It's only the aesthetic mind that will doubt it but are the majority not aesthetic in their outlook? It is not the paradox that constitutes the downfall but understanding by not understanding itself.
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David Bain • Not one of my favorite Kierkegaard quotes...I stay away from the religous side of Kierkegaard...My spirituality is more of a pantheistic-deistic spirituality and has been influenced more by the likes of Heraclitus, Plato, Spinoza, Schelling, Hegel, Einstien....I have a much different take on 'Fear and Trembling' and the Abraham-Isaac parable. I do not hold any faith in a God who would tell me to murder my own son...Instead, i would tell God that 'He is dead' -- because it is only a sadistic, murdering God who would tell me to kill my own son. I would kill God instead -- at least this type of God. Kierkegaard betrayed his fiancee at the alter for this type of God? In this regard, yes indeed, Kierkegaard was left with an 'either/or' choice -- marriage or the worship of God -- and it is obvious to me that Kierkegaard made the wrong choice. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been such a miserable, sarcastic, arrogant, condescending person his whole life. Kierkegaard never found God or Salvation. He spent much of his life simply trying to justifiy and rationalize his own stupid choices....
David - the genetic fallacy has been rehashed ad nauseum in SK scholarship; surely the meaning of anyone's life could be reduced by this sort of deterministic logic. But is that the best or most charitable way to read the situation? The same for your read of the Abraham-Isaac story and SK's interpretation of it: you could make a case out of it, as many already have, but because your case lacks charity, it is neither the most cogent nor the most compelling case. If your own religious views allow you to trash somebody whom you've never met and likely not tried very hard to understand, how can you consider yourself any different than your own reading of SK? More to the point, maybe your reading of SK says more about the reader than the subject? Perhaps you should read Works of Love - or at least the Golden Rule.
David Bain • I don't know what you mean, Kerby, by 'the genetic fallacy', ...All of my arguments are my own arguments -- even if they have been argued before me by someone who I haven't read....
To be perfectly clear on the matter above, I am certainly not trashing the altruistic side of religion and its sincere attempts to counter the 'narcissistic callousness and apathy' that makes up much of our society today....But you don't have to be religious to be altruistic and humanistic, and both religion and God can mean a thousand different things to a thousand different people -- some good, some bad, some healthy, some pathological, some severely pathological...In the end, both God and religion are no better or no worse than what we project onto these terms and concepts ourselves....I believe that God lives in all of us and that we can 'become more Godly' to the extent that we all live more balanced, meaningful, passionate, assertive and socially sensitive lives....
I will stick with Kierkegaard's more existentially enlightening quotes (at least from my own perspective) like....
'Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.' -- Soren Kierkegaard
I will stick with Kierkegaard's more existentially enlightening quotes (at least from my own perspective) like....
'Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.' -- Soren Kierkegaard
And again, I believe that we all have to look inside to find God. Godliness is the ideal 'dialectic-humanistic-existential balancing act of all our internal and external interests, needs, impulses, desires, drives, paradoxes, contradictions, impasses, conflicts...actualizing our own potential to our fullest capability without trashing other people in the process.' -- dgb.
of what I do not like about authoritarian religion -- and Kierkegaard's
idea of 'faith'. If i were to go back and redo my response i might modify
one line.
My mom is very religous -- Protestant -- as is my dad. Both are great
family and community people. They would probably not like my idea of God,
spirituality, and religion which borrows, as I said, from the likes of
Heraclitus, Plato, Spinoza, Schelling, Hegel and Einstein.
Regardless of how diplomatically or undiplomatically i were to write about
what i didn't like about Kierkeggard (his sarcastic arrogance, his
bitterness, and his take on the Abraham-Isaac parable -- it still comes
down to the same thing.
'Blind faith' without critical insight into what or who you are submitting
your faith and judgment to is a very dangerous, naive proposition,
especially in a very narcissistic world where there are some very ethically
bad people who would love to take advantage of this edge of power that they
would love to incorporate over you. Let's calling it taking advantage of
the 'herd mentality' (eg. Nazi Germany, and authoritarian religion).
So basically, the long and the short of what I wrote remains the same. My
point remains the same. And I don't even know who this 'SK' is that you
keep referring to.
Thanks for your feedback....appreciated....even if our points of view, our
paradigm, may differ.
David
Bain