HN Gopher Feed (2017-11-16) - page 1 of 10 ___________________________________________________________________
I still love Kierkegaard
71 points by lermontov
https://aeon.co/essays/happy-birthday-kierkegaard-we-need-you-now-you-now___________________________________________________________________
interfixus - 1 hours ago
Kierkegaard annoys the crap out out of me, as almost all
philosophers do.But I will say this for the guy: He had humour. A
weird, understated, tangled one, but he had it.Mind you, it is so
tied up with his native language and culture, it ought not travel
well. And judging by whatever translations I have seen, it hasn't.
His worldwide fame is still a mystery to me.And by the way, correct
pronunciation is something like Kierkegore. Fittingly, it means
churchyard.
racer-v - 23 minutes ago
For a translation of his humor into English, see The Humor of
Kierkegaard, ed. Thomas C. Oden. Some of it is laugh-out-loud
funny, like his description of the ridiculousness of state
religion:"Rather than taking part in official Christianity with
the thousandth part of my little-finger nail, I would rather
engage in the following display of seriousness. A flag is
purchased at a hardware store, it is unfurled; with great
reverence I approach it, lift up three fingers and swear fidelity
to the flag. Thereupon, rigged out in a cocked hat, a cartridge-
belt and sword (all from the hardware store), I mount a
hobbyhorse, proposing in union with others to make an attack upon
the enemy, with contempt for the mortal danger into which I am
evidently casting myself, with the seriousness of one who knows
what it signifies to have sworn fidelity to the
flag."Kierkegaard's "Attack upon 'Christendom'" [277-78]
StavrosK - 1 minutes ago
Oh man, I couldn't even understand what he meant, let alone
find the humour in it.
jksmith - 1 hours ago
"Don't be a little Soren" -- Old professor of mine.
mschaef - 1 hours ago
Whenever I see Kierkegaard referenced, I can't help but think of
Michael Swaine's comments (1998) on how it influenced Stroustrup as
he developed C++:> Is modesty a virtue in a programming language?
Stroustrup thinks so. Invisibility, even. "If you know what
language you are using," he says, "there is something wrong. You
shouldn't be able to tell." The "you" in this case is the user, I
guess. Even Bjarne isn't modest enough to suggest that the
programmer shouldn't be able to tell the difference between C++ and
Java. But he may be mystical enough. Red Herring notes that
Stroustrup's thinking was heavily influenced by the Danish
philosopher S?ren Kierkegaard. Gosling, as we know, was influenced
by an oak tree growing outside his window.http://collaboration.cmc.
ec.gc.ca/science/rpn/biblio/ddj/Web...
throwawayjava - 44 minutes ago
When I'm feeling contemplative, I really want to read something
continental for the evening. But when I have shit to do, I snap
into an analytic frame of mind.I feel the same way about
programming languages; the Kierkegaardian crowd (C++, Perl) are
great for evening enjoyment, but I'd prefer something from the
more analytic tradition to language design when there's work to
be done.
yarrel - 1 hours ago
Fear and Trembling reads like the fan of an aging rock band trying
to convince a bored listener that the comeback album really is as
good as the old material if they just listen to it enough times.I
cannot imagine being impressed by the contorted peregrinations of
its attempt at gaslighting.
pmoriarty - 2 hours ago
Reading Kierkegaard was one of the low points of my philosophy
studies. K writes in such a rambling, self-indulgent, muddle-
headed way. Every few hundred pages there might be a small gem,
but for me it was not anywhere near worth digging through all the
refuse for.As far as proto-existentialists go, give me Leopardi
over Kierkegaard any day.
muxator - 1 hours ago
I cannot but appreciate the reference to Leopardi. His poetics is
lucid and implacably rational, while the aesthetics of the
language is fascinating, both in prose and in the poems.
