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Ironically, the philosophy of love has long been neglected by philosophers, so-called \"lovers of wisdom,\" who would seemingly need to understand how one best becomes a lover.In Kierkegaard and the Philosophy of Love, Michael Strawser shows that the philosophy of love lies at the heart of Kierkegaard's writings, as he argues that the central issue.

Søren Kierkegaard is often cast as the forefather of existentialism and an anti-Hegelian proponent of the single individual. Yet this book calls these traditional characterizations into question by arguing that Kierkegaard offers not only a systematic critique of idealist philosophy, but more surprisingly, a political ontology that is paradoxically at home in the context of twenty-first-century philosophical and political thought. Through a close consideration of his authorship in the context of nineteenth-century German idealism, Michael O'Neill Burns argues that Kierkegaard develops an ontology, anthropology and theory of the political that are outcomes of his critical appropriation of the philosophical projects of Hegel, Schelling, and Fichte. While starting out in the philosophical concerns of the nineteenth century, the book offers an interpretation of Kierkegaard that shows his relevance to philosophers and political theorists in the twenty-first century.

There has been a recent revival of interest in reading Kierkegaard as an ontologist, as a thinker who engages with questions about the kinds of entity or process that constitute ultimate reality. This new way of reading Kierkegaard stands alongside a revival of interest in ontology and metaphysics more generally. This highly original book concentrates on the claim that Kierkegaard focuses in part on ontological questions and on issues pertaining to the nature of being as a whole. Alison Assiter asserts that Being, for Kierkegaard, following Schelling, can be read in terms of conceptions of birthing—the capacity to give birth as well as the notion of a birthing body. She goes on to argue that the story offered by Kierkegaard in The Concept of Anxiety about the origin of freedom connects with a birthing body, and that Kierkegaard offers a speculative hypothesis, in terms of metaphors of birthing, about the nature of Being.

In Kierkegaard's Instant, David J. Kangas reads Kierkegaard to reveal his radical thinking about temporality. For Kierkegaard, the instant of becoming, in which everything changes in the blink of an eye, eludes recollection and anticipation. It constitutes a beginning always already at work. As Kangas shows, Kierkegaard's retrieval of the sudden quality of temporality allows him to stage a deep critique of the idealist projects of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. By linking Kierkegaard's thought to the tradition of Meister Eckhart, Kangas formulates the central problem of these early texts and puts them into contemporary light -- can thinking hold itself open to the challenges of temporality?.

Deeply engaged with the work of Aquinas, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Kant, among others,The Eclipse and Recovery of Beautywill be essential reading for those interested in contemporary philosophy and theology.

In the digital world, Kierkegaard's thought is valuable in thinking about aesthetics as a component of human development, both including but moving beyond the religious context as its primary center of meaning. Seeing human formation as interrelated with aesthetics makes art a vital dimension of human existence. Contributing to the debate about Kierkegaard's conception of the aesthetic, Kierkegaard, Aesthetics, and Selfhood argues that Kierkegaard's primary concern is to provocatively explore how a self becomes Christian, with aesthetics being a vital dimension for such self-formation. At a broader level, Peder Jothen also focuses on the role, authority, and meaning of aesthetic expression within religious thought generally and Christianity in particular.

Søren Kierkegaard is a fascinating author. Living shortly after the dawn of modernity in the Enlightenment, he restates classical Christianity in dynamic fashion. His Lutheran heritage is vital here as he places ‘faith’ over ‘reason’. Yet Kierkegaard also holds decidedly pre-modern epistemological presuppositions that are supportive of his endeavour. After an initial chapter on Kierkegaard's intellectual milieu, the book expounds with reference to the philosophical and historical context of seven of his major texts, ranging across theological, ethical, social and political questions. A final chapter, on an autobiographical text, allows for an estimate of Kierkegaard as a person. The book does not however simply depict Kierkegaard. In the ‘Critique’ with which each chapter concludes, the book carries on a lively debate with Kierkegaard. Questions range from his indifference to biblical historical criticism, his lack of a sense for causality and for the regularity of nature, and his early a-political outlook. Whatever one's theological evaluation, Kierkegaard has insights that are abiding; into the nature of the self in relation to God, the manner of according dignity to others, and the need to prioritise rightly in life.

An accessible and original exploration of the theological and philosophical significance of Kierkegaard's religious thought.

\"The day will come when not only my writings, but precisely my life--the intriguing secret of all the machinery--will be studied and studied.\" Søren Kierkegaard's remarkable combination of genius and peculiarity made this a fair if arrogant prediction. But Kierkegaard's life has been notoriously hard to study, so complex was the web of fact and fiction in his work. Joakim Garff's biography of Kierkegaard is thus a landmark achievement. A seamless blend of history, philosophy, and psychological insight, all conveyed with novelistic verve, this is the most comprehensive and penetrating account yet written of the life and works of the enigmatic Dane who changed the course of intellectual history. Garff portrays Kierkegaard not as the all-controlling impresario behind some of the most important works of modern philosophy and religious thought--books credited with founding existentialism and prefiguring postmodernism--but rather as a man whose writings came to control him. Kierkegaard saw himself as a vessel for his writings, a tool in the hand of God, and eventually as a martyr singled out to call for the end of \"Christendom.\" Garff explores the events and relationships that formed Kierkegaard, including his guilt-ridden relationship with his father, his rivalry with his brother, and his famously tortured relationship with his fiancée Regine Olsen. He recreates the squalor and splendor of Golden Age Copenhagen and the intellectual milieu in which Kierkegaard found himself increasingly embattled and mercilessly caricatured. Acclaimed as a major cultural event on its publication in Denmark in 2000, this book, here presented in an exceptionally crisp and elegant translation, will be the definitive account of Kierkegaard's life for years to come.

Although the ideas of Soren Kierkegaard played a pivotal role in the shaping of mainstream German philosophy and the history of French existentialism, the question of how philosophers should read Kierkegaard is a difficult one to settle. His intransigent religiosity has led some philosophers to view him as essentially a religious thinker of a singularly anti-philosophical attitude. In this major new survey of Kierkegaard's thought, George Pattison addresses this question head on to show that although it would be difficult to claim a \"philosophy of Kierkegaard\" as one could a philosophy of Kant, or of Hegel, there are nevertheless significant points of common interest between Kierkegaard's central thinking and the questions that concern philosophers today. The most important of these is what it is to be a self or person and what might be the best form of life for a self thus constituted. Pattison shows that the challenge of self-knowledge in an age of moral and intellectual uncertainty lies at the heart of Kierkegaard's writings and his ideas have much to offer contemporary philosophy.