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Caryn, US -- Kierkegaard
What a great programme. I wish we could have such great talk radio in the US. Thankfully there is the internet. Thanks also for the podcast. What a great programme to listen to when I'm out for a walk. Such intelligent discussion!! Thanks very much.
Christopher John Paul Francis - Soren Kierkegaard
I'm not familiar with Soren Kierkegaard and found the overview of his views illuminating.I was most interested in the (non) progression from ascetic to moral to religious. A certain idea about this point of view struck me when comments about Soren Kierkegaard's fascination with the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac.The ascetic strikes me as that person who is likely to burn themselves by fire or by ice out of desire either to grasp one or escape the other.The moral/ethical person is that person who knows that fire and/or ice burns and tries to find the warm place somewhere inbetween.The religious person is that person who understands that last time the fire and/or the ice burnt them but that also understands that the nature of fire and ice is not permanent, and so despite - and also with - past experience returns to that which burnt. Abraham is religious.I come at this with something of a buddhist or vedic standpoint, and i'd see the moral stage as the transition from selfishness to selflessness, with the religious stage being necessary for the attainment of selflessness. The moral stage then is necessarily a consciously active stage.It also puts me in mind of the innocence, experience, experience/innocence prgression i associate with William Blake.
Kierkegaard (D.F. Bates Merseyside/North Wale
When clarification was being sought for the term “aesthetic”, it might have been useful if someone had drawn attention to the etymology of the word (without of course imagining that words mean whatever they have meant in the past); and its place in Plato’s scheme. The word most precisely means “having to do with perception through the senses” (sight and the rest); for Plato this level of cognition is the lowest because what it delivers is disconnected and deeply ambiguous, and the philosophical task is to climb above it to a unified cognition of what is ultimately more “real”. However it is possible to live only (more or less) at the level of perception (“aesthesis”), delighting (hence the connection with “hedonism” and pleasure) in the discrete colours, sounds, smells etc. Someone who does that is the “aesthetic” person. In Republic 5, round about 475c-476a, Plato mentions such people. He calls them “philotheamones” (“spectacle or sight-lovers”) but I don’t think he would have rejected a rough identification with the “aesthete” of Kierkegaard…for whom all the Platonic background would have been deeply familiar.Of course it may be that this sort of point was made during the discussion but edited out.
George, Oxford - Francis August Schaeffer
After listening to the programme about Kierkegaard, it made me think about Schaeffer. I heard about him a while ago and thought he had some interesting views in embracing science within a christian framework. Whilst sceptical, I've heard a few christians (of a certain age) refer to him, so I thought his work would be interesting to dissect by experts.P.S. I'm a massive fan of IOT - Any chance of podcasting the archive programmes (pre-2007)?
Dave S: Kierkegaard
Well, there were at least 3 different pronunciations of 'Kierkegaard' on the programme: So, what's the answer to the basic question: how is 'Kierkegaard' pronounced?
DB Kierkegaard
I was hooked on Kierkegaard's writing when in my teens and though they permanently affected me, I had not read him for many years. I shall do so again as a result of this programme which set out his ideas and their significance with magnificent clarity. My only quibble was that the nature of his Christianity and his struggle against Bishop Mynster might have come into slightly sharper focus. Kierkegaard did literally take to the streets to live out his philosophy. What does mean for institutional Christianity today--and why did some of his followers gravitate towards the most institutionalised form of Christianity, Roman Catholicism? Is he a Danish parallel to J.H.Newman? If he had lived, where would he have gone--or would there have been more decades of individual street protest? Or is one to assume that he had little or no impact on Denmark but that his philosophy attached no weight to his doing so?
MD - Sartre the atheist
There appears to have been a shift in Sartre's position towards the end of his life. Already, in 'La Ceremonie des Adieux', he says that he has retained from his Xtian unpbringing the notion of good and evil as absolutes. And later, in 'L'espoir maintenant', published just before his death and much deplored by his friends, he outlines a new morality based not on left wing politics/equality but on morality and a relationship of fraternity between human beings all of whom are metaphorically born of the same mother. The messianic tone of some his last pronouncements horrified Simone de Beauvoir and the old Sartrists. And while Sartre's thinking may not be entirely clear, not least because he was practically blind at the time of these interviews and could not check the written text, the idea of a moral fraternity is nevertheless attractive at a time when it is becomong incresingly clear that human beings share a common destiny on planet earth, and when it is difficult to conceive of peace in the middle east without at least a small measure of on planet earth Certainly, it is difficult to conceive of peace in the middle east without at least minimal fraternity amongst the children of Abraham.
