Infinite Resignation

  infinite resignation: Infinite Resignation Eugene Thacker, 2018-07-17 “Scholarly advice for dark times.” —The New Yorker “Provides a metric ton of misery and a lot of company.” —New York Times “Probably philosophy’s only beach read.” —Vice A ‘nihilist’s devotional,’ this collection aphorisms, fragments, and observations on philosophy and pessimism offer a raw look at the human condition Dark times lie around us and ahead of us, and what better way to survive the coming Apocolypse than by immersing yourself in some of the greatest thinkers on pessimism, brought together with his own thoughts on the subject by Eugene Thacker, author of the contemporary classic, In the Dust of This Planet. Comprised of aphorisms, fragments, and observations both philosophical and personal, Infinite Resignation traces the contours of pessimism, caught as it often is between a philosophical position and a bad attitude. Reflecting on the universe’s “looming abyss of indifference,” Thacker explores the pessimism of a range of philosophers, from the well-known (Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Camus), to the lesser-known (E.M. Cioran, Lev Shestov, Miguel de Unamuno). Readers will find food for thought in Thacker’s handling of a range of themes in Christianity and Buddhism, as well as his engagement with literary figures (from Dostoevsky to Thomas Bernhard, Osamu Dazai, and Fernando Pessoa), whose pessimism about the world both inspires and depresses Thacker. By turns melancholic, misanthropic, and darkly funny, Infinite Resignation is a welcome antidote to the exuberant imbecility of our times.
  infinite resignation: Fear and Trembling Soren Kierkegaard, 2013-01-18 In our time nobody is content to stop with faith but wants to go further. It would perhaps be rash to ask where these people are going, but it is surely a sign of breeding and culture for me to assume that everybody has faith, for otherwise it would be queer for them to be . . . going further. In those old days it was different, then faith was a task for a whole lifetime, because it was assumed that dexterity in faith is not acquired in a few days or weeks. When the tried oldster drew near to his last hour, having fought the good fight and kept the faith, his heart was still young enough not to have forgotten that fear and trembling which chastened the youth, which the man indeed held in check, but which no man quite outgrows. . . except as he might succeed at the earliest opportunity in going further. Where these revered figures arrived, that is the point where everybody in our day begins to go further.
  infinite resignation: In the Dust of This Planet Eugene Thacker, 2011 The world is increasingly unthinkable, a world of planetary disasters, emerging pandemics, and the looming threat of extinction. In this book Eugene Thacker suggests that we look to the genre of horror as offering a way of thinking about the unthinkable world. To confront this idea is to confront the limit of our ability to understand the world in which we live - a central motif of the horror genre. In the Dust of This Planet explores these relationships between philosophy and horror. In Thacker's hands, philosophy is not academic logic-chopping; instead, it is the thought of the limit of all thought, especially as it dovetails into occultism, demonology, and mysticism. Likewise, Thacker takes horror to mean something beyond the focus on gore and scare tactics, but as the under-appreciated genre of supernatural horror in fiction, film, comics, and music.
  infinite resignation: Kierkegaard and Nietzsche J. Kellenberger, 1997-03-24 This book examines the thinking of two nineteenth-century existentialist thinkers, Soren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche. Its focus is on the radically different ways they envisioned a joyful acceptance of life - a concern they shared. For Kierkegaard, in Fear and Trembling, joyful acceptance flows from the certitude of faith. For Nietzsche, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, joyful acceptance is an acceptance of the eternal recurrence of life, and is ultimately a matter of will. This book explores the relationship between these opposed visions.
  infinite resignation: After Life Eugene Thacker, 2010-11-15 Life is one of our most basic concepts, and yet when examined directly it proves remarkably contradictory and elusive, encompassing both the broadest and the most specific phenomena. We can see this uncertainty about life in our habit of approaching it as something at once scientific and mystical, in the return of vitalisms of all types, and in the pervasive politicization of life. In short, life seems everywhere at stake and yet is nowhere the same. In After Life, Eugene Thacker clears the ground for a new philosophy of life by recovering the twists and turns in its philosophical history. Beginning with Aristotle’s originary formulation of a philosophy of life, Thacker examines the influence of Aristotle’s ideas in medieval and early modern thought, leading him to the work of Immanuel Kant, who notes the inherently contradictory nature of “life in itself.” Along the way, Thacker shows how early modern philosophy’s engagement with the problem of life affects thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze, Georges Bataille, and Alain Badiou, as well as contemporary developments in the “speculative turn” in philosophy. At a time when life is categorized, measured, and exploited in a variety of ways, After Life invites us to delve deeper into the contours and contradictions of the age-old question, “what is life?”
