Jon Bartley Stewart

Kierkegaard has long been known as a philosopher and theologian, but his contributions to psychology, anthropology and sociology have also made an important impact on these fields. The articles featured in the present volume explore the reception of Kierkegaard's thought in the social sciences. Of these fields Kierkegaard is perhaps best known in psychology, where The Concept of Anxiety and The Sickness unto Death have been the two most influential texts. With regard to the field of sociology, social criticism, or social theory, Kierkegaard's Literary Review of Two Ages has also been regarded as offering valuable insights about some important dynamics of modern society.

Kierkegaard's Influence on the Social Sciences

As Kierkegaard's reputation grew, he was co-opted by a number of different philosophical and religious movements in different contexts throughout the world. This volume features the three tomes that attempt to record the history of this reception according to national and linguistic categories.

Kierkegaard's International Reception

Vol. 2 is dedicated to the use of Kierkegaard by later Danish writers. Almost from the beginning Kierkegaard's works were standard reading for these authors. Danish novelists and critics from the Modern Breakthrough movement in the 1870s were among the first to make extensive use of his writings. These included the theoretical leader of the movement, the critic Georg Brandes, who wrote an entire book on Kierkegaard, and the novelists Jens Peter Jacobsen and Henrik Pontoppidan

Kierkegaard's Influence on Literature, Criticism, and Art: The Germanophone world

The Debate Between Sarte and Merleau-Ponty

Kierkegaard's Influence on Literature, Criticism, and Art: The Anglophone world

The present volume features articles that employ source-work research in order to explore the individual Danish sources of Kierkegaard's thought. The volume is divided into three tomes in order to cover the different fields of influence.Tome I is dedicated to exploring the sources that fall under the rubrics, Philosophy, Politics and Social Theory. With regard to philosophy, Kierkegaard read the works of all the foremost Danish thinkers of the time and their German antecedents, in particular Cont, Schilling and Hegel. While he was sympathetic to individual ideas offered by this tradition, he was generally keen to criticise the German model of philosophy and to propose a new paradigm for philosophical thought that was more in tune with lived existence. Kierkegaard also experienced the dynamic period in history that saw the great upheavals throughout Europe in connection with the revolutions of 1848 and the First Schleswig War. While it has long been claimed that Kierkegaard was not interested in politics, recent research supports a quite different picture. To be sure, he cannot be regarded as a political scientist or social theorist in a traditional sense, but he was nonetheless engaged in the issues of his day, and in his works one can certainly find material that can be insightful for the fields of politics and social theory.

Kierkegaard and His Danish Contemporaries: Philosophy, politics and social theory

Kierkegaard's relation to the field of philosophy is a particularly complex and disputed one. He rejected the model of philosophical inquiry that was mainstream in his day and was careful to have his pseudonymous authors repeatedly disassociate themselves from philosophy. But although it seems clear that Kierkegaard never regarded himself as a philosopher, there can be no doubt that his writings contain philosophical ideas and insights and have been profoundly influential in a number of different philosophical traditions. The present volume documents these different traditions of the philosophical reception of Kierkegaard's thought. The articles featured here demonstrate the vast reach of Kierkegaard's writings in philosophical contexts that were often quite different from his own. Tome I is dedicated to exploring the reception of Kierkegaard in Germanophone and Scandinavian philosophy. Kierkegaard has been a major influence for such different philosophical projects as phenomenology, hermeneutics, dialogical thinking, critical theory, Marxism, logical positivism and ordinary language philosophy. Similarly in Denmark and Norway Kierkegaard's writings have been more or less constantly discussed by important philosophers, despite the later dominance of analytic philosophy in these countries. The present volume features articles on the leading Germanophone and Scandinavian philosophers influenced by Kierkegaard's thought.

German and Scandinavian Philosophy

Kierkegaard's Influence on Philosophy

The existentialist movement was largely responsible for the major advance in Kierkegaard's international reception that took place in the twentieth century. In Kierkegaard's writings one can find a rich array of concepts such as anxiety, despair, freedom, sin, the crowd, and sickness that all came to be standard motifs in existentialist literature. The articles feature figures from French, German, Spanish and Russian traditions of existentialism. They examine the rich and varied use of Kierkegaard by these later thinkers, and importantly, they critically analyze his purported role in this famous intellectual movement.

Kierkegaard and Existentialism

This volume features articles which employ source-work research to trace Kierkegaard's understanding and use of authors from the Patristic and Medieval traditions. It covers an extraordinarily long period of time from Cyprian and Tertullian in the second century to Thomas à Kempis in the fifteenth. Despite its heterogeneity and diversity in many aspects, this volume has a clear point of commonality in all its featured sources: Christianity.

Kierkegaard and the Patristic and Medieval Traditions

The most complete collection of essays on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit available in any language, with essays by distinguished international Hegel scholars.

