Soren Kierkegaard

Vladimir Jankélévitch has recently emerged as one of the most insightful moral thinkers on the problem of forgiveness. His work influenced Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida in France and, since the 2005 English translation of his work Le Pardon (1967),¹ the theoretical outline of forgiveness he had proposed has been gaining recognition and importance world-wide. In this paper I propose an overview of Jankélévitch’s position on forgiveness, with a particular attention to the difference between forgiveness and clemency that Jankélévitch articulates. In addition, I offer a critical assessment of this difference, especially with regard to the priority that Jankélévitch assigns to forgiveness over clemency. In order to illuminate the limitations of Jankélévitch’s position I make use of Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous author Assessor Wilhelm and his ethical views,² as presented in Part II of Either/Or. I propose an interpretation of Assessor Wilhelm as an ironic ethicist and provide a sketch of what ironic ethics entails, drawing on Kierkegaard’s magisterial thesis The Concept of Irony and a pseudonymous work, The Concept of Anxiety. I conclude that although Jankélévitch presents an elaborate and insightful account of the concept of forgiveness, his account of its neighbor concept of clemency is unnecessarily one-sided.

This teaching guide accompanies my journal article: Existential Scrooge: A Kierkegaardian Reading of A Christmas Carol, published in Literature Compass 9/11 (2012), pp 695-921. Special Issue: Philosophy and Literature in Nineteenth-Century Britain.

"I wrote this article because I disagreed with the overview of existentialism that Walter Kaufmann put forward in his 1956 book Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre (New York: Penguin, 1989).  This book, an anthology of existential writing, is intended to tell “the story of existentialism” (12).  However, from the outset, Kaufmann makes it clear that it is his story of existentialism:

"An effort to tell this story with a positivist’s penchant for particulars and a relentless effort to suppress one’s individuality would only show that existentialism is completely uncongenial to the writer.  This is not meant to be a defense of arbitrariness.  A personal perspective may suggest one way of ordering diffuse materials, and be fruitful, if only by way of leading others to considered dissent." (12)

Kaufmann then goes on to claim that in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 1864 work Notes from Underground we hear a completely “new voice” singing “an unheard-of song of songs on individuality” and while this song of individuality is completely wretched and repellent it is nonetheless for the highest good (12).  Further, Kaufmann writes:  “I can see no reason for calling Dostoevsky an existentialist, but I do think that Part One of Notes from Underground is the best overture for existentialism ever written” (14).  Immediately after this, Kaufmann goes on to write about the reputed ‘father of existentialism’, Søren Kierkegaard, who “was dead nine years when Notes from Underground was published” (14) however because Friedrich Nietzsche had apparently avidly read Notes from Underground in 1887 and did not get to read any of Kierkegaard’s works, Kaufmann claims that it is “better to reverse the strict chronology” (14) of existentialism and start with Dostoevsky. 

To my mind, however, Charles Dickens’s 1843 work A Christmas Carol is actually the best overture for existentialism ever written owing to its anticipation of existential ideas (albeit in fictional form) and it makes more sense from a chronological perspective because it was written six months before Kierkegaard wrote his seminal 1844 work The Concept of Anxiety.  My article therefore takes up Kaufmann’s challenge and sings a hitherto unheard-of song of “considered dissent”.
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La mélancolie a sans cesse accompagné Kierkegaard. Sans jamais délier ce mal étrange de son expérience intime, Kierkegaard en a fait une catégorie générique capable de rendre compte de la réalité humaine. « Mélancolie » désigne ainsi une forme de l’être et un rapport au monde. Cet article reprend l’analyse kierkegaardienne de cette blessure de l’être qui fige l'existence et que rien ne semble pouvoir guérir. Il montre alors comment Kierkegaard situe le problème sur un plan spirituel, faisant du christianisme tout à la fois une source majeure de la mélancolie et sa traversée possible en ouvrant la possibilité d’un « devenir ».

