Sören Kierkegaard (1813-1855), «père de l'existentialisme», a eu une vie brève et a écrit ses œuvres les plus importantes dans un laps de temps de quelques années.
Le Traité du désespoir, publié en 1849, est à la fois le dernier de ses livres fondamentaux et la synthèse de tous les thèmes majeurs de son œuvre. Traité du désespoir
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اول اینو بگم که ترجمه قابل قبول نبود. اصرار زیاد به تحت اللفظی بودن، آدم رو به این شک می انداخت که مترجم حرفی که متن اصلی میخواد بزنه رو متوجه نشده، در نتیجه مجبور شده با دقت وسواس گونه و بیمارگونه ای لفظ به لفظ ترجمه کنه. (بعداً با ترجمه های دیگهٔ رؤیا منجم مواجه شدم، و فهمیدم همه به عنوان یه مترجم بد که به ترجمهٔ آثاری بزرگ تر از حد سوادش دست زده می شناسنش.)
حروف چینی و علامت گذاری و ویراستاری هم افتضاح بودن. جاهایی حتا کلمات رو اشتباه نوشته بودن، در نتیجه معنای جمله، کاملاً عکس اون چیزی می شد که نویسنده می خواست بگه و این رو متوجه نمی شدی، مگر بعد از دو صفحه با گیجی و سردرگمی پیش رفتن.
دوم این که کتاب، نوشته ی یک فیلسوف هگلیه. یعنی فلسفه ی دیالکتیک هگل، یکی از عناصر اساسی این کتابه و پیوسته به عنوان استدلال بر حرف هاش از دیالکتیک استفاده می کنه. از اون جایی که من فقط یه آشنایی بسیار بسیار ابتدایی با هگل دارم (در حد دنیای سوفی!!!) این قسمت ها رو سریع و بدون تلاش برای فهمیدن می خوندم و میگذشتم که البته باعث حسرت خوردن میشد.
سوم، این که این کتاب به قول خود نویسنده، بیش از اندازه دقیق است که بخواهد پارسایانه باشد یا بیش از اندازه دقیق و فلسفی است که بخواهد عامه پسند باشد. به عبارت دیگر، کتاب بیشتر حالت فلسفی-روانشناسانه دارد و خشک است. از این جهت، خواندنش حوصله ی زیادی می خواهد مخصوصاً برای امثال من که دنبال متون ساده فهم هستند.
از این سه مورد که بگذریم، جاهایی که کتاب ساده بود و خشک نبود و مترجم و ویراستار هم زیاد روی اعصاب نبودند، کتاب به طرز دیوانه کننده ای زیبا می شد. از آن هایی که از ته دلم، از اعماق جانم به نویسنده اش فحش می دادم. (من معمولاً به داستایفسکی هم فحش می دم و داستایفسکی به نظرم رب النوع نویسنده هاست) از جمله جایی که راجع به نومیدی انسان های بی واسطه (انسان هایی که به قدری در غم و شادی دنیای اطراف غرقند که فراموش کرده اند خود و نفسی هم دارند) و نومیدی انسان های درونگرا (انسان هایی که نومیدیشان همراه با ضعف و انفعال و روکردن به دنیای درون است) و نومیدیِ پرخاشگرانه (انسان هایی که در نتیجه ی نومیدی، تندخو و عصبی می شوند، نمونه ی روشنش فکر کنم راسکولنیکوف و ایوان کارامازوف و شخصیت اصلی پدران و پسران باشد که اسمش یادم نیست)، جایی که راجع به این سه نوع نومیدی حرف می زد، اوج کتاب بود و واقعاً شیفته ی کتاب و نویسنده ش شدم. همین طور جایی که راجع به گناه بودن نومیدی حرف میزد.
خلاصه، در مجموع کتاب خوشایندی بود. باید بیشتر از کیرکگور بخونم. Paperback - Paperback
خداوندا به ما دیدگانی کم فروغ ده
در دیدار با آنچه بی قدر است
و دیدگانی روشن بین
در سراسر ساحت حقیقت.
