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Å leve med Kierkegaard
172 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2013
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February 9, 2017
I have rarely been so angry with a book (or its author) as I was during the reading of this book. Yet at the end, I’m not only, or still, angry but a bit more enlightened. I still feel my anger though. So I suppose I am conflicted.
The book is a snippet of Sørine Godtfredsen’s own story embedded in a mini-biography of Søren Kierkegaard. She is a well-known figure in Denmark, although mostly from television, which I rarely watch, so I didn’t really have any preconceived notions about the book.
Godtfredsen offers plenty of insight into Søren Kierkegaard’s ideas and views. There is no doubt that she knows what she is talking about. But I also felt the book to be full of arrogant, ethnocentric comments that made me huff and puff during the reading of it and which made me wonder what her errand really was. (She is a Protestant priest, so ‘preaching’ would be one plausible answer).
The book is in Danish and probably doesn’t exist in translation, so it doesn’t make sense that I write this review in English. However, I do. I do it in defiance of what I perceive to be Godtfredsen’s smug declaration of love of the Danish language – a love that indirectly states, to me, that Danish is better than other languages when she finds herself estranged abroad because people don’t speak Danish (she was on Lanzarote, for goodness sake, not outer Mongolia). Sure, I’ve felt estranged as well when I’ve ventured into remote corners of the world, but so what? I suggest opening her mind and learning one or two other languages.
She may not mean it that way of course, but coupled with her repeated insistence that to travel is to outwardly remove oneself from oneself instead of making that inward journey that Kierkegaard insists is the all important one, as long as it’s a journey toward God, I felt a distinct need to distance myself from this woman. Travelling doesn’t ensure self-development, true. You may wish to lie on a beach in the tropics for two weeks and never have an intelligent thought (and frankly, if you have a demanding job at home, this may be just what the doctor ordered. You get my blessing). But allow me to list the two most obvious arguments against hers (or Kierkegaard’s, I suppose: ‘travelling is foolish’) to demonstrate just how obvious they are:
1. Travelling doesn’t imply leaving one’s brain at home. I’ve trekked in the Himalayas, stayed at an orphanage in India (and been shown how to tie a sari – essential information!), visited a school in Sumatra, Indonesia, where the children had never seen ‘white’ people before, stayed up all night with jet lag in New York City and been baffled at all the lights turned on in empty offices but which ensured an perennially photo-worthy skyline, etc. etc. I cannot express with words how much I’ve learned from my travels, but they would include a deepening sense of some of the following dichotomies: humility/pride, tolerance/intolerance, exasperation/hope, incredulity/relief – but most of all: other ways of living, other people, other values, other hopes. So. To conclude: Travelling does not hinder spiritual or psychological development but can in fact promote it. Which leads me to counter-argument number 2:
2. Staying at home does not ensure spiritual growth. Just because you choose to stay within your own four walls all your life does not mean that you struggle with all life’s problems and come out the other side an uplifted and spiritualized human being. It does not mean that you do a Jungian soul search, or meditate your way to enlightenment or find your deepest fears at the bottom of a well and subsequently integrate your darkest demons into your personality and become your own, true being of light. You might, but then again, you might not.
My conclusion as to her travel phobia: One does not rule out the other. It is up to the individual human being. But this might be a good time to remind us of Kipling’s quote They don’t know England who only England know. The same, surely, goes for people. Do we truly know ourselves if we’ve only acted and spoken and seen ourselves in the same surroundings all our lives? Would we not be sick of ourselves if all we did was look inwardly and never see ourselves in other people’s eyes? Do we (only) develop as human beings in a national, psychological, religious vacuum?
I don’t as yet know how much of this is Kierkegaard (I’m worming my way through his Either-Or, and it’s a slow process) and how much is Godtfredsen. But one of them, and I’m feeling very, very apprehensive indeed about criticizing Kierkegaard, having as yet read so little by him (plus, he lived in a completely different time, and we always have to consider the historical context;), so for all intents and purposes I’ll take the most black-and-white views as having been expressed mainly by Godtfredsen; one of them (she) confuses her own, self-proclaimed inability to enjoy travelling with her proposed ‘fact’ that travelling leads only to outward, superficial ‘joys’.
