Kierkegaard BTFO

hacker news comments never cease to amaze me with how arrogant and tone deaf they manage to come across

When you live in times when even the rainbow has been equalized into gray paste, does it really surprise you?

We live in the Mouse Utopia.

Startup culture is incredible for this. They're smart in their field (software engineering), and so attempt to solve the problems of every field without learning it because "how hard can it be?"

STEMlords in general speaking on philosophy
t. STEMlord

Wow they totally dismantled his points. How can he even recover

KierKEgaard is a shit meme philosopher with overdone prose that obfuscates his ideas and means any interpretation of those ideas is possible

I hate these HN sociopathic pseudo-visionary scientist fucks

fug i do too

I spy with my little eye that you messed up on your attempt at /pol/ humor.

>mfw I don't need to read philosophy because it all literally boils down to the 2nd law of thermodynamics and "being yourself"

>Kierkegaard annoys the crap out out of me, as almost all philosophers do.

really boils the beans

>oh man programmers make more money than me AND they get to study philosophy for fun :(

>as all philosophers do
besides rick and morty of course, but to be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Rick and Morty. The humour is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of theoretical physics most of the jokes will go over a typical viewer’s head. There’s also Rick’s nihilistic outlook, which is deftly woven into his characterisation- his personal philosophy draws heavily from Narodnaya Volya literature, for instance. The fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of these jokes, to realise that they’re not just funny- they say something deep about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike Rick & Morty truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn’t appreciate, for instance, the humour in Rick’s existential catchphrase “Wubba Lubba Dub Dub,” which itself is a cryptic reference to Turgenev’s Russian epic Fathers and Sons. I’m smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as Dan Harmon’s genius wit unfolds itself on their television screens. What fools.. how I pity them.

And yes, by the way, i DO have a Rick & Morty tattoo. And no, you cannot see it. It’s for the ladies’ eyes only- and even then they have to demonstrate that they’re within 5 IQ points of my own (preferably lower) beforehand. Nothin personnel kid

iSpy with my little eye
An user I can get cause he don't get too many (You)s
A nameless little cutie I can turn into my boo
Wait, that means it's casual, hold up, never mind

I was in ironically unironically being unironic

I was just noticing that you didn't capitalize the I.

and i've got a buncha beans

underrated

Does anyone want to read a letter that I wrote to Abraham as A (from Either/Or, Pt. I)? It's kind of a rough turd, but goddAMN i just love kierkegaard

yes please

Most venerable father! You whose plodding leap echoes in the minds of men — would that it still echoed in their spirits. In this moment I write to you, I am rent between the inquisition I wish to hold for you and the belief that, the moment you put ink to paper, you would become 'menschlich, wenn Du das Geheimniss zeigst.' Then write not to me, but listen and see if your faith cannot be shaken.

My soul is wearied by the trivialities of my age, which you were so lucky to have been denied. The crowd, like a mob of wethers, has cut off their humanness in so meek a procession. You may be dismayed to learn that we have abandoned your church en masse for the hallowed universities, where human reason triumphs über alles. We modern and well-bred men have no accommodations for Gods that cannot be explained or lectured on.

I have much longed to see a faith that moved mountains, but I will settle for yours that only names them. Doubt! Rancorous, pernicious Doubt! Would that my doubt took form so that I might wrestle with it as did your seed on Penuel. A viscous grease has overtaken my skin, presumably from indolence of heart, mind, and legs — this can be nothing but helpful when grappling with doubt.

Would that you never know the devil of refrigeration! I can think of nothing so pacifying as this instrument for ruminants — if only they could ruminate. The comforts of domestication have reached a pitch, convincing the weak-minded that a good job, a faithful wife (an oxymoron), and the wisdom of consensus are all that is needed for life’s meaning. As for faith? You might see it once a year in Christ’s mass — twice at Easter if you’re lucky. The end of the world approaches fast, and the wiser in our society welcome it as a joke.