  infinite resignation: Cosmic Pessimism Eugene Thacker, 2015 We're doomed. So begins the work of the philosopher whose unabashed and aphoristic indictments of the human condition have been cropping up recently in popular culture. Today we find ourselves in an increasingly inhospitable world that is, at the same time, starkly indifferent to our species-specific hopes, desires, and disappointments. In the Anthropocene, pessimism is felt everywhere but rarely given its proper place. Though pessimism may be, as Eugene Thacker says, the lowest form of philosophy, it may also contain an enigma central to understanding the horizon of the human. Written in a series of fragments, aphorisms, and prose poems, Thacker's Cosmic Pessimism explores the varieties of pessimism and its often-conflicted relation to philosophy. Crying, laughing, sleeping--what other responses are adequate to a life that is so indifferent?
  infinite resignation: Philosopher of the Heart Clare Carlisle, 2019-04-04 Selected as a Book of the Year in The Times Literary Supplement 'This lucid and riveting new biography at once rescuses Kierkegaard from the scholars and shows why he is such an intriguing and useful figure' Observer Søren Kierkegaard, one of the most passionate and challenging of modern philosophers, is now celebrated as the father of existentialism - yet his contemporaries described him as a philosopher of the heart. Over about a decade in the 1840s and 1850s, writings poured from his pen analysing love and suffering, courage and anxiety, religious longing and defiance, and forging a new philosophical style rooted in the inward drama of being human. As Christianity seemed to sleepwalk through a changing world, Kierkegaard dazzlingly revealed its spiritual power while exposing the poverty of official religion. His restless creativity was spurred on by his own failures: his relationship with the young woman whom he promised to marry, then left to devote himself to writing, haunted him throughout his life. Though tormented by the pressures of celebrity, he deliberately lived amidst the crowds in Copenhagen, known by everyone but, he felt, understood by no one. When he collapsed exhausted at the age of 42, he was still pursuing the question of existence: how to be a human being in this world? Clare Carlisle's innovative and moving biography writes Kierkegaard's remarkable life as far as possible from his own perspective, conveying what it was like to be this Socrates of Christendom - as he put it, living life forwards yet only understanding it backwards.
  infinite resignation: Pessimism Joshua Foa Dienstag, 2009-02-17 Pessimism claims an impressive following--from Rousseau, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, to Freud, Camus, and Foucault. Yet pessimist remains a term of abuse--an accusation of a bad attitude--or the diagnosis of an unhappy psychological state. Pessimism is thought of as an exclusively negative stance that inevitably leads to resignation or despair. Even when pessimism looks like utter truth, we are told that it makes the worst of a bad situation. Bad for the individual, worse for the species--who would actually counsel pessimism? Joshua Foa Dienstag does. In Pessimism, he challenges the received wisdom about pessimism, arguing that there is an unrecognized yet coherent and vibrant pessimistic philosophical tradition. More than that, he argues that pessimistic thought may provide a critically needed alternative to the increasingly untenable progressivist ideas that have dominated thinking about politics throughout the modern period. Laying out powerful grounds for pessimism's claim that progress is not an enduring feature of human history, Dienstag argues that political theory must begin from this predicament. He persuasively shows that pessimism has been--and can again be--an energizing and even liberating philosophy, an ethic of radical possibility and not just a criticism of faith. The goal--of both the pessimistic spirit and of this fascinating account of pessimism--is not to depress us, but to edify us about our condition and to fortify us for life in a disordered and disenchanted universe.
  infinite resignation: Starry Speculative Corpse Eugene Thacker, 2015-04-24 Could it be that the more we know about the world, the less we understand it? Could it be that, while everything has been explained, nothing has meaning? Extending the ideas presented in his book In The Dust of This Planet, Eugene Thacker explores these and other issues in Starry Speculative Corpse. But instead of using philosophy to define or to explain the horror genre, Thacker reads works of philosophy as if they were horror stories themselves, revealing a rift between human beings and the unhuman world of which they are part. Along the way we see philosophers grappling with demons, struggling with doubt, and wrestling with an indifferent cosmos. At the center of it all is the philosophical drama of the human being confronting its own limits. Not a philosophy of horror, but a horror of philosophy. Thought that stumbles over itself, as if at the edge of an abyss. Starry Speculative Corpse is the second volume of the Horror of Philosophy trilogy, together with the first volume, In The Dust of This Planet, and the third volume, Tentacles Longer Than Night.
  infinite resignation: On the Basis of Morality Arthur Schopenhauer, 2019-08-15 This edition originally published by Berghahn Books. Schopenhauer's treatise on ethics is presented here in E. F. J. Payne’s definitive translation, based on the Hubscher edition (Wiesbaden, 1946-1950). This edition includes an Introduction by David Cartwright, a translator’s preface, biographical note, selected bibliography, and an index. For convenient reference to passages in Kant's work discussed by Schopenhauer, Academy edition numbers have been added.
