Kierkegaard and ReligionNo thinker has reflected more deeply on the role of religion in human life than Søren Kierkegaard, who produced in little more than a decade an astonishing number of works devoted to an analysis of the kind of personality, character, and spiritual qualities needed to become an authentic human being or self. Understanding religion to consist essentially as an inward, passionate, personal relation to God or the eternal, Kierkegaard depicts the art of living religiously as a self through the creation of a kaleidoscope of poetic figures who exemplify the constituents of selfhood or the lack thereof. The present study seeks to bring Kierkegaard into conversation with contemporary empirical psychology and virtue ethics, highlighting spiritual dimensions of human existence in his thought that are inaccessible to empirical measurement, as well as challenging on religious grounds the claim that he is a virtue ethicist in continuity with the classical and medieval virtue tradition. |
Contents
The Art of Existing Religiously as a Self | 1 |
The Constituents of Personality | 17 |
Portraits of Character | 50 |
Character and Virtue | 74 |
Existence as a Time of Testing | 108 |
The Content and Formation of Christian Character | 128 |
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Common terms and phrases
Abraham absolute Anti-Climacus become Cambridge character traits Christ Christian character Christian love Christianly communion Concept of Anxiety concrete personality consciousness constitutes contemporary defined despair disposition divine earnestness Edna H essentially Christian esthetic eternal happiness ethical-religious everything existence existential expression Fear and Trembling finite forgiveness gaard God’s Hans Lassen Martensen Hong and Edna Hong Princeton human Ibid inasmuch infinite International Kierkegaard Commentary inwardness Johannes Climacus Johannes de silentio Jon Stewart Judge William Kierke Kierkegaard’s Concepts Kierkegaard’s view knight of faith life-view live lowliness Luther Macon Martensen Mercer University Press moral character namely one’s oneself Oxford University Press pagan paradox passion Perkins person of character Philosophical Fragments Philosophy possibility pseudonym relation religious individual repetition Robert Robert L self-denial sense single individual Socrates Søren Søren Kierkegaard spiritual qualities spiritual trial striving suffering task temptation Theology trans truth UDVS understanding upbringing Vigilius virtue ethicist virtue ethics