To move briefly on to the final point that riled me, I will try to translate a quote from the book into English:
The perpetual journey abroad can be seen as a tragic replacement of the real journey which takes place in relation to God..
Now, this may seem a fair viewpoint – viewpoint being the operative word, but she forgets one crucial thing, which surprises me although she is a priest (she’s also a Dane, and Danes are notoriously irreligious): it is a question of faith. I don’t disbelieve in God – I’m probably an agnostic if a label is needed - but the discussion (or rather preaching) here assumes that it is a scientific fact, or an inalienable truth, that:
1. our purpose in life is to move toward God – self-knowledge without God is not self-knowledge at all
2. our journey towards God is hindered by external satisfaction (such as indulging in wine),
3. we are deluding ourselves if we think otherwise
4. it’s the Christian God we should move towards
The main problem to me, is actually that I agree with her about much of what she criticizes about modern societies – not least Denmark. I, too, think we’ve become self-centered and superficial consumers of mass culture etc. But by preaching to me, she convinces me less than if she had soberly presented her views as views and argued for them instead of presenting them as indisputable facts which no one in their right mind, to her, can disagree with. Just because she sells me some of Kierkegaard’s ideas through a personal story that I actually liked but which deliberately shows her own flaws and failings so as to be seen as the imperfect being that I, as an even more imperfect reader, can relate to doesn’t mean that I don’t also recognize and resent her admonishing and prejudiced tone.
I wish she would have convinced me to marvel at the wonder that may be God instead of force-feeding me (albeit very eloquently) her beliefs, which are, after all, beliefs. Our journeys are different in life. It seems to me a view from the Middle Ages to assume that because I do not do what she (or Kierkegaard) prescribes, I am doomed. Despite my spurts of anger, however, I do actually appreciate getting worked up about the book, which could be an argument for the positive aspects of travelling: It’s when we meet people who are not quite like us that we find out who we are, or may become.
The book is a snippet of Sørine Godtfredsen’s own story embedded in a mini-biography of Søren Kierkegaard. She is a well-known figure in Denmark, although mostly from television, which I rarely watch, so I didn’t really have any preconceived notions about the book.
Godtfredsen offers plenty of insight into Søren Kierkegaard’s ideas and views. There is no doubt that she knows what she is talking about. But I also felt the book to be full of arrogant, ethnocentric comments that made me huff and puff during the reading of it and which made me wonder what her errand really was. (She is a Protestant priest, so ‘preaching’ would be one plausible answer).
The book is in Danish and probably doesn’t exist in translation, so it doesn’t make sense that I write this review in English. However, I do. I do it in defiance of what I perceive to be Godtfredsen’s smug declaration of love of the Danish language – a love that indirectly states, to me, that Danish is better than other languages when she finds herself estranged abroad because people don’t speak Danish (she was on Lanzarote, for goodness sake, not outer Mongolia). Sure, I’ve felt estranged as well when I’ve ventured into remote corners of the world, but so what? I suggest opening her mind and learning one or two other languages.
She may not mean it that way of course, but coupled with her repeated insistence that to travel is to outwardly remove oneself from oneself instead of making that inward journey that Kierkegaard insists is the all important one, as long as it’s a journey toward God, I felt a distinct need to distance myself from this woman. Travelling doesn’t ensure self-development, true. You may wish to lie on a beach in the tropics for two weeks and never have an intelligent thought (and frankly, if you have a demanding job at home, this may be just what the doctor ordered. You get my blessing). But allow me to list the two most obvious arguments against hers (or Kierkegaard’s, I suppose: ‘travelling is foolish’) to demonstrate just how obvious they are:
1. Travelling doesn’t imply leaving one’s brain at home. I’ve trekked in the Himalayas, stayed at an orphanage in India (and been shown how to tie a sari – essential information!), visited a school in Sumatra, Indonesia, where the children had never seen ‘white’ people before, stayed up all night with jet lag in New York City and been baffled at all the lights turned on in empty offices but which ensured an perennially photo-worthy skyline, etc. etc. I cannot express with words how much I’ve learned from my travels, but they would include a deepening sense of some of the following dichotomies: humility/pride, tolerance/intolerance, exasperation/hope, incredulity/relief – but most of all: other ways of living, other people, other values, other hopes. So. To conclude: Travelling does not hinder spiritual or psychological development but can in fact promote it. Which leads me to counter-argument number 2:
2. Staying at home does not ensure spiritual growth. Just because you choose to stay within your own four walls all your life does not mean that you struggle with all life’s problems and come out the other side an uplifted and spiritualized human being. It does not mean that you do a Jungian soul search, or meditate your way to enlightenment or find your deepest fears at the bottom of a well and subsequently integrate your darkest demons into your personality and become your own, true being of light. You might, but then again, you might not.