  infinite resignation: Reading Kierkegaard I Paul Martens, 2017-01-20 In his posthumously published Journals and Papers, Kierkegaard boldly claimed, Oh, once I am dead, Fear and Trembling alone will be enough for an imperishable name as an author. Then it will be read, translated into foreign languages as well. The reader will almost shrink from the frightful pathos in the book. Certainly, Fear and Trembling has been translated into foreign languages, and its fame has ensured Kierkegaard's place in the pantheon of Western philosophy. Today, however, most shrink from the book not because of its frightful pathos but because of its fearsome impenetrability. In this first volume of a Reading Kierkegaard miniseries, Martens carefully unfolds the form and content of Kierkegaard's celebrated pseudonymous text, guiding and inviting the reader to embrace the challenge of wrestling with it to the end. Throughout, Martens demonstrates that Fear and Trembling is not merely a book that contains frightful pathos; it is also an entree into Kierkegaard's vibrant and polyphonic corpus that is nearly as restless as the faith it commends.
  infinite resignation: Narrative Identity, Autonomy, and Mortality John J. Davenport, 2012-09-10 In the last two decades, interest in narrative conceptions of identity has grown exponentially, though there is little agreement about what a life-narrative might be. In connecting Kierkegaard with virtue ethics, several scholars have recently argued that narrative models of selves and MacIntyre's concept of the unity of a life help make sense of Kierkegaard's existential stages and, in particular, explain the transition from aesthetic to ethical modes of life. But others have recently raised difficult questions both for these readings of Kierkegaard and for narrative accounts of identity that draw on the work of MacIntyre in general. While some of these objections concern a strong kind of unity or wholeheartedness among an agent's long-term goals or cares, the fundamental objection raised by critics is that personal identity cannot be a narrative, since stories are artifacts made by persons. In this book, Davenport defends the narrative approach to practical identity and autonomy in general, and to Kierkegaard's stages in particular.
  infinite resignation: Fear and Trembling, and Repetition Robert L. Perkins, 1993 For the first time in English the world community of scholars is systematically assembling and presenting the results of recent research in the vast literature of Soren Kierkegaard. Based on the definitive English edition of Kierkegaard's works by Princeton University Press, this series of commentaries addresses all the published texts of the influential Danish philosopher and theologian.
  infinite resignation: What Is Otherwise Infinite: Poems Bianca Stone, 2022-01-18 Finalist for the New England Book Award in Poetry and the Vermont Book Award As heard on NPR Morning Edition A New York Public Library Best Book of 2022 A searching, startling new collection of poems from the author of The Möbius Strip Club of Grief and Someone Else’s Wedding Vows Written in four sections with incisive and vivid lyrical language, Bianca Stone’s What Is Otherwise Infinite considers how we find our place in the world through themes of philosophy, religion, environment, myth, and psychology. “I deal only in the hardest pain-revivers, symbols and tongues,” writes Stone. “I want to tell you only / in the intimacy of our discomfort.” Populated by Archangels, limping in paradise; by allergies of the soul; the intimacy and danger of motherhood; psychic wounds; and dirty, dirty chocolate layer cake, What Is Otherwise Infinite deftly examines our inherent and inherited ideas of how to live, and the experience of the Self—which on one hand is so intensely personal, and on the other, universal.
  infinite resignation: A Brief Eternity Pascal Bruckner, 2021-02-03 There is one fundamental thing that has changed in our societies since 1950: life has got longer. Over the last few generations, 20 or 30 years have been added to the duration of our lives. But after the age of 50, human beings experience a kind of suspension: no longer young, not really old, they are, as it were, weightless. It is a reprieve that leaves life open like a swinging door. The increase in life expectancy is a tremendous step forward that upsets everything: relations between generations, patterns of family life, the very meaning of our identity and our destiny. This reprieve is both exciting and frightening. The deadlines are getting shorter, the possibilities are shrinking, but there are still discoveries, surprises and upsetting love affairs. Time has become a paradoxical ally: instead of killing us, it carries us forward. What to do with this ambiguous gift? Is it only a question of living longer or living more intensely? To continue along the same path or to branch out and start again? What about remarriage, a new career? How to avoid the weariness of living, the melancholy of the twilight years, how to get through great joys and great pains? Nourished by both reflections and statistics, drawing on the sources of literature, the arts and history, this book proposes a philosophy of longevity based not on resignation but on resolution. In short, an art of living this life to the full. Is there not a profound joy in being alive at the age when our ancestors already had one foot in the grave? This book is dedicated to all those who dream of a new spring in the autumn of life, and want to put off winter as long as they can.
