Kierkegaard On Art And Communication

Christianity has repeatedly valued the "Word" over and above the non-verbal arts. Art has been seen through the interpretative lens of theology, rather than being valued for what it can bring to the discipline. 'Explorations in Art, Theology and Imagination' argues that art is crucially important to theology. The book explores the interconnecting themes of embodiment and incarnation, faith and imagination, and the similarities and differences between art and theology. Arguing for a critique that begins with art and moves to theology, 'Explorations in Art, Theology and Imagination' offers a radical re-evaluation of the role of art in Christian discourse.

And to a new awareness of Kierkegaard's skillful - and ethical - use of "indirect communication," much like a good midwife and very much in the way of the "Socratic/maieutic art.""--BOOK JACKET.

Kierkegaard scholarship has generally focused on either existential or religious issues, interpreting Kierkegaard's understanding of the individual's relationship to itself and to the Christian God. As a result of his description of the stages of development of the individual in the process of that relationship, such scholarship has consistently ignored the inherent potential to articulate an aesthetic system which would describe art as a means of facilitating the development in a positive direction. This book offers the first thorough description of a Kierkegaardian aesthetic which does not demote art to a merely sensuous and negative influence; it is an explication of the specific feature of Kierkegaard's description of the individual (such as communication, repetition, and the self) within the context of a positive notion of art, as well as an analysis of art itself, the artist, and the fundamental value of art as a profitable means of influencing the individuals. While this book is unique for placing art into a central role within Kierkegaard scholarship, it also remains critical of such a role, maintaining the importance of recognizing the limitations which art has. The final

The pseudonymous works Kierkegaard wrote during the period 1843&–46 have been responsible for establishing his reputation as an important philosophical thinker, but for Kierkegaard himself, they were merely preparatory for what he saw as the primary task of his authorship: to elucidate the meaning of what it is to live as a Christian and thus to show his readers how they could become truly Christian. The more overtly religious and specifically Christian works Kierkegaard produced in the period 1847&–51 were devoted to this task. In this book Sylvia Walsh focuses on the writings of this later period and locates the key to Kierkegaard&’s understanding of Christianity in the &“inverse dialectic&” that is involved in &“living Christianly.&” In the book&’s four main chapters, Walsh examines in detail how this inverse dialectic operates in the complementary relationship of the negative qualifications of Christian existence&—sin, the possibility of offense, self-denial, and suffering&—to the positive qualifications&—faith, forgiveness, new life/love/hope, and joy and consolation. It was Kierkegaard&’s aim, she argues, &“to bring the negative qualifications, which he believed had been virtually eliminated in Christendom, once again into view, to provide them with conceptual clarity, and to show their essential relation to, and necessity in, securing a correct understanding and expression of the positive qualifications of Christian existence.&”

These readings of Kierkegaard begin with a series of reflections on the background to his thought and writings, examining Romanticism, German Idealism and Danish intellectual history in the early 19th century. The author analyzes the role of indirect communication in Kierkegaard's authorship.

John Heywood Thomas was probably the earliest twentieth-century British scholar to study Kierkegaard's texts. Here he offers, as the fruit of a lifetime's devotion to that study, what Kierkegaard would call a "fragment"--a little of what needs to be said about the legacy of this radical Danish writer, philosopher, and theologian. This book, based on lectures given at the University of Calgary, seeks to explore different aspects of Kierkegaard's work in its original context and its legacy. Chapters include studies on Kierkegaard the writer (located within the history and development of European literature and nineteenth-century aesthetic theory) and Kierkegaard the philosopher (understood within the context of the development of philosophy in the first quarter of the nineteenth century). Also, since he always described himself as a religious thinker, Kierkegaard's view of religion is explored and in particular his attitude to the possibility of Christianity without the confines of an established church. Because Kierkegaard's philosophy is never separate from his religious thinking, Heywood Thomas also offers studies on the issues of metaphysics in Kierkegaard--its relation to theology, the scope of reason, the problem of time, and the meaning of death. Finally, to appreciate Kierkegaard as a man of his time as well as a "man for all seasons," his views on education are considered.