"The day will come when not only my writings, but precisely my
life--the intriguing secret of all the machinery--will be studied and
studied." Søren Kierkegaard's remarkable combination of genius and
peculiarity made this a fair if arrogant prediction. But Kierkegaard's
life has been notoriously hard to study, so complex was the web of
fact and fiction in his work. Joakim Garff's biography of Kierkegaard
is thus a landmark achievement. A seamless blend of history,
philosophy, and psychological insight, all conveyed with novelistic
verve, this is the most comprehensive and penetrating account yet
written of the life and works of the enigmatic Dane who changed the
course of intellectual history. Garff portrays Kierkegaard not as the
all-controlling impresario behind some of the most important works of
modern philosophy and religious thought--books credited with founding
existentialism and prefiguring postmodernism--but rather as a man
whose writings came to control him. Kierkegaard saw himself as a
vessel for his writings, a tool in the hand of God, and eventually as
a martyr singled out to call for the end of "Christendom." Garff
explores the events and relationships that formed Kierkegaard,
including his guilt-ridden relationship with his father, his rivalry
with his brother, and his famously tortured relationship with his
fiancée Regine Olsen. He recreates the squalor and splendor of Golden
Age Copenhagen and the intellectual milieu in which Kierkegaard found
himself increasingly embattled and mercilessly caricatured. Acclaimed
as a major cultural event on its publication in Denmark in 2000, this
book, here presented in an exceptionally crisp and elegant
translation, will be the definitive account of Kierkegaard's life for
years to come.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781400849604
Publisert
2013
Utgiver
Vendor
Princeton University Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter