Research Paper On Kierkegaard

What is a human person? How do human beings relate to God? Who am I? Why do I exist?

The Generativity vs. stagnation stage ranges from ages thirty-five to sixty-five and is when we ask ourselves if we produced anything of value in our lives, and if not then we find some way to fulfill that desire (Erikson, 1994). Lastly, the Ego integrity vs. despair stage ranges from sixty-five years old until death, and is when we look back on our lives and decide if we made an impact or made a difference while we were on this earth (Schultz, 2008).

Sacrificed the truth, beauty and the right to think, happiness and comfort is just indulgent, it is the discomfort brought by the misery, responsibility and the bonding give us the weight of life. The world is full of people who try hard to gain happiness, and we all have at least one time the idea of living in a perfect world, a world without pain, without misery, without getting old and without cancers. We always ignored the importance and the beauty of uncomfortableness, just as a quote in this book said, “Stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand”. After read this book, I started to be more objective at those bad things I used to hate, to understand the significance of art and to be grateful to this imperfect world we are

Take a minute to relax. Enjoy the lightness, or surprising heaviness, of the paper, the crispness of the ink, and the regularity of the type. There are over four pages in this stack, brimming with the answer to some question, proposed about subjects that are necessarily personal in nature. All of philosophy is personal, but some philosophers may deny this. Discussed here are philosophers that would not be that silly. Two proto-existentialists, Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, were keen observers of humanity, and yet their conclusions were different enough to seem contradictory. Discussed here will be Nietzsche’s “preparatory human being” and Kierkegaard’s “knight of faith”. Both are archetypal human beings that exist in

Kierkegaard goes on to define what it means to experience despair. Only the “lowliest, least endowed person can despair” (E/O Handout). In other words, the one that abandons commitment to their own life is the one that experiences despair. He goes on to explain that to choose absolutely is to choose despair and he “chooses himself, not in his immediacy, but chooses himself in his eternal validity” (E/O 78). By choosing despair, the person realizes there is a disruption between how one truly absorbs the world they live in and how our perception is used in pursuit of happiness and pleasure. Despair can be understood as the vehicle for an aesthetic person to get back to an ethical life. Specifically, given the right means, the aesthetic person can be more conscientious of the disconnect between one’s absorption of the world and how they pursue happiness. To an extent,

In Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard differentiates between the subject as the knower, and the world (object) as the known: the only way we know the world is through ourselves. Kierkegaard emphasizes the importance of "how" the subject is related to the truth,

In the Life Cycle Completed by Erik H. Erikson, Erikson talks about the stages in life those stages range from infancy to elderly age. The stages are basic trust vs. basic mistrust, autonomy vs. shame and doubt, initiative vs. guilt, industry vs. inferiority, identity vs. identity confusion, intimacy vs. isolation, generatively vs. stagnation, and finally integrity vs. despair. In Wild Strawberries the character Isak Borg goes through all the stages that Erikson talk about in his book Life Cycle Completed and you get a visual understanding of what Erikson means about the stages.

How does the individual assure himself that he is justified? In Soren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, Abraham, found in a paradox between two ethical duties, is confronted with this question. He has ethical duties to be faithful to God and also to his son, Isaac. He believes that God demands him to sacrifice Isaac. But, Abraham, firmly adhering to his faith, submitted to what he believed was the will of God. By using his perspective and that of his alternative guise, Johannes de Silentio, Kierkegaard concentrates on the story of Abraham in such a way that his audience must choose between two extremes. Either Abraham is insane or he is justified in saying he will kill Isaac.

Kierkegaard’s position on faith is represented with the Knight of infinite resignation and the Knight of faith. The Knight of faith is regarded as the one who believes in that which is absurd. For, he is the knight that is able to believe in the things that are

Kierkegaard proposed that a person’s life could be divided into three clear stages: aesthetic, ethical, and religious. I watched my first episode of Star Trek during my aesthetic stage of life. I was immediately transfixed by the intellectual entertainment that

Hegel’s and Kierkegaard's philosophies can be attributed to the Romantic influences of the late eighteenth century. Each were also opposed to their predecessor; aspects of Romanticism were criticized by Hegel, while Kierkegaard had a negative disposition to Hegel’s ideas as he deemed them inapplicable to one’s personal life. In Sophie’s World, Hegel’s “world spirit” is described as “the sum of human utterances.” In the same context, Kierkegaard’s existentialism is described as “the only important thing [is] each man’s ‘own existence.” It is also worth noting, though Kierkegaard rebuked Hegelianism, the man himself was dead a decade before Kierkegaard was thirty years old, so it could not be said the two men were direct contemporaries.

During this stage of life one establishes their place in the workplace, makes a commitment in a relationship, start families of their own and can now see the bigger picture of life. We continue the cycle of life by raising our children, working in our community and being involved in activities and organizations. When one fails this stage they become depressed and feel like their unproductive within their society.

Starting with Kierkegaard, it is best to understand that he has a deep fulfillment to God and that he feels is the absolute. This absolute is to live in the realm of a paradox and that paradox is proving the existence of God and experiencing it for yourself. To understand this is to go through the different stages, of aesthetic, moral and religious. The aesthetic is all about the individual and focuses on oneself as an individual. The moral is having to be antagonistic towards yourself in

The Merriam – Webster Dictionary defines existentialism as a chiefly 20th century philosophical movement embracing diverse doctrines but centering on analysis of individual existence in an unfathomable universe and the plight of the individual who must assume ultimate responsibility for acts of free will without any certain knowledge of what is right or wrong or good or bad (Merriam, 2011). In other words, an existentialist believes that our natures are the natures we make for ourselves, the meaning of our existence is that we just exist and there may or may not be a meaning for the existence, and we have to individually decide what is right or wrong and good or bad for ourselves. No one can answer any of those things for us. A good

In this essay, I will try to summarize, analyze and discuss several pages of Søren Kierkegaard’s Training in Christianity. I will try to focus on his approach to sacred history, a general Christian history and Christianity, which he discusses in this work in relation to faith in God. In other parts of this essay I will attempt also to relate these pages of his work to some key ideas of Kierkegaard’s theology and philosophy and support this with some concrete quotations from the text. In the end I will very briefly compare different philosophies of Hegel and Kierkegaard and try to relate Kierkegaard’s work to a few topics, which