Verzweiflung und vom Glauben als Herausforderung bei Sören Kierkegaard  Zusammenfassung Während der platonische Sokrates auf die Macht der Dialektik zur mora li-schen Selbstbesinnung setzt, erfährt Kierkegaard das Denken von Jugend an zumal als unheimlich, insofern es alles bislang für wahr Gehaltene in Zweifel zu ziehen vermag. Dennoch kann sich Kierkegaard der Leidenschaft des Denkens nicht entziehen. Bald erkennt er, dass Zweifel leicht in Verzweif-lung umschlägt. Als einzigen Ausweg aus der Verzweiflung sieht er freilich den Glauben. Mit dem Glauben geht derweil die Affirmation der eigenen End-lichkeit einher und das ist der Schlüssel zum nicht verzweifelten Leben. Doch sollte die Versöhnung mit der eigenen Endlichkeit tatsächlich nur kraft des Glaubens möglich sein? Abstract Unlike Plato's Socrates, who relies on the power of dialectics for the benefit of moral self-reflection, Kierkegaard, while still young, experienced in particular the uncanny side of thinking-since everything can be called into question by skeptical thinking. Nonetheless, he could not resist the passion of thinking. Soon he recognized that doubt easily turns into desperation. Certainly , for Kierkegaard, there is no way out of desperation other than by faith. True faith implies the affirmation of one's finitude-and that is the key to the non-desperate life. But should the reconciliation with one's own fi-nitude really only be possible in virtue of faith?  Der vorliegende Aufsatz geht auf einen Vortrag vom 09.11.2016 an der Universität Fri

Kierkegaard Az irónia fogalmáról című doktori disszertációjának sokszor idézett záró passzusában röviden elemzi a humor jelenségét, elhatárolva azt az értekezés tárgyát adó iróniától. A humor fogalmát a szkepszishez, a bűnösséghez, az istenemberi jelleghez – egyáltalában a vallási jelenségéhez köti. Kierkegaard ekkor már évek óta foglalkozik a humor kérdésével, naplóbejegyzéseiben rendre visszatérnek a humor, az irónia és a paródia osztályozási problémái. A humor paradigmatikus alakja számára Johann Georg Hamann, akinek számos megállapítását gondolja tovább, és jó néhány szóképét egyszerűen át is emeli. A tanulmányban azt mutatom be, hogy mennyiben volt példaértékű Kierkegaard számára Hamann humorban gazdag gondolkodás- és írásmódja, illetve milyen mértékben hatott a német bölcselő Kierkegaard sajátosan elhatárolt humor-koncepciójára. Arra keresem a választ, hogy milyen módon támaszkodott a filozófuselőd gondolataira, trópusaira a koraromantika irónia- és vicc-felfogásának bírálatakor, illetve milyen történeti és vallási érvényességet tulajdonított a humor jelenségének.

Nineteenth century Christian thought about self and relationality was stamped by the reception of Kant’s groundbreaking revision to the Cartesian cogito. For René Descartes (1596-1650), the self is a thinking thing (res cogitans), a simple substance retaining its unity and identity over time. For Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), on the other hand, consciousness is not a substance but an ongoing activity having a double constitution, or two moments: first, the original activity of consciousness, what Kant would call original apperception, and second, the reflected self, the “I think” as object of reflection. Both are essential to the possibility of an awareness of a unified experience. Such an awareness is achieved only insofar as the self is capable of reflecting on its activity of thinking. As such, the possibility of self-consciousness, or the capacity to reflect on one’s own acts of thought is essential to the constitution of the self. This new model of the mind became the starting point to the thought of central 19th century figures such as Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), J. G. Fichte (1762-1814), Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) and Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855). This chapter will explore their reception of Kant’s model of self-consciousness, the controversies surrounding its development and exposition, and the advantages of this model for theological reflection. The idea of mind as essentially capable of reflection provided an account of how the self can stand in an ontologically immediate relation to God constitutive of the self, while at the same time allowing that the self’s consciousness of itself is distinct from this original moment, so that a limited or false consciousness of self is possible. As such the task of the self is to recognize (that is, to realize in and through self-consciousness) who it most truly is, both in relation to God, and in relation to self and other.

