924
Lectures Watched
Since January 1, 2014
Since January 1, 2014
- A History of the World since 1300 (68)
- History of Rock, 1970-Present (50)
- A Brief History of Humankind (48)
- Chinese Thought: Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Science (35)
- The Modern World: Global History since 1760 (35)
- The Bible's Prehistory, Purpose, and Political Future (28)
- Introduction aux éthiques philosophiques (27)
- Jesus in Scripture and Tradition (25)
- Roman Architecture (25)
- Sexing the Canvas: Art and Gender (23)
- Descubriendo la pintura europea de 1400 a 1800 (22)
- Introduction aux droits de l'homme (19)
- Buddhism and Modern Psychology (18)
- Calvin: Histoire et réception d'une Réforme (17)
- The Ancient Greeks (16)
- À la découverte du théâtre classique français (15)
- The French Revolution (15)
- Letters of the Apostle Paul (14)
- Key Constitutional Concepts and Supreme Court Cases (14)
- Christianisme et philosophie dans l'Antiquité (14)
- Egiptología (12)
- Western Music History through Performance (10)
- The Rise of Superheroes and Their Impact On Pop Culture (9)
- The Great War and Modern Philosophy (9)
- Alexander the Great (9)
- Greek and Roman Mythology (9)
- Human Evolution: Past and Future (9)
- Phenomenology and the Conscious Mind (9)
- Masterpieces of World Literature (8)
- Villes africaines: la planification urbaine (8)
- Greeks at War: Homer at Troy (7)
- Pensamiento Científico (7)
- MongoDB for Node.js Developers (7)
- Fundamentos de la escritura en español (7)
- Introduction to Psychology (7)
- Programming Mobile Applications for Android (7)
- The Rooseveltian Century (6)
- Karl der Große - Pater Europae (6)
- Fake News, Facts, and Alternative Facts (6)
- Reason and Persuasion Through Plato's Dialogues (6)
- The Emergence of the Modern Middle East (6)
- A Beginner's Guide to Irrational Behavior (6)
- Lingua e cultura italiana: avanzata (6)
- L'avenir de la décision : connaître et agir en complexité (5)
- Understanding Einstein: The Special Theory of Relativity (5)
- Dinosaur Paleobiology (5)
- Exploring Beethoven's Piano Sonatas (5)
- War for the Greater Middle East (4)
- Emergence of Life (4)
- Introduction to Public Speaking (4)
- The Kennedy Half Century (4)
- Problèmes métaphysiques à l'épreuve de la politique, 1943-1968 (4)
- Designing Cities (4)
- Western Civilization: Ancient and Medieval Europe (3)
- Paleontology: Early Vertebrate Evolution (3)
- Orientierung Geschichte (3)
- Moons of Our Solar System (3)
- Introduction à la philosophie de Friedrich Nietzsche (3)
- Devenir entrepreneur du changement (3)
- La Commedia di Dante (3)
- History of Rock and Roll, Part One (3)
- Formation of the Universe, Solar System, Earth and Life (3)
- Initiation à la programmation en Java (3)
- La visione del mondo della Relatività e della Meccanica Quantistica (3)
- The Music of the Beatles (3)
- Analyzing the Universe (3)
- Découvrir l'anthropologie (3)
- Postwar Abstract Painting (3)
- The Science of Religion (2)
- La Philanthropie : Comprendre et Agir (2)
- Highlights of Modern Astronomy (2)
- Materials Science: 10 Things Every Engineer Should Know (2)
- The Changing Landscape of Ancient Rome (2)
- Lingua e letteratura in italiano (2)
- Gestion des aires protégées en Afrique (2)
- Géopolitique de l'Europe (2)
- Introduction à la programmation en C++ (2)
- Découvrir la science politique (2)
- Our Earth: Its Climate, History, and Processes (2)
- The European Discovery of China (2)
- Understanding Russians: Contexts of Intercultural Communication (2)
- Philosophy and the Sciences (2)
- Søren Kierkegaard: Subjectivity, Irony and the Crisis of Modernity (2)
- The Fall and Rise of Jerusalem (2)
- The Science of Gastronomy (2)
- Galaxies and Cosmology (2)
- Introduction to Classical Music (2)
- Art History for Artists, Animators and Gamers (2)
