Sitepal Kierkegaard: THE SICKNESS UNTO DEATH

[pastorniels]

Sorry Gaurinathan, i'm a danish scholar. I do know what i'm talking about. Ever read a complete book of Kierkegaard? In danish?

[meryle24]

how do u upload this 2 utube?

[AssemHendawi]

shittiest thing I've ever seen !

[philomypillow]

hahahahahahaha watch this stoned

[domuned]

Hey, cuates, cuática la cosa. Kierkegaard no era tan gil.

[warwize]

kierkegaard was truly a master of irony, that opening sentence is made of irony and many lols

[warwize]

HILARIOUS LOL OLLOL

kierkegaard's convoluted description of the self + robot voices = pure comedy

[watashiwanachodes]

the first time i read that book it freaked me out so much i wanted to throw myself in front of a car... it really felt no other way that to be desperate meanted NOT wanting to fall in despair... just like they say in ICHI The killer

[Duchovicius666]

Cool:D

[TheCanadianPrairies]

Excellent video. :)

[Casualvacancy]

this is strange

i could understand it when i read it.

But how cud anyone understand these guys!?

[ticklepain]

synthesis that's it !

I am single ;I am self

Couples are halflings ?

[sicknessuntodeath]

The opening of "The Sickness unto Death" is Kierkegaard parodying Hegel's often obtuse ellipses; though it still is quite effective by its own standards. I am, though, no expert - contrary to the indications of my sign in. Perhaps I am somewhat relating myself to myself or something...?!

The ridicule belongs to Kierkegaard's fiery dislike of Hegel, a fire that, to be sure, most definately does burn.

[sweetsouce]

actually, according to Hubert Dreyfus, to think of the opening of Sickness Unto Death as a parody of Hegel is a horrible misunderstanding of what Kierkegaard is trying to say and do. (listen to his lecture on itunesU, under UC Berkeley, Philosophy, Philosophy 7: Existentialism in Literature, Spring 2006, "Sickness Unto Death" pt.1. Its for free, and a good listen)

[pastorniels]

@sweetsouce Actually pretty much everything Kierkegaard ever said was in dispute to Hegel. Kierkegaard could be quite ironic, so he could very well be making fun of Hegel. Secondly, Kierkegaard puplished his own works. Hence the occasional lack of editing. Sometimes he just babels on, simply because there was no editor to make him edit his works. Therefore it is important to realise that not every chapter in a Kierkegaard book is the deepest insight.

[gaurinathan]

@pastorniels what a load of rubbish! hahahaha... Put the care he put into every single word and sound into one day of yours and you'll have one of the greatest days of your life.

[nowmatonic]

I would argue that the introduction is not a parody of Hegel, but rather the foundation on which the rest of The Sickness Unto Death is based. This is a pseudonymous work about a serious topic--despair, and overcoming despair in faith--so I hardly think that SK would begin the entire discussion in an ironical fasion. Roger Poole tries to make points like this, but if we take SK as a serious Christian thinker, which I think we should, it is no longer so easy to make such dismissive comments.

[sicknessuntodeath]

It seems that it is I who have been a slave to the tyranny of the copula. However, I don't think that 'parody' is necessarily derogatory, the debt to Hegel of his detractors is inculcate, and K does go on to flesh out the abstraction (some would say excessive, which may or not be his point) with concrete examples. I don't think the above comment is dismissive at all. Remarks on style are necessary - I guess(!) - for commentary on K, But conclusions(?!):

The instant of decision is madness.

[nowmatonic]

I could not agree more that we must take style into consideration when reading K (e.g. we will get nowhere without taking the voices of the psudonymous authors seriously); however, I think that the deconstructive reading of SK often goes too far in seeing SK as little more than an aesthetic encounter. If we reduce K to this (which is not liberating), then we do not need to listen to what K says, but only how he says it. Nothing could be further from SK's interpretation of his own authorship.