What is Truth? Philosophical explorations merely presuppose truth, rather than define it. The inscrutable nature of truth enables a recognition of human finitude, which is both Socratic (the recognition that one does not know) and non-Socratic (the recognition that truth has to be given from without). This opens the way to locating truth outside the individual, which can be appropriated only when the condition to recognize it is given....This book explores what truth implies for the individual and examines the value of historical research for Christian faith.

Objectives:
1.Introduce Fear and Trembling within the context of Kierkegaard’s wider authorship.
2. Identify the pseudonymous author of the book and suggest some additional complicationsthat this introduces for understanding it.
3. Explain the main themes and structure of the book.
4. Outline some of the main concerns of each section.

Soren Kierkegaard Lucinda-kritikájának elemzéséből kiindulva azt vizsgálom meg, hogy miben különbözött Schlegel és Kierkegaard iróniával kapcsolatos trópus-használata, milyen metaforák mentén határolódott el a dán filozófus német elődjétől. A hegeli bírálati pontok számbavételével igyekszem árnyalni a Paul de Man-féle interpretációt is. Kierkegaard és Schlegel összehasonlítása során külön hangsúlyt fektetek az éghajlat, a meztelenség, és a restség alakzataira, illetve azok revelációval és szubverzióval kapcsolatos szerepére.

The Danish literary scholar Kresten Nordentoft’s (1938-1982) book “Hvad siger Brand-Majoren?”, Kierkegaards opgør med sin samtid, is a textual exploration of Søren Kierkegaard’s socio-political views. Although Nordentoft throughout the book brings Kierkegaard’s writings into dialogue with a number of well-known political-philosophical ideas, his book is not an attempt to construct a political ideological scheme from Kierkegaard’s writings. Instead, his book is an exemplary attempt to identify and disclose what motivated Kierkegaard’s reaction to the political atmosphere of his time⎯and especially Kierkegaard’s shocking outrage against the Danish State Church (kirkekampen).

Трактат С. Керкегора «Понятие страха» (1844 г.) рассматривается в контексте эпохальных сдвигов середины XIX в., переориентировавших философскую мысль в сторону практики. В этих условиях интеллектуальное высказывание, становясь рупором всего общества и перенимая журналистские нормы, перестает подчиняться академическим правилам работы с понятиями. Убеждение, что мысль должна стать действенной, присуще не только левым гегельянцам. Их противники-и те, кто считает наследие Гегеля платформой для религиозного обновления, и те, кто борется против огосударствления христианства,-также исходят из понимания слова как дела. К числу последних относится и Керкегор. В статье уточняются некоторые аспекты керкегоровской работы со словом. В реферативном изложении тезисов о коммуникации, набросанных в 1847 г. и объединенных общим заголовком «Диалектика этического и этико-религиозного сообщения» (Papir 364-371), подробно разбирается керкегоровское понятие сообщения, дается дистинкция прямого и непрямого сообщения, уточняются роли локуторов, разъясняется функция участников коммуникации, действующих под псевдонимами. Элементы коммуникации-отправитель и адресат, их установки, тактика, речевое поведение и другие уровни, задействованные псевдонимами, анализируются с точки зрения конечной цели послания-вызвать перемену в читающем. Керкегоровское сообщение анализируется в статье как прагматизированное высказывание, стирающее различие между письменной и устной речью; отмечается вклад этих размышлений в позднейшие теории речевых актов. Несколько отрывков из «Понятия страха» переведены заново с учетом коммуникативных намерений автора. Ключевые слова: публичная речь, популяризация Гегеля, коммуникация, непрямое сообщение, псевдонимы-марионетки, «Диалектика этического и этико-религиозного сообщения», переводы «Понятия страха».

The Philosophy of Existence: Concept of anguish existential in Kierkegaard and Heidegger.

