Kierkegaard and the patristic and medieval traditions / edited by Jon Stewart.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Stewart, Jon (Jon Bartley)

Series:

Kierkegaard research ; v. 4.

Kierkegaard research ; v. 4

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Kierkegaard, Søren, 1813-1855.

Fathers of the church--History and criticism.

Philosophy, Medieval.

Fathers of the church.

Physical Description:

xviii, 330 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Aldershot, England ; Burlington, VT : Ashgate, [2008]

Summary:

This volume features articles which employ source-work research to trace Kierkegaard's understanding and use of authors from the Patristic and Medieval traditions. It covers an extraordinarily long period of time from Cyprian and Tertullian in the second century to Thomas a Kempis in the fifteenth. Despite its heterogeneity and diversity in many aspects, this volume has a clear point of commonality in all its featured sources: Christianity.

Kierkegaard's relation to the Patristic and Medieval traditions has been a rather neglected area of research in Kierkegaard studies. This is somewhat surprising given the fact that the young Kierkegaard learned about the Patristic authors during his studies at the University of Copenhagen and was clearly fascinated by many aspects of their writings and the conceptions of Christian religiosity found there. With regard to the medieval tradition, in addition to any number of theological issues, medieval mysticism, medieval art, the medieval church, troubadour poetry and the monastic movement were all themes that exercised Kierkegaard during different periods of his life. Although far from uncritical, he seems at times to idolize both the Patristic tradition and the Middle Ages as contrastive terms to the corrupt and decadent modern world with its complacent Christianity. While he clearly regards the specific forms of this Medieval appropriation of Christianity to be misguided, he is nonetheless positively disposed toward the general understanding of it as something to be lived and realized by each individual.

Contents:

Part I The Patristic Tradition

Athanasius: Kierkegaard's Curious Comment / Robert Puchniak 3

Augustine: Kierkegaard's Tempered Admiration of Augustine / Robert Puchniak 11

Bernard of Clairvaux: Kierkegaard's Reception of the Last of the Fathers / Jack Mulder, Jr. 23

Chrysostom: Between the Hermitage and the City / Leo Stan 47

Cyprian of Carthage: Kierkegaard, Cyprian, and the "urgent needs of the times" / Jack Mulder, Jr. 67

Gregory of Nyssa: Locating the Cappadocian Fathers in Kierkegaard's Church-Historical Narrative / Joseph Ballan 95

Irenaeus: On Law, Gospel and the Grace of Death / Paul Martens 103

Origen: Kierkegaard's Equivocal Appropriation of Origen of Alexandria / Paul Martens 111

Pelagius: Kierkegaard's Use of Pelagius and Pelagianism / Robert Puchniak 123

Tertullian: The Teacher of the credo quia absurdum / Pierre Buhler 131

Part II The Medieval Tradition

Abelard: Kierkegaard's Reflections on the Unhappy Love of a Scholastic Dialectician / Istvan Czako 145

Anselm of Canterbury: The Ambivalent Legacy of Faith Seeking Understanding / Lee C. Barrett 167

Thomas Aquinas: Kierkegaard's View Based on Scattered and Uncertain Sources / Benjamin Olivares Bogeskov 183

Boethius: Kierkegaard and The Consolation / Joseph Westfall 207

Dante: Tours of Hell: Mapping the Landscape of Sin and Despair / Thomas Miles 223

Meister Eckhart: The Patriarch of German Speculation who was a Lebemeister: Meister Eckhart's Silent Way into Kierkegaard's Corpus / Peter Sajda 237

Petrarch: Kierkegaard's Few and One-Sided References to a Like-Minded Thinker / Karl Verstrynge 255

Tauler: A Teacher in Spiritual Dietethics: Kierkegaard's Reception of Johannes Tauler / Peter Sajda 265

Thomas a Kempis: Devotio Moderna and Kierkegaard's Critique of "Bourgeois-Philistinism" / Joel D.S. Rasmussen 289

Troubadour Poetry: The Young Kierkegaard's Study on Troubadours-"with Respect to the Concept of the Romantic" / Tonny Aagaard Olesen 299.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

ISBN:

9780754663911

0754663914

OCLC:

156994445