[watashiwanachodes]

it seems more like: "the instant IS madness"

[watashiwanachodes]

why not? in a way thats what gives definitive depth to plato's work, that over all that layers of interpretation still remains the question of how serious is he about all those issue's he addresed and that comes from a man that gets the most serious respect from the philosophical community: leon robin. to have the serious aspects of interpreting K and add to that the ironic or/and sarcastic quality to it it would prove quite a hard yet reguarding agenda to follow.

[nowmatonic]

True, but the more important question is, namely, what kind of irony are we discussing?  Wayne Booth outlines two kinds of irony in his book on the subject: a negative and a positive sort. Negative irony is that which leads onward to further ironic "deconstruction" while positive is that which is put to the service of a positive view. I think that SK, in his attempt to "reintroduce Christianity to Christendom" falls in the latter category. Yes, he is ironic and sarcastic, but toward a goal.

[nowmatonic]

If you are interested, C. Stephen Evans wrote a great article on precisely the subject of irony in SK (though he looks at Philosophical Fragments instead of SUD):

C. Stephen Evans, "The Role of Irony in Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments" Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook 2003, pp. 63-99.

[watashiwanachodes]

well not shure if thats the point since he did get into the trouble of all the pseudonims, i think they all have different agendas and part of their function was to separate the states so sayin its positive or not has the downwards that implies that those states "should" be put into an order and they all become a path for life (a la plato's banquet) and loose theyr significance, ¿why bother describing anything other than the transition to religious state?theres more to k i think

[nowmatonic]

You are correct to say the pseudonyms make reading SK much more difficult, and to some extent SK wants to disappear and let each pseudonym speak for himself (that is his purpose in indirect communication as connected to subjectivity: c.f. Concl. Unscien. Post.). Yet even K in his "autobiography" The Point of View argues that all the pseudonyms are meant to lead the readers to the religious. He considers the totality of the authorship edifying, even if each writing in itself may not be so.

[watashiwanachodes]

i thought inevitable for u to pull up that quote. still, how much of the ironic aspect could be broughy up in point of view? i think many. just like pessoa who had an "ortonimo" (kind of an pseudonymous) called just like himself, fernando pessoa. in a way i think that both authors could disassociate subjectivity extremely well. to the point of not giving strength to unity the same as most other thinkers do. just like in fear and trem, one is apart from itself. how could we defend oneness in k

[nowmatonic]

Good points. First, I think it is perhaps important to distinguish between oneness in voice and oneness in purpose. There is certainly not oneness in voice in SK's early writings (even though he drops the pseudonymns altogether in the late writings in order to write "explicitly Christian" treatises under his own name). I think oneness in purpose is shown very clearly in the use of the stages/spheres of existence. Regardless of differing perspectives on what constitutes the best life, all ...

[nowmatonic]

... the pseudonyms agree that the stages exist. Now the question is one of purpose: does SK intend for the reader to grow within these stages into the religious? MacIntyre in After Virtue argues "no", but if we look at how Judge W argues, he gives reasons why the ethical is aesthetically better. For A, suicide is the tendency, and I am pretty sure SK intends for the reader to get free of such despair in faith. This is K's purpose and therefore the oneness that holds together the authorship.

[watashiwanachodes]

this is the coming apart point, i think. lets just remember that he is the author of paradox (for instance, unamuno brought his all " being an i is to be contradictory" thing going after reading k) and second i go more for the richness and polysemic way of thinking the world (as a symbol) and i dont think much of the edifying stuff that is obviously at work (even we dont agree at what extend it goes on). so: nice arguing with ya mister. u have good points there

[nowmatonic]

Good move to bring the discussion into the realm of paradox. You are completely correct to call SK the philosopher of paradox, so we should look at this a bit (I am quite hopeful that it is precisely at the point of "coming apart" that one learns the most). First, I want to consider carefully Unamuno's own reading of SK: I tend to think that the existentialists such as Sarte, Camus and U are less interested in the Christian aspects of SK and therefore have greater tendencies to read the ...

[nowmatonic]

... existential elements (that no doubt exist) as the center. Why should we give priority to this reading over another? Secondly, I don't believe SK spends so much time on paradox for the sake of paradox alone. In Phil. Frag. paradox is meant to show the limits of reason so as to prepare the individual for revelation (note 1) and in SUD paradox is meant to force the individual into either faith or offense by a passionate decision (note 2). For SK, paradox is not the end, but the beginning.