  infinite resignation: The Man in the High Castle and Philosophy Bruce Krajewski, Joshua Heter, 2017-08-04 The Man in the High Castle is an Amazon TV show, based on the Philip K. Dick novel, about an “alternate present” (beginning in the 1960s) in which Germany and Japan won World War II, with the former Western US occupied by Japan, the former Eastern US occupied by Nazi Germany, and a small “neutral zone” between them. A theme of the story is that in this alternative world there is eager speculation, fueled by the illicit newsreel, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, about how the world would have been different if America had won the war. In The Man in the High Castle and Philosophy, twenty-two professional thinkers look at philosophical issues raised by this ongoing enterprise in “alternative history.” One question is whether it really made a profound difference that the Allies won the war, and exactly what differences in everyday life we may expect to arise from an apparent historical turning point. Could it be that some dramatic historical events have only superficial consequences, while some unnoticed occurrences lead to catastrophic results? Another topic is the quest for truth in a world of government misinformation, and how dissenting organizations can make headway.
  infinite resignation: The Ethics of Authenticity Charles Taylor, 2018-08-06 Everywhere we hear of decline, of a world that was better before the influence of modernity. While some lament Western culture’s slide into relativism and nihilism and others celebrate the trend as a liberating sort of progress, Taylor calls on us to face the moral and political crises of our time, and to make the most of modernity’s challenges.
  infinite resignation: The Summer Book Tove Jansson, 2012-08-08 In The Summer Book Tove Jansson distills the essence of the summer—its sunlight and storms—into twenty-two crystalline vignettes. This brief novel tells the story of Sophia, a six-year-old girl awakening to existence, and Sophia’s grandmother, nearing the end of hers, as they spend the summer on a tiny unspoiled island in the Gulf of Finland. The grandmother is unsentimental and wise, if a little cranky; Sophia is impetuous and volatile, but she tends to her grandmother with the care of a new parent. Together they amble over coastline and forest in easy companionship, build boats from bark, create a miniature Venice, write a fanciful study of local bugs. They discuss things that matter to young and old alike: life, death, the nature of God and of love. “On an island,” thinks the grandmother, “everything is complete.” In The Summer Book, Jansson creates her own complete world, full of the varied joys and sorrows of life. Tove Jansson, whose Moomintroll comic strip and books brought her international acclaim, lived for much of her life on an island like the one described in The Summer Book, and the work can be enjoyed as her closely observed journal of the sounds, sights, and feel of a summer spent in intimate contact with the natural world.
  infinite resignation: The Routledge Guidebook to Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling John Lippitt, 2015-10-16 Søren Kierkegaard is one of the key figures of nineteenth century thought, whose influence on subsequent philosophy, theology and literature is both extensive and profound. Fear and Trembling, which investigates the nature of faith through an exploration of the story of Abraham and Isaac, is one of Kierkegaard’s most compelling and widely read works. It combines an arresting narrative, an unorthodox literary structure and a fascinating account of faith and its relation to ‘the ethical’. The Routledge Guidebook to Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling introduces and assesses: Kierkegaard’s life and the background to Fear and Trembling, including aspects of its philosophical and theological context The text and key ideas of Fear and Trembling, including the details of its account of faith and its connection to trust and hope The book’s reception history, the diversity of interpretations it has been given and its continuing interest and importance This Guidebook assumes no previous knowledge of Kierkegaard's work and will be essential reading for anyone studying the most famous text of this important thinker.
  infinite resignation: Poetry and Heroism Richard McCombs, 2025-04-08 Kierkegaard lamented that many people find life distressingly empty, devoid of consolation, and a cause for despair; and set out to provide a remedy to this malaise. As a “singular kind of poet and thinker,” he employed a holistic approach, which he strikingly called “dialectical lyric,” to the all-important question of how we should live. His poetic task is to praise ideals, and heroes who represent them, in order to make readers profoundly appreciate the worth of the ideals, to help them experience intimately and concretely what it is like to serve something of infinite value, and thus to awaken them to their own heroic vocations. His task as a thinker or dialectician is to articulate the essence of competing ways of life, and to distinguish them from one another, so that it is possible to choose between them responsibly and without confusion. In Poetry and Heroism readers will encounter Kierkegaard’s alluring invitation to live poetically and heroically, or to become the hero of one’s own life, by striving passionately to become a faithful replica of ideals which can give profound meaning to human existence and which can help readers discover what Kierkegaard calls one’s “eternal validity.”