- L'art des structures 1 : Câbles et arcs (2)
- Russian History: from Lenin to Putin (2)
- The World of Wine (1)
- Wine Tasting: Sensory Techniques for Wine Analysis (1)
- William Wordsworth: Poetry, People and Place (1)
- The Talmud: A Methodological Introduction (1)
- Switzerland in Europe (1)
- The World of the String Quartet (1)
- Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (1)
- El Mediterráneo del Renacimiento a la Ilustración (1)
- Science of Exercise (1)
- Социокультурные аспекты социальной робототехники (1)
- Russian History: from Lenin to Putin (1)
- The Rise of China (1)
- The Renaissance and Baroque City (1)
- Visualizing Postwar Tokyo (1)
- In the Night Sky: Orion (1)
- Oriental Beliefs: Between Reason and Traditions (1)
- The Biology of Music (1)
- Mountains 101 (1)
- Moral Foundations of Politics (1)
- Mobilité et urbanisme (1)
- Introduction to Mathematical Thinking (1)
- Making Sense of News (1)
- Magic in the Middle Ages (1)
- Introduction to Italian Opera (1)
- Intellectual Humility (1)
- The Computing Technology Inside Your Smartphone (1)
- Human Origins (1)
- Miracles of Human Language (1)
- From Goddard to Apollo: The History of Rockets (1)
- Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales (1)
- Handel’s Messiah and Baroque Oratorio (1)
- Theater and Globalization (1)
- Gestion et Politique de l'eau (1)
- Une introduction à la géographicité (1)
- Frontières en tous genres (1)
- Créer et développer une startup technologique (1)
- Découvrir le marketing (1)
- Escribir para Convencer (1)
- Anthropology of Current World Issues (1)
- Poetry in America: Whitman (1)
- Introducción a la genética y la evolución (1)
- Shakespeare: On the Page and in Performance (1)
- The Civil War and Reconstruction (1)
- Dinosaur Ecosystems (1)
- Développement durable (1)
- Vital Signs: Understanding What the Body Is Telling Us (1)
- Imagining Other Earths (1)
- Learning How to Learn (1)
- Miracles of Human Language: An Introduction to Linguistics (1)
- Web Intelligence and Big Data (1)
- Andy Warhol (1)
- Understanding the Brain: The Neurobiology of Everyday Life (1)
- Practicing Tolerance in a Religious Society (1)
- Subsistence Marketplaces (1)
- Physique générale - mécanique (1)
- Exercise Physiology: Understanding the Athlete Within (1)
- Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1)
- What Managers Can Learn from Great Philosophers (1)
- A la recherche du Grand Paris (1)
- The New Nordic Diet (1)
- A New History for a New China, 1700-2000 (1)
- The Magna Carta and its Legacy (1)
- The Age of Jefferson (1)
- History and Future of Higher Education (1)
- Éléments de Géomatique (1)
- 21st Century American Foreign Policy (1)
- The Law of the European Union (1)
- Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society (1)
- Introduction to Data Science (1)
- Configuring the World (1)
- From the Big Bang to Dark Energy (1)
- Animal Behaviour (1)
- Programming Mobile Services for Android Handheld Systems (1)
- The American South: Its Stories, Music, and Art (1)
- Care of Elders with Alzheimer's Disease (1)
- Contagious: How Things Catch On (1)
- Constitutional Law - The Structure of Government (1)
- Narratives of Nonviolence in the American Civil Rights Movement (1)
- Christianity: From Persecuted Faith to Global Religion (200-1650) (1)
- Age of Cathedrals (1)
- Controversies of British Imperialism (1)
- Big History: From the Big Bang until Today (1)
- Bemerkenswerte Menschen (1)
- The Art of Poetry (1)
- Superpowers of the Ancient World: the Near East (1)
- America Through Foreign Eyes (1)
- Advertising and Society (1)
Hundreds of free, self-paced university courses available:
my recommendations here
my recommendations here
Peruse my collection of 275
influential people of the past.
influential people of the past.