Definitely one of my favourite authors.
hprotagonist - 1 hours ago
> K writes in such a rambling, self-indulgent, muddle-headed
way.When he chose to, it was on purpose. He was wholly capable
of writing clearly. Nesting levels of meta-text, intentionally
adopting a different authorial voice as a metatextual gambit,
etc. were all pretty new things when he was alive.They're trite
or annoying now, but it's still important to know that he wasn't
just being a whiny prat. They're signs that maybe you should or
should not take this or that particular penname totally
seriously. ('johannes silentio' was super prolix, etc. )
nrjames - 27 minutes ago
I always preferred Kierkegaard's contemporary, N.F.S. Grundtvig. If
Kierkegaard was "you have to be a good Christian before you can be
a good person," then Grundtvig was, "you have to be a good person
before you can be a good Christian." As the ideological founder of
the folk high school system in Scandinavia, he's had a long and
lasting impact on the importance of education.
kraig911 - 1 hours ago
S?ren has always kind of put me off to philosophy and
existentialism. Creating foundations within religion as matter of
fact then using it as a principal to state everything is
meaningless... my mind couldn't make the connection.
burntrelish1273 - 33 minutes ago
Exactly. It's noncommittal, inconsistent and still at the mercy
and vulnerability of magical thinking. The positive part was
watering-down ideas enough to be palatable to those whom were
predominantly religious. Reality is too much for most people to
accept, so they lie to themselves and each other.
runesoerensen - 29 minutes ago
> still at the mercy and vulnerability of magical thinkingWhat
magical thinking are you referring to?
mirimir - 14 minutes ago
religion = magical thinking
theoh - 10 minutes ago
Or, religion is, at least, a form of seeing meaning in
things, which is the same category of activity as magical
thinking.
bambax - 1 hours ago
> Kierkegaard?s greatest illustration of this is his retelling of
the story of Abraham and Isaac in Fear and Trembling (1843).
Abraham is often held up as a paradigm of faith because he trusted
God so much he was prepared to sacrifice his only son on his
command. Kierkegaard makes us realize that Abraham acted on faith
not because he obeyed a difficult order but because lifting the
knife over his son defied all morality and reason. No reasonable
man would have done what Abraham did. (...) So when Abraham took
his leap of faith, he took leave of reason and morality.I don't
know if Kierkegaard actually said any of this, but it's wrong.
Child sacrifice is as old as time. Many myths or actual rituals
involved killing one's own children. It's found in most ancient
cultures from the Middle East to the Americas.It was therefore not
"irrational" to do so, but, rather, quite reasonable and normal (if
horrible), esp. in dire times.The innovation found in some books of
the Bible was just the opposite: to declare that child sacrifice is
in fact bad and should be avoided.And of course Jesus is that exact
same myth of child sacrifice (with a twist: he dies but lives
again).
coliveira - 1 hours ago
Like in mostly everything, the Bible is ambiguous about child
sacrifice. A lesser known character, Jephthah, committed child
sacrifice after wining a battle with the help of god, and in that
case there was no scapegoat as in Isaac's tale.
doulos - 51 minutes ago
The account of Jephthah is vastly different than of Abraham;
though neither indicate any ambiguity on God's stance regarding
child sacrifice.Judges 11 1) The Spirit of the Lord had already
come upon Jephthah before he made his vow; showing that God was
already intending to give him victory. (v29) 2) Jephthah rashly
made a vow to God of his own accord, which was never affirmed
by God nor required by God. (v30-31)Even on a surface level
reading of the passage, it would be difficult to defend that it
was ever God's desire that Jephthah sacrifice his daughter.
And, if he knew the character of God as proclaimed by God
himself in Exodus 34:6-7, he could have repented and received
grace and he still would have had his daughter.
hprotagonist - 1 hours ago
and meanwhile, anything related to Moloch, It-Who-Feeds-On-
Children, is 10000% bad and should be destroyed on sight.
jabretti - 32 minutes ago
Jepthah made a vow to sacrifice whoever walked out of his front
door first when he returned home; the fact that it's his
daughter is portrayed as a horrible twist (I guess he was
hoping to sacrifice a servant or something? How did this guy
not see it coming? Though I just read another interpretation,
that he expected it to be one of his animals) and the approval
or disapproval of God is not recorded, nor is whether heThe
point of the story seems to be that you shouldn't go round
making stupid oaths, not that you should sacrifice your
children.