  infinite resignation: Truth is the Way Christopher Ben Simpson, 2011-01-01 In The Truth Is the Way, Christopher Ben Simpson presents Kierkegaard's work as a theologia viatorum, a theology to guide one on life's way. This truth that is the way is at once existential, metaphysical, and theological - the highest truth is a living in accord with reality that is revealed to us and enabled in us by Jesus Christ. This picture of Kierkegaard's thought, drawing on the whole of his published corpus, presents his perspectives (by way of prolegomena) on the nature of truth, of communication and of faith and (more substantially) his guiding vision of the world, God, humanity, and Christ, culminating in Kierkegaard's understanding of the manner of life lived in light of this vision - of a journey walked in the virtues of patience, faith, hope, and love toward a life of joy in the midst of suffering, of communion with oneself, with God, with others.
  infinite resignation: The Kingdom of Infinite Number Bryan Bunch, Bryan H. Bunch, 2001-09-15 A guide to numbers, suggesting ways of looking at individual numbers and their unique properties.
  infinite resignation: Recovering Christian Character Robert C. Roberts, 2022-03-17 Discipleship guidance from the writings of Kierkegaard Genuine Christian character often runs counter to prevailing notions of Christianity—as much in today’s era of nationalistic religiosity as in the staid Christendom of Søren Kierkegaard’s time. Kierkegaard responded to the hypocrisy around him by becoming a missionary of sorts in the Western world. Through his writing he exposed the illusions of conventional wisdom while advancing a compelling vision of the true Christian life that would give rise to essential virtues like faith, hope, love, patience, gratitude, and humility. What might Kierkegaard say to us today about recovering a genuine Christian character amid manifold corruptions of the gospel? Robert C. Roberts guides the reader through Kierkegaard’s thought about character—clarifying while never unduly simplifying—to show how Kierkegaard’s prescient psychological insights can be applied in the lives of twenty-first-century Christians interested in personal formation. Taking on a Kierkegaardian voice of his own, Roberts powerfully illustrates how virtue arises not from the mastery of individual ethical principles but from the continuity of one’s soul with the heart of God.
  infinite resignation: The Existentialists Charles B. Guignon, 2004 This volume brings together for the first time some of the most helpful and insightful essays on the four most influential and discussed philosophers in the history of existentialism: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre. The contributors write on such topics as Kierkegaard's knight of faith and his diagnosis of the 'present age;' Nietzsche's view of morality and self-creation; Heidegger's accounts of worldhood and authenticity; and Sartre's ontology, ethics, and conception of the cogito. The essays have been selected for their higher level of scholarship and for their ability to illuminate various aspects of their subject's work. The volume is enhanced by the editor's introduction and extensive bibliography to aid further study.
  infinite resignation: Interpreting Abraham Bradley Beach, Matthew T. Powell, 2014 Interpreting the Akedah-- across tradition and across time. The story of Abraham and Isaac is a story of near universal importance. Sitting near the core of three of the world's great religious traditions, this nineteen-verse story opens a world of interpretive possibilities, raising questions of family, loyalty, faith, and choices that are common to us all. This collection of essays ... takes up the question of how our interpretation of this pivotal text has changed over time, and how, even in unlikely places, the story influences our thought. It begins by exploring various readings of Abraham and the Akedah story throughout [sic] the traditional lenses of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. From there it moves into modern and postmodern readings, including how such varied thinkers as Kant and Kierkegaard, Kafka and Derrida have engaged the text. Interpreting Abraham demonstrates the diversity of interpretations and the dramatic impact of the story on the Western intellectual tradition.--Back cover.
  infinite resignation: Fear and Trembling (SparkNotes Philosophy Guide) SparkNotes, 2014-08-12 Fear and Trembling (SparkNotes Philosophy Guide) Making the reading experience fun! SparkNotes Philosophy Guides are one-stop guides to the great works of philosophy–masterpieces that stand at the foundations of Western thought. Inside each Philosophy Guide you’ll find insightful overviews of great philosophical works of the Western world.
  infinite resignation: The Art of Reconciliation D. Petersson, 2013-05-14 Dag Petersson offers a comprehensive critique of the philosophy that has dominated 200 years of modern thought, politics, economy, and culture. The basic question is this: why does dialectical metaphysics fail to keep what it promises? What is it about dialectics, that makes it fall into irreducibly distinct variations of itself, when all it promises is to synthesize, to reconcile and make whole what is fragmented and alien to itself? An undisciplined creativity intrinsic to completing reason comes to light through analyses of how dialectical systems begin. Every dialectical philosophy must account for its own birth, and it is at this point, when it also articulates its promise of universal synthesis, that the book discovers a desire for light-writing, or photography. Only the most immediate element light can mediate the necessary self-determination of thought at its origin. Light must begin to write. A philosophical critique of dialectics is therefore also a point of departure for a new aesthetic ontology of photography.