My conclusion as to her travel phobia: One does not rule out the other. It is up to the individual human being. But this might be a good time to remind us of Kipling’s quote They don’t know England who only England know. The same, surely, goes for people. Do we truly know ourselves if we’ve only acted and spoken and seen ourselves in the same surroundings all our lives? Would we not be sick of ourselves if all we did was look inwardly and never see ourselves in other people’s eyes? Do we (only) develop as human beings in a national, psychological, religious vacuum?
I don’t as yet know how much of this is Kierkegaard (I’m worming my way through his Either-Or, and it’s a slow process) and how much is Godtfredsen. But one of them, and I’m feeling very, very apprehensive indeed about criticizing Kierkegaard, having as yet read so little by him (plus, he lived in a completely different time, and we always have to consider the historical context;), so for all intents and purposes I’ll take the most black-and-white views as having been expressed mainly by Godtfredsen; one of them (she) confuses her own, self-proclaimed inability to enjoy travelling with her proposed ‘fact’ that travelling leads only to outward, superficial ‘joys’.
To move briefly on to the final point that riled me, I will try to translate a quote from the book into English:
The perpetual journey abroad can be seen as a tragic replacement of the real journey which takes place in relation to God..
Now, this may seem a fair viewpoint – viewpoint being the operative word, but she forgets one crucial thing, which surprises me although she is a priest (she’s also a Dane, and Danes are notoriously irreligious): it is a question of faith. I don’t disbelieve in God – I’m probably an agnostic if a label is needed - but the discussion (or rather preaching) here assumes that it is a scientific fact, or an inalienable truth, that:
1. our purpose in life is to move toward God – self-knowledge without God is not self-knowledge at all
2. our journey towards God is hindered by external satisfaction (such as indulging in wine),
3. we are deluding ourselves if we think otherwise
4. it’s the Christian God we should move towards
The main problem to me, is actually that I agree with her about much of what she criticizes about modern societies – not least Denmark. I, too, think we’ve become self-centered and superficial consumers of mass culture etc. But by preaching to me, she convinces me less than if she had soberly presented her views as views and argued for them instead of presenting them as indisputable facts which no one in their right mind, to her, can disagree with. Just because she sells me some of Kierkegaard’s ideas through a personal story that I actually liked but which deliberately shows her own flaws and failings so as to be seen as the imperfect being that I, as an even more imperfect reader, can relate to doesn’t mean that I don’t also recognize and resent her admonishing and prejudiced tone.
I wish she would have convinced me to marvel at the wonder that may be God instead of force-feeding me (albeit very eloquently) her beliefs, which are, after all, beliefs. Our journeys are different in life. It seems to me a view from the Middle Ages to assume that because I do not do what she (or Kierkegaard) prescribes, I am doomed. Despite my spurts of anger, however, I do actually appreciate getting worked up about the book, which could be an argument for the positive aspects of travelling: It’s when we meet people who are not quite like us that we find out who we are, or may become.