The father of many nations! You must see how all nations approach their untergang with the leeching of passion from their so-called faith. I ask you: even if you had the faith I seek, what is its worth when your seed falls on the soil of barren souls? Either father many nations or do not father any nations — you must regret both.

pt. 2:

I fear you do not understand my doubt, in which case I will forsake anything you say, or that you understand it all too well, in which case you are not the man of faith I seek. There is a wise German with lofty notions of this ambiguity; for him, our awareness of self exists only in service of the nation. His nation, however, is the whole of mankind. There is a Frenchman that claims, “A constitution which is made for all nations is made for none,” though we cosmopolitans dismiss him as simply unenlightened. Perhaps I am mistaken; perhaps you had no forethought to the rule of the nations that proceeded from your loins; perhaps you are merely a madman.

You certainly had no thought when you cast your bastard out to die from thirst; your head was filled with only the nagging of your kept crone, Sarah. I do not blame you for concealing your trek to Moriah from her — a petty woman could not understand faith, the faith that reveals how life’s highest, most splendid moment of enjoyment is accompanied by death. But could you think how that violent by-blow would beget an army that looks to destroy the faith you once held dear? His descendants march at the gates of Europe seeking to conquer. Their submission to their god is not unlike that of the Germans to their reason; I would not be surprised if both parties lived alongside one another splendidly.

I just started reading fear and trembling for the first time, and I'm in love. He's got so much of direct value for me.

"The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation’s relating itself to itself in the relation.”
I like how streamlined this quote is

i'm not certain if he's being 100% serious with that quotation, or if he's taking the piss out of hegel.

Almost always the latter

heh, right.

there was an introduction on Hume's Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding that said, "most people read Hume so they can refute him," i.e., to read Kant. i haven't yet read Hegel, but i feel much the same way.

I don't understand what this means

there is literally no way to understand this by itself, you need more context.

when he says "relation that relates itself to itself," he's talking about a mediation between two parts of being human: the necessary/possible, the finite/infinite, the temporal/eternal. however, this is not fully accurate, so he goes on to say:
>the self is not the relation but is the relation's relating itself to itself
as in, being a self is always an act of relating contradictions to one another. for virtually everyone, the act of relating is an act of choice: will i choose to blend in with the crowd, or will i stand recklessly apart from society? will i choose to view myself as a victim because my alcoholic father beat me, or will i try and run a marathon as a 300lb sack of shit?

for K, all of the above are the wrong kinds of questions. a static balance between the two is never achieved permanently, it is continually an act of mediation. if we achieved stasis, we could not have passion/spirit/communion with God. we would literally be inhuman, dead on the inside.

I don't understand less, thanks

How does stasis lead to inhumanity and no communion with God?

It's Heideggerian.

the short answer: you need to read The Sickness Unto Death.

the long, but none too helpful answer: to be in despair is to be both without hope and spirit. everyone is in despair, preventing them from being an "authentic" individual. there are many different types of despair, based on variations and perversions of the three "spheres" of existence (aesthetic -> ethical -> religious). to understand the spheres, you should read either/or. basically, the aesthetic is immediately gratifying, the ethical is a delayed gratification for something nobler (society, etc.), the religious is continually gratifying.

humanity is defined as a tension between two poles; these poles are contradictory (and thus violate aristotle's law of non-contradiction) so they cannot be held both simultaneously and fully. however, one cannot win over the other (think about the cripple who wants to win a marathon; they are mentally/spiritually imbalanced).

have you ever had that esoteric form of punishment where you must stand in the hall and hold heavy stones, palms up? the goal is to balance them with one another, but you're not a statue—your muscles are straining, you're working out. to say you're doing nothing because you appear to be motionless is stupid and wrong.

so, if being a human is acting ("relating"), then it is inhuman to be perfectly stoic. the communion with god thing is really complex; all i can say is K hated two kinds of people—hyperrational passionless intellectuals, and very comfortable, "go to church once a year" christian hypocrites.