Ştefan’s Comments (group member since Jun 22, 2011)

Ştefan’s comments from the Existentialism group.

I look fwd to reading it.

@ John:
I always thought of him as a type of Abraham.
-- you can see it both ways
For instance in the Gospel of Suffering, Abarham can be seen as a sacrificial figure like Jesus (contrary to the official comparison between Isaac and Jesus)
To see K. as Isaac, however, we have to recourse to biography again (something I'm not very fond of) and to Fear and Trembling
The curse of K.'s father (who damned God in his youth in despair) and who most likely traumatized K. in his childhood with an intense and radical religious education makes Isaac a role model for K.
Moreover, if you read the introduction to Fear and Trembling (the alternative narratives to Abraham's tale), Isaac seems to be a lead figure in childhood trauma: if your father tried to kill you, you could lose your faith in any Father - you could become an atheist of even an anti-theist -- a sort of Nietzsche + Lars von Trier + Palahniuk type radical nihilist

I haven't studied Augustine yet: I only read the fragments that I needed in university and for my PhD thesis on existentialism -- I know, however, that Augustine influenced enormously Heidegger on time, and more importantly for me, on the falling and the they-self (das Man) -- his attack on curiosity, which he calls a "disease" is very influential in Pascal, Kierkegaard, Cioran and Heidegger and was attacked by Adorno, who basically said that without curiosity we would be immobile and intelectually frozen

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/84...

I would recommend this book. It is a study guide for Either/Or. It would be helpful to read fragments from it before or after you read the respective chapters from Kierkegaard.

You can check its contents here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Between-Nihil....

@ Jimmy:

So with the poet. He needs to suffer to write.

-- "You know I need you/ Like the poet needs the pain" writes Jon Bon Jovi. And I guess he's right. To make a trivial particular argument, I've finished my second poetry book in 2 weeks, writing among 25 poems, after I broke my leg at basketball.
To go a little further, we can use Nietzsche's anti-hedonistic POV: we aren't looking for pleasure but for power. Maybe it hurts a little, but we overcome ourselves and if we are lucky we become something spectacular.
"Without pain, without sacrifice we would have nothing." (Palahniuk)

@ John
Kierkegaard wasn't asked to give up his child, but he listened to his calling
-- He was Isaac

@ Jimmy
Or maybe it was Kevin Bacon.
:):)
I'm fascinated by the whole breakup story.
-- I'm not being structuralist here, but I wouldn't explain Kierkegaard strictly through biography
To quote Merold Westphal who writes on Fear and Trembling: "It has been rumoured that Abraham will shortly receive an Oscar nomination for his supporting role in the greates love story since Abélard and Héloïse, that of Søren and Regina … Reading this version of the Abraham story as a piece of spiritual autobiography may serve to increase its lyrical intensity but not to illuminate its dialectical intrigue."

@John:
Are the Confessions by Augustine pre-existentialist?
-- I believe so
For instance, William Barrett said that Pascal is not only pre-existentialist, he is the first existentialist
Also Augustine is very important for Heidegger and for the religious part of existentialist (for Kierkegaard, Unamuno, Marcel)
However I believe that this distinction between atheist and Christian existentialism is not very coherent, because anti-religious thinkers like Nietzsche or Cioran construct a prose full of religious implications -- they are not atheist in the modern sense or in the fashion of French Enlightenment authors, who fanatically believe in reason
I think that works like Confessions or Pensées are essential for both religious and agnostic/atheist existentialism (reading Augustine, Pascal or even Luther could only make clearer Kierkegaard's point of view about the religious sphere)

I believe that "Diapsalmata" anticipates the aphoristic style of Nietzsche, Kafka and Cioran and one can wonder if the fragments are pre-existentialist or pre-nihilist (probably being a combintion of these two rival directions).

It's a wonderful idea to do some preliminary research on Don Giovanni. The Myth of the Seducer is essential for Kierkegaard in "Either/Or".

@ John: I meant I would have read them both if you decided to stick to the unabridged version, to read the book completely and keep track of the discussions at the same time.

I would read the unabridged version in two volumes. To be honest, when most of you decided to read the unabridged version, I was thinking to read them both, to make sure I'm not missing anything!

I hope we'll do the unabridged version in Kierkegaard's honour. It is more work but I believe we should go all the way. And perhaps we should schedule the book in two months. The summer of Kierkegaard!

I'm for Kierkegaard. :)

If we do it, I think we should read it all! :)

Either/Or sounds fine but it's way too long.

All the 5 books are wonderful. I would be interested in re-reading the first two. The other three I have just re-read recently.

Seems like a good idea to me, especially because Roquentin inspires a sort of ambivalent repulsive attraction.

I'm reading a mobi version of the book. Could you be a little more specific about the sections we read every week? (e.g. reading until p. 40 = is there a textual reference where we stop?) I'm thinking that this would be useful for other persons that use different editions.