
Difficulties Everywhere: Can Kierkegaard tell us how to live? - lermontov
https://harpers.org/archive/2020/05/difficulties-everywhere-soren-kierkegaard-philosopher-of-the-heart-clare-carlisle/
======
icu
It might seem odd but I had a profound philosophical awakening playing Nier:
Automata. You 'experience' Kierkegaard's philosophy in the game along with
other philosophies which could be spoilers if anyone decides to play it.

I almost didn't play the game, I passed on it a few times until SkillUp (a
YouTuber I respect) did a video on it entitled "The Masterpiece You (Probably)
Won't Play" ([https://youtu.be/-NiyfG8Ctbo](https://youtu.be/-NiyfG8Ctbo)).

If you aren't going to play the game, and I recommend you try it, Wisecrack
did a really good philosophical analysis of the game here:
[https://youtu.be/UiOTSKBy6ME](https://youtu.be/UiOTSKBy6ME) and here:
[https://youtu.be/LCcednqOLwQ](https://youtu.be/LCcednqOLwQ)

------
lidHanteyk
Rendering is fucked up on this page and Reader Mode doesn't automatically
engage. Explicitly do the "about:reader?url=" trick to fix it.

The author's got a bad misstep in the first paragraph; Socrates, if he
existed, was skilled, landed, honored in military service, and his "poverty"
was part of his apology when he was sentenced to death. This matters deeply
because there is _another_ important Greek philosopher who, if he existed,
lived a much more impoverished and simple life, namely Diogenes [0]. This
contrast between Socrates and Diogenes is worth carrying into the rest of the
piece.

Kierkegaard was Christian, and living in an era where Christian foundational
beliefs were considered scientifically supported. As a result, his philosophy
cannot escape the Christian mindset. While the author name-drops
existentialists, folks like Camus and Nietzsche, they don't seem to grok that
existentialism aggressively rejected the same trappings of society to which
Kierkegaard felt encircled and trapped, particularly the religious trappings
to which Kierkegaard felt such obligation and wonder.

At least Kierkegaard was right to criticize Hegelian dialectic as "nonsense".
Plain language philosophy [1] is so much simpler, although it wasn't ready yet
in Kierkegaard's time.

The author uncritically accepts Kierkegaard's view that Christian myths much
be accepted as paradoxical or absurd yet true. When countervailing evidence
disproves each myth, we are not merely being fervent or zealous if we hold on
to those stories, but actively denying reason and empiricism.

The author concludes by suggesting that we look inward to an intuitive
religious or spiritual path, and ignore the distractions of society. Further,
they insist that the philsophical truths revealed here or there by Kierkegaard
or his biographers are ageless and that the "peculiar challenges of our
moment" are not "the meaning of our lives". That is high-minded, but simply
not true. A lot of folks will think of COVID-19, but I think of secularism and
the decline of the Church's ability to control minds.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinary_language_philosophy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinary_language_philosophy)

~~~
zebrafish
I’m curious about the evidence that disproves each myth.

~~~
lidHanteyk
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_the_Bible](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_the_Bible)
is a good community-sourced overview.

------
throw0101a
See also the recent post on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics:

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22965049](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22965049)

Is it Philosophy Day on HN or something? :)

------
LatteLazy
If you want to know how to live, start with the stoics. They answered this
question VERY successfully thousands of years ago.

~~~
goto11
If you already have all the answers, Kierkegaard would definitely be of little
interest for you.

------
cousin_it
I think the internet has kind of inoculated us to such philosophies. There are
so many people online who are depressed and try to channel it into insightful
writing. In the end, these insights turn out useless: life just isn't a very
deep thing. He should've married Regine and got on with it.

~~~
daseiner1
the implication that internet edgelords of any flavor are holding a candle to
or diminishing Kierkegaard in any way is pretty disgusting tbh.

and “insights turn out useless: life just isn't a very deep thing” is
incredibly trite. i don’t mean this to come across as a personal attack, but
dismissing K’s project out of hand and then making a pithy reference to his
biography in what i suppose is an attempt to signal knowledge (or worse yet,
understanding) of the matter at hand is just incredibly weak.

~~~
fapjacks
Wow, so what does it look like when you _are_ attacking someone personally?

~~~
DSingularity
That is not a personal attack. You have someone effectively dismissing a
philosophers work using something that just sounds profound “life isn’t deep”.
Sorry, it will take more than this to counter Kierkegaard!

~~~
fapjacks
Look, I have no horse in this race, but this is clearly a personal attack in
the reply above. Regardless, on what basis are you disagreeing with someone's
interpretation of life as having no meaning or lacking in depth?

