Life lessons from Kierkegaard

Author: Robert Ferguson
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 1447247043
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 130

Book Description
The School of Life offers radical ways to help us raid the treasure trove of human knowledge' Independent on Sunday Soren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher, theologian, literary stylist and social critic. Born in 1813 in Copenhagen, his philosophical work addressed living as a single individual and the importance of personal choice. A famously fierce critic of the idealist thinkers of his time, he is regarded as the first existentialist philosopher. Here you will find insights from his greatest works. The Life Lessons series from The School of Life takes a great thinker and highlights those ideas most relevant to ordinary, everyday dilemmas. These books emphasize ways in which wise voices from the past have urgently important and inspiring things to tell us. 'thoroughly welcoming and approachable ... [Robert Ferguson] communicates strongly his enthusiams, indeed his love, for this Manichean of the north, and writes of him beautifully ... If the six books in the Life Lessons series can teach even a few readers to pay passionate heed to the world - to notice things - they will have been an unquestionable success' John Banville, Prospect 'there is a good deal to be learned from these little primers' Observer

The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air

Author: Søren Kierkegaard
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400880475
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 127

Book Description
A masterful new translation of one of Kierkegaard's most engaging works In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells his followers to let go of earthly concerns by considering the lilies of the field and the birds of the air. Søren Kierkegaard's short masterpiece on this famous gospel passage draws out its vital lessons for readers in a rapidly modernizing and secularizing world. Trenchant, brilliant, and written in stunningly lucid prose, The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air (1849) is one of Kierkegaard's most important books. Presented here in a fresh new translation with an informative introduction, this profound yet accessible work serves as an ideal entrée to an essential modern thinker. The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air reveals a less familiar but deeply appealing side of the father of existentialism—unshorn of his complexity and subtlety, yet supremely approachable. As Kierkegaard later wrote of the book, "Without fighting with anybody and without speaking about myself, I said much of what needs to be said, but movingly, mildly, upliftingly." This masterful edition introduces one of Kierkegaard's most engaging and inspiring works to a new generation of readers.

Kierkegaard's God and the Good Life

Author: Stephen Minister
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253029481
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 295

Book Description
Collected critical essays analyzing Kierkegaard’s work in regards to theology and social-moral thought. Kierkegaard’s God and the Good Life focuses on faith and love, two central topics in Kierkegaard’s writings, to grapple with complex questions at the intersection of religion and ethics. Here, leading scholars reflect on Kierkegaard’s understanding of God, the religious life, and what it means to exist ethically. The contributors then shift to psychology, hope, knowledge, and the emotions as they offer critical and constructive readings for contemporary philosophical debates in the philosophy of religion, moral philosophy, and epistemology. Together, they show how Kierkegaard continues to be an important resource for understandings of religious existence, public discourse, social life, and how to live virtuously. “All in all, the editors of this volume have put together a thoughtful and sometimes provocative collection of essays by a number of Kierkegaard scholars and philosophers for the reader’s consideration. . . . The volume undoubtedly makes a contribution to contemporary philosophical debates in the philosophy of religion, moral philosophy, and epistemology, especially with regard to the importance of faith and love for leading a good and meaningful human life.” —International Journal for Philosophy of Religion “Invites the reader to think anew about what Kierkegaard was saying and what we can learn from him in the context of our time, particularly what it means to become a Christian in terms of the moral task of love and living a life worthy of a human being.” —Sylvia Walsh, translator of Kierkegaard’s Discourses at the Communion on Fridays

Philosopher of the Heart

Author: Clare Carlisle
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374721696
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Book Description
Philosopher of the Heart is the groundbreaking biography of renowned existentialist Søren Kierkegaard’s life and creativity, and a searching exploration of how to be a human being in the world. Søren Kierkegaard is one of the most passionate and challenging of all modern philosophers, and is often regarded as the founder of existentialism. Over about a decade in the 1840s and 1850s, writings poured from his pen pursuing the question of existence—how to be a human being in the world?—while exploring the possibilities of Christianity and confronting the failures of its institutional manifestation around him. Much of his creativity sprang from his relationship with the young woman whom he promised to marry, then left to devote himself to writing, a relationship which remained decisive for the rest of his life. He deliberately lived in the swim of human life in Copenhagen, but alone, and died exhausted in 1855 at the age of 42, bequeathing his remarkable writings to his erstwhile fiancée. Clare Carlisle’s innovative and moving biography writes Kierkegaard’s life as far as possible from his own perspective, to convey what it was like actually being this Socrates of Christendom—as he put it, living life forwards yet only understanding it backwards.

