Kierkegaard on Suffering

Any paragraph by him revolts me and appears to be horrific drivel. How can anyone take him seriously? He would have loved Mother Theresa btw

Yes except tnat statement is diametrically opposite to what Kierkegay thinks.

It's ok user, John Paul II recommended based kierk as essential reading for those who want to further explore the meaning of faith.

I think you are being unfair

I know user I know

Maybe. Suffering is a side effect. There's nothing more to it. It's not a divine tool. It's a consequence of being alive. Why bask in its misery.

Mother Theressa is a saint

Well you and him disagree about basic premises so there’s not much possible discussion. But you might agree then that faith is a way to cope with suffering

Yes of course, I can see that and I envy anyone who can diminish their suffering through faith. From my point of view, it's self-deception or simply delusional. It's not emancipated.

this is a really good definition of suffering, thanks OP
for kierkegaard suffering would be a method of grace. i don't think that pleasure can alleviate suffering. suffering is a fact of human existence. but maybe gf would alleviate suffering

if sufdering is an existential and not an ideological or physiological problem, and faith offers an existential solution, i don't see how the release from suffering 8n this way can be delusional.

i don't know if greater control over my thoughts is worth all these typographical errors
stupid thumbs, stupid keyboard layout

But all your life is delusion, that’s like the whole point of Kierkegaard’s pluralism.

I think he means one is positing his faith in something that is, ultimately, unlikely

but kierkegaard recognizes the absurdity of the act. it's an ironic gesture that becomes a genuine commitment.

commitment to the works of love, not quiescence in the relief from suffering that, say, prayer might bring.

Well, I don't think that kind of absurdity should be the justification of the commitment

What's the value in emancipation if it just leads to suffering?

Emancipation in that we take the suffering without convincing ourselves that a deity is there to smile at our struggles. It's part of our lives. Our lives.

Kierkegaard squirms. He is a whiny maggot.

Faith does not offer an existential solution, it offers a physiological solution to use your own words. Opiate, etc. Numbing the pain. Instead of taking it. It's a side effect, let's not elevate it.

it does offer a solution to the existential problem. it is a way of orienting your life, to give meaning to an ultimately (at least ostensibly) vacuous existence.
drugs are just a secular solution to the same problem, and they are typically destructive of the spirit, whereas faith builds and sustains you.

It deprives you of the chance to grow and learn from the suffering you endure. As Nietzsche says, suffering is like a forge. If we let it burn. Stare into the flames and let it burn us. Faith is short term wet blanket. Keep on dousing every new fire in life with a wet blanket and a prayer, or start using the heat to harden yourself and understand life as it is?

Religion is the opiate though.

Oh, and good luck using faith to explain away things like your child dying, etc. That's one divine crutch that will break away and make you crash hard. Suffering: take it, but fuck it.

You can learn from suffering while still having faith to give the suffering meaning

It's just god testing you though. Not life.

Also again, that's not the emancipated thing to do.

The absurdity of faith is in its grasping the finite after relinquishing infinitely, not in its positing the infinite. The ironic gesture is an attempt to grasp at the universal by relinquishing the finite--exactly the opposite. I illustrate:
>Abraham believes, hope against hope, that by virtue of the absurd he shall have a multitude of offspring through Isaac even as he binds him to the altar. He has made the infinite resignation, but now by faith seems to grasp Isaac in his finitude.
>Dylan the barista brings your coffee, with the foam just how you like. You compliment him on his craft. Oh no, he says, I'm not a barista, this is not my craft, I am a poet in truth. He has relinquished the finite, his actuality as a barista, to grasp the infinite, the pure concept of poesy.
I believe you're merely projecting your perception of the difficulty of faith onto Kierkegaard's thought in believing it merely ironic. Surely, faith is difficult; Johannes de Silentio finds it too much for himself to lay hold of, too high, too impossible, absurd, beyond anyone but the extraordinary to attain unto, that one should grasp the finite after relinquishing the finite infinitely. But Abraham, though knowing his belief in his posterity through Isaac is absurd, believes it anyway, and for this reason it is accounted unto him for righteousness.
Basically, you're gay and don't know what faith is.