Resumo: Por meio da análise filosófica o artigo retrata o conceito de existencialismo e as suas influencias no mundo moderno e contemporâneo.  A abordagem retrata a filosofia dos conceitos em perspectiva comparativa sobre o existencialismo na filosofia de Kierkegaard e Heidegger. Nessa perspectiva discute-se os idealismos, as angustias e as consciências transcendentais no pensamento dos sujeitos
Palavra-Chaves: Existencialismo, Kierkegaard, Heidegger

Abstract:Through philosophical analysis the article portrays the concept of existentialism and its influences in the modern and contemporary world. The approach portrays the philosophy of concepts in a comparative perspective on existentialism in the philosophy of Kierkegaard and Heidegger. From this perspective, idealisms, anxieties and transcendental consciences are discussed in the subjects' thinking
Keywords: Existentialism, Kierkegaard, Heidegger

Recebido em: 10/11/2019  – Aceito em 31/12/2019

At the heart of McCarthy's novel resides a tremendous interpretive challenge: how can we reconcile the ending, which is hopeful about the future, with the fatalism that dominates the text? This paper explores how Søren Kierkegaard's treatment of Abraham and Isaac, found in his work, Fear and Trembling, can help elucidate the tension between hope and nihilism in The Road. Based on a note referring to Kierkegaard found in an early draft of McCarthy’s novel, this paper argues that the father in The Road displays an absurd faith in goodness and the future which can be best explained in relation to Kierkegaard's depiction of Abraham’s faith in Fear and Trembling.

Intoxicated with poets and playwrights, our modern sensibilities quickly recoil from any notion of love put forth in economic terms. Love is not a cold monetary exchange, we might say, but rather a passionate giving of our hearts. However, the metaphors we use for love in our everyday lives reveals that we have yet to fully divorce ourselves from such economic conceptions. We speak of " investing in a relationship, " of the " give and take of relationships, " and how we are " unable to repay the love " given by the other. As the shortcomings of the purely Shakespearian love have been well elucidated by philosophers and theologians alike, I wish instead to focus on this latter conception of love as presented in our economic metaphors, specifically with reference to debt – a metaphor few authors have been willing to employ in their expositions. Using the work of Hadewijch, a 13 th century Christian mystic, and Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher of the mid-19 th century, I want to propose that our economic metaphors for love may still be employed, and may in fact be helpful, but only within a Christian framework.

This chapter sketches some central features of Kierkegaard's discussion of forgiveness. It focuses on the relationship between the divine forgiveness of sins and interpersonal forgiveness between human beings; the difficulties of accepting, as well as offering, forgiveness; and the importance of love to our understanding of forgiveness. Neighbour-love incorporates, for Kierkegaard, a certain way of seeing the other, which highlights the need for certain other virtues or spiritual qualities, such as generosity of spirit, humility and hope. Kierkegaard, I suggest, is interested in what it means to be a forgiving person, as an aspect of what it means to be a loving person. The chapter also summarises some secondary literature on Kierkegaard and forgiveness published in recent years.

The purpose of this brief paper is to elucidate the concept of the person as a member of a communal or civil society. It will try to answer the question as to what makes a person a person, and the corollary question as to how the person should be related to communal society.

L'œuvre de Søren Kierkegaard fait l’objet de recherches constamment renouvelées, en France comme à l’étranger. Mais au regard des œuvres pseudonymes les plus célèbres, la somme considérable des Discours autonymes, dont une part accompagnait la publication des œuvres pseudonymes et que Heidegger considérait comme une source philosophique majeure, a été jusque
là traitée plus discrètement et plus occasionnellement. On propose une introduction aux problèmes afférents au statut de ces Discours dans l'œuvre et à leur réception.

