explain why he goes around Athens and harasses his fellow citizens in this way Socrates tells the story of a friend of his who went to B Oracle at Delphi in ancient Greece society the Oracle was a revered religious institution it was believed that the god apollo spoke through the priestesses there whenever some important decision needed to be made either about some private matter or about some larger matter of the state it would be typical that one would go to the Oracle in order to ask the God if the proposed plan would prosper Socrates his friend asked the God if there was anyone who was wiser than socrates and the God replied through the priestess that in fact there was no one when his friend reported this socrates was perplexed by the answer since he couldn't think of anything that he had any special knowledge about indeed he saw many people around him whom he considered to be much wiser than he about a number of different things and so he set out to ask these different people about what they knew as it turned out he went around from one person to the next each of them pretended like Euthyphro to be a great expert at something but in the end after socrates is questioning they proved to know nothing at all Socrates was then led to the conclusion that he was wiser in the sense that he at least knew that he did not know in contrast to others who claim to know things that they did not know this he thought must be the meaning of the Oracle Socrates's knowledge was not some positive knowledge about some concrete sphere of thought or activity but rather a negative knowledge paradoxically Socrates's knowledge is that he does not know anything at all so Socrates came to believe that he had been given a divine mission and that it was his religious duty to go around Athens and to test people's claims to knowledge this was his explanation to the jurors for why he acted the way he did Socrates uses the image of a gadfly as an analogy to his action a gadfly goes around and irritates a horse by constantly buzzing around and landing here and there on it Socrates sees himself is doing the same thing with his fellow Athenians he explains who I think the God attached me to the city the sort of person who never ceases provoking you in persuading you in a repo tching each and every one of you the whole day long everywhere I settled socrates thus portrays himself as the gadfly of Athens who performs a beneficial although irritating function of keeping people from falling into complacency and constantly keeping them on their guard with respect to their claims to knowledge Socrates thus regards his work as a religious colleague he's not interrogating people on the streets because he likes to do so or because he personally might think it's a good idea but rather he sees himself as following the command of the god it's his religious duty to do so this was the image that he heard relished and he came to conceive of his own task it is like that of Socrates he believed that through his writings he could in effect be the gadfly of Copenhagen keeping his fellow countrymen from falling into complacency one of the chargers that was raised against Socrates was that he worshipped foreign gods that were not worshiped in Athens this charge refers to what Socrates called his diamond this is a Greek word that means literally a God or a spirit many of the Platonic dialogues mention is made of Socrates as diamond is a kind of personal spirit or inner voice that advises him modern scholars have had difficulties making sense of this some try to interpret it is the voice of conscience while others regard it as a form of superstition something like a guardian angel in his trial Socrates explains the diamond as follows something divine and spiritual comes to me this has been coming to me as a kind of voice beginning in childhood and whenever it comes it always diverts me from what I'm about to do but never urges me on so Socrates claims that he has a private inner voice that prevents him from getting into trouble by telling him not to do something that is ill-considered but the diamond never offers him any positive suggestions for what he should do diamond was purely negative Socrates believes this also to be a part of his divine mission or to be a part of the divine will when the jurors convict him of the charges and sentence him to death he claims that he's not concerned about this since throughout the entire trial his demo never once raised an objection or anything against anything he was saying or doing a factor Socrates takes to mean that everything is proceeding according to the divine will therefore he concludes that he has nothing to fear this was also an idea that key art identified with his work the point of view from my work as an author in which he reflects on his life and his writing career explains his conviction that his life has been driven by an invisible divine governance God had a plan for his life which cured unwittingly realized God was in a sense guiding keyword in his writings in the same way that Socrates his diamond was guiding him another feature of Socrates is thought this what is referred to as my eunuchs or the art of midwifery the word my eunuchs simply comes from the Greek adjective my otakus meaning of or about midwifery Socrates explains that his mother was a midwife and that he took this art from her when he questions people the goal he claims is to get them to come to the truth for themselves the idea is that they implicitly had the truth within themselves but without knowing this consciously but this knowledge can be brought to light with the kind of leading questioning that Socrates engages in a famous example of this is when Socrates questions an uneducated slave boy in the dialogue the Meno and merely by questioning without stating anything positive himself he's able to lead the boy to an understanding of some of the basic principles of geometry everyone present is astonished that the boy apparently new geometry ahead of time without ever having any instruction in it this is consistent with Socrates his repeated claim that he doesn't teach anything he claims merely to be a midwife who assists in the birth of ideas but himself doesn't produce them he simply helps others to produce them and to evaluate them subsequently the ideas lie hidden in the individuals themselves without them even being aware of them this later leads Socrates to a doctrine of innate ideas that is the notion that were born with certain ideas right from the start and that we know things before actually having any experience of the world Socrates is my unikz is a motif that Karen also uses in his writings he doesn't want to state explicitly what he thinks Christianity is but by means of his writings he wants to help others to arrive at their own conception of it I'm glad to have with me today Professor Peter sujith from the slack Academy of Science in Bratislava professor Schroeder is a leading international expert in the field of keyword studies and has done substantial work on keywords relation to mysticism in the reception of keywords thud in the 20th century professor showed a who why do you think that the killer makes use of Socrates a pagan philosopher in order to illustrate the the problems of Christianity or Christendom in his own de Guerre card says sometimes that his philosophy revolves around a simple question and the question is what does it mean to be a Christian and as we know Kierkegaard