از کی یر کگور. اسقف البرتینی
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من خیلی این کتاب را درک نکردم. به شدت ترجمه‌ی تحت الفظی و کلمه های ناواضح و بی مفهموی استفاده شده بود. کتاب به شدت با تعلیمات دین دارهای ما در یاران همخوانی دارد با توجه به اینکه خود کی یرکگور هم مسیحی بوده دو آتشیه.
مهمترین و زیباترین چیزهایی که من از کتاب دریافت کردم:
نومیدی نوعی بیماری روح، نوعی بیماری خود است. نومیدی، بیماری منتهی به مرگ است. (این تیکه ی بعدی رو خودم نوشتم) از هزارتوی انواع نومیدی من این موجودم: اینگه ادمی در نومیدی نخواهد خودش باشد و تا مدت ها وقتی حمام می رفتم برای اینکه خودم را در آینه ی قدی رو به روبه روی نبینم یک حوله ی بلند پهن می کردم حجابی بین من و آینه. فرار از خویشتن در ساده ترین و اولیه ترین سطحش.
نومیدی که نمی خواهد خودش باشد نسبتی غریبی با این خود پیدا می کند. همچون نسبتی که ادم می تواند با زادگاه‌ش با خانه اش داشته باشد. او آنجا را ترک می کند ولی نقل مکان نمی کند. سکونتگاه جدیدی اختیار نمی کند. همچنان خانه ی قدیم را نشانی از خود می داند اما مشکل اینجاست که جرات نمی کند به خودش بیاید. نمی خواهد خودش باشد و نمی تواند به خانه بازگردد.
آدمی از آدمیان سخن گفتن می اموزد و از خدایان خاموشی.
صفحه 215
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ایا چنان در نومیدی زیسته اید که متوجه نشده باشید نومید بوده اید. یا به گونه ای مخفیانه این بیماری را در درون خودتان همچون راز جانکاهتان، همچون ثمره ی عشقی گناه آلود در اعماق قلبتان حمل کرده اید یا به گونه ای رد نومیدی از کوره دررفته اید که مایه ی وحشت دیگران شده باشید.
هرچه درجه ی آگاهی بیشتر باشد شدت ناامیدی بیشتر است.
Paperback In which I am again reminded of a friend's experience with a professor in a class on Kierkegaard: the students spent the first five weeks trying to convince the professor that you can probably only understand a quarter of Kierkegaard unless you read him in the context of Hegel; the professor rejects this and stresses instead Kierkegaard's Socraticism; at the end of the fifth week (i.e., less than halfway through the course) the professor admits defeat. If that doesn't sound remarkable, you haven't taken many courses with philosophy professors, whom you cannot convince of anything unless they already secretly believe it. The moral of the story is: most of Kierkegaard's writing is incomprehensible unless you've read Hegel.
That doesn't mean, as the cliche has it, that he's writing *against* Hegel. This book is a kind of depressing mini-phenomenology of spirit, in which, instead of ascending towards absolute knowledge, human kind simultaneously ascends towards (what Kierkegaard takes to be) absolute knowledge (i.e., God), and descends further into despair for any number of reasons and in any number of ways. For Hegel, there's always one destination--you might stop on the way to the truth, but your journey is always in that direction. For Kierkegaard, as for Marx, there are two destinations--the good (God/communism) and the horrific (despair/barbarism)--which are both in the same direction. For Marx, 'science' (in the Hegelian sense) will get you to communism, while ideology/capitalism etc will get you to barbarism. For Kierkegaard, science will lead you closer to God, by deepening your despair, but it *won't* get you to the good. Kierkegaard has very good criticisms to make of Hegel, but not the way that, say, Russell has criticisms of him. Kierkegaard, like Marx, remains on Hegel's side of the fence.
Anyway, SuD is a critique of the various idiocies human kind will perform in order to stay in despair. Unlike 20th century existentialists, to whom he's often compared, Kierkegaard insists that the way we are (both 'eternal' and mortal) does not, in itself, lead to despair--despair is the result of an imbalance in ourselves, a stressing of one or the other of these elements at the expense of the other. The human condition is not *intrinsically* one of despair; despair is something we do to ourselves. SuD goes through the many different ways in which we can be unbalanced: pretending we're other than we are, despairing of the way we are, and so on. The 'cure' is to recognize and live with our synthesis, not wish to be entirely eternal (a fantasy) nor believe ourselves to be entirely mortal (which, as a kind of determinism, cuts us off from the possibilities of human existence).