[nowmatonic]

(n. 1) Ph. F. 46: "if a human being is to come truly to know something about the unknown (the god), he must first come to know that it is... absolutely different from him...but how is the understanding to grasp this? At this point we seem to stand at a paradox."

(n. 2) SUD, 98 (Anti-C): "the Christian teaching is that sin is a position--yet not as if it could be comprehended, but as a paradox that must be believed...either it must be believed or one must be scandalized and offended by it."

[nowmatonic]

One Q: if we see the world as symbol, then are we not required to retain some intelligible (not necessarily reason-based) connection to the signifier? Otherwise doesn't the symbol lose all meaning that even willing cannot supply? E.g., if the word XIKEED existed in some "dead" language as a symbol of something, we could supply all the meaning we want, but if we have no connection to the signifier, we may as well drop its funtion as a symbol and call it instead a new signifier (for us).

[watashiwanachodes]

precisely, but as other religious, art, and symbolic thinkers -such as r otto or h corbin- have recognized, when speaking about the "absolutely different" we cannot accept the early and rough meaning of symbol -the greek symbolon-, instead, the paradox is that its great allusive nature, god's i mean, can be pointed by this finite thing, the symbol, only by over charging it with so much meaning -thats why is polysemantic- to show something that is either in every direction or alluded only by...

[watashiwanachodes]

the fact that its missing. god here its not an object. thats why it changes the structure towards how symbols works but also about what they can mean. to me SK, among other thinkers, talks about a paradoxical symbol that tries to mean everything in a way that it could be confused with... nothing, i think. and that is a god that resembles only the god that appears from time to time in mysteric facets of broader religions and so, to answer:

[watashiwanachodes]

To me he is a religious thinker but in a more of a mysteric track and less of a institution kind of, just as he demonstrate on a couple of episodes of his life. so.. he is a christian to me, but more of the nag hammadi, dionysius the aeropagite, juan de la cruz, kind. and yes paradox is the beginning of other road, but its a more intimate one. that can be felt by higher aspects of the soul but cannot be understood by mere reason, just as ibn arabi described in his dreamy visit to the heavens

[watashiwanachodes]

about unamuno, he wrote his "agonia del cristianismo", the agony of christianity AFTER reading SK in which he wished to state how being religious means to go about an internal war (thats the meaning of the word agony, to him). a war thats is at stake, according to him, in the contradictory disconnected personas that live inside us (lie the pseudonims in SK) just in the fear and trem fashion. that war is, of course, the one for true faith. and a war that has absolute value BECAUSE

[watashiwanachodes]

we really dont know, for shure, if god must be taken by faith as real.

have a nice day and sorry for all the multiple comments!

[nowmatonic]

Thank you for the incredibly insightful comments. With the internet full of ad hominem abuse due to the lack of responsibility that anonymity unfortunately too often supports, It is quite refreshing to read an intelligent and reflective argument. I will have to ruminate a bit more on your previous entries, but I assure you some sort of response will follow soon enough. Thanks.

[watashiwanachodes]

well thank u for humoring me and chatting with me. and sorry for the very much incompetent english that comes from the fact that this is not my birth language. im shure i made tons of mistakes and phrases with "twisted tongue" or with a bad structure! thanks again!

[SAVONLIQUIDE]

how incredibly paradoxical! Do you intend to ridicule Kierkegaard, or is this some sort of social religious-ethical protest statement?

[jiolsmolimassunemo]

oh but kierkegaard is entirely convinced that it is in paradox that truth lies.

he LOVES the paradox.

[watashiwanachodes]

that sounds just like what Unamuno would've said. and youre reaching far my friend, in barely a couple of phrases.

[us3idiots]

wait. what?

[time4anarchy]

thats funny. yeah i guess kierkegaard can be like that- wordy and really abstract.

i still enjoy his writing though, even though i don't get all of it. the parts i get- i really get and enjoy

[magauchsein]

good :)