Life Lessons From Freud

Author: Brett Kahr
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1743515839
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 79

Book Description
Sigmund Freud is best known as the father of psychoanalysis. Born in 1856, he was a physiologist, medical doctor and psychologist who spent most of his life in Vienna, Austria. He developed revolutionary ideas about the unconscious mind, repression and the meaning of dreams and the clinical method of treatment through dialogue. Here you will find extracts from his greatest works. The Life Lessons series from The School of Life takes a great thinker and highlights those ideas most relevant to ordinary everyday dilemmas. These books emphasise ways in which wise voices from the past have urgently important and inspiring things to tell us. This book is introduced and edited by Brett Kahr, Senior Clinical Research Fellow in Psychotherapy and Mental Health at the Centre for Child Mental Health in London. He is a qualified psychotherapist and author.

The Essential Kierkegaard

Author: Søren Kierkegaard
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691019401
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 536

Book Description
An anthology containing substantial excerpts from the Danish philosopher's major works.

Kierkegaard

Author: C. Stephen Evans
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521877032
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 223

Book Description
This clear, readable introduction to Kierkegaard presents him as a thinker with powerful answers to the questions which philosophers ask.

Kierkegaard and the Problem of Self-Love

Author: John Lippitt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110706791X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 221

Book Description
The problem of whether we should love ourselves - and if so how - has particular resonance within Christian thought and is an important yet underinvestigated theme in the writings of Søren Kierkegaard. In Works of Love, Kierkegaard argues that the friendships and romantic relationships which we typically treasure most are often merely disguised forms of 'selfish' self-love. Yet in this nuanced and subtle account, John Lippitt shows that Kierkegaard also provides valuable resources for responding to the challenge of how we can love ourselves, as well as others. Lippitt relates what it means to love oneself properly to such topics as love of God and neighbour, friendship, romantic love, self-denial and self-sacrifice, trust, hope and forgiveness. The book engages in detail with Works of Love, related Kierkegaard texts and important recent studies, and also addresses a wealth of wider literature in ethics, moral psychology and philosophy of religion.

How To Read Kierkegaard

Author: John D. Caputo
Publisher: Granta Books
ISBN: 1783780649
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 142

Book Description
Soren Kierkegaard is one of the prophets of the contemporary age, a man whose acute observations on life in nineteenth-century Copenhagen might have been written yesterday, whose work anticipated fundamental developments in psychoanalysis, philosophy, theology and the critique of mass culture by over a century. John Caputo offers a compelling account of Kierkegaard as a thinker of particular relevance in our postmodern times, who set off a revolution that numbers Martin Heidegger and Karl Barth among its heirs. His conceptions of truth as a self-transforming 'deed' and his haunting account of the 'single individual' seemed to have been written with us especially in mind. Extracts include Kierkegaard's classic reading of the story of Abraham and Isaac, the jolting theory that truth is subjectivity and his ground-breaking analysis of the concept of anxiety.

Life Lessons from Bergson

Author: Michael Foley
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 144724561X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 130

Book Description
Henri Bergson was a French professor and philosopher. Born in Paris in 1859 to a Polish composer and Yorkshire woman of Irish descent, his revelatory ideas of life as process and the importance of duration, comedy and joy brought him incredible fame and media celebrity. Here you will find extracts from his greatest works. Michael Foley takes this great thinker and highlights those ideas most relevant to ordinary everyday dilemmas.