January 5, 2010 at 8:20 am (Blooms)
Tags: Anti-Climacus, The Sickness Unto Death
“First comes despair over the earthly or something earthly, then despair over oneself about the eternal. Then comes defiance, which really is despair by the aid of the eternal, the despairing abuse of the eternal in the self to the point of being despairingly determined to be oneself. But just because it is despair by the aid of the eternal it lies in a sense very close to the true, and just because it lies very close to the true it is infinitely remote. The despair which is the passageway to faith is also by the aid of the eternal: by the aid of the eternal the self has courage to lose itself in order to gain itself. Here on the contrary it is not willing to begin by losing itself, but wills to be itself.”
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~Source: The Sickness Unto Death (1849)
Author: Søren Kierkegaard using the pseudonym Anti-Climacus
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January 4, 2010 at 7:44 am (Blooms)
Tags: The Present Age: A Literary Review
“The principle of individuality in its immediate and beautiful formation symbolizes the generation in the outstanding and eminent individual; it groups subordinate individualities around the representative. This principle of individuality, in its eternal truth, uses the abstraction and equality of the generation to level down, and in that way co-operates in developing the individual religiously into a real man. For the leveling process is as powerful where temporary things are concerned as it is impotent where eternal things are concerned.”
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~Source: Two Ages: “The Present Age: A Literary Review” (1846)
Author: Søren Kierkegaard
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January 3, 2010 at 8:43 am (Blooms)
Tags: On My Work as an Author (1851)
“From the very beginning, I have stressed and repeated unchanged that I was ‘without authority.’ I regard myself rather as a reader of the books, not as the author. ‘Before God,’ religiously, I call my whole work as an author (when I speak with myself) my own upbringing and development, but not in the sense as if I were now complete or completely finished with respect to needing upbringing and development.”
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~Source: On My Work as an Author (1851)
Author: Søren Kierkegaard
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January 2, 2010 at 9:04 am (Blooms)
Tags: Anti-Climacus, Practice in Christianity
“The print of a foot along a path is obviously a consequence of the fact that some creature has gone that way. I may now go on to suppose erroneously that it was, for example, a bird, but on closer inspection, pursuing the track farther, I convince myself that it must have been another sort of animal. Very well. But here we are far from having an infinite qualitative alteration. But can I, by closer inspection of such a track, or by following it farther, reach at one point or another the conclusion: ergo it was a spirit that passed this way? A spirit which leaves no trace behind it! Just so it is with this thing of concluding from the consequences of an (assumed) human existence that ergo it was God.”
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~Source: Practice in Christianity (1850)
Author: Søren Kierkegaard using the pseudonym Anti-Climacus
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January 1, 2010 at 9:09 am (Blooms)
Tags: Two Discourses At The Communion On Fridays
“What in paganism was sought after and sought in vain, what under the dominance of the Law was and is a fruitless effort — that the Gospel made possible. At the altar the Saviour stretches out His arms, precisely for that fugitive who would flee from the consciousness of his sin, flee from that which is worse than pursuit, namely, gnawing remorse; He stretches out His arms, He says, ‘Come hither,’ and the attitude of stretching out His arm is a way of saying, ‘Come hither,’ and of saying at the same time, ‘Love hides the multitude of sins.’”
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~Source: Two Discourses At The Communion On Fridays (1851)
Author: Søren Kierkegaard
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December 31, 2009 at 9:04 am (Blooms)
Tags: Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses: "The Expectancy of Faith, New Year's Day" (1843)
“Once again a year has passed, heavenly Father! We thank you that it was added to the time of grace and that we are not terrified by its also being added to the time of accounting, because we trust in your mercy. The new year faces us with its requirements, and even though we enter it downcast and troubled because we cannot and do not wish to hide from ourselves the thought of the lust of the eye that infatuated, the sweetness of revenge that seduced, the anger that made us unrelenting, the cold heart that fled far from you, we nevertheless do not go into the new year entirely empty-handed, since we shall indeed also take along with us recollections of the fearful doubts that were set at rest, of the lurking concerns that were soothed, of the downcast disposition that was raised up, of the cheerful hope that was not humiliated. Yes, when in mournful moments we want to strengthen and encourage our minds by contemplating those great men, your chosen instruments, who in severe spiritual trials and anxieties of heart kept their minds free, their courage uncrushed, and heaven open, we too, wish to add our witness to theirs in the assurance that even if our courage compared with theirs is only discouragement, our power powerlessnesss, you, however, are still the same, the same might God who tests spirits in conflict, the same Father without whose will not one sparrow falls to the ground. Amen.”