The quasi-Hegelian 'portraits' of various people in despair still read like a rogue's gallery of contemporary intellectuals:
Have hope in the possibility of help, especially on the strength of the absurd, that for God everything is possible? No, that he will not. And ask help of any other? No, that for all the world he will not do; if it came to that, he would rather be himself with all the torments of hell than ask for help. (102)
Here are your militant atheists, 'scientific' determinists*, literary existentialists, and solipsistic nihilists of all stripes, wallowing in self-satisfaction, he prefers to rage against everything and be the one whom the whole world, all existence, has wronged, the one for whom it is especially important to ensure that he has his agony on hand, so that no one will take it from him--for then he would not be able to convince others and himself that he is right. (103).
The second part, on despair as sin, is a much easier read, and not quite as interesting, although it does include the wonderful thought that a self is what it has as its standard of measurement, (147). Kierkegaard's attack on 'Christendom' comes up here, and is as right as ever, but you'd have to be pretty convinced of the perfection of institutional Christianity to find it all that affecting, and I, dear reader, am not.
In short, there's a great lesson in here for 21st century types who like to harp on about humanity's existential loneliness and how evolution means we're destined to rape and pillage because there's no meaning anymore: if you think only a God can give us meaning, then leap into faith, or come to the somewhat easier realization that actually, we can give ourselves meaning. It's childish to think otherwise.
*I've always found it odd that so many people who, quite rightly, hold firm to empiricism, take so seriously the idea of determinism (a reasonable assumption for experimental science, but not therefore a fact) despite the absence of evidence for it. Granted, there can be no evidence for it (despite those idiotic 'experiments' in which people's brains 'decide' something 'before' the people do). But determinism and God have that in common. That won't change anyone's mind on God or determinism, of course, because, as Kierkegaard puts it in a different context, the despairer thinks that he himself is this evidence (105). Paperback کتابی به شدت سخت و دقیق که اقسامِ نومیدی را به شیوه‌ای همزمان دقیق، گیج کننده و دیالکتیکی بر می شمارد. قلمِ کی یرکگور گاهی همانند صاعقه بر سرِ خواننده فرود می آید و ناگاه پیچ و تاب می خورد و او را مات و مبهوت به حال خود رها می کند. امیدوارم دوباره به این کتاب بازگردم... دوباره خوانشی عمیق در وقتِ مناسب و با دانشی جاندارتر. Paperback
For Kierkegaard, “the self is not the relation (which relates to itself) but the relation’s relating to itself.” From the start, he shifts from a Cartesian or essentialist view of the self to an existentialist one. Whereas for Descartes “self” is a common noun, for Kierkegaard, it is a gerund. And the embedded verb, to relate, points to the dynamics of the self. In this case, relating to itself.
The first despair is that “which is ignorant of being in despair, or the despairing ignorance of having a self and an eternal self.” Similar to the “unexamined life” of Socrates, this is the unexamined self. And for Kierkegaard, this is the most common despair, though the individuals involved aren’t aware of it. In the Christian worldview, “a human being is a synthesis of the infinite and finite,” and therefore the tension between these poles becomes the source of next two types of despair: “wanting in despair to be oneself” and “not wanting in despair to be oneself.”
For Kierkegaard, despair is the sickness unto death, one different from an ordinary sickness that leads to physical death. Within the Christian framework, physical death may be a path toward eternal life and a dying person may hope for the life after. But despair, as the sickness unto death, is when one hopes for death as a resolution, but the person cannot die. Hence, the despair. Such despair presupposes life after death. For the atheistic existentialist, such as Sartre or Camus, death is the ultimate end and creates the despair by nullifying hope and achievement and life.
Faith, the interacting with the “power which established it,” is for Kierkegaard the only way the self can overcome despair.
Kierkegaard contributes to Christianity by reformulating faith as the dynamics between the believer and the “power that established it,” in overcoming the ignorance of a self, and in reintegrating the self with this power so as to resolve the tension between the two. Not longer is faith accepting a set of doctrines and carrying out the rites and rituals of the Church.
