Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855)

Just a short, suggestive re-review, because, although I might never get to re-read a 600 page philosophy book when there are other philosophy books I’ll never read, right, my stance towards life when I read this book was too isolative to allow me to see its flaws, or, perhaps, even its strengths:

Well, certainly both the ‘aesthetic’ and of course also the ‘ethical’ ways have changed a lot since the 1840s: I’m kinda disappointed in Past Ted to start a review off based on the almost idiotic premise that ‘ethics’ has changed (ethics is good!) and ‘aesthetics’ has not, right (the kids never change!): certainly in any particularist sense at all, a feminist ethicist and a country cleric of the 1840s would not consider themselves to be at all alike, you know; and obviously the aesthetes of previous times were…. I mean, they were elitists; they intended to be, you know. Not for them, the music of people who farm in the villages, right, or sweep the streets.

Let’s see, what else: one or two more things…. I mean, there is kinda this question of it being a rumble between aesthetics and ethics, right: just the two of them; Soren was a sort of literary Hegel, and Hegel had his living god-dying god-resurrected god thing, right, but in this book I don’t know so much that there is a synthesis, probably because I doubt somewhat that there was one in society: either you sought pleasure, or you crushed it, right…. I mean, does living ethically mean that you give up beauty in your life? Is it a case of either being a seducer and deceiving girls, or entering into the grey marriage-of-duty, right….? I forget exactly how Soren’s ethicist feels, and it’s just as well, because I don’t trust myself to have perceived aright, but, although I don’t consider reading this book to have been time “wasted”—even in the sense of, “the only way to know is to find out”, and you find out that society was deceiving/controlling, right—obviously in my opinion there’s the aspect that generally marriage then was duty and sacrifice and beauty might be okay—sorta—if it helped you conform, but really….

Yeah, I mean, a very relevant point for a book like this is that reading philosophy is NOT the only way to explore these problems, you know. Really I feel that we all should have non-philosophical methods to go into this stuff—although generally speaking, people have no methods at all, not least because they’re mostly told that they’re not worth it from an early age, not least in school: and even the person who tests well is told that they had value, sorta, because they succeeded at conforming and “earned” it, or rather were granted it, as a sort of monarch’s gift, you know—and then philosophers should have both philosophical and non-philosophical tools, right~ whereas the average philosopher of post-medieval times, if not much earlier, as well, tries to have only philosophical tools, so that he—very much, ‘he’—can be confirmed to be separate from the dirty masses, right, which is basically the goal, the whole goal. Soren is much better along these lines than the average philosopher, but it is certain that people study who try to assimilate his attitude to the attitude of the majority-elite guy, right: and it is hard to have a culture, all to one’s self, right.… (lisätietoja)