  infinite resignation: Volume 17: Kierkegaard's Pseudonyms Katalin Nun, Jon Stewart, 2016-12-05 One of the elements that many readers admire in Kierkegaard’s skill as a writer is his ability to create different voices and perspectives in his works. Instead of unilaterally presenting clear-cut doctrines and theses, he confronts the reader with a range of personalities and figures who all espouse different views. One important aspect of this play of perspectives is Kierkegaard’s controversial use of pseudonyms. The present volume is dedicated to exploring the different pseudonyms and authorial voices in Kierkegaard’s writing. The articles featured here try to explore each pseudonymous author as a literary figure and to explain what kind of a person is at issue in each of the pseudonymous works. The hope is that by taking seriously each of these figures as individuals, we will be able to gain new insights into the texts which they are ostensibly responsible for.
  infinite resignation: This Life Martin Hägglund, 2020-02-04 Winner of the René Wellek Prize Named a Best Book of the Year by The Guardian, The Millions, and The Sydney Morning Herald This Life offers a profoundly inspiring basis for transforming our lives, demonstrating that our commitment to freedom and democracy should lead us beyond both religion and capitalism. Philosopher Martin Hägglund argues that we need to cultivate not a religious faith in eternity but a secular faith devoted to our finite life together. He shows that all spiritual questions of freedom are inseparable from economic and material conditions: what matters is how we treat one another in this life and what we do with our time. Engaging with great philosophers from Aristotle to Hegel and Marx, literary writers from Dante to Proust and Knausgaard, political economists from Mill to Keynes and Hayek, and religious thinkers from Augustine to Kierkegaard and Martin Luther King, Jr., Hägglund points the way to an emancipated life.
  infinite resignation: Reason and Conversion in Kierkegaard and the German Idealists Ryan Kemp, Christopher Iacovetti, 2020-05-10 In his late work Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, Immanuel Kant struggles to answer a straightforward, yet surprisingly difficult, question: how is radical conversion—a complete reorientation of a person’s most deeply held values—possible? In this book, Ryan S. Kemp and Christopher Iacovetti examine how this question gets taken up by Kant’s philosophical heirs: Schelling, Fichte, Hegel and Kierkegaard. More than simply developing a novel account of each thinker’s position, Kemp and Iacovetti trace how each philosopher formulates his theory in response to tensions in preceding views, culminating in Kierkegaard’s claim that radical conversion lies outside a person’s control. Kemp and Iacovetti close by examining some of the moral-psychological implications of Kierkegaard’s account, particularly the question of how someone might responsibly relate to values that have, by their own admission, been acquired in contingent and accidental fashion.
  infinite resignation: Infinitely Full of Hope Tom Whyman, 2021-04-13 A philosophical memoir about becoming a father in an increasingly terrible world – can I hope the child growing in my partner's womb will have a good-enough life? For Kant, philosophy boiled down to three key questions: “What can I know?”, “What ought I do?”, and “What can I hope for?” In philosophy departments, that third question has largely been neglected at the expense of the first two – even though it is crucial for understanding why anyone might ask them in the first place. In Infinitely Full of Hope, as he prepares to become a father for the first time, the philosopher Tom Whyman attempts to answer Kant’s third question, trying to make sense of it in the context of a world that increasingly seems like it is on the verge of collapse. Part memoir, part theory, and part reflection on fatherhood, Infinitely Full of Hope asks how we can cling to hope in a world marked by crisis and disaster.
  infinite resignation: The Task of Hope in Kierkegaard Mark Bernier, 2015-11-12 Philosophers of religion are often caught up with the epistemic justification of their religious beliefs, rather than the qualities of the religious life that make it valuable. Mark Bernier argues that hope is one of the most important of such qualities, and is an essential thread that connects despair, faith, and the self. The Task of Hope in Kierkegaard reconstructs Kierkegaard's theory of hope, which involves the distinction between mundane and authentic hope, and makes three principal claims. Firstly, while despair involves the absence of hope, a rejection of oneself, and a turn away from one's relation to God, despair is fundamentally an unwillingness to hope. This unwillingness is directed toward authentic hope, conceived of by Kierkegaard as an expectation for the possibility of the good. Secondly, hope is not simply an ancillary activity of the self; rather, the task of becoming a self is essentially constituted by hope. Thus, when in despair one is unwilling to hope, one is in fact rejecting one's task of becoming a self. Thirdly, faith stands in opposition to despair precisely because it is a willingness to hope. An essential role of faith is to secure the ground for hope, and in this way faith secures the ground for the self. In short, authentic hope (what Kierkegaard calls spiritual hope) is not merely a fringe element, but is essential to Kierkegaard's project of the self.