View My Class Notes via:
Receive My Class Notes via E-Mail:
Contact Me via E-Mail:
edward [at] tanguay.info
Notes on video lecture:
Introduction to Kierkegaard
Notes taken by Edward Tanguay on October 7, 2013 (go to class or lectures)
Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
Herodotus, bourgeois, Romanticism, Danish, Irony, single, Hebrew, sciences, metaphor, relativism, impoverished, existentialist, 19th, Hegel, abstract, seven, limited, Eckersberg, positive, aporia, Aristophanes
Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
first philosopher
fondness for , irony and parables
how one lives as a " individual"
priority to concrete human reality over thinking
personal choice and commitment
critic of idealist intellectuals of his time such as Hegel, Goethe and Hans Christian Andersen
ask yourself how much time you spend using your cell phone and computer today, that will tell you how different you are from one or two generations back
these constant changes make people feel insecure
things that people have done all their lives suddenly become obsolete
Kierkegaard saw many of these kinds of changes coming in the 19th century
scholars argue whether Kierkegaard was a philosophy, theologian, inspirational author, literary writer, psychologist, or something else all-together
his highly creative form of writing makes it hard to say which genre he was using or what academic field he belonged to
he's had an appeal to people who disagree among each other
he's been seen as an advocate of both progressive political views and reactionary ones
both a critic of German idealism and a follower of it
focused on , lack of meaning, and the crisis of religious faith that are typical in modern life
1841 "On the Concept of "
when we say that e.g. a law is merely relative, we intend to undermine it, i.e. it doesn't have absolute validity and therefore we can choose to follow it or not
Kierkegaard refers to subjectivity and relativism as irony
compares Socrates irony with modern irony
post-structuralism
instability in the human , due to the complexity of humans themselves and the impossibility of fully escaping structures in order to study them
post-structuralism is a response to structuralism, an intellectual movement of the mid-20th century which argued that human culture may be understood by means of a structure modeled on language
Kierkegaard and Socrates
"my task is a Socratic task"
we have to understand how he understood Socrates and what he took Socrates to stand for
mostly found in the work "The Concept of Irony"
: in thought, a seemingly insoluble impasse in an inquiry, often arising as a result of equally plausible yet inconsistent premises, the state of being perplexed, at a loss
maieutics n. the art of giving birth to ideas
Kierkegaard's life
born 1813, the year the state went bankrupt
Kierkegaard's father was one of the few who was still relatively wealthy
Danish Golden Age (painting)
first half of century in Denmark
arts took on a new period of creativity catalyzed by from Germany
mostly had to do with painting from 1800-1850: , Bendz, Hansen
Hans Christian Anderson
Copenhagen was small and at the time, and dominant figures of the age new each other and influenced each other
1838: published first book, criticized a novel by Hans Christian Anderson
raised in tradition of Lutheran Christianity
brother studied theology and became a bishop in the Danish Lutheran Church
youngest of children
all died except he and his older brother Peter (bishop)
School of Civic Virtue
founded 1789
for sons of wealthy bourgeois families
attended 1821-1830
classic education in Latin, Greek and
developed a love for Greek culture and literature
studied Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, some of ' Histories and some of the New Testament
read dialogues of Plato, specifically the Euthyphro, the Apology, and the Crito
read Xenophon's Memorabilia of Socrates
he discovered here Socrates, who fascinated him for the rest of his life
Kierkegaard didn't have many friends probably due to the fact that he had a tendency to tease and antagonize his fellow students with his superior intellect
often beat up for this
he came back to this school later in life to teach Latin
The Concept of Irony
three parts, two long, one short
1. The Position of Socrates Viewed as Irony
compares the picture of Socrates as presented by Plato, Xenophon (students of Socrates, and wrote dialogues with their teacher as the main speaker) and who parodied Socrates in a comedy called The Clouds
presents Socrates as someone who doesn't have any doctrine or theory, but rather merely contradicts what others say without presenting anything positive himself
Socrates is a negative, destructive force
talks of 's view of Socrates was very influential at the time
2. The Concept of Irony
talks of the modern form of irony of the German Romantics
while Socrates' irony is given a positive treatment, the Romantics were criticized as using irony in the service of relativism or nihilism, whose goal he thought was to undermine society without giving a truth of meaning to replace it
3. Irony as a Controlled Element, the Truth of Irony
Kierkegaard's presentation of his own view of the proper and appropriate use of irony
impossible to use irony as Socrates did
but Romantics go to far by undermining society
Kierkegaard suggests a form of irony as the most appropriate for his own day