5/5 Kierkegaard and the Contemporary Spirit (Rick Roderick)

Transcript: http://rickroderick.org/107-kierkegaard-and-the-contemporary-spirit-1990/ This is part five of the seventh lecture in the "Philosophy and Human Values" series of lectures. Presented by Professor Rick Roderick in 1990. Originally released by The Teaching Company on VHS.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Kierkegaard
• Contemporary
• Spirit
• god
• jesus
• christian

[forthesakeofmovies]

1) Despair is not the self. Read pages 22-23 of the section "The Universality of Despair", and that becomes an impossible interpretation. Actually, read Kierkegaard's definition of self on the first page, and he makes it quite clear that the self is the positive third.

2) Kierkegaard writes explicitly about what the cure of despair is: faith (or rather, this is the opposite of despair). It's quite clear that this has to do with resting transparently in the power that established one.

[chrisltft]

@forthesakeofmovies thanks, i'll have another read...

[forthesakeofmovies]

@chrisltft For sure; sorry for writing so much. I just get frustrated when people try to read God out of Kierkegaard. Dreyfus does it too (well, for that matter, a lot of existentialists did).

Unfortunately, in doing so they miss wholly what Kierkegaard was saying. Obviously, I am not claiming that I understand Kierkegaard fully; all I can say is that Roderick's interpretation is fundamentally askew, and he isn't really conveying Kierkegaard to the audience.

[chrisltft]

@forthesakeofmovies point taken. he glosses kierkegaard to set up the point that the self is a despairing relation, which he builds on in the next lecture by tying those concepts to baudrillards view of the world as completely simulated and meaningless. Most of the lecture series end with more than a subtle hint that atheism is an answer that should comfort no one.

[EZkill25l7]

5:05 cut to students in little wool sweaters lol

[chrisltft]

no worries

they all end well, but this one is awesome :)

[pencert]

@EZkill25l7 I lol'd

[lajungesombre]

@chrisltft i like his interpretation. i don't think that there is anything wrong with contextualizing older writings in modern times, to make them fit. it is not the only way of legitimate and proper interpretation, but it is definitely one way. i don't think that to interpret an older work only in its older context is that only legitimate and appropriate way of interpreting that text, and to say so seems to circumvent the freedom of appropriate and legitimate interpretation

[Smokeclouds702]

Profound

[chrisltft]

@forthesakeofmovies sorry i accidentally deleted your original comment, here it is: How does he so totally misunderstand the whole of The Sickness unto Death and yet know so many of the details? It's as if he's decided to read past whole passages and ignore the spirit of the work.

Basically, he constitutes the definition of despair: he would have to lie to himself to read Kierkegaard this way. It's fascinating!

[forthesakeofmovies]

"The human self is such a derived, established relation, a relation that relates itself to itself and in relating itself to itself relates itself to another. This is why there can be two forms of despair in the strict sense. If a human self had itself established itself, then there could be only one form: not to will to be oneself, to will to do away with oneself, but there could not be the form: in despair to will to be oneself."

[forthesakeofmovies]

"Such a relation that relates itself to itself, a self, must either have established itself or have been established by another.

If the relation that relates itself to itself has been established by another, then the relation is indeed the third, but this relation, the third, is yet again a relation and relates itself to that which established the entire relation."