coldtea - 47 minutes ago
>And of course Jesus is that exact same myth of child sacrifice
(with a twist: he dies but lives again)The twist is in fact a
different one -- "sacrifices, dies but lives again" is older.The
key is that the victim, normally a scapegoat the city is happy to
get rid of, is this time celebrated as to be in the right. This
is a turning point in putting the victim as noble (as opposed the
punishers as noble), on which most of modern morality is based on
(Old Testament-following puritans aside).
quantumofmalice - 1 hours ago
> And of course Jesus is that exact same myth of child sacrifice
(with a twist: he dies but lives again). The twist is more
complex than that: it is God sacrificing his own Son, which is
also Him, in place of all sacrifices. God becomes the
scapegoat.Rene Girard talks about this idea in this
interview:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNkSBy5wWDk
jmcqk6 - 51 minutes ago
>God sacrificing his own Son, which is also Him, in place of
all sacrifices.The twist is more complex than that.God is
sacrificing his own son, which is also him, to himself, in
order to satisfy rules that he himself also put in place so
that he doesn't have to send people he created and loves
infinitely to be tortured forever in a place he created because
they broke rules they couldn't understand with consequences
they couldn't comprehend.
Mediterraneo10 - 11 minutes ago
As the other poster stated, this is a snarky dig at Christian
doctrine by someone who has never actually examined Christian
teaching within the philosophy of religion. I would strongly
recommend reading e.g. Richard Swinburne's Responsibility and
Atonement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989) for a
reasonable depiction of Christian belief in this area. There
are atheist critiques of the doctrine of the Atonement, of
course (and disagreements between Western and Eastern
Christianity concerning it), but one has to actually confront
the claims in their fullness instead of posting that
disingenuous, one-paragraph copy/paste snark.
jmcqk6 - 4 minutes ago
>As the other poster stated, this is a snarky dig at
Christian doctrine by someone who has never actually
examined Christian teaching within the philosophy of
religion.That's a pretty bold claim from someone who only
knows me from a few comments on a website. Just because I
can snark about this, doesn't mean I'm unaware of the
things you mention. Though since you called be
disingenuous, you must have expected that as well.But on
the other hand, my time studying christianity ended a
decade ago, and I have no unmet spiritual needs, so I doubt
I will be taking another look at them at this time.
Mediterraneo10 - 2 minutes ago
If you were familiar with actual literature in philosophy
of religion, then why didn?t you cite that instead of a
copy/pasta? I think it is quite reasonable to doubt the
knowledge of the literature of someone who can?t even
cite something.> I have no unmet spiritual needsA lot of
work in philosophy of religion concerning a particular
religion, is done by people who find its claims
interesting (whether they can be defended or attacked)
but who are not in the game for "spiritual" reasons.
coldtea - 38 minutes ago
That's not "more complex". That's the high school kind of
"religion is absurd" reaction, and is a naive literal reading
that even the people of the bible era were above.The key is
that there are no "rules that he himself also put in place"
etc. (as he doesn't exist and even if he did it wouldn't
matter). The rules were formed by people (obviously) and
codify societal practices and philosophies towards morality
and right. The story of Christ, as such, codifies a different
approach contrary to those older practices -- which is why it
was the basis on a whole different mentality that shaped
Europe and ended in things like the "human rights" and modern
ethics.(Or course this can be difficult to fathom in places
were Old Testament beliefs are still championed, along with
very crude literal meanings of religion, in the name of
"Christianity". But this wasn't the case in later Rome and
Europe, not even in the Inquisition era).
jmcqk6 - 27 minutes ago
I was raised in one of those places where Old Testament
beliefs are still championed and they believe in a literal
bible. They absolutely believe as I described it, though
they would not connect those beliefs together like I
did.There are millions of Christians like this in the US
alone, let alone the rest of the world. I'm not sure what
you're trying to push with your interpretation of
christianity, but it's certainly not common, given that it
assumes their god doesn't exist.
doulos - 38 minutes ago
We can complain about the problem or be grateful for the
Solution. The outcomes remain and the choice is ours.
jmcqk6 - 26 minutes ago
Or you can say "that's absurd" and move on with your life.