Alex, if you didn't misrepresent Kierkegaard, I wouldn't bother correcting you. Ever think of that?
Talking Ass wrote:One must know, and most intelligent people do know and do recognize, that of those who encounter Kierkegaard's writing, many, many different opinions and impressions have come into being.
I am convinced that not a single person understands me.
— Kierkegaard
On one extreme there are atheisitc existentialists who find sources of value in him, and on the other fairly orthodox Christian apologist 'existentialists'.
There have been hours when I wished there were someone with whom I could talk, an ascetic. But wherever I look I see this nauseating spectacle: the professor who lectures and otherwise existentially knows only about a job and a career. It would never occur to me to speak with anyone like that; indeed, I could not even justify it, for of course he would try to help me get rid of all modesty so that in utterly shameless security I promptly would make a livelihood the earnestness of life.
— Kierkegaard
This, then, is the law: the person who does not want to operate with illusions will unconditionally get into trouble during his lifetime, will be trampled down, sacrificed. On the other hand, as soon as such a person is dead, the deceivers (orators, poets, professors, etc.) promptly take him over and exploit him — and he is idolized by the next generation. And if there is someone in the next generation who does not want to deceive or operate with illusions, well, if he keeps on, the same thing will happen to him as happened to the dead man when he was living.
— Kierkegaard
Somewhere in a psalm it tells of the rich man who painstakingly amasses a fortune and "knows not who will inherit it from him."
In the same way I will leave behind me, intellectually speaking, a not-so-little capital. Alas, but I know who is going to inherit from me, the character I find so repulsive, he who will keep on inheriting all that is best just as he has done in the past — namely, the assistant professor, the professor.*
[*And even if "the professor" happened to read this, it would not stop him, it would not prick his conscience — no, he would lecture on this, too. And even if the professor happened to read this remark, it would not stop him either — no, he would lecture on this, too. For the professor is even longer than the tapeworm which a woman was delivered of recently (200 feet according to her husband, who expressed his gratitude in Addresseavisen recently) — a professor is even longer than that — and if a man has this tapeworm "the professor" in him, no human being can deliver him of it; only God can do it if the man himself is willing.]
But it is part of my suffering to know this and then quite steadily go ahead with the project which will bring me toil and trouble and the yield the professor in one sense will inherit — in one sense, for in another sense I will take it with me.
— Kierkegaard
However, here on GF, there is really only ONE interpretation that is possible, given the presuppositions and the necessary intellectual (and perceptive) suppressions that are part and parcel of the QRStian mentality. Not only is this done with Kierkegaard but it is done with all intellectual figures that the QRStians dig into.
Either/Or
Every cause which is not served as an either/or (but as a both-and, also, etc.) is eo ipso not God's cause, yet it does not therefore follow that every cause served as an either/or is therefore God's cause.
Either/Or, that is, that the cause is served as an Either/Or, is an endorsement similar to "in the royal service."
The symbol for the merely human, for mediocrity, the secular mentality, dearth of spirit, is: both-and, also.
And this is the way Mynster actually has proclaimed Christianity, that is, if consideration is given to his own personal life.
— Kierkegaard
Either/Or
That is what I was called at the time. What a succession of interpretations of my
Or I have already gone through!
I eliminated marriage as an
Or. But marriage, after all, was not the
Or of my life; I am much farther distant from the prior
Either.
To be specific, the prior
Either signifies the licentious enjoyment of life. Then come all the intermediate stages: the enjoyment of life with an admixture of the ethical. But my
Or is not here. Then follows: the enjoyment of life with an ethical-religious admixture, but this is still not my
Or.
So there is only one
Or left: suffering, renunciation, the religious — to become less than nothing in this world.
If I am an original dialectician, if I am dialectical by nature, then I can find rest only in the last
Or, not in any intermediate
Or; for
Either-Or is not exhausted until one comes to rest in the final
Or.
— Kierkegaard
An Either-Or for an Established Order
Either the established order — or the single individual, unconditionally the single individual, but with nothing in between, for that is half-and-half, parties, sects, etc.
That is how I support the established order, for there is scarcely one in any generation who manages to be unconditionally the single individual; they all want to dabble around in parties etc.
— Kierkegaard
If you start with a mind predisposed to 'binaries', to reductionist logic, a mind that has only a limited number of moving parts, it really doesn't matter what quantity of material one shoves into the hopper: it will get shredded in more or less the same manner. In a similar manner, you could shove all the 'genius' that exists into that mind dominated by reductionsit tendencies and habits, and never will there come out 'genius' on the other end. What comes out is a 'hack-job'.
No alternative, eh? No other option? Well, that's reductionistic, Alex. Oops, eh?
I have the impression, in respect to Kierkegaard, that QRStians act as 'naive rationalists' in respect to a thinker who longed for, and proposed, an immersion in the vital substance of Christianity. As I have said, it is necessary that QRStians deny and remodel any thinker---in this case Kierkegaard---to accord with a fixed group of presuppositions and speculations one discovers at the base of ALL their reasonings.
The following is a long quote, that shows how much of a thinker Kierkegaard was, and how he used his reasoning to elucidate Christianity. I have included it in its entirety, because I would like to share it with others on the forum. I'm not expecting you yourself to read it, Alex, even though it answers your comment perfectly.
Christian Auditing
What money is in the finite world, concepts are in the world of spirit. All transactions are conducted with them.
When it so happens that generation after generation everyone takes over the concepts he got from the previous generation — and then devotes his days and his time to enjoying this life, works for finite goals, etc. — it all too easily happens that the concepts are gradually distorted, become entirely different from what they were originally, come to mean something entirely different, come to be like counterfeit money. Meanwhile all transactions nevertheless continue to be conducted smoothly with them, which, incidentally, does not disturb men's egotistical interests (which is not the case when counterfeit money appears), especially if the concept-counterfeiting is oriented precisely toward human egotism; thus the one who is actually fooled, if I dare say so, is the other partner in the business of Christianity: God in heaven.
Yet no one wants the business of auditing the concepts. Everyone understands more or less clearly that to be employed in such a way in this business is practically the same as being sacrificed, means that a person's life becomes so impounded that he cannot follow his natural inclination to occupy himself with finite goals. No, the human thing to do is to treat the concepts as superficially as possible and to plunge into the concrete details of life the sooner the better, or in any case not to be particularly scrupulous about the concepts, not so scrupulous that one cannot move full speed into the concrete details of life.
Nevertheless auditing is needed, and more and more with each decade.
Therefore Governance must take possession of an individual who is to be used for this purpose.
Such an auditor, of course, is nothing at all like the whole chattering company of preachers and professors — yet he is not an apostle either, but rather just the opposite.
Precisely what the auditor needs is what the apostle does not really need — intellectuality, superior intellectuality — moreover, he must be extremely familiar with all possible kinds of swindling and counterfeiting, almost as if he personally were the trickiest of all swindlers — in fact, his business is to "know" the counterfeits.
Since all this knowledge is so very shady and equivocal that it could occasion the greatest possible confusion, the auditor is not treated like the apostle. Alas, no, the apostle is a trusted man; the auditor is put under the strictest supervision. Because it is so descriptive, my one metaphor for this is constantly the same. Imagine that the Bank of London became aware that counterfeit notes were in circulation — so well counterfeited that the bank despaired of identifying them with certainty and of protecting itself against future imitation. Despite all the talented bank and police personnel, there was only one with absolute talent in this area — but he was a criminal, one of the condemned. So he is used, but he is not used as a trusted man. He is placed under the most terrifying supervision: with death hanging over his head, he has to sit and handle all that mass of money, he is periodically searched, etc.
It is the same with the Christian auditor. If the apostle has the task of proclaiming the truth, the auditor has the task of discovering counterfeits, identifying them and thereby rendering them impossible. If the apostle's personal attribute is a noble and pure simplicity (which is the condition for being the instrument of the Holy Spirit), the auditor's is this shady, ambiguous knowledge. If the apostle is in the power of Governance in a univocal and wholly good sense, the auditor is completely in the power of Governance in an equivocal sense. If with all his efforts and work the apostle still has no merit before God, the auditor has even less and could not possibly gain any (were it otherwise possible), since he has a negative service to fulfill and thus is essentially a penitent — but essentially both of them are sacrificed and both are chosen in grace by Governance, for it is not in disgrace that the one is chosen as auditor. And as it begins with the apostle, the auditor obviously can come only toward the end, since he has the dissemination as a presupposition. And if the apostle has his name from being sent out because he proceeds from God outwards, the examiner's task is to penetrate the counterfeits and lead back to God.