When Kierkegaard claims, on numerous occasions and in various voices, that he is really engaged in a kind of poetic communication, that the single individual is the sole audience and goal of his writing, that he speaks without authority, and that he is absolutely not interested in politics, I believe we ought to take him seriously. But taking Kierkegaard seriously means not taking his rejection of politics directly. Why not? Because Kierkegaard has indicated, through what he calls his maieutic carefulness, that not only does he care about sociality but his authorship is nothing if not an invitation to venture into existence with others as an active, fully engaged ethical-religious subject. This engagement comprises what we can call Kierkegaard's politics in the soft sense of the term. Certainly for Kierkegaard this requires deep psychological reckoning with the spiritual or theological dimensions of our human experience. Hence we can speak of a 'political theology'. My intention here is not to settle a debate about Kierkegaard's politics. I am not going to argue for the true Kierkegaard, or that Kierkegaard properly belongs to any particular faction recognizable to twenty-first century political allegiances. I do acknowledge that Kierkegaard's anti-political and anti-democratic direct statements make him susceptible to a conservative and reactionary politics. But I believe that his indirect communication and the long-view of his authorship seriously undermine the 'conservative' reading of Kierkegaard's more direct statements. Admittedly, then, I will rely on the plasticity of Kierkegaard's thought to stretch him perhaps beyond his own acknowledged positions, but I am confident that the configuration here remains faithful to Climacus and the two 'Kierkegaards' I will highlight.
Just as Kierkegaard recognized that subjectivity is complex and differentiated, so too does he recognize the need for a complex and differentiated approach to our social communication, engagement, and activism.  Therefore, I identify three  approaches to social engagement that incorporate his religious imperative to work for edification and to provide for (polemical) critique. Each approach is associated with a particular voice or ‘Kierkegaard’ and each voice presents a strategy for social engagement. (1) Johannes Climacus communicates a pedagogy of becoming from the point of view of a philosopher, or otherwise ethically committed individual who understands the religious life-view. (2) Søren Kierkegaard (1847), in Works of Love, invites us to direct personal engagement with our fellow humans, but also demands vigilance against closed structures of belonging. (3) Søren Kierkegaard (1855) presents us with the direct action option of provocation and disobedience toward a Church triumphant or a divinized political order.

Pope Francis has remarked that acedia-a condition long referred to as "the noontime devil" in the Western monastic tradition-is the great sin of the modern age. As scientific advancement continues to exponentially increase against our incremental understandings of self, the distance between our material capability and our spiritual refinement has created a gap challenging Western understandings of faith, culture, suffering, and human freedom. This paper will explore these challenges in the light of Schelling's commentaries on human freedom and Kierkegaard's discourse on modernist society, specifically with an eye towards Pope Francis' re-introduction of the works of Romano Guardini to the Catholic world.

Straipsnyje analizuojamos Søreno Kierkegaard'o filosofinio personažo Teisėjo Vilhelmo etinės pažiūros. Įprastai Teisėjas Vilhelmas yra siejamas su Hegelio filosofine teorija, kurioje siektinas etinis gyvenimas yra suprantamas kaip Sittlichkeit, vyraujančių etinių bei mo-ralinių normų laikymasis. Analizuojant S. Kierkegaard'o veikalo Arba / arba II dalį, straipsnyje kvestionuojamas tokios sąsajos pagrįstumas ir atskleidžiama, kad esama nemažai argumentų, leidžiančių permąstyti Teisėją Vilhelmą kaip Immanuelio Kanto etikos atstovą.

This essay demonstrates the prominence of imitation in Kierkegaard’s ethics. I move beyond his idea of authentic existence modeled on Christ and explore the secular dimension of Kierkegaard’s insights about human nature and imitation. I start with presenting imitation as key to understanding the ethical dimension of the relationship between the universal and individual aspects of the human self in Kierkegaard. I then show that Kierkegaard’s moral concepts of “primitivity” and “comparison” are a response to his sociological and psychological observations about imitation from an ethical point of view. In the final section of this paper, I briefly engage Friedrich Schleiermacher’s “ethics of individuality” and Gabriel Tarde’s “laws of imitation” to explore Kierkegaard’s consideration of ethics and imitation as situated within the context of a broader conversation on imitation.