Dr Lesley Evans - Soren Kierkegaard
I found Melvyn's comments in his newsletter after yesteday's programme very interesting - I too was brought up Anglican, went through several phases of rejecting it all after trying to reason my way to faith, and have only recently come back to faith. Anselm said " I believe in order that I may understand," not the other way round. Faith and Scientific reasoning are two different approaches to truth, but neither negates the other. I have been greatly helped by reading the books of the late Michael Mayne, in particular "Learning to Dance" and "The Enduring Melody". He says that Christianity is not about trying to provide neat explanations for life, suffering, etc. Rather it is about encountering mystery. He answers Dawkins very forcefully in the penultimate chapter of "Learning to Dance", in which he also quotes Kierkegaard. I can heartily recommend his books to Melvyn and anyone else who is questioning, as we all should if we think at all.
Kierkegaard
Kierkegaard was ably and wittily introduced by the 3 speakers.They raised his connection to Socrates and Socratic irony.His use of pseudonyms and displacement from the author.The 3 categories:aesthetics,ethics and religion.His dislike of Hegelianism and systems.His love of subjective inwardness and truth.You couldn't identify the message and the author.Everthing he wrote was an attempt to get at what it meant to become a Christian:it certainly didn't reside in the state religion or in the complacency of people who were certain they were Christians.Hence the attempt to apprise what the leap of faith meant:the story of Abraham and Isaac.The best part of faith is in receiving(a gift of grace) not in an intellectual statement of belief.Kierkegaard has been sidelined and subsumed by the atheists and the existentialists.But he needs relooking at and re-examining just to see where we've come from.A worthy subject.
Kierkegaard -- ANXIETY??
A whole program on Kierkegaard without mentioning anxiety once! The easiest way to explain why he is the grandfather of existentialism and why Melvyn rightly questioned the hierarchy issue of the spheres of existence is anxiety. There is no reason to move from one sphere to the next, the 'existing individual' may or may not find his life as a hedonist drives him to anxiety and despair and thus leaps to the next sphere. He can not be convinced rationally to move from one to the next because there are no rational grounds to be ethical rather than aesthetic, or religious rather than ethical. The moves are only understandable to an individual in living their life because only they experience anxiety.Pete RogersLondon
léo burton...kierkegaard & loving your neighbour
From the programme, I gather that when K writes of love, he is concerned with the love of one individual for another. This is the concern prevalent in our own society.We take the message in the dictum "love your neighbour as yourself" to be that one should care for another individual as much as one cares for oneself. In another society, the message might be that the 'group' of neighbours is an organism, and that the survival of the group is more important than the survival of any individual neighbour.Melvyn Bragg asked 'what if you hate yourself?' In our society this is a personal problem, perhaps pathological; in another society this would be criminal treachery.The Old Testament commandments may be directed at the members of a group rather than individuals, 'Thou shalt not kill' meaning it is forbidden to kill a group member or neighbour, but there is no particular objection to killing anyone outside the group. This was exemplified in the film ' Little Big Man', where the tribe were Human-Beings, and all other beings were non-human.Most of us have experienced the joy of romantic love for another individual, and it is not easy to accept that the ecstasy is a biochemical condition, quite different from the compassion that a mother has for a child. Probably none of us has experienced being an integral part of a tribe, and hence do not know the feeling of being immersed in a pool of love rather than sharing a mutual emotion.However, we have evolved as we have evolved...
Anthony Campbell -- Kierkegaard
I started listening to this programme with a good deal of pleasurable anticipation, having tried a few times to read Kierkegaard but always retiring baffled. I hoped that I would reach some kind of understanding of what he was driging at. I have to say that after listening to the discussion I'm still baffled -- perhaps I should listen to it again. But I suspect that the ability to respond to writers like K. is a temperamental bias; either you have it or you don't. I don't think I do.
Martin Eggleton (Rev.Dr) Kir
Now I can finish my Good Friday sermon. What is the meaning of Christ's Death? What is Truth? The new Truth , the subjective inner truth that enables me to love . Love the religious people, my enighbour and even my enemies as much as myself.
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