Volume 71 (2016), 4

The paper tries to clarify Kierkegaard’s apolitical standpoint as an integral part of his philosophy. Kierkegaard’s apoliticism is here understood as a principled stand of a deeply religious thinker based on the essential discrepancy between Christianity and politics. I am to show that Kierkegaard preaches programmatic indifference of Christianity to any kind of… Read more

This paper deals with S. Kierkegaard as a political thinker from a viewpoint of consistency of his literary corpus. In the first section it analyzes the main aspects of the contemporary interest in Kierkegaard’s political philosophy and suggests that such interest might result in inappropriate expectations and interpretations. The second section deals with… Read more

The paper identifies four models of social involvement in Kierkegaard’s treatise The Single Individual. These models are embodied in four figures discussed by Kierkegaard: the professional leader of the crowd, the truth-witness, the politician who loves being a human being and loves humankind, and Kierkegaard himself as an author. The paper explores the motives,… Read more

This paper offers a systematic overview of the aspects of Heidegger’s Being and Time that are concerned with the understanding of human sociality. Three dimensions of Heidegger’s analysis are distinguished: self-being (Selbstsein), caring-with (Mitsorge), and being-with-one-another (Miteinandersein). These dimensions can be enacted in different modalities on the… Read more

Martin Buber’s The Question to the Single One appeared in Nazi Germany at a time, when collectivism in its totalitarian forms was at the height of its development. On one hand this little book is an immediate reaction to the social-political situation in inter-war Europe. On the other hand it is a consideration of the anthropological question of the modern man… Read more

Although The Communist Manifesto of 1848 was clearly not intended as a work of poetry, this article considers the merits of reading it according to the aesthetic criteria of epic poetry and of tragedy respectively. Following a brief treatment of the role of poetry in Karl Marx’s evolution as a philosopher and critic, the article then speculates that the… Read more

In the history of Kierkegaard studies, A Literary Review has often been hailed as the Danish philosopher’s main contribution to the field of social-political philosophy. Although this aspect of the work has been explored in some detail, only few commentators have taken the time to study the background of it, i.e., the book which Kierkegaard purports to analyze in… Read more