Apostles can never come again; otherwise Christ also must be able to come again in a way different than his second coming. Christ's life on earth is Christianity. The apostle signifies: Now Christianity has been introduced; from now on you men have to take it over yourself, but with responsibility.
So mankind took it over. And even if it is an everlasting lie that Christianity is perfectible, mankind certainly displayed a mounting perfectibility — in counterfeiting Christianity.
Confronted with this counterfeiting, God — even if he wanted to (and even if there were no other hindrance) — cannot use an apostle, because through its counterfeiting Christendom has so alienated itself from God that a trusting appeal to men, if I dare put it this way, is out of the question. No, as Christendom is a counterfeiting, and since sin nowadays is primarily prudence, on the side of Governance (whom man with his counterfeiting has alienated) all is distrust. Joyous emissaries no longer come from God, any more than we hail the police as such; no, only experts in frauds come, and even these, since they in fact essentially belong to the general fraudulence, are treated by Providence as shady and equivocal characters.
Christendom today is happy and satisfied. Not infrequently we are given the impression that a new epoch is coming, new apostles are coming — because Christendom, which of course has done an excellent job, has so perfectly practised and appropriated what the apostles introduced that now we must go further. The truth is that Christendom has done the shabbiest, trickiest job possible, and to expect new apostles (if there were any truth to this idea at all) is the most confounded insolence.
— The author of "The Book of the Judge", no less.
Alex Jacob wrote:
I have suggested before and will suggest it again: the conceptual 'solutions' of the QRStians are far less well-reasoned than one might imagine. Rather, they are comprised of a 'forced strategy' where certain views and ideas are enforced as 'Truths' and these Truths dominate and obscure all other possibilities of thinking, especially all those that may be said to 'root' into the 'real person', the flesh-and-blood person, the person of intellect and feeling.
You never enter into any contact with what I write about the " 'real person', the flesh-and-blood person, the person of intellect and feeling."
You simply regard anything deeper than the ego, to be a falsehood.
Such enforcing takes place precisely in the post-modern mentality and is a phenomenon of post-modernism. It is a strategy, it seems, that stems from 'ontological uncertainty' and the pain and difficulty of having to work---organically and holisitically---through the modern problems of loss of meaning, loss of connection and relatedness, and the stress to the individual.
If one were reacting to the confusion of post-modernism, and the sense of being lost in a haze of equivalence, then one may well try to seek permanence and centralisation as a result. The wafty and ungrounded "everything is equal and valid" mode is indeed a cause for false fundamentalism. It's how the ego springs back and forward between two opposing falsehoods.
Neither position have anything to do with the true nature of Reality. The Truth cannot be held onto, in a fanatical and dogmatic way, or turned into a "Spin-the-Ideological-Wheel" to choose whatever takes your fancy.
To make these sorts of statements generally produces, with time, the threat of being 'banned' or the endless but predictable 'ridicule' by the group. It is imperative to attack and to dismantle any 'conceptual pathway' that does not lead directly to the QRStian dogmatic position into which one 'leaps' not with expansive faith but with rhetorical impositions on the mind and on being.
Your statements in themselves aren't a problem. It's your close-mindedness to your own hypocrisy. You accuse me, and others, of being rigid and reductionistic, while you are no less rigid in your refusal to consider my reasoning - but you dress it up in words like "I suggest" or "I have the impression", and so forth.
It really is a waste of everyone's time. You repeat the same things, dishing out your fair share (and more) of insults and slander. You don't consider at all the explanations given to you, but respond with ad hominems, dressed up as "suggestions" and "impressions". That is why you have been asked repeatedly to go away.
I would finally suggest that Prince might be described as the chemically reduced form of the QRStian fury in opposition to any views and narratives that do not fit into the established, dogmatic QRStian structure.
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Your desire to lump individuals into a group and label people is your own issue. There is no QRS.
Prince is himself, and has admitted to having post-traumatic-stress disorder from some childhood traumas. Using his psychological issues to argue that there is an underlying close-minded, rigid fanaticism and dogmatism running amok on this board, is inconsiderate to Prince, and another irrelevant ad hominem to boot.
If you want to discuss Kierkegaard, study his actual writings. I won't be responding to any more of your Kierkegaard-related posts otherwise.
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