Publication Details

Abstract

The general aim of this article is to contribute to the answer how studying of Kierkegaard could help us to understand societal and political life. The author illustrates Kierkegaard’s usefulness by example of an innovative and illuminative Bellinger’s interpretation of Nazism and Stalinism given in Kierkegaard’s terms of anxiety and stages of existence. Bellinger interprets Hitler and Nazism as an extreme pathological example of the aesthetic stage and anxiety before the good, and Stalinism as an extreme pathological example of the ethical stage and anxiety before the evil. On this basis we may also speak about the importance of Kierkegaard for the understanding of depth motivation for political violence and crime.