nietszche and big k are answering to the same call, and basically after the same thing.
suffering is always there; faith does not end suffering. rather it connects you sufferer to their suffering in a meaningful way, and through faith they are led from despair to communion with their fellow men, and through their works they are connected with the eternal in man, which is god, who is 'love', or caritas.
the knight of faith is the master ironist. belief in a transcendent entity is kinda beside the point.

i'm merely giving k a monstrous child
a newborn king, in my own image ;^)

What's the difference? It's still a test which you can use to learn and grow

The belief in God as transcendent entity is the point. You can't escape despair without being in a proper relation with yourself, transparently grounded in the Power that constituted you. Have you even read Kierkegaard?

Not the poster your replied to, but could you give an example of some kind of the growth and learning one can gain from suffering without faith that can't be experienced with faith? Also maybe expand on what you mean by "life as it is?"

long time ago.
power, not entity. not big bearded father figure in the sky. are you reading the posts i'm replying to? obviously a kid, obviously not very literate. how should one approach such a seeker? with jargon and ironically-employed hegelian dialectic? especially when the only real point to be made was that 'you're on the wrong level of analysis, dude'.

And the distinction between a Power and an entity here would be...
No, the poster you were responding to doesn't have perfect sentence structure, but he expresses a perfectly legitimate and coherent thought. In any case, I have no problem with your terminology, I don't think you need to use jargon you're not using, I just think your reading of Kierkegaard is flawed, since as I've explained faith and irony are opposite.

what's the difference between a punch and the fist that delivers it?
you're in a better position to judge. why don't you take it from here?

Not really.

Actually *sniff* opium is the opiate of the masses and so on

That's exactly the emancipated thing to do. You'd say that the actually emancipated way to do would be to try and stop suffering, and that's indeed a worthy endeavour, but taken to its logical end it would require you to end your life, even outright killing yourself or confining yourself in some sort of technological nirvana, which is more or less the same from the philosophic point of view. Once you realise it, the desire to live without suffering becomes self-contradictive, and it turns out the only truly emancipating way to understand it is to embrace this contradiction through faith. Doing anything else you still get cucked by life.

Imagine being this retarded. The two are perfectly in accord.

Shit question. Does honest faith alleviate suffering?

It does in the sense of resolve, and peace.

I feel alone here. People aren't able to concentrate hard enough. Too many brainlets.

You either correct your choices and opinions or you submit to the way things are.

He hasn't read Nietzsche either. This board disgusts me.

Faith isn't supposed to explain away or alleviate suffering, if you think this none of you understand Kierkegaard, faith is the contrast between the reality of suffering and the reality of love motivated by that suffering

>the contrast between the reality of suffering and the reality of love motivated by that suffering
That's merely resignation. Faith does make one happy despite all the suffering.

i've read both, friend. state your case or eat my dick.

hey, you ever imagine the possibility that you can, like, read from a thinker, not subscribe to every detail of their thought, nor necessarily follow them through to the very end of their (often unendurably pedantic and relentlessly pedagogical) perorations, and even make your own interpretive interventions?
the absurdity of faith is in the belief in the impossible, in the very face of its nullity. this should sound familiar to readers of fashionable french intellectuals and greek mythology.
irony is the gentle insistence on the nonsensical; a way of holding together contrarieties and declaring their mutual truth. ironical action is, in this sense, a persistence against hopelessness. this should also sound familiar.
it is in this way that i identify faith with a continually renewed ironic gesture.

No it isn't. Nietzsche does understand it better than Kierkegaard does, though. Notice how Kierkegaard has to throw in God at the end there as if anything at all warrants the inclusion. That part is what prevents him from championing the full conclusion of his previous thought, which is the necessity of evil for the expansion of consciousness.