posed this question to himself because it's concerned his own life his own existence but he also posed this question to his contemporaries to the age he was living in and as far as he could see here for most people this was an easy question with an easy answer it was supposed that one is basically born Christian that one grows up in a Christian family one's friends are Christians one lives in a Christian state as some would consider Denmark to be so it was enough just to go with the crowd and there was no doubt about once Christian identity the identity was secure there was no reason to question it to debate it so Kierkegaard's question was in a way a provocation because he wanted to stir a controversy about something that was considered completely uncontrolled so how specifically do you see this is relevant for Socrates I think that the Kierkegaard you saw in Socrates a thinker whose philosophy also revolved around a simple question and again it was a question that was seen as a provocation and it turned into a problem something that was considered completely unproblematic Socrates question was what does it mean to be a human being and given God knows that in Socrates time people were perfectly sure of being human and of knowing what does it mean to be a human being but strangely enough Socrates doubted that one is a human simply by birth instead he argued that we need to learn to be human we need to learn what it means to be humans and he considered this to be no easy task he argued that every individual is faced with with a task with this question and has to answer it with his own exhibit with his or her own existence so the question was addressed to the to the individual the collective could not answer for the individual the individual could not inherit the answer from the collective or delegated to the collective and I think that in this Socrates was a source of inspiration for a Kara guide because also the question what does it mean to be a Christian is addressed to the single individual and the individual cannot inherit the the answer from the collective or delegated to the collective in this answer it with his or her own existence so the answer can only come in the form of an existential transformation individually so what special and unique message do you think cured as a Christian writer has for us today in a pluralistic society I would like to highlight two aspects of character as a Christian writer I think these two aspects are in a creative tension the first aspect is that Kierkegaard is really a thinker goes at font as he goes to the sources to the sources of Christianity in this case and that means first and foremost exploring the Bible so when we read care guard we see that he's a he's a thinker noise an avid reader of the Bible is a very attentive reader he has a great imagination and he reads the Bible in a very creative way so he plunges into the psychology of the biblical figures and explores their inner struggles he invents alternatives to biblical stories and lets the reader compare them to the original he plays for a long time with one sentence analyzing each of its words and their potential meanings so as readers we are we are often surprised how much we discover to careful guides interpretations of the Bible and the second aspect which I would like to highlight is that Kierkegaard always brings the Bible into into a productive dialogue with non-christian sources and so what example can you give for how cured brings the Bible into a dialogue with other sources I think there are many examples of this in his works both the published works and in his journals and papers but I would like to mention one example which is the pseudonymous work fear and trembling as we know in fear and trembling Kierkegaard plays or elaborates on the biblical motif of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac which is a story taken from the book of Genesis the first book of the Bible but interestingly enough it is not it is not explore this or this story with the help of Christian sources in Christian offers in fact he draws on a relatively broad variety of non-christian sources he borrows motifs from the Greek poet Homer from the Greek playwright Sophocles and Euripides he refers to the ancient historians Levy and Plutarch and refers to the ideas of Greek philosophers such as Pythagoras Socrates Plato and Aristotle so I think that what we can learn from kare-kare today is exactly this importance of solid knowledge of one's own tradition and it's principal sources and bringing of this tradition into productive philosophical dialogue with with sources from other traditions one of the few friends the cohort had throughout his life was a man named Emil boozing he recalled the importance of keywords master's thesis the philosophers later development explaining quote it was most probably what cured was writing the concept of irony that he first gained a clear understanding of what he himself wanted to do and what his abilities were boozing seems to suggest that there was something about cards work in this context that helped him to decide to be an author and helped him to find out specifically what kind of an author he wanted to be what was this much evidence supports the claim that it was Socrates who was the key for Kira Gordon indeed all the points that we've touched on here were important for him in one way or another a pariah the Sophists the gadfly the diamond Mayo DEQ's and of course Socrates is irony in many of the most important works of the authorship keyword returns to the figure of Socrates Socrates is discussed at some length in the philosophical fragments as a form of learning that's contrasted to Christianity likewise references may is made to Socrates in the satirical work preface --is from 1844 a large section of cohorts famous book stages on life's way entitled in vino veritas is modeled on Plato's dialogue the symposium throughout cohorts edifying discourses Socrates is referred to indirectly as the simple wise man of old Socrates also appears in scattered passages of the concluding unscientific PostScript moreover he's discussed in connection with a theory of love in keycards book works of love cavora also has one of his pseudonymous authors invoked Socrates explicitly in the sickness unto death as an alternative to the modern age finally Socrates is mentioned as a kind of model for Kierkegaard in the final issue of the moment shortly before his death give her to recognize some problems in his own day in nineteenth-century Denmark that were analogous to the problems that confronted the Greeks in the 5th century BC moreover human nature being what it is he recognized many of his own contemporaries in the figures that are portrayed in the dialogues of Plato your heart hit upon the idea that what was needed in his own time was a new Socrates by this he meant not someone who would come up with a new philosophy or a new doctrine but rather someone who would disturb and provoke people someone who would shake them from their complacency this is the goal that he decided to set for himself he would become the new Socrates the Socrates of Copenhagen you

Channel: Sk Coursera

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Keywords: Kierkegaard, Søren Kierkegaard (Author), Philosophy (Field Of Study)

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Length: 46min 40sec (2800 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 24 2015