Critical and Interpretive Essays

The Phenomenology of Spirit Reader

This first tome treats the German philosophical influences on Kierkegaard. The dependence of Danish philosophy on German philosophy is beyond question. In a book review in his Hegelian journal Perseus, the poet, playwright and critic, Johan Ludvig Heiberg (1791-1869) laments the sad state of philosophy in Denmark, while lauding German speculative philosophy. Moreover, Kierkegaard's lifelong enemy, the theologian Hans Lassen Martensen (1808-84) claims without exaggeration that the Danish systems of philosophy can be regarded as the disjecta membra of earlier German systems. All of the major German idealist philosophers made an impact in Denmark: Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and most significantly, Hegel. Kierkegaard was widely read in the German philosophical literature, which he made use of in countless ways throughout his authorship.

Kierkegaard and His German Contemporaries: Philosophy

Katalin Nun

The articles in this volume employ source-work research to trace Kierkegaard's understanding and use of authors from the Greek tradition. A series of figures of varying importance in Kierkegaard's authorship are treated, ranging from early Greek poets to late Classical philosophical schools. In general it can be said that the Greeks collectively constitute one of the single most important body of sources for Kierkegaard's thought. He studied Greek from an early age and was profoundly inspired by what might be called the Greek spirit. Although he is generally considered a Christian thinker, he was nonetheless consistently drawn back to the Greeks for ideas and impulses on any number of topics. He frequently contrasts ancient Greek philosophy, with its emphasis on the lived experience of the individual in daily life, with the abstract German philosophy that was in vogue during his own time. It has been argued that he modeled his work on that of the ancient Greek thinkers specifically in order to contrast his own activity with that of his contemporaries.

Kierkegaard and the Greek World: Socrates and Plato

The present volume features articles that employ source-work research in order to explore the individual Danish sources of Kierkegaard's thought. The volume is divided into three tomes in order to cover the different fields of influence.Tome III is dedicated to the diverse Danish sources that fall under the rubrics Literature, Drama and Aesthetics. The Golden Age is known as the period when Danish prose first established itself in genres such as the novel; moreover, it was also an age when some of Denmark's most celebrated national poets flourished. Accordingly, this tome contains articles on Kierkegaard's use of the great Danish poets and prose writers, whose works are frequently quoted and alluded to throughout his writings. Kierkegaard regularly attended dramatic performances at Copenhagen's Royal Theater, which was one of Europe's leading playhouses at the time. In this tome his appreciation for the art of Denmark's best-known actors and actresses is traced. Finally, this tome features articles on the leading literary critics and aesthetic theorists of the Golden Age, who served as foils for Kierkegaard's own ideas.

Kierkegaard and His Danish Contemporaries: Literature, drama, and aesthetics

The present volume features articles that employ source-work research in order to explore the individual Danish sources of Kierkegaard's thought. The volume is divided into three tomes in order to cover the different fields of influence.Tome II is dedicated to the host of Danish theologians who played a greater or lesser role in shaping Kierkegaard's thought. In his day there were a number of competing theological trends both within the church and at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Copenhagen, and not least of all in the blossoming free church movements. These included rationalism, Grundtvigianism and Hegelianism. In this quite dynamic period in Danish ecclesial history, Kierkegaard was also exercised by a number of leading personalities in the church as they attempted to come to terms with key issues such as baptism, civil marriage, the revision of the traditional psalm book, and the relation of church and state.

Kierkegaard and His Danish Contemporaries: Theology

The Anglophone World

Kierkegaard's Influence on Literature, Criticism, and Art

Denmark

Kierkegaard's Influence on Literature, Criticism and Art

The polymath Johan Ludvig Heiberg (1791-1860) represented in many ways a kind of crossroads in the Danish Golden Age, where many different figures and cultural institutions converged. Although he has been studied for years in his native Denmark, he has not enjoyed the same reception abroad. Recently, however, his work has begun to catch the eye of international scholars, and, largely as a result of their efforts, Heiberg has now become a familiar name among the most recent generation of Anglophone and international researchers working in fields such as Scandinavian literature, Danish theatre history and Kierkegaard studies. However, Heiberg was one of the most versatile figures of his age, and the full scope of his activity and thought is still far from being adequately explored in the literature. The collection features articles from leading Danish and international experts that reflect the different dimensions of Heiberg's thought. The volume is thus interdisciplinary in an attempt to cover as many different aspects of Heiberg's intellectual activity as possible. It is divided into four rubrics: I. Philosophy, II. Literature and Criticism, III. Drama and Aesthetics, and IV. Politics and Social Criticism. The hope is that this collection will encourage students and scholars to further explore the different dimensions of Heibergs thought, both on its own terms and in connection with other important figures such as Søren Kierkegaard and Hans Christian Andersen.

Jon Bartley Stewart

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