Yeah but Kierkegaard is neither Greek nor French, he's Christian, and in addition to this thread being about him, I believe his thought to be deeper than both greek and french. It is that very last step that heathens and frenchmen cannot comprehend he seeks to make, the step that makes faith into the basis of one's existence and not merely an ironic thought to entertain to distract oneself from the horrors of the hopeless world. That which Camus called a philosophic suicide, but which is actually philosopher's suicide, for indeed finding oneself in faith one stops being a philosopher and starts being a human. Kierkegaard describes that in fine details in "Concluding Unscientific Postscripts".
Was he able to reach the land he saw or not, or whether it's possible at all, I have no idea. I just make points about Kierkegaard and his Faith.

faith in the ironic mode is not merely an intellectual exercise to alleviate anguish--how could ever even be? we can't actually imagine sisyphus happy. but it is through the actions that follow from faith that genuine, communion is possible. faith unsettles you, and directs you toward love. and love is not ironic, but the truth, and truth is what the ironist is ultimately after.

If faith merely directs you towards love, then you will never reach love as you can only grasp it as an idea, however true, and you are forever separated from the realm of the finite by comprehending it as finite. You became a knight of infinite resignation. For Kierkegaard, it's not enough. Can you imagine Abraham happy, he asks? Or Paul the Apostle? You should be, and what's more, you should become just as happy -- through faith. Just as you said, Paul's happiness is not ironic but the truth, whether the God he believes in exists or not. From any objective point of view he fools himself, successfully enough to become a madman. If Paul was a Kierkegaardian knight of faith he'd constantly entertain the possibility that he fools himself, since uncertainty is the path of faith, but nevertheless, having all the doubts and fears at hand wherever he's asleep or awake, he'd still be happy. That's the miracle of faith.

again, this is not meant to be an intellectual exercise. you arrive at love through love, through your works.
experience of happiness is like that of the beautiful; occasional; inspired but always fleeting. if mere happiness is your goal, them your doctrine of faith is no more than a form of hedonism.
'true' happiness is the, as before, homogeneity of your will with god's, which is evident through your actions performes outnof love.

Are you ever going to respond to my refutation of faith as irony in ?

i already have, read the thread. i can take kierkegaard and use him in any which way i so choose. but anyway i think maybe you or kierkegaard or more likely both of you together don't seem to trace the ironic through its appearance in every stage, from the aesthetic to the religious.
simplifying quite a bit, if faith is absurd and absurdity is an ironic stance toward your own actions then by the transitive property faith is also absurd.

faith is also ironic** obviously

"Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, you will regret it either way"
Based and Redpilled. Kierkegaard is /ourguy/

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Your minor premise is flawed. Absurdity is not irony, ironic detachment is a way of dealing with the absurd; those that cannot embrace the absurd by faith detach from it ironically. Absurdity is things not making sense; irony is detaching oneself from a thing that is still part of oneself. It is obvious that irony is a common response to the absurd, but they are in no way identical.

this is a point where we are going to disagree and possibly never move past. detachment is only a form of irony, and yes it is also a kind of resignation, or at least leads to it.
but irony is a broader concept. as i wrote in a previous post (read the thread, i said!) it is 'the gentle insistence on the nonsensical; a way of holding together contrarieties and declaring their mutual truth. ironical action is, in this sense, a persistence against hopelessness.' there is no resignation in this. quite the opposite. it leads to joy, without taking joy as its objective.

Im a neet and have been for a long time. I think about death and suffering a lot. I also have spent time reading the great pessimist philosophers.

I have come to a few conclusions.

Happiness is not a concrete object that can be attained. It is a fleeting feeling that comes and goes. Happiness should never be a goal in life. In a capitalist system we are reoriented towards the motive of capital. Profit and consmmerism. But that is not a human beings purpose. At its core, life in absurd and meaningless. We are driven by our desires to end our suffering. But the only cure for that is death. So, to live a life of comfort we must create a motive. Which creates goals and ambitions. And live a life of endless striving. Like rolling a rock up a hill for eternity. Then one day the rock comes down and crashes on us
there is no point in killing yourself. death is always on the horizon and will come naturally. Suffering is a natural part of life and is not something that can be overcome. Suffering is what gives purpose and meaning and gains us a sense of the profound and purpose. through suffering we strive for our betterment.

I truly believe, just as Socrates did, that life is a disease.

Yea Forums we owe a cock to asclepius, dont forget to pay the debt

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>'the gentle insistence on the nonsensical; a way of holding together contrarieties and declaring their mutual truth. ironical action is, in this sense, a persistence against hopelessness.'
I'll allow this--I don't think it's wrong; but I think that while the form of irony and faith are similar there is an essential difference in content, the one being infinite and the other finite.

>but maybe gf would alleviate suffering
maybe, until she leaves you for chad repudiating all the i love you‘s that came out of her mouth and the time you‘ve spent together

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see, it's precisely where kierkegaard starts in with his rube goldberg dialectical willy wonkery that i just completely check out. this is also the point where i think our respective metaphysical doctrines are going to make continued mutual understanding very difficult.

it's not at all surprising that if you spend a great deal of time alone with thinkers that consistently and continually tell you that life is basically meaningless and stupid, and you do not leave your house to experience any of the great variety and delight--in addition to (and i would say in excess of) pain and sorrow--that the world offers to everyone, that you would come to such conclusions. they are only natural, given the case.
but i won't cut my dick off on your account, no.

Fair enough. I think we've had a good discussion and I can see where you're coming from even if we disagree. Sorry if I came off a bit abrasive, fren.

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>Suffering is the qualitative expression of heterogeneity with this world

Is this the same thing that evangelion says?

To exist in the world, to be normal, is to create your own suffering. Normality in capitalism seems like a type of masochism to me. To live a life of comfort we must create goals and ambitions, why? So we can fulfill our desires. All suffering is derived from desire. So we must create our own suffering. And it never ends. As even if we fulfill or desires, end the suffering, it either comes back or we must create a new form of suffering. The entirety of life to me seems like a form of masochism. Like rolling a rock up hill for eternity. Then one day the rock falls on you and squashes you. You know its going to happen too.

That is what separates man from the animals. Our ability to see into the future. And what we see is our death.

To exist as a human being is to exist in a state of perpetual terror and suffering.

The goal of humanity to me seems to be to overcome this. They want to transfer our brains into robot bodies or some other type of method.

But to end our suffering is very simple.

We must die.

What value does Kierkegaard have for a non-Christian, who likely won't ever become one, and doesn't have interest in themes relating to faith or a theistic model of God? I'm sure there are gems in his mind for a non-Christian, but what specifically would they be?

What is suffering?

Kierkegaard is just Christian Nietzsche before Nietzsche was Nietzsche. Instead of master morality you have teleological suspension of the ethical, instead of the Ubermensch you have the knight of faith, etc. They're honestly more similar than different--they're looking at the same subject (existentialism) from two different perspectives. If Nietzsche or existentialism are interesting at all to you, you'll benefit from seeing Kierkegaard's alternate take; if you don't care for either Nietzsche or Christianity I think it's unlikely you'll care for Kierkegaard.

Even if you have faith in a different religion or just any spirituality in general I’d say it’s worth a read

I’m the OP. Thank you both for the discussion. I’m going to reread through it many times.

What was Kierkegaard's deal? Was he depressed? On the spectrum? What did he suffer from?

He was a hunchbacked Chad with real wit. Engaged to a hot sixteen year-old who deeply loved him, and he her, but then he broke if off because he felt God was calling him to do so. This is the defining event of his life and is central to many of his works. The last years of his life were spent crying out for reform in the Danish Church, which he felt had become corrupted by modern philosophy (i.e. Hegelianism). He dies at age 42, never having married.
>What did he suffer from?
Despair. But he was wrapped in the arms of Jesus. He's very Christian, God and Christianity was his life. Really more a religious writer than a philosopher, but he's of such high quality that he excels as both.

Why'd he die so young? And what was his despair over? Who were his philosophical precursors? Surely he didn't start a whole branch of philosophy by himself, from nothing more than a religious foundation? Was he a moral man? Why all pseudonyms? Why so much irony? How do we know who and what each voice of his works says about his own positions?

Why all of the pseudonyms?*

Answering in order: He just got sick and died. If you read The Sickness Unto Death, you'll see that despair doesn't have a predicate; one does not truly despair over anything, one simply is in despair or not in despair. His philosophical influences (whose positions he largely opposed) were Hegel and Schelling (the latter of which he attended the lectures of); religiously he was most influenced by Luther. One could say he did, but existentialism in the modern understanding was not fully developed by Kierkegaard alone but had to wait for Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre. He may or may not have sowed some wild oats in his youth (he was popular at parties, remember) but certainly became totally given to religious writing after breaking his engagement with Regine. He used pseudonyms to present aesthetic or philosophical ideas, often publishing a religious work under his own name in connection with a pseudonymous more philosophical work--the aesthetics he puts out for public consideration but the religious he feels deeply enough to sign his name to. I'm the guy who posted and the following so I don't think there's much irony in his works at all, unless you consider the use of pseudonyms ironic, which I suppose you could. The various pseudonymous authors typically speak of themselves enough to give you an idea of what perspective they're coming from as they write--Johannes de Silentio, for example, must stay silent (hence the name) on the topic of religious faith, as it's too much for him to grasp--and in any case Kierkegaard wrote plenty under his own name so his positions aren't exactly secret.

Based effort poster

Thank you :) which works should I check out of his, and which to begin with? Remembering that I'm the same one who wrote . He seems very intriguing, but there's not much point in me reading works that involve heavily Christian themes, or commentaries on Abrahamic mythologies (like Abraham and Isaac, etc). Maybe if I really like his other works I'll continue reading off into those ones too, but for now I'd just like the more "secular" publications by him.

I'd usually recommend Fear and Trembling as an entry point, that's the Abraham and Isaac one--if you're interested in Nietzsche's master morality I still think it's worth a go, so you can compare the Ubermensch and the knight of faith. But something else may be more your speed. People say Either/Or is the best starting point, as it's his first work and secular, but it's also quite long. I'm reading it myself at the moment so I can't give a final verdict, but I think going from the pseudonyms to Kierkegaard might be difficult if you're not familiar with his thought. The Sickness Unto Death is pretty Hegelian, so if you know Hegel you might find that a good starting point; it's one of his better works, it's an analysis of despair and its forms. The most straightforward works are the religious works published under his own name. I'd recommend them in general, but they may not interest you.
In short, the best recommendations I can give you are:
>You like Nietzsche --> Fear and Trembling
>You like Hegel --> The Sickness Unto Death
>You like to read --> Either/Or

Actually, change that last bit. You should read Either/Or if you like Mozart or Goethe.

It's wise of you to see the transhumanist path of overcoming suffering as an aesthetic trap, I'm not being ironic here. What happens, however, if you understand all that you wrote but you still love life? You desire to stop suffering, yet you desire to live. Both of those desires define you, anything you could ever want is reduced to them, neither can be sacrificed lest you sacrifice yourself. And yet they are in contradiction, the contradiction that is fundamental to the concept of human. And faith is a way to address that contradiction, to tear your reason apart and make it, too, contradictory, so that you can comprehend the fundamental contradiction of your existence without it destroying you.
You should start with the works other user recommended, but after you get into Kierkegaard don't forget to check "Philosophical fragments" and "Concluding Unscientific Postscripts", they are just that good.