Many of Søren Kierkegaard's most controversial and influential ideas are more relevant than ever to contemporary debates on ethics, philosophy of religion and selfhood. Kierkegaard develops an original argument according to which wholeheartedness requires both moral and religious commitment. In this book, Roe Fremstedal provides a compelling reconstruction of how Kierkegaard develops wholeheartedness in the context of his views on moral psychology, meta-ethics and the ethics of religious belief. He shows that Kierkegaard's influential account of despair, selfhood, ethics and religion belongs to a larger intellectual context in which German philosophers such as Kant and Fichte play crucial roles. Moreover, Fremstedal makes a solid case for the controversial claim that religion supports ethics, instead of contradicting it. His book offers a novel and comprehensive reading of Kierkegaard, drawing on important sources that are little known.
By:
Roe Fremstedal (Norwegian University of Science and Technology Trondheim)
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Edition: New edition
Dimensions:
Height: 235mm,
Width: 158mm,
Spine: 23mm
Weight: 730g
ISBN: 9781316513767
ISBN 10: 1316513769
Pages: 280
Publication Date: 17 February 2022
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Introduction; Part I. Self, Despair and Wholeheartedness: 1. Selfhood and anthropology; 2. Why be moral? The critique of amoralism; 3. Moral inescapability: Moral agency and meta-ethics; Part II. Morality, Prudence and Religion: 4. The critique of eudaimonism: Virtue ethics, kantianism and beyond; 5. Non-eudaimonistic ethics and religion: Happiness and salvation; 6. The 'Teleological suspension of the ethical' and Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac; 7. Moralized religion: The identity of the good and the divine; Part III. 'Subjectivity, Inwardness, is Truth': 8. 'Hidden inwardness' and humor: Kantian ethics and religion; 9. Subjective truth: 'Kierkegaard's most notorious…claim'; Part IV. Faith and Reason: 10. A leap of faith? The use of lessing, Jacobi and Kant; 11. Faith neither absurd nor irrational: The neglected reply to Eiríksson; 12. Faith beyond reason: Supra-rationalism and anti-rationalism; 13. The ethics of belief: Fideism and pragmatism; Conclusion; References; Index.
Roe Fremstedal is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at NTNU, Trondheim. He is the author of Kierkegaard and Kant on Radical Evil and the Highest Good (2014), and has published extensively on German philosophy, existentialism, ethics, and religion.
Reviews for Kierkegaard on Self, Ethics, and Religion: Purity or Despair
'Professor Fremstedal conducts a compelling reconstruction of how Kierkegaard develops wholeheartedness based on his views of moral psychology, metaethics, and the ethics of religious belief ... This monograph provides unique understanding and reliable resources, tackling some controversial issues, and is a timely reference worthy of being read by researchers interested in the study of Kierkegaard and his outstanding cognitive philosophy on selfhood, ethics, and religion.' Chuandai Qiao, Dialog A Journal of Theology 'While this book will serve as an indispensable resource for contemporary Kierkegaard scholarship, it also has something to offer for ongoing conversations about Kant, German Romanticism, Idealism, ethics, religious epistemology, and Kierkegaard's subsequent relevance to these areas. In this way, Fremstedal has done a tremendous service to Kierkegaard scholarship by re-presenting him as a figure worthy of immediate consideration across multiple subdisciplines of philosophical and theological inquiry and scholarship.' Charles Duke, Journal for Continental Philosophy of Religion
