The Paradoxical Rationality Of S Ren Kierkegaard

Richard McCombs presents Søren Kierkegaard as an author who deliberately pretended to be irrational in many of his pseudonymous writings in order to provoke his readers to discover the hidden and paradoxical rationality of faith. Focusing on pseudonymous works by Johannes Climacus, McCombs interprets Kierkegaardian rationality as a striving to become a self consistently unified in all its dimensions: thinking, feeling, willing, acting, and communicating. McCombs argues that Kierkegaard's strategy of feigning irrationality is sometimes brilliantly instructive, but also partly misguided. This fresh reading of Kierkegaard addresses an essential problem in the philosophy of religion—the relation between faith and reason.

S ren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) famously critiqued Christendom -- especially the religious monoculture of his native Denmark. But what would he make of the dizzying diversity of religious life today? In this book George Connell uses Kierkegaard's thought to explore pressing questions that contemporary religious diversity poses. Connell unpacks an underlying tension in Kierkegaard, revealing both universalistic and particularistic tendencies in his thought. Kierkegaard's paradoxical vision of religious diversity, says Connell, allows for both respectful coexistence with people of different faiths and authentic commitment to one's own faith. Though Kierkegaard lived and wrote in a context very different from ours, this nuanced study shows that his searching reflections on religious faith remain highly relevant in our world today.

Merigala Gabriel's main objective is to thoroughly examine subjective truth, which is the core concept in Kierkegaard's philosophy. Here Gabriel contrast subjective truth with objective truth in order to highlight the significance of subjective truth in its religious context and to bring out the inadequacy of objective truth. The principle of absolute paradox connected with the subjective truth is also discussed. The study also aims to present a detailed analysis of the aesthetic, ethical, and religious stages that represent existential dialectic, to examine their interrelationship and to show how the religious mode of existence is the key to genuineness in real existence. Care is taken to examine the disjunction between reason and faith: to bring out the importance of "faith" in Christianity and to show the limitations of science as far as Christianity is concerned. Gabriel also addresses the relation between God and Man. Finally, the importance of Kierkegaard's thought and his contribution to the development of "subjectivity and religious truth" are outlined.

Johannes Corrodi Katzenstein offers a contribution to the current debate on Kierkegaard, mostly concerning the rationality of religious belief and the presumed religious neutrality (autonomy) of philosophical and scientific thought. More specifically, his book is an attempt to relate Kierkegaard's theory of the stages of life (aesthetic, ethical, religious) to issues that have been of utmost concern to Anglo-American (analytical) philosophy, such as the nature of truth, rational knowledge, objectivity, etc. From this angle, Kierkegaard turns out to be not the irrationalist he has often been made into but rather the outspoken witness of a passion that guides all thinking, i.e. the passion to think what cannot be thought. An attempt is made to show that for Kierkegaard, anticipating some of the arguments of contemporary postsecular philosophy, the ideal of pure or autonomous reason inevitably has its basis in a pre-rational, often tacit commitment to an origin whose primary home is in religious faith. Rather than precluding dialogue, awareness of these deeper forces and starting-points of our various philosophical and scientific outlooks is a critical requirement for mutual understanding between secularist and religious perspectives and traditions competing for cultural and political dominance.

Reidar Thomte's Kierkegaard's Philosophy of Religion is an excellent read for students beginning their study of one of the greats of nineteenth and twentieth century philosophy. Thomte directly appropriates Kierkegaard's insightful language and discussion of the theological and philosophical issues that stimulated him, all of which are still alive and well today. This approach has the happy result that readers seeking an introduction do not have to be led through technical debates in order to approach Kierkegaard's thought. Thomte is a master of incisive summary; his presentations of crucial distinctions are level-headed and to the point. Kierkegaard's categories such as the stages on life's way (the aesthetic, the ethical, Religiousness A, and Religiousness B), the individual, subjectivity, the Paradox, the varieties of love, faith and knowledge, etc., are provocative and illuminating. Not only is this book a good a starter, it is also a comprehensive review of the principal issues in Kierkegaard's philosophy of religion. (by Robert L. Perkins, Editor, International Kierkegaard Commentary)

This book situates Kierkegaard in the nineteenth-century debates which influenced him and discusses his relevance to contemporary Christian theology.