And he contributes to our understanding of human beings by modeling the self as the relating to itself and others, rather than as static stuffs: bodies, minds, souls and spirits, etc. So the focus shifts from being to becoming. Paperback در باب اثبات نامیرایی کی یرکه گورمی گوید سقراط نامیرایی جان را از روی این حقیقت ثابت کرد که بیماری جان(گناه) آن جان را به همان صورتی تحلیل نمی برد که بیماری تن،تن را تحلیل می برد.به همین ترتیب نیز می توان امر جاودان در انسان ��ا از روی این حقیقت نشان داد که نومیدی نمی تواند خود را تحلیل برد،و همین دقیقا وجود تضاد در نومیدی است . اگر چیزی جاودان در انسان نبود،نمی توانست نومید شود،اما اگر نومیدی می توانست خود را تحلیل برد،باز هم امکان نومیدی وجود نداشت
وی سپس انواع بیماری نومیدی را شرح می دهد ودرباره آگاهی می گویدبا هر افزایشی در میزان آگاهی ، وبه تناسب این افزایش ،شدت نومیدی افزایش می یابد:هرچه آگاهی بیشتر باشد ،نومیدی شدیدتر است
نومیدی شیطان ،شدیدترین نومیدی است،زیرا شیطان روح محض است ،و بنابراین آگاهی و شفافیت مطلق ؛در شیطان هیچ ابهامی وجود ندارد که بتواند به منزله دستاویزی برای سبک کردن و تخفیف ، عمل کند سپس در قسمت بعد می آورد که نومیدی گناه است و آگاهی نفس را درجه بندی می کندو می گوید کودکی که برای سنجش خود، تااین لحظه فقط پدر و مادرخود را داشته است زمانی نفس می شود که شخص بزرگی شود. اما چه تاکید بیکرانی بر نفس نازل می شود که پروردگار را مقیاس قرار دهد
ودرباره گناه می گوید منظور از اصرار در گناه ،این نیست که درباره گناهان جدید خاص بیاندیشیم،بلکه بایدبه حالت بودن در گناه توجه کنیم که عبارت از پر توان شدن در گناه است،پایداری در حالت گناه با آگاهی ازآن توام است
در مقدمه مترجم انگلیسی کتاب آمده است به چاپ این اثر کی یر که گورمردد بود چون که فکر می کرد آیا آدمی این حق را دارد که بگذارد مردم بدانند تا چه اندازه انسان خوبی است. وسرانجام این اثر زیبا و عمیق بعد مرگش منتشر شد
Paperback Identity in an industrialised world
14 October 2013
This book seems to simply ramble on with only a vague structure to it. The reason I say a vague structure is because the first part deals with despair and the second part deals with the nature of sin. However within both parts Kierkegaard doesn't seem to actually be moving in any specific direction, nor does he seem to come to any particular conclusion – if I were marking this as an essay, I would probably give it good marks in relation to content (which I why I gave it such a high rating, because in amongst all of the ramblings, he makes some very insightful statements) but give it an very low mark in regards to structure. However, as I have mentioned, I am more interested in the content than in the structure.
Kierkegaard (which, by the way, means graveyard in Danish) is considered to be the father of existentialism. It wasn't that one day he decided to sit down an write a new philosophy, but rather he was writing in response to the changes that he was seeing going on around him and building upon the philosophies of those that came before him. Kierkegaard was also a Christian, and had studied for the priesthood, however we wasn't connected with any specific church. This is not surprising because at the time Denmark had a state church, and with all state churches, if one does not tow the line, one does not get to speak.
The situation that Kierkegaard is writing about is the destruction of the self that was coming about with modernisation. As people began to move from the country to the cities, people's individuality, and identity, were beginning to disappear. This was also happening within industrialisation, as the skilled person was being replaced with a multitude of unskilled workers. Where previously a nail would be individually made by a blacksmith who was skilled in making all sorts of items, nails were now made by a team who were required to work on only one part of the nail. As such, the identity of the skilled blacksmith was being replaced by the workers, who in effect had no identity at all.
This, as Kierkegaard suggests, is the progenitor of despair. Further, this loss of identity also created a loss of purpose, and when one's purpose is removed, it goes on to add to the despair. Maybe this is why depression is so common in the developed world today because we have effectively lost our identity, and simply find ourselves as being one of the crowd. For instance, as in my case, I like to review and comment on books, but so do hundreds of other people, and as such I find myself competing with hundreds (or even thousands) of other people for readership of my commentaries, and if twenty of them have picked up a large following then I feel, in the end, that I have been left behind, and as such all of my work means nothing – I have lost my purpose, and in the end there is nothing left but despair.
So the question that arises is: what is existentialism? It is the idea that we define who we are rather than letting other people define ourselves. This is the essence of despair because if I base my ability to write a commentary by the number of likes that I get then I find that I am letting others define who I am. Instead, if I let define myself as someone who likes to read, and then write about what I have read, and the thoughts and ideas that I have while I have been reading, then it does not matter what other people think, because I have given myself my own definition. It is also the case outside of this particular sphere because if you let people define who you are 'David, I can see that you are this type of person' then we open ourselves up to despair because we give our identity to others to enchain us with their opinion. How would one respond to that? Me, I simply ignore that person, and go and find somebody else to spend time with, somebody who is not going to attempt to define me, but allow me to define myself.
I guess that is what Kierkegaard is trying to do (and I don't really think he does it well in my opinion, because this book is very dense, and also hard to follow his argument) and that is to empower us to escape from the cycle of despair and to make us realise that in God's eyes we are actually somebody, and while we may have a meaningless, dead-end job, we can escape that by giving ourselves our own identity and our own definition. Another example from my own life is that in my previous role I let it define me, and because I let it define me, it depressed me. This time I just acknowledge that I do work, and I work for an insurance company, but then try to move away from that to talk about other things so that my job does not define me, but rather I define myself. Look, it isn't easy, and people really don't like it when you empower yourself like that, but as Nietzsche said, that which doesn't kill you, only makes you stronger (and he was also an existentialist philosopher). Paperback تحقیقی در ماهیت نفس و ماهیت اوامر صادره از نفس من جمله گناه و نا امیدی. ریشۀ بسیاری از نا امیدی ها در گناه و بالعکس، ریشۀ بسیاری از گناه ها نیز در نا امیدی است. کیرکگور آنچنان که خاصیت اوست، اغلب در مقام نوعی فیلسوف متاله به بیان آرای خود می پردازد. در این کتاب نیز، نوعی بیزاری از کلیسا و آرای آن مشهود است. اما در تحلیل، بسیار خود را وابسته به سنت و کتاب می گرداند. مهم ترین نوع نا امیدی که می تواند قابل بحث باشد نا امیدی از خود بودن و یا نا امیدی از بودن و هم چنین نا امیدی از بودن در ... است. نویسنده با بسط و توضیح سه مفهوم نا امیدی، نفس و مرگ گفتار خود را اسلوب می بخشد. بحث های نخستین در حکم مقدمه و پیشگفتاری است در این موضوع که اتفاقا جالب تر و گیراتر از بقیۀ کتاب است. در اواسط و اواخر کتاب، گفتارها لحنی نصیحت مانند به خود می گیرند که این عامل موجب سر رفتن حوصلۀ مخاطب می گردد. Paperback ...What our age needs is education. And so this is what happened: God chose a man who also needed to be educated, and educated him privatissime, so that he might be able to teach others from his own experience. From Kierkegaard's [personal] Journals.
2013 is the bicentennial of Kierkegaard's birth. He probably would have not wanted you to know that, but he has plenty more things to let you know.
They call him the Father of Existentialism. You know you're asking for trouble when trying to write about a man who holds that distinction, but I must make an effort, once again, to try in vain to talk about one of my heroes-period. Philosopher, theologian, man in love, man in despair, man in angst, man in thought, man in anxiety, the man who launched the great Attack on Christendom in order to save Christianity...I can obviously go on but he is almost beyond description in a way though I have just described him at considerable length.
To get to the book itself, it is a relatively short read in comparison to most of his work and is an implicit response to his earlier masterpiece Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments written under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus while this book is written under the name Anti-Climacus. I have read excerpts of Postscripts but not the whole work in its entirety (it is long), but a lot of the main points are brought up and somewhat expounded on from a different angle here.
The title of this book is actually 2/3 of the main topic of the book which is that the sickness unto death is despair; that is THE word of this book and main idea.
In two parts, he is going to talk about the kinds of despair and than what despair actually is. Throughout that time we will get the standard anti-Hegelianism, mixed with the very in-depth psychological, existential (obviously, he even uses the word), and theological insight that has made his work as new today as it was 50, 100, and 164 years ago.
I am constantly amazed at how at his best, he could tell you anything and make it sound ultra-enlightening even if you feel you have heard it before. For such a small book I felt overwhelmed (in a good way) at all the information that I was getting in such little space. The only other book that really did that to me is Notes from Underground, another existential classic.
This book also recalled Fear and Trembling to my mind. But where that book gives the existential definition of faith (the teleological suspension of the ethical), this book gives the existential definition of sin.
One common complaint about this book is about some of the lag in part one which infuriated me when part two came around and he easily explains all the tortured points he was making in a page and a half. The good news is that he makes up for it big time in part two when he gets into the topic Despair is Sin, from there he's on a rampage of everything you ever thought about sin and [Christian] faith...
One is amazed at how well executed his criticism of institutional Christianity (which he calls Christendom) is without seeming in the least apostateical yet he pulls no punches, whether you're pious or a pagan he is going after you and trying his best to make you question what you thought you knew:
But it has to be said, and as bluntly as possible, that so-called Christendom (in which all, in their millions, are Christians as a matter of course, so that there are as many, yes, just as many Christians as there are people) is not only a miserable edition of Christianity, full of misprints that distort the meaning and of thoughtless omissions and emendations, but an abuse of it in having taken Christianity's name in vain...
Alas! the fate of this word in Christendom is like an epigram on all that is Christian. The misfortune is not that no one speaks up for Christianity (nor, therefore, that there is not enough priests); but they speak up for for it in such a way that the majority of people end up attaching no meaning to it...Thus the highest and holiest leave no impression at all, but sound like something that has now-God knows why-become a matter of form and habits indefensible-they find it requisite to defend Christianity.
Oh and his feelings toward apologetics? One can see now...how extraordinarily stupid it is to defend Christianity, how little knowledge of humanity it betrays, how it...[makes] Christianity out to be some miserable object that in the end must be rescued by a defence[sic]. It is therefore certain and true that the person who first thought of defending Christianity in Christendom is de facto a Judas No. 2; he too betrays with a kiss, except his treason is that of stupidity. To defend something is always to discredit it. Let a man have a warehouse full of gold, let him be willing to give away a ducat to every one of the poor - but let him also be stupid enough to begin this charitable undertaking of his with a defence in which he offers three good reasons in justification; and it will almost come to the point of people finding it doubtful whether indeed he is doing something good. But now for Christianity. Yes, the person who defends that has never believed in it. If he does believe, then the enthusiasm of faith is not a defence, no, it is the assault and the victory; a believer is a victor.
One has to have read or be familiar with Concluding Unscientific Postscripts to understand why he is so against Christian apologetics. In that work he comments on the absurdity of the idea that the eternal should come into time and die while taking on the form as the least and lowest of men. He argues here and there that the idea is from an intellectual bases absurd to all hell and back, thus making it indefensible but at the same time making it the supreme act of love and morality and is, at least for him, the solution to despair-but of course I'm simplifying this so my small mind can understand.
This is just a taste of the ideas going through this book and I would advise you to read it and experience it for yourself.
One more person who deserves some credit in this book is obvious (to those who knows the life of Kierkegaard) was the only love he ever had, his fiancée Regine Olsen. This book, like many of S.K.'s work, is autobiographical to an extent and his relationship to Olsen manages to show-up in quite a bit of his works in one form or another. They were not Dante and Beatrice but she had a devastatingly profound effect on him and she could be called, in a way, the mother of existentialism. This really impresses me and makes me feel that Kierkegaard was probably one of the best psychologist of his own mind outside of Jung.
Let us speak of this in purely human terms. Oh! how pitiable a person who has never felt the loving urge to sacrifice everything for love, who has therefore been unable to do so! Paperback
