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A review by camstipated
Fear and Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death by Walter Lowrie, Søren Kierkegaard
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
1.5
I could rant about Kierkegaard for a while but I’ll try to keep this short:
I think he’s stupid. That’s not a joke or something, I actually don’t think he’s very smart.
For one, he expressed in ‘Either/Or’ his dichotomous view of religion and reason, so the fact he even wrote books breaks his foundation as a writer. He claims that defending God is tantamount to killing him by placing yourself above him, but any preacher is placing himself above God by elaborating on His message.
Another reason I think he’s stupid is that he gets hung up on dumb issues like Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac that are truly not that interesting. Nobody should have 200 pages to write on that one story. Not to mention that I disagree with just about everything he says about the story.
The last reason I didn’t like this book is that it’s made clear that one of the main audiences Kierkegaard was considering was the church because he was seeking employment there. Where Nietzsche feels unbridled and Camus feels at least honest, Kierkegaard seems to be a blind man walking down a path that even he doesn’t believe to be correct, and yet he believes himself to be in a position to preach. He is trying to impress the church at the expense of truly expressing himself, or his ‘self’ is just weak.
To summarize: Kierkegaard is stupid, a bad writer, and a shill for the church. Do not read this book.
I think he’s stupid. That’s not a joke or something, I actually don’t think he’s very smart.
For one, he expressed in ‘Either/Or’ his dichotomous view of religion and reason, so the fact he even wrote books breaks his foundation as a writer. He claims that defending God is tantamount to killing him by placing yourself above him, but any preacher is placing himself above God by elaborating on His message.
Another reason I think he’s stupid is that he gets hung up on dumb issues like Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac that are truly not that interesting. Nobody should have 200 pages to write on that one story. Not to mention that I disagree with just about everything he says about the story.
The last reason I didn’t like this book is that it’s made clear that one of the main audiences Kierkegaard was considering was the church because he was seeking employment there. Where Nietzsche feels unbridled and Camus feels at least honest, Kierkegaard seems to be a blind man walking down a path that even he doesn’t believe to be correct, and yet he believes himself to be in a position to preach. He is trying to impress the church at the expense of truly expressing himself, or his ‘self’ is just weak.
To summarize: Kierkegaard is stupid, a bad writer, and a shill for the church. Do not read this book.