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~Source: Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses: “The Expectancy of Faith, New Year’s Day” (1843)
Author: Søren Kierkegaard
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December 30, 2009 at 8:50 am (Blooms)
Tags: "Discourses at the Communion on Fridays; I. Luke 22:15" (1848), Christian Discourses
“What sheer vanity the earthly and temporal is… Everything, all that I see, is vanity and vicissitude as long as it exists, and finally it is the prey of corruption. Therefore, when the moon rises in its radiance, I will together with that devout man* say to the star, ‘I do not care for you: after all, you are now eclipsed’; and when the sun rises in all its splendor and darkens the moon, I will say to the moon, ‘I do not care for you: after all, you are now eclipsed’; and wwhen the sun goes down, I will say, ‘I thought as much, because all is vanity.’ When I see the brook running along so briskly, I will say: Just keep on running; you will never fill the sea. To the wind I will say, yes, even it it tears trees up by the roots, I will say to it: Just keep on blowing; there is no meaning or thought in you, you symbol of inconstancy. Even if the loveliness of the field, which charmingly captivates the eye, and even if the melodiousness of the birds’ singing, which deliciously falls upon the ear, and even if the peacefulness of the forest, which invitingly refreshes the heart — even if they were to use all their persuasiveness, I will still not allow myself to be persuaded, will not allow myself to be beguiled; I will still call to mind that all of it is deception. Even though through thousands of years the stars remained so fixed and without changing their positions in the sky, I will still not allow myself to be deceived by this reliability; I will call to mind that they at some time will fall down.”
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~Source: Christian Discourses: “Discourses at the Communion on Fridays; I. Luke 22:15″ (1848)
Author: Søren Kierkegaard
*See Ecclesiastes 12:2,8
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December 29, 2009 at 8:50 am (Blooms)
Tags: Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits
“Are you now living in such a way that you are aware as a single individual, that in every relationship in which you relate yourself outwardly you are aware that you are also relating yourself to yourself as a single individual, that even in the relationships we human beings so beautifully call the most intimate you recollect that you have an even more intimate relationship, the relationship in which you as a single individual relate yourself to yourself before God?”
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~Source: Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits: “Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing” (1847)
Author: Søren Kierkegaard
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December 28, 2009 at 7:48 am (Blooms)
Tags: Fear and Trembling, Johannes De Silentio
“The ethical expression for what Abraham did is that he meant to murder Isaac; the religious expression is that he meant to sacrifice Isaac — but precisely in this contradiction is the anxiety that can make a person sleepless, and yet without this anxiety Abraham is not who he is.”
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~Source: Fear and Trembling (1843)
Author: Søren Kierkegaard using the pseudonym Johannes de Silentio
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December 27, 2009 at 8:51 am (Blooms)
Tags: The Moment
“In ‘Christendom’ we are all Christians — therefore the relationship of opposition drops out. In this meaningless sense they have got all men made into Christians, and got everything Christian — and then (under the name of Christianity) we live a life of paganism. They have not ventured defiantly, openly, to revolt against Christianity; no, hypocritically and knavishly they have done away with it by falsifying the definition of what it is to be a Christian. It is of this I say that it is: (1) a criminal case, (2) that it is playing Christianity, (3) taking God for a fool.”
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~Source: The Moment (1855)
Author: Søren Kierkegaard
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