Controverting Kierkegaard (Selected Works of K.E. Logstrup)

Description

This is the first English edition of a major work by the Danish philosopher and theologian K. E. Løgstrup (1905-81). It is the culmination of his critical engagement with Kierkegaardianism, which had begun almost 20 years earlier. In this text, Løgstrup focuses on four main themes in Kierkegaard: his understanding of Christ and thus of Christianity; his understanding of suffering in human existence; Christian vs. secular ethics; and Platonistic influences on Kierkegaard's position, which Løgstrup characterises as nihilistic. Løgstrup presents his own alternative conception in response: that Christ revealed universal ontological ethical structures that put Christians and non-Christians on a par; that suffering is a basic human experience and so there is no such thing as a particular Christian suffering; that sovereign expressions of life such as trust, sincerity, and compassion are the fundamental phenomena of ethics that enable our lives to function, and are thus given as a gift of creation, not of faith; and finally that human existence as created is meaningful and holds value and so is not a Kierkegaardian 'nothingness' of mere relativity. As well as offering a classic and yet controversial critique of Kierkegaard, this text also develops Løgstrup's conception of the sovereign expressions of life, which was to become central to his later ethics, further deepening his distinctive understanding of the human condition. Here translated in full for the first time, it will now be possible for English-speaking readers to explore the issues that drew Løgstrup into his controversion with Kierkegaard. Cover Controverting Kierkegaard Copyright Contents Translators’ Preface Acknowledgements A Chronology of Løgstrup’s Life and Works Introduction 1. Controverting Kierkegaard 2. Background and Context 2.1 Tidehverv: Luther, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Danish Protestantism 2.2 Løgstrup, Tidehverv, and Kierkegaard 3. Controverting Kierkegaard: The Main Themes of the Book 3.1 Part I The Historical Jesus, and Løgstrup’s Concepts of Ontology and Revelation 3.2 Part II Suffering 3.3 Part III The Infinite Movement and the Sovereign Expressions of Life 3.4 Part IV Nihilism and Platonism Controverting Kierkegaard German Foreword Foreword Part I. Christianity without the Historical Jesus 1. The Christian Message Is Derived from Paradoxicality, and Jesus’s Proclamation and Works Are Not Integral to Christianity 2. The Question of the Occasion for Faith According to Kierkegaard (a) Paradoxicality Makes Pressing the Question of the Occasion for Faith (b) The Question of the Occasion for Faith and the Attempt to Legitimize Faith (c) The Answer to the Question of the Occasion for Faith 3. The Approximation Problem 4. An Alternative to Kierkegaard’s View 5. The Paradoxicality 6. The Interpretation of the Crucifixion 7. Following Christ Part II. The Sacrifice 1. Suffering (a) Christianity’s Interpretation of Suffering (b) The Self-Imposed Martyrdom (c) The Alternative to Kierkegaard (d) Jaspers’ Non-Christian Version of Kierkegaard’s Specifically Christian Suffering (e) Demand and Salvation 2. Christianity and the Naturally Generated and Culturally Formed Communities (a) Self-Denial and Martyrdom (b) The Extensive vs Intensive Understanding of Evil (c) A-Cosmic Ethics of Love (d) Suffering and Misfortune (e) The Admission Part III. The Movement of Infinity 1. The Infinite Movement of Resignation 2. Taking over Concrete Existence 3. The Abstract and Negative Self 4. Sartre’s and Kierkegaard’s Portrayal of Demonic Self-Enclosedness (a) Sartre’s Le diable et le bon dieu (b) Drama of Ideas and Drama of Characters (c) Kierkegaard Illustrated through Sartre, Sartre Interpreted through Kierkegaard (d) The Sovereign Expressions of Life 5. The Absolute Good 6. Conformity and the Collision between Faith in God and the Neighbour 7. The Sovereign Expressions of Life and the Question of the Freedom or Bondage of the Will 8. Taking over the Situation through the Sovereign Expressions of Life 9. How the Ethical Life of the People Is Lost, Conformism, and How the Relation of Spirit Is Doubled 10. Morality is the Provision of Substitute Motives for Substitute Actions 11. The Levelling Down of Finitude 12. Consciousness of Guilt (a) Eternity’s Vertical Understanding of Guilt (b) Time’s Horizontal Understanding of Guilt 13. Action and Attitude of Mind Part IV. Nothingness 1. Knowledge as It Is Understood in Transcendental Philosophy, and Existence 2. The Synthesis between Infinity and Finitude, between Eternity and Temporality 3. The Doubling of the Relation of Spirit 4. Nothingness and Action 5. Knowledge and Reflection Editors’ Notes German Foreword Part I Part II Part III Part IV Select Bibliography Primary texts in English Primary Texts in Danish and German Further reading Index