  infinite resignation: All Gall Is Divided E. M. Cioran, 2012-05-01 Now in paperback, an antidote to a world gone mad for bedside affirmation (Washington Post). E. M. Cioran has been called the last worthy disciple of Nietzsche and a sort of final philosopher of the Western world who combines the compassion of poetry and the audacity of cosmic clowning (Washington Post). All Gall Is Divided is the second book Cioran published in French after moving from his native Romania and establishing himself in Paris. It revealed him as an aphorist in a long tradition descending from the ancient Greeks through La Rochefoucault but with a gift for lacerating, subversively off-kilter insights, a twentieth-century nose for the absurdities of the human condition, and what Baudelaire called spleen. The aphorisms collected here address themes from the atrophy of utterance and the condition of the West to the abyss, solitude, time, religion, music, the vitality of love, history, and the void. The award-winning poet and translator Richard Howard has characterized them as manic humor, howls of pain, and a vestige of tears, but, as he notes too, in these expressions of the philosopher's existential estrangement, there glows a certain sweetness for all of what Cioran calls 'amertume.'
  infinite resignation: The Book of Dead Philosophers Simon Critchley, 2008 Diogenes died by holding his breath. Plato allegedly died of a lice infestation. Diderot choked to death on an apricot. Nietzsche made a long, soft-brained and dribbling descent into oblivion after kissing a horse in Turin. From the self-mocking haikus of Zen masters on their deathbeds to the last words (gasps) of modern-day sages, The Book of Dead Philosophers chronicles the deaths of almost 200 philosophers-tales of weirdness, madness, suicide, murder, pathos and bad luck. In this elegant and amusing book, Simon Critchley argues that the question of what constitutes a 'good death' has been the central preoccupation of philosophy since ancient times. As he brilliantly demonstrates, looking at what the great thinkers have said about death inspires a life-affirming enquiry into the meaning and possibility of human happiness. In learning how to die, we learn how to live.
  infinite resignation: The Other David A. Muñoz, 2003
  infinite resignation: Kierkegaard and the Changelessness of God Craig A. Hefner, 2023-08-22 Living what he perceived to be a culturally lukewarm Christianity, Søren Kierkegaard was often critical of his contemporary church. This volume explores his reading of Scripture and theology to argue not only that he was a modern defender of the doctrine of divine immutability, but that his theology can be a surprising resource today.
  infinite resignation: Science and Omniscience in Nineteenth Century Literature Jonathan Taylor, 2014-07-01 Iinvestigates some of the ways in which Laplacian and, indeed, Newtonian models of observation and the universe are at once assimilated and complicated by Romantic and Victorian writers such as Carlyle, Burke, Abbott, Poe and Wordsworth. This book explains how some of these literary reimaginings look forward to more modern conceptions of science.
  infinite resignation: Volume 15, Tome V: Kierkegaard's Concepts Steven M. Emmanuel, William McDonald, Jon Stewart, 2016-12-05 Kierkegaard’s Concepts is a comprehensive, multi-volume survey of the key concepts and categories that inform Kierkegaard’s writings. Each article is a substantial, original piece of scholarship, which discusses the etymology and lexical meaning of the relevant Danish term, traces the development of the concept over the course of the authorship, and explains how it functions in the wider context of Kierkegaard’s thought. Concepts have been selected on the basis of their importance for Kierkegaard’s contributions to philosophy, theology, the social sciences, literature and aesthetics, thereby making this volume an ideal reference work for students and scholars in a wide range of disciplines.
  infinite resignation: The Committed Self Victor A. Shepherd, 2015-01-03 The Committed Self is a clear and compelling introduction to Existentialism, the root of Postmodernism and, according to Victor A. Shepherd, still the most significant philosophy of our times. Focusing on Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Buber, Heidegger, and Sartre and their passionate commitment to the authenticity of the self, Shepherd maintains that Existentialism has much to say to Christians with its understanding of: What it is to be a human being, How diverse forces operative in the world and in the psyche shape human self-awareness, The manner in which radical commitment forges and forms that self, which is nothing less than a new birth. Shepherd believes that an acquaintance with Existentialism will aid Christians in negotiating the minefield they think life has become. And he persistently draws attention to the manner in which Existentialism recalls theology to its proper vocation whenever theology appears to be in danger of becoming a species of rationalism that uses religious vocabulary
calculus - What is infinity divided by infinity? - Mathematics Stack ...
Aug 11, 2012 · One advantage of approach (2) is that it allows one to discuss indeterminate forms in concrete fashion and distinguish several cases depending on the nature of numerator and …