~~~
serf
>Look, I have no horse in this race, but this is clearly a personal attack in
the reply above.

in what way is it personal? In that he's attacking his conclusion for all of
Kierkegaards' work? Or that he's trying to characterize your actions into a
specific motivations?

Being called wrong , even in the softest ways, is now a personal attack?

I think it's fair to say that a 3-5 word sentence is a bit too shallow to
characterize Kierkegaards' entire body of work. 'Sickness Unto Death' totally
changed my outlook as a teenager reading it at the right time.

Here's the thing that's missing : life is as deep as we give it credit for,
and many philosophies seek to enrichen and deepen the experience of life.

In my opinion, someone with the stance 'life isn't very deep' is in the
perfect position to try to honestly absorb some of the pasts' philosophers and
step away from the mammalian life of eat-sleep-breed.

In other words : our biological life _is_ shallow in reason, philosophy and
human thinking itself is what fills the world with reason, objective, and
depth.

Anyone with the take-away that 'life isn't very deep' receives my greatest
sympathy and sorrow. I remember how I felt when I came to the same
conclusions, and i'm glad I have shifted away from that perspective with the
help of philosophy and dialogue with others.

Re-imagining the world with the tools that philosophy gives you through
practice is a fantastic experience, and I hope that the parent who believes
that life isn't as deep as people give it credit for has the chance to undergo
that epiphany themselves one day.

~~~
fapjacks
I am not addressing any of these points about either of our own value
judgments about life, because they do not address the point I have made, which
is that _nothing else matters_ if some particular person interprets the
meaning of their life in a particular way. No amount of your belief in some
philosophy or religion will change their interpretation of the meaning (or
lack thereof) in their own life. If this person posted for example that
nothing Jesus said matters, because they think life is completely without
depth, that's the end of it. They don't _have to_ respond to any external
reasoning or justify dismissing some philosopher's entire body of work,
because _they_ assign the depth of _their own_ life. You and I can discuss
what that means with respect to our own value judgments, but it has no bearing
on what that person thinks of their own. If you want to proselytize to that
person for finding meaning in life, that's great, have at it. But you can't
say that person's dismissal of some system of reasoning is invalid because his
dismissal is based on value judgments entirely up to that person alone, and no
amount of external reasoning on your part will "override" their value
judgment.

About the reply above with the personal attack, here are a selection of
phrases used to attack the author of the post, and not the author's argument:
"internet edgelords", "pretty disgusting", "'insights turn out useless: life
just isn't a very deep thing' is incredibly trite", "i don’t mean this to come
across as a personal attack, but...", "a pithy reference", "an attempt to
signal knowledge (or worse yet, understanding)", "just incredibly weak."

Give me a break, that's a personal attack.

~~~
serf
>I am not addressing any of these points, because they do not address the
point I have made,

Fine, i'll afford you the same favor and ignore everything you said, too. One
sided judgements isn't discourse.

Just to let you know, though, I was quite obviously replying to the first
sentence you wrote in parent.

>Look, I have no horse in this race, but this is clearly a personal attack in
the reply above. Regardless..

Let me ask you a simple question.

If you were driving with someone, and they slowly drove through a red-light
and said "You only have to slow down on the reds." would you question that
persons' understanding of traffic laws?

I don't care who finds value in what philosopher, but when the only thing you
can tell me about Nietzsche is that the word has an S in it[0], then I
question your objective knowledge on that topic. If someone dismisses a
philosophical point of view without the objective knowledge of what that
philosophy entails, then I do not believe, personally, that their opinion is
worth value with regards to philosophy.

[0]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa0bCzwSNA0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa0bCzwSNA0)

p.s. since you edited in a bunch of stuff about personal attacks after your
initial post, let me mention : that word cloud you posted is devoid of who it
was towards. Go re-read; the attacks are on 1) the idea 2) the motivation
towards the idea -- not the person. That's exactly the difference between a
personal attack and someone who is trying to disagree with that persons' idea.

~~~
fapjacks
I find it amusing you seem to believe that you are capable of adjudicating
another person's _value judgments_ as they pertain to their own internal
belief structure, and furthermore that you have literally referred to the use
of some "objective knowledge" to do so. You have made a point, to be sure, but
it's definitely not the point you think you've made.

