Kierkegaard's Living-Room

by Mercer, David E.

• ISBN13: 9780773521018
• ISBN10: 0773521011
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-01-01
• Publisher: Carleton Univ Pr

Summary

In Kierkegaard's Livingroom David Mercer weaves his way through the Philosophical Fragments, bringing the reader a new understanding of Kierkegaard's work. Placing the Philosophical Fragments in the context of Kierkegaard's others works, Mercer's commentary shows how literary style and character are used to reveal the nature of history and time.He shows us that Kierkegaard's expressed intent is to provide readers with the opportunity to choose or reject Christ. He explores the question of who Kierkegaard understands Jesus to be and why he believes that faith or history alone cannot answer this question, claiming that history is meaningful only when it is understood from the perspective of "sacred history."Kierkegaard's Livingroom explores what "sacred history" is, why it is so important to us, and why it depends on an incarnate God. Mercer argues that Kierkegaard is not tilting at windmills but responding to Hegel's view of history and Kant's view of faith, showing that Kierkegaard has much to contribute to the debates on liberalism and post-modernism.David E. Mercer is assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy, St. Thomas University

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction	3	(8)
The Elephant in the Living-Room	11	(19)
Forceful Currents	18	(5)
The Hegelian Knot	23	(4)
Kierkegaard's Response to Plato's Temporal Present	27	(3)
The Preliminary Discussion of History and Its Structure in Either/Or	30	(29)
Relation as Consciousness	36	(3)
The Value of Architecture, Sculpture, Art, Music, and Poetry in the Historical	39	(4)
Poetry as a Historical Expression	43	(1)
The Characters and the Historical	44	(5)
The Ethical and the Historical	49	(5)
Marriage as a Historical Expression	54	(1)
Outer and Inner History	55	(4)
The Poetic Study of the Temporal and the Eternal in Philosophical Fragments	59	(23)
The ``Thought-Project'' in ``A'': Can the Truth Be Learned?	65	(3)
The ``Thought-Project'' in ``B'': Can the Truth Be Learned?	68	(8)
Kierkegaard's Rationale for the Divine Teacher	76	(6)
The Puzzle of the Absolute Paradox	82	(18)
The Assumption	86	(7)
The Frontier	93	(2)
The Nature of Sin	95	(1)
The Offence	95	(5)
The Condition of the Follower	100	(18)
The Contemporary Follower	102	(5)
The Gift of Faith	107	(6)
The Advantage of the Contemporary	113	(5)
The Role of the Necessary in the Past and the Future	118	(24)
The Purpose of the ``Interlude''	119	(1)
What Is the Effect of Coming into Existence?	119	(2)
The Nature of the Necessary	121	(1)
The Possibility of Freedom in the Necessary	122	(2)
The Nature of the Historical	124	(3)
The Certainty of the Past	127	(2)
The Past as a Subject	129	(2)
The Historian's Subject	131	(4)
The Foundation of Belief	135	(4)
The Application of What Has Been Discovered	139	(3)
The One Who Comes after the Event	142	(19)
The Next Generation of Followers	143	(2)
An ``If/Then'' Proposition	145	(2)
The Awareness	147	(3)
The Relation between the Types of Facts	150	(2)
The Absolute Fact	152	(6)
Objections	158	(3)
Sacred History	161	(13)
Christ and History	164	(1)
The Problem of Scripture	165	(4)
The Relation of Faith and History	169	(5)
Kierkegaard's Place in the Current Debate	174	(13)
The Modern Confusion	177	(1)
Kierkegaard and the Philosophy of History	178	(2)
Kierkegaard and the Value of the Incarnation	180	(2)
Kierkegaard's Value in the Modern Debate	182	(1)
Kierkegaard and Feminism	182	(1)
The Moral Issue	183	(4)
Notes	187	(12)
Bibliography	199	(6)
Index	205