The Kierkegaardian account of becoming a Christian has come to be perceived in radically egocentric terms. This study serves to challenge this perception by demonstrating that Kierkegaard was devoted to expounding Christian conversion as a transformative process of becoming that is grounded in an active relationship initiated through the agency of the eternal God who has established kinship with us in time.
At the same time, this study will also explore the way that Kierkegaard confronts some of the key errors that arise in overly systematic accounts of Christian conversion: (1) the inherent weakness of approaches that seek to dichotomise, and then quantify separately, the contributions of God’s grace and human freedom; (2) the inclination to objectify God and human beings in ways that neglect their existence as living agents; (3) the overemphasis on conversion as a monadic event of individual transformation rather than an event of reconciliation; (4) the tendency to prioritise epistemology over ontology in discussions of becoming a Christian; and (5) the propensity to lose sight of God’s all-embracing purpose of reconciling persons into their one true form of existence ‘before God’.
Finally, this study will also consider how Kierkegaard was able to negotiate his emphasis on the God-relationship with his emphasis on the importance of individual reflection, decision and action in the Christian life. It will conclude that, for Kierkegaard, the freedom to become a Christian is not the freedom to awaken ourselves into the Christian life but a decision to embrace the Christian life into which God awakens us.

Contents

Introduction
I. Listening to Kierkegaard Alongside his Pseudonyms
a. Kierkegaard and Climacus
b. Anti-Climacus and Kierkegaard

Chapter One: The Communication of the Christian Truth
I. Can the Truth Be Learned?
II. The Relationship or Non-Relationship between Subjectivity and Objectivity
III. The Revelation of Sin
a. Despair
b. The infinite qualitative difference and sin-consciousness
IV. Being in the Truth
V. Passion in Kierkegaard’s Thought
a. The Passion of Thought
b. Passionate Responsibility
c. The Passion of Faith
VI. Conclusion

Chapter Two: The Possibility of Reconciliation
I. The Tale of the King and the Maiden
II. Drawing Another to Oneself
III. The Possibility of Reciprocity
IV. The Possibility of Offense
V. Encountering God in Time
VI. Conclusion

Chapter Three: The Orientation of a Life Lived in Relationship with God
I. The Religious Category of Existence
II. Søren Kierkegaard’s Christian Realism
III. Immanent Religiousness and Christianity
IV. Sin-consciousness and Guilt-consciousness
V. Repentance
VI. Conclusion

Chapter Four: The Orientation of a Life Lived in Relationship with God
I. Following Scripture Faithfully
a. Reading a Letter from a Beloved
b. The Perspicuity of Scripture
c. The Uncertainty of Scripture
II. The Single Individual
III. Christ is the Way
a. Following Christ
b. Following Christ Voluntarily
c. Christ as Prototype and Redeemer
IV. Becoming a Christian in the World
V. Conclusion

Chapter Five: The Freedom to Become a Christian in Relationship with God
I. Approaching Christianity
II. The Passionate Transition
a. Venturing the Leap
b. Preparing to become a Christian?
c. Relationship with “the paradox”
III. Faith in the Presence of God
IV. The Choice to Become a Christian
a. The Freedom of the Individual to Relate to God
b. Willing Beliefs
c. Human Responsibility for Sin
d. Transforming the Will
V. The Freedom to Love
VI. Conclusion

Closing Reflection
I. Kierkegaard’s Low Pneumatology
II. Communion with the One Who Establishes Kinship with Us in Time
III. Conclusion

Complete Story of 'The Abyss' from this anthology of ten short stories by Russian master of this genre - Leonid Andreyev. It is a dark and intense work of Expressionist Russian Litareature which at the same time falls in the bracket of Popular Fiction. For at the time, Leonid Andreyev really was the equivalent of a Stephen King or Dan Brown in terms of his popularity in Russia. He may not be a familiar name to everyone now but during his life he was as celebrated as Maxim Gorky and Leo Tolstoy. He was a bestselling novelist who at the same time expressed his extreme political views through his fiction. Andreyev's novels are partly forgotten today but due to some excellent translations, many of which have been pulled together in the work from which this extract has been taken, his short stories live on. There is a separate download on this page where you can access the brief biographical essay on this Russian fiction-writer that I have written to the volume 'The Abyss and Other Stories'. This translation from the Russian has been revised and re-edited by Edouard d'Araille. I have included a photo-portrait of Andreyev after the story.