November 10, 2023
Sørine skriver arrogant
September 3, 2020
Det er sikkert en okay bog, hvis man gerne vil læse noget ikke alt for svært om Kierkegaard. Som en person der i mange led under en svær depression og angst, har jeg det dog svært ved, hvordan Sørine Gotfredsen mener, at hun kan udtale sig om psykisk sårbarhed og sygdom fordi:
1. Hun en aften sad og følte sig trist og ensom på et hotel i Atlanta.
2. Hun led af uigengældt kærlighed, da hun var i 20'erne.
Hvis hun så i det mindste havde påpeget, at der er forskel på folk og graden af deres problemer, men nej. Hun fortæller om, hvordan Kierkegaard engang gik til lægen med sin depression, men fordi psykofarmika endnu ikke var opfundet dengang, så er det heller ikke noget man skal benytte i dag.
REND MIG!!!
1. Hun en aften sad og følte sig trist og ensom på et hotel i Atlanta.
2. Hun led af uigengældt kærlighed, da hun var i 20'erne.
Hvis hun så i det mindste havde påpeget, at der er forskel på folk og graden af deres problemer, men nej. Hun fortæller om, hvordan Kierkegaard engang gik til lægen med sin depression, men fordi psykofarmika endnu ikke var opfundet dengang, så er det heller ikke noget man skal benytte i dag.
REND MIG!!!
February 17, 2024
Lærerik, varm og full av innsikt. Første halvdel av boka er VELDIG god. Ein god intro til Kirkis, og ein god intro til å tenke tanker om glede, kjærlighet, vennskap, tro og livet generelt. Dersom man ikkje har begynt på det allereie.
Moral:
- slutt å gjere ting berre fordi det er gøy uten å tenke på kven du egentlig er
- ikkje reis rundt overalt i verden og stimuler og gled deg sjølv uten å tenke over kven du egentleg er
Moral:
- slutt å gjere ting berre fordi det er gøy uten å tenke på kven du egentlig er
- ikkje reis rundt overalt i verden og stimuler og gled deg sjølv uten å tenke over kven du egentleg er
April 19, 2015
Gennem episoder fra forfatterens eget liv beskrives menneskelige vilkår som den eksistentielle angst, kærlighed, og det, at være sig selv bekendt. Parallelt hermed følger man Kierkegaard, både biografisk og gennem uddrag fra udvalgte værker. Ideel for sådan en som jeg, der ikke orker at kæmpe sig igennem Kierkegaards samlede værker. Varm anbefaling!
November 30, 2024
Utroligt klog, berigende læsning der kan inspirere mange menneskers forsøg på at blive voksne, udvikle sig til at ikke bare at acceptere dem de er, men også opnå en lettere gang på jord blandt andre. Kirkegaard bliver konkret og brugbar og relevant på en måde jeg ikke troede var muligt. Den er opdelt i kapitler om fx kærlighed mm. så man kan dykke ned i dem man finder mest relevant. Det er selvudvikling uden psykologisering. Ligesom inden for AA og 12 trins modellen, spiller troen en væsentlig rolle, fordi Kirkegaard og SG er kristne. Men man kan godt være troende uden at være en aktiv del af folkekirken. Hvis man har været i en dyb dyb krise, har de fleste nok erfaret at en del af helbredelsen er at overgive sig til noget der er større end en selv. Og at der kommer elementer af taknemmelighed og ydmyghed ind i ens liv. Og en erkendelse af hvor uperfekte vi mennesker er. Den er for læsere der tænker over livet og meningen med det.
June 10, 2023
Trækker en linje mlm SKs eksistensteologi og Gotfredsens eget liv - meget klar og vellykket
December 25, 2024
Trækker en linje mlm SKs eksistensteologi og Gotfredsens eget liv - meget klar og vellykket
December 23, 2016
Så nær på å gi denne 5/5, men den ble for religiøs for meg til tider. Til tross for at jeg ikke klarer å følge tankegangen hennes helt ut pga det religiøse aspektet, er boka veldig godt skrevet og det er mye i den som var veldig gjenkjennelig og som jeg kommer til å ta med meg videre.
June 28, 2013
En skøn bog, der er skrevet med en lethed, det gør Kierkegaard spiselig, og samtidig med en dybde, der gør bogen vedrørende og interessant.
July 20, 2013
Fremragende bog, der på forbløffende vis formår igennem Sørine Gottfredsens eget liv og livtag med Kierkegaard at tale direkte til læseren om vores individuelle ansvar for vores egen eksistens.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews