Soren

What a terrible (to be clear: because bad, execrable, undesirable) thing to want.

If I live long enough, I look forward to reading some Kierkegaard, the better to reject him from a position of knowledge. I have no expectation of finding anything useful.

weird bait

To a fellow wistful outsider upon Christendom, Kierkegaard showed me the power of true belief and its profound impact upon the soul. He guided me through accepting the idea of the irrational, and opened the door for me for other thinkers like St. Augustine. I would not have a balanced view on religion if it weren't for his work.

Where do I start with Soren?

Why does everyone on Yea Forums only recommend the same 5 writers. It's like a community of psuedo's that have no pallet and are formed by cookie cutters. A college literature course has greater recommendations than most of you

The perceptive lurker would quickly realize Yea Forums canon is recommended as an intro and as a result is most likely to be discussed. There's nothing wrong with that. Are you distracted, new, or both?

Strange, I thought you killed yourself. Must have trolled us.

Which books did you read?

I love him dearly, such a precious soul
read Pascal already, filthy heathen
The Sickness Unto Death and Either/Or (unabridged) are good starting points

It doesn't matter, we should be grateful that we already do

Purity of Heart is what did it for me. I already respond super well to preachy literature. It was his methodical approach to cultivating faith that took it to the next level for me.

The Sickness

No religion, no philosophy, no science, no ideology, has as many eminent geniuses and sages as Christianity. Amazing.

6-7 years ago I was posting Guenon, Kierkegaard, Evola and Orthodox Christian thinkers...with very little engagement on Yea Forums
today it's quite different!
These type of threads appear daily.
God is good.

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Anyone here read Practice in Christianity?

No. Do you recommend?

ive heard good things

shut the fuck up you havent even read the bible you cuck

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I've read it 7 times. Praying for you.

Me too, user. Me too.
I would recommend Fear and Trembling. It beautifully outlines and summarises the whole philosophical, psychological and theological project of Kierkegaard, trading verbosity and analyticity found in his other books for pure beauty of leading the reader straight to the heart of the problem. Of course, that only works if the reader is ready to be led, that is, personally familiar at least to some degree with the Aesthetic despair that extends all the way to the Ethical. Otherwise you better start with Either/Or, as others recommend. Sickness unto Death is great as well, but due to its conciseness can be easily misunderstood.

how do i will the goof via my occupation in a capitalist system unless my occupation is focused on dismantling that system? it seems impossible to choose a vocation that allows you to will the Good in modern times. the nature of modern work is exploitative. what do.

Discord tranny

who cares if kierkegaard is going to autistically describe all the Bible stories to you anyway?

Marxist zealots begone. Most any vocation can be done while willing the Good. To God what is God's, to Caesar what is Caesar's.

i didn’t say marxism is the answer. recognizing the inherent flaws in capitalism doesn’t indicate i’m a marxist. neither are particularly ethical system. not a zealot. you gave a non-answer so you could do some deus vult larping, very cool move there fella.

"Dismantling the capitalist system" gives you away. Marxism, understood broader that a particular political and economic teaching, is a whole family of what is essentially Christian heresies. They are Christian because they share the basic goals and postulates with Christianity, but they're heresies because they lose Christian dialectics of what is ideal and what is material, and as a result their deeds relate to Christianity's deed just as Jesus choosing to be King of the Jews and leading his people in a righteous war against Romans relates to what Jesus actually chose.

Why does your vocation matter? Sounds like double-mindedness to me

There’s an entire section of the book dedicated to you occupation and vocation

Lmao you literally could not be more wrong. A fundamental misunderstanding of dialectics “gives you away”.

If we were to follow Kierkegaard, the fundamental postulate of Christianity, the one that separates Christianity from the highest achievements of the pagan philosophy, is that: the Good cannot be realised in temporality because a human is imperfect and capable of sin. It is this postulate that the bunch I slovenly call Marxists seem to lose, implicitly or explicitly, in their grand plans, in their unyielding idealism, in their beautiful pictures of Heaven on Earth. That's what I call Christian dialectics, again following Kierkegaard, although it probably isn't exactly dialectical distinction by Hegel's definitions and is best understood in modern language as psychological distinction, the necessary degree of self-reflectional tension (and any meditation on the imperfection of human should start and end with the imperfection of the one doing the meditation, otherwise no sufficient degree of self-reflection is reached and the whole reduces into endless mind games)

You fucking idiot. Perfection can’t be attained so we should settle for suffering under an economic system? I literally can’t fathom having the mindset that because humans can’t reach God’s level of purity, we should be cool with throwing an endless number of people into a man-made meat grinder of inherent inequality. Would you have been anti-capitalist at the dawn of capitalism because whoever created it sought to make things better?

How far have you come ever since? Which other writers would you recommend after them?

I find the totality of author discussed here to be quite wide. Of course there is going to be concentration on a few darlings, but if you want to discuss a not-too-obscure author (and even quite a few obscure ones) you will find to discuss them with.
I suggest lurking more and looking for rare thread.

god I wish that was me
14years since I finished college and started working. Now I'm married, 2 kids and deeper than I've ever been into my depressed existence. I've never been able to shake melancholy away since I can remember, but once I entered the working market I nearly collapsed.
only brothers karamazov kept me safe

Your anger means that you don't understand the point Christianity tries to make. That perfection can't be attained means that suffering of human beings cannot be ended, and it cannot even be decreased (although if you're driven by Christian virtues of compassion it will lead you to decreasing the suffering, yours and people around you -- through Faith instead of rational calculation). I don't want to advocate for particular economic systems; as far as I am concerned capitalism does indeed need to be fixed. But as long as you strive for ending suffering, or even for decreasing suffering, you, as long as you are passionate enough, laborious enough and smart enough, would quickly realise that the goal is impossible: it is after all the imperfect human beings that cause harm and suffering to themselves and one anothers, and when you arrive by that point you'll either need to renounce your desire to decrease suffering in favour of your desire to love people, imperfect as they are, or you'll get dragged into daemonic, so exquisitely described to Kierkegaard. Many many people embarked on this road, and the only thing Christianity and Kierkegaard want to do here is to tell you where it leads.
>a man-made meat grinder of inherent inequality
People are inherently unequal -- in the finite, that is. Distinguishing people's qualities between "unnatural" such as class, parents' wealth or the quality of upbringing, and "natural" such as personality, innate intellect and beauty, won't help us much: all of these are beyond our control, and all of these influent directly our whole life, our successes and failures. These qualities cannot be made equal between humans, nor should they be made equal unless you want some Brave New World-like conveyor style upbringing. Here, the distinction between Christianity and what I call Marxism is empathized: the latter wants to make people equal in the finite, and driven by its idealism it won't stop until it makes people equal in anything that actually matters or dies trying to do so; while the former proclaims people as already equal. Equal before God, that is. Christianity realises that whatever Marxism holds as the most important things: wealth, security, physical well-being, -- are not important at all before the face of God. This is the self-denial Kierkegaard writes of. This is the point that drives people insane, that makes them loathe Christianity. That, again, doesn't mean that Christianity is content with whatever horrors of the capitalism you want to describe -- far from it; but Christianity realises that however loathsome these horrors are, they are not really important compared to what is actually important: the relationship of each individual person to God. Even though through the realisation of this God-relationship of man the horrors of capitalism would be subdued, just as the horrors of slavery were subdued, Christianity would not seek the former as it did not seek the latter. Ironic, isn't it.

>Born Orthodox, go to Mass but never really understood "faith"
>Fall away from grace and God through semi-atheism in teen years, (I didn't believe anymore but after a while the depression made me suicidal, and I would 'pray' out of despair + plead to Christ for help after bouts or attempts)
>Decade of mental illnesses gone within 6 months, never turning back
>Begin to go to Ortho Church again out of ethnic tradition and desire to get better as a person, still not fully grasping faith by any means
>Start reading Christian works for my degree, ft Church Doctors and Catholic lit
>Get invited to TLM Mass by Cath friends, impressed.png
>Now on the path towards Christ, absorbed the theology and culture
>Pick up Kierkegaard out of curiosity, finish Fear and Trembling twice in a short span
>Knight of Faith; "In this world, in this life."
>Go to Catholic Church, start weeping uncontrollably during prayer, as I finally understood the faith of Christ and his Holy Mother Church, through His love alone

I know this will sound cringe to some of you, but I'm ever so grateful to God for it, and Kierkegaard for opening my eyes—may the long journey continue. Now I spend my days painting as my promise to praise His glory. Best of luck to you too my bros, and much love

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Absolutely blessed and christpilled. I love you brother

environmentalist science, that is if you believe in preserving nature. there is high demand for environmental engineers.

Sounds like me. Are you a software engineer too? The pay is good but I want to kill myself every other day, although I would never do it.

Was he a Chad?

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structural engineer, I used to love the work tho

Danes are good

Im the guy he replied to. I was a software engineer. For me, living authentically involved quitting my job.

You should have explained it like that to start. Sorry for being a dick. Your points here have made me view the situation through a completely different lens. I’m not far along enough In my journey is what I’m realizing. Interested to sit with what you’ve said and try to unpack it. Extra curious to meditate on wether it’s fair to view suffering this way if everyone subjected to suffering does know that Christianity is an option. Should they be made to suffer if there’s no knowledgeable form of salvation? Anyways, I concede. Sorry again for being a dick.

It's his best work, and also his clearest since he didn't use a pseudonym. Main focus is on the infinite qualitative distinction between God and man, which ended up greatly influencing Barth and his commentary on Romans.

Lol nvm I forget here wrote it under anti-climacus. Still, it is very reflective of Kierkegaard's actual views unlike some of his commonly cited works. He himself said it was the most true and perfect thing he ever wrote.

Nice. At this point I intend to read all of his major works.

Is there a Kierkegaard chart? What do I read?

Forgive me Father for I have sinned against a brother engaged in the covenant with our fathers’ Lord.

t. cuck

Fear and Trembling, no question.
DO NOT start with The Sickness unto Death. It's short and important, but without the leg work of his other work, you'll lack really important context.
Also, how's your Hegel?

Fear and Trembling
Either/Or (If you can get both volumes of the Hong translations.)
If you're a Christian, read his Upbuilding Discourses here.
The Concept of Anxiety
Philosophical Fragments
Concluding Unscientific Postscript
The Sickness Unto Death
The last three are the most life altering.

where would you place purity of heart? its the first ive read by him and im accessing it pretty well.. probably not 100% understanding it but its very compelling.

Yes. It's his bridge between the Pseudonyms and the attack on the church.
Probably my favorite of his.
Focuses on Grace, the offensiveness of Christ, and the necessity of living like Christ.

Purity of Heart is an ok thing to jump in with. It will give you a taste for his more direct work. It's one of his Upbuilding Discourses.
I always suggest Fear and Trembling first, though. Because his philosophically and theologically important stuff is written pseudonymously so it's important to get comfortable reading him in that way.
Purity of Heart, though, is a really great way to start to read the stuff under his own name.

Add Works of Love after the Concluding Unscientific Postscripts

I've yet to start with Hegel. Where should I start with him?

Love you guys! Please stay here and continue your work. You give me hope. I am far away from Lord now and was thinking on giving up becouse struggle is dragging me down. I am a terrible person, alcoholic and incel some way. I am thinking that whore is my only option. I want to go to army becouse I don't know what to do in life. But the point is I write work about Soren for a friend who is studying psychology, two years ago witch Wikipedia and other sites. This guy is amnezing, I don't know why I don't read anything of him till now but I will now for sure. Please do your work there is a lot people like me here waiting for salvation.

you're right about starting with Fear and Trembling
I initially recommended he start with The Sickness Unto Death but only upon re-viewing this thread have I come to realize that I somehow confused it with Fear and Trembling

It's okay, user. We all come to Yea Forums to be dicks sometimes.

This any good for an intro to him?

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Abridgements, compilations and secondary literature can do a lot of harm when it comes to a thinker as complex as Kierkegaard. An easier example would be his pseudonyms that do not represent the author's position in its fullest, especially when it comes to aesthetically-oriented guys like Johannes. And then you see people who are only familiar with Kierkegaard by the excerpts from the first half of Either/Or. I haven't read this particular book so it may be actually okay, but being compiled by a poet, it probably bears the usual poetic delusions, and a good part of Kierkegaard's creative efforts went at dealing with poetic delusions in particular.

Oh ok thanks