Hello /lit/. I need help. I was going to start reading Kierkegaard's

>>8378970
Like I've said an hour ago in a kierkegaard theread with the same OP picture, Plato (but not aristotle), kierk himself and hegel.
Kierkegaard is also a fideist, hence your belief according to him would be quite different than the one of st. Augustine, Aquinas and closer to Pascal.
Go for Confessions of Augustine as a more newbie friendly work which is also an earlier part of the philosophical history.

>>8378970
Just try reading it and use the internet for help. For an intro to Kierk (but not to either-or) I recommend looking up Bert Dreyfuss's lectures at Berkeley. You can find them on itunes as a podcast.

You don't really need to read anything before. He uses some Hegelian terminology, but you can look those terms up to see what he means.
the sparknotes page for Fear and Trembling has a terms page with these definitions

>>8378989
based Dreyfus.

Honestly, just find something philosophical that intrigues you and go from there. If you want to wring every ounce of meaning out of Kierk, you mostly certainly need to read Plato and Hegel at least (and in turn to understand THEM you'll need to read presocratics and Kant at least, etc. etc.)

I might start with a different work by Kierk since that one is so hefty, but if it grips you, just run with it.

Philosophy completionists are silly, but there certainly are some people you can read who are going to be made constant reference to, (e.g. Plato) and you can help yourself by reading them (or at least having an understanding via secondary sources, though elitists will not like this)

>You have to be a christian to appreciate Kierkegaard maymay

>Who was Socrates.

Kierkegaard is just Socrates for cool people.

>>8378986
>Plato (but not aristotle)
>for Either/Or
You're either confused or retarded. Aristotle is THE Greek to read not just for Kierkegaard but particularly for that work.

>>8379513
Isn't Kierks a Socrates 2.0 though?

Also, I think The Sickness Unto Death would be a better introduction to Kierks if you're into the idea of why a belief in God is necessary, alongside some of the best psychoanlysis and prose I've ever been lucky enough to read.

Anyone find it interesting how potentially{/spoiler] K's modern Knight of Faith is an ISIS shooter?

>>8379716
>Isn't Kierks a Socrates 2.0 though?
>Also, I think The Sickness Unto Death would be a better introduction to Kierks if you're into the idea of why a belief in God is necessary, alongside some of the best psychoanlysis and prose I've ever been lucky enough to read.
>Anyone find it interesting how potentially{/spoiler] K's modern Knight of Faith is an ISIS shooter?
On all 3 points my advice is to actually read Kierkegaard and stop trying to get by on second hand information.

>>8378970
What Dostoevsky did you read that left you wishing you believed in God? He had the opposite effect on me...

kind of a philosophy bab here

I loved the Kierkegaard I read, the most of any of the big four existentialists, and really enjoy a lot of Stoic and Taoist philosophy

could you lovely people point me anywhere next?

>>8379513
???

>>8380009
K had a hard on for Aristotle. Aesthetics, Poetics, Logic... I assume idiots have done a Chinese whispers and have somehow switched the overtly relevant Aristotle for Socrates. Socrates while arguably relevant is quite an esoteric one to stuck in here. It's not all that long ago the first book looking at the influence of Plato and Socrates over all of K's work came out, and bear in mind that K wrote his doctoral thesis on Socrates, the similarities are not immediately obvious.

The thrust of Either/Or and the reference in the title is to Aristotelian logic.

>>8379941

Dostoevsky's point is exactly that there is, ultimately, no certain view point that is endorsed, compared with Tolstoy. Read Bakhtin's Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics if you're interested in a more detailed discussion of this aspect (what Bakhtin calls polyphony).

>>8380046
Sorry. I am confused bc i took that coursera course on Kierkegaard, and Socrates is probably talked about just as much as him, and they referenced Plato. Do you mean Kierkegaard himself did work off of Plato, but Aristotle and got his socratic stuff from him?

And what do you mean by
>the similarities are not immediately obvious

>>8380124
*didnt work off of Plato oops

>>8379912
I've read Seducer's Diary, Fear and Trembling and Sickness Unto Death anon. Kierkegaard's epistemology resembles Socrates to a large degree, in that it is largely ironic, seeking to tear down facts and formulae and replace them with suggestions, subjective theories that aren't designed to describe the world but break down what you already know. Hell, there are even diary notes with plays on Socrates, and he writes:

"What our age needs…is not a new contribution to the system
but a subjective thinker who relates himself to existing qua
Christian just as Socrates related himself to existing qua
human being (CUP2 77; Pap. VI B 98, p. 62).1
—Johannes Climacus

You can see that attempt just in the numerous pseudonyms, the obtuse parody of Hegel's language in Anti-Climacus's opening passage of a negative third unity, the constant mystification of the teleological suspension of the ethical, his writings encompassing first person PoV from the ethical, religious and aesthetic modes of life. His whole philosophy is sceptic fideism, a "truth is subjectivity" viewpoint that renders everything fallible but divinity.

And, on the ISIS point, I think it's a pressing example. If someone were to have a holy revelation about comitting an act society feels is inexcusable, then that draws sure parallels to the Abraham analogy, that the "single individual" can be higher than a "universal" because of the deep subjectivity of human life. If anything, to believe in doing "good" from a perfect source rather than your own subjective mind, frames the action as potentially more ethical, selfless even.

Please don't be so upset when someone has a different reading to you, it's all subjective after all.

>>8381611
>I think it's a pressing example
They're exchanging one social milieu for another. While it may be radical to be an Isis shooter in Western society, it's perfectly normal in daesh. I also wouldn't discount everything else about Abraham (he didn't just kill his son, he climbed the mountain made the pyre and ultimately did something he didn't want to on any level until he finally didn't have to do the action), or his comments about how the knight of faith looks (barely indistinguishable on a day to day basis from any other of the congregation).

I don't disagree with a reading of Plato/Socrates on Kierkegaard, but Aristotle is not only important he is obviously more important. That goes doubly for either/or. To say read Plato and not Aristotle is retardation.

>>8380124
The reading Socrates/Plato into Kierkegaard is something that has come up more only in the last 10 years, and Kierkegaard's first step into serious academia is a thesis on Socratic irony so if it were such an elementary point someone would have covered it earlier.

I don't really agree on Plato's Socrates being all that important considering Kierkegaard thought Aristophanes got to the heart of Socratic irony though. I don't think Plato is all that apparent in Kierkegaard's works in general either, he's there but not all that much.