As the ironist does not have the new within his power, it might be asked how he destroys the old, and to this it must be answered: he destroys the given actuality by the given actuality itself.
søren Kierkegaardquotes
1813 - 1855
A heavy melancholy hung over Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard’s (1813-1855) life that is said to have been inherited from his gloomy and guilt-ridden father. They believed a curse hung over the family because his now successful father had cursed God when he was a young, poor shepherd. Out of Kierkegaard’s six siblings, only one other besides himself survived past the age of 34, which seemed to offer proof of God’s punishment.
If he inherited his father’s guilt, he inherited his wealth as well and that enabled Kierkegaard to live as a freelance writer. Initially, Kierkegaard entered the University of Copenhagen to study theology but switched to philosophy. His primary interest was asking how life ought to be lived, particularly as a Christian, and he said that his writing was on the whole religious.
His first work of importance, Either/Or, considered two spheres of existence that man chooses to live within, either the aesthetic or the ethical. Later, in Fear and Trembling, he offers a third sphere, namely, the religious. In his works, philosophers have identified the beginnings of existentialism and have considered Kierkegaard the father of that movement.
Colliding often with the Church of Denmark, Kierkegaard felt that Christianity had been lost in Christendom and needed to be reintroduced (Training in Christianity). Before his death in 1855, he had written numerous short pieces attacking the church as counterfeit. Kierkegaard never married, but a broken engagement haunted him for life. He dedicated all of his works to his beloved, Regine Olsen.
But now how can an Apostle prove that he has authority? If he could prove it physically, then he would not be an Apostle. He has no other proof than his own statement. That has to be so; for otherwise the believer’s relationship to him would be direct instead of being paradoxical.
apostle / authority / believer / paradoxical / physically
But the eternal is not a thing which can be had regardless of the way in which it is acquired; no, the eternal is not really a thing, but is the way in which it is acquired.
In the first case, he personally enjoyed the esthetic; in the second case, he esthetically enjoyed his personality.
A superstitious belief which embraces an error keeps the possibility open that the truth may come to arouse it; but when the truth is there, and the superstitious mode of apprehending it transforms it into a lie, no saving awakening is possible.
error / lie / superstitious / truth
The slaves of paltriness, the frogs in life’s swamp, will naturally cry out, “Such a love is foolishness. The rich brewer’s widow is a match fully as good and respectable.” Let them croak.
An Apostle can never come to himself in such a way that he becomes conscious of his apostolic calling as a factor in the development of his life. Apostolic calling is a paradoxical factor, which from first to last in his life stands paradoxically outside his personal identity with himself as the definite person he is.
apostle / calling / conscious / identity / paradoxical
There is something frightful in the fact that the most dangerous thing of all, playing at Christianity, is never included in the list of heresies and schisms.
Christianity / dangerous / heresies / schisms
Faith is namely this paradox that the single individual is higher than the universal.
Faith / individual / paradox / universal
The levelling process is the victory of abstraction over the individual. The levelling process in modern times, corresponds, in reflection, to fate in antiquity.