A diagram to be used as a teaching aid for Kierkegaard's _The Concept of Anxiety_, focused upon the idea of "positing the synthesis." Helps explain the relation between freedom and necessity, the role of the "God-relation," the nature of the demonic as the exclusion of a constituent of the self, the role of anxiety in discovering possibility, and the role of positing the synthesis in establishing the self,  among other things.

This essay investigates why Kierkegaard hates professors (particularly of the assistant variety) and asks what might be done to address his worries. I look especially at the issues of job security (particularly the chasing of it) and the academy's distaste for ambiguity. As I consider these topics I interweave gratuitous personal reflections on my own assistant professor-ish experience.

It was the emphasis of Søren Kierkegaard's railing against 19th-century Danish Christianity in all its ruthlessness that eventually led him to utterly reject and actively fight the majority of the contemporary as well as important aspects of the historical discourse on Christianity. One of the aspects that Kierkegaard distanced himself from sharply consists in the long tradition of Christian mysticism. Nevertheless his concept of the “knight of faith” reveals several deliberations that appear to be close to mystical Christian conceptions (e.g. the meaning of suffering or despair for the leap of faith, an increasing awareness of sin and guilt as well as the conditions for the knight of faith's secular ministry). Thus, Kierkegaard's critique of mysticism suggests his misunderstanding of the mystical perspective's implications. This essay tries to solve said misunderstanding between Kierkegaard and christian tradition by interrelating the process of becoming a knight of faith with the mystical responsibility before the divine and the ethical responsibility before all of humanity.

In this article I employ the Kierkegaardian categories of three distinct stages of existence (aesthetic, ethical, religious) to show that J. Alfred Prufrock, the famously elusive protagonist of T. S. Eliot's first great poem, possesses many features characteristic of what the Danish philosopher described as the aesthetic mode of living. The article begins with a concise outline of the aesthetic existence, and then goes on to describe the ways in which Prufrock's character corresponds to Kierkegaard's analyses. Prufrock's opacity to himself and others, his inability to relate meaningfully to anything lying outside of himself, his futile self-introspections, ultimately leading to a solipsistic insulation from the world, spectral musings on situations which never occurred, and which are unlikely to happen in the future, all make him an embodiment of the melancholy-stricken aesthete. Prufrock's self-involvement is further underscored by the textual organisation of the text. His predicament is made visible through the use of recurrent lines and images, incantatory passages which are deliberately hazy, as well as tentative advances and retreats of the vaguely intimated narrative arch of the poem. All of these features serve to create an aura of solipsistic unreality of Prufrock's universe. Finally, I come to the conclusion that the drowning of the main character described in the final lines of the poem demonstrates the futility of the aesthetic life.

Despite their differences in time and situation, Søren Kierkegaard and Hannah Arendt offer surprisingly similar analyses of the evils of their times. Writing in nineteenth-century Denmark, Kierkegaard is concerned with the threat of "the public." As an amorphous entity that is both everyone and no one at the same time, the public evades responsibility because it is not made up of real individuals who can be called to account. Writing post-Holocaust, Hannah Arendt takes up similar themes as she seeks resources for resistance to totalitarianism. Arendt sees the most dangerous evil as that which has no memory of what it has done and no one who can be held accountable. This paper argues that both Kierkegaard and Arendt identify the subjectivity of the of the ethical agent as the most fundamental site of resistance. For Kierkegaard, this subjectivity is developed through faith, whereas, for Arendt, it is formed by engaging in inner dialogue with oneself through thinking. Both Kierkegaardian faith and Arendtian thinking prepare the individual to make ethical choices that are unsupported by previously established moral frameworks. Having cultivated the capacity to improvise in the face of ethical difficulties, such a subject is capable of resisting dehumanizing evil in all its forms.

El presente artículo argumenta que Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011) puede constituir una ocasión privilegiada para pensar seriamente en la muerte en los términos que Søren Kierkegaard propone en "Junto a una tumba", generando en el espectador el mismo efecto que el discurso pretende producir en el lector.