#kierkegaard

[homoerotisch]

Søren Kierkegaard, in a letter to his niece Henriette Lund, 1847

[apesoformythoughts]

[apocryphics]

copenhagen, 2022.

[sacredcitycenter]

Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.

[soracities]

It is perfectly true, as philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards. And if one thinks over that proposition it becomes more and more evident that life can never really be understood in time because at no particular moment can I find the necessary resting-place from which to understand it.

Søren Kierkegaard, from At the Existentialist Café by Sarah Bakewell

[sororalice]

"Christianity teaches that this individual human being -- and thus every single individual human being, no matter whether man, woman, servant girl, cabinet minister, merchant, barber, student, or whatever -- this individual human being exists before God, this individual human being who perhaps would be proud of having spoken with the king once in his life, this human being who does not have the slightest illusion of being on intimate terms with this one or that one, this human being exists before God, may speak with God any time he wants to, assured of being heard by Him -- in short, this person is invited to live on the most intimate terms with God! Furthermore, for this person's sake, also for this very person's sake, God comes to the world, allows himself to be born, to suffer, to die, and this suffering God -- he almost implores and beseeches this person to accept the help that is offered to him! Truly, if there is anything to lose one's mind over, this is it!" -Søren Kierkegaard, “The Sickness Unto Death”

[thirdity]

When I read the “Exordium,” [of Fear and Trembling] I feel that Kierkegaard is trying to get me into a state of readiness for a consideration of the actual biblical story of Abraham and Isaac, which is essentially inexplicable. The “Exordium” is a rehearsal: it lays out a series of rational explanations the better to demonstrate their poverty as explanations. For nothing can prepare us for Abraham and no one can understand him — at least, not rationally. Faith involves an acceptance of absurdity. To get us to that point, Kierkegaard hopes to “attune” us, systematically discarding all the usual defenses we put up in the face of the absurd.

Zadie Smith, "Some Notes on Attunement"

[pav-anne]

"If you crush a cockroach, you're a hero. If you crush a beautiful butterfly, you're a villain. Morals have aesthetic criteria"- Friedrich Nietzsche

[philosophybitmaps]

[fuoridalcloro]

Per nuotare, è necessario togliersi tutti i vestiti. Al fine di aspirare alla verità, ci si deve spogliare in un senso molto più interiore, occorre spogliarsi di pensieri, pregiudizi, preconcetti, egoismo. Solo quando si diventa sufficientemente nudi interiormente, si può essere ricettivi e comprendere la realtà.

-Søren Kierkegaard-

[redsediment]

You GOTTA love the Kierkegaard influences in Conclave. Faith having no use for certainty, the mundane having an essence of the divine spirit, anxiety over the lack of objectivity of faith…

[cogito-ergo-iperuranio]

La vita può essere capita solo all'indietro, ma va vissuta in avanti.

Søren Kierkegaard

[thepursuitofunderstanding]

The most common form of despair is not being who you are.

Soren Kierkegaard

[dzgrizzle]

From Tom Gauld (and Kierkegaard)

[schizografia]

Non mi va di far nulla. Non mi va di andare a cavallo, è un esercizio troppo violento; non mi va di camminare, mi stanca troppo; non mi va di sdraiarmi, perché, o bisogna restare sdraiato, e questo non mi va, o bisognerebbe alzarsi, e nemmeno questo mi va, Summa summarum: non mi va di fare nulla [...]. Destino miserabile! È inutile che ti impiastricci il viso avvizzito come una vecchia battona, è inutile che ti metta a suonare i tuoi ciondoli da pagliaccio: tu mi annoi.

S. Kierkegaard

[grandpasessions]

In his early period, Lacan worked within the opposition of empty and full speech.

Empty speech is speech situated among the imaginary axis.

For Lacan, subjectivity is founded upon identification with a false image of unity.

The subject perpetuates this imaginary self by choosing relationships which confer upon him or herself the sense of sameness, relations which are in effect 'narcissistic embraces.'

This is because it is far easier to construct oneself on the basis of another, incorporating his or her tastes or desires, rather than confront the lack that resides in each of us.

And because the subject has constructed him or herself on the basis of another, he or she is unable to enjoin in the assumption of desire.

In other words, in constructing our desires on the basis of another we reinforce our alienation from desire.

As Lacan says: 'For in the work he does to reconstruct it for another, he encounters anew the fundamental alienation that made him construct it like another, and that has always destined it to be taken from him by another.'

This is the meaning of Lacan's enigmatic phrase, 'Man's desire is the desire of the Other,' we desire what the Other desires.

Speech is empty therefore to the extent that it is ironically filled by the Other.

As Lee puts it: 'From the subject's own perspective, then, his speech has been in an important sense "empty": it has been emptied of the subject by being filled with his alienating moi [ego] identity.'

In a clinical setting, a subject whose speech is empty will tend to objectify himself in the following ways:

'I think that I'm the kid of person .. ' or alternatively, 'My teacher thinks that I'm ...'

The art of analysis is to break the analysand's imaginary identifications, 'suspending the subject's certainties until their final mirages have been consumed.'

It is not difficult to see how empty speech corresponds to the objective standpoint.

The objective standpoint seeks to ground itself in sure and certain foundation; it relies on a universally accepted standard of rationality, so that given the same premise we can all arrive at the same conclusion, thereby conferring a collective self-same identity and propagating the illusion of the whole.

As Kierkegaard says: 'The objective way is of the opinion that it has the security that the subjective way does not have' because our thoughts are buttressed by a collective Other.

Theology, Psychoanalysis and Trauma

Marcus Pound