#kiekegaard

[lunamoonly]

La vida sólo puede ser comprendida mirando hacia atrás, pero sólo puede ser vivida mirando hacia adelante.

Soren Kierkegaard

[alienalienalie]

Lowkey wanted to read fear and trembling but realised it’s almost 3 am and I don’t hate myself enough yet to think about absurdities and paradoxes at this hour

[tagitables]

[desaparecidos]

For Kierkegaard there are three levels of existence. At the aesthetic level, the experience of love is one of vain seduction and repetition. The selfishness of pleasure and the very selfishness of that selfishness drive individuals on, the archetype being Mozart’s Don Juan. At the ethical level, love is genuine and demonstrates its own seriousness. It is an eternal commitment, turned towards the absolute, something Kierkegaard himself experienced in his long courtship of the young Régine. The ethical level can lead the way to the highest level, the religious level, if the absolute value of the commitment is endorsed by marriage. Marriage is thus conceived not as a strengthening of the social bond against the perils of wayward love, but as the institution that channels genuine love towards its fundamental destination. The final transfiguration of love becomes possible when “the Ego plunges through its own transparency to meet the power that has created it”: that is, when, thanks to the experience of love, the Ego roots itself in its divine source. Love then moves beyond seduction and, through the serious mediation of marriage, becomes a way to accede to the super-human.

In Praise of Love, Alain Badiou

[fridaandnigel]

The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand it, we must act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God.

~Soren Kierkegaard via source

[theqlccom-blog]

The Existential Guide to Success

Philosophy does not always have the best reputation for practical insights. One notable exception is the school of existentialism, which looks at the philosophy of living and how individuals face the world. In this article we briefly look at three key ideas.

 1. Responsibility

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.                           - Jean Paul Sartre

Freedom can be nauseating but without the power to choose we are slaves to circumstance. Taking responsibility gives you the power to make positive changes and have an impact. As Viktor Frankyl suggested:

The Statue of Liberty on the East Coast should be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.

2. Authenticity

Be that self which one truly is. - Soren Kierkegaard

As Oscar Wilde brilliantly put it:

Be yourself, everybody else is already taken!

Though, as Paul Tilich, another existentialist observed, it takes a lot of courage to be yourself. The moment you express your authentic self, you open yourself up for rejection and that can hurt. But the price of inauthenticity is worse. If you live your life sheltered under a socially acceptable mask, you can never experience the joy of somebody appreciating you truly for you. You live a lie. As Kurt Cobain concludes:

I'd rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I am not.

 3. Meaning

Those of who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'. - Friederich Nietzsche

Many of the existentialists viewed life as absurd but they all recognised the importance of finding a meaning to your life, even a subjective one. It is this search for meaning, this 'pursuit of happiness' that propels us forward to create purposeful change in our lives.

Without a vision, the people perish.

As Solomon noted. Meaning gives our lives significance.

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Rich is the site's founder. Having led a spectacularly mediocre life, he got inspired by great writers and quit his quarter life crisis. Since then he's hiked mountains, taking up American Football, caught a criminal and become a digital nomad, working from beaches and cafés around the world. Now he wants to give back and tired of the superficial drivel shared on social media, aims to give a more meaningful voice for quarter-lifers.

[jhoerson]

Si el hombre fuese un animal o un ángel, no podría de ningún modo angustiarse. Puesto que es una síntesis puede angustiarse, y cuanto más profunda es la angustia, más grande es el hombre.

Soren Kierkegaard

[teachanarchy]

PHILOSOPHY - Soren Kierkegaard 

Soren Kierkegaard is useful to us because of the intensity of his despair at the compromises and cruelties of daily life. He is a companion for our darkest moments.