Proof of infinite monkey theorem. - Mathematics Stack Exchange
Apr 24, 2015 · The infinite monkey theorem states that if you have an infinite number of monkeys each hitting keys at random on typewriter keyboards then, with probability 1, one of them will …

Uncountable vs Countable Infinity - Mathematics Stack Exchange
As far as I understand, the list of all natural numbers is countably infinite and the list of reals between 0 and 1 is uncountably infinite. Cantor's diagonal proof shows how even a theoretically …

calculus - Infinite Geometric Series Formula Derivation
Infinite Geometric Series Formula Derivation. Ask Question Asked 12 years, 1 month ago. Modified 4 years ...

elementary set theory - What do finite, infinite, countable, not ...
Clearly every finite set is countable, but also some infinite sets are countable. Note that some places define countable as infinite and the above definition. In such cases we say that finite sets are "at …

mathematical operations with infinity - Mathematics Stack Exchange
Jan 1, 2021 · Let us follow the convention that an expression with $\infty$ is "defined" (in the extended reals) if: when you replace each $\infty$ with any function/sequence whose limit is …

Example of infinite field of characteristic $p\\neq 0$
On the other hand, if we had $\overline{\mathbb{F}_p}\subseteq\mathbb{F}_p(T)$, then we would have that there were some $\frac{f}{g}\in \mathbb{F}_p(T)$ such that …

linear algebra - Definition of Infinite Dimensional Vector Space ...
Sep 24, 2020 · In the text i am referring for Linear Algebra , following definition for Infinite dimensional vector space is given . The Vector Space V(F) is said to be infinite dimensional …

$\\sin(x)$ infinite product formula: how did Euler prove it?
I know that $\sin(x)$ can be expressed as an infinite product, and I've seen proofs of it (e.g. Infinite product of sine function). I found How was Euler able to create an infinite product for sinc by …

How can I define $e^x$ as the value of infinite series?
Stack Exchange Network. Stack Exchange network consists of 183 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow, the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their …

calculus - What is infinity divided by infinity? - Mathematics Stack ...
Aug 11, 2012 · One advantage of approach (2) is that it allows one to discuss indeterminate forms in concrete fashion and distinguish several cases depending on the nature of numerator and …

Proof of infinite monkey theorem. - Mathematics Stack Exchange
Apr 24, 2015 · The infinite monkey theorem states that if you have an infinite number of monkeys each hitting keys at random on typewriter keyboards then, with probability 1, one of them will …

Uncountable vs Countable Infinity - Mathematics Stack Exchange
As far as I understand, the list of all natural numbers is countably infinite and the list of reals between 0 and 1 is uncountably infinite. Cantor's diagonal proof shows how even a …

calculus - Infinite Geometric Series Formula Derivation
Infinite Geometric Series Formula Derivation. Ask Question Asked 12 years, 1 month ago. Modified 4 years ...

elementary set theory - What do finite, infinite, countable, not ...
Clearly every finite set is countable, but also some infinite sets are countable. Note that some places define countable as infinite and the above definition. In such cases we say that finite …

mathematical operations with infinity - Mathematics Stack Exchange
Jan 1, 2021 · Let us follow the convention that an expression with $\infty$ is "defined" (in the extended reals) if: when you replace each $\infty$ with any function/sequence whose limit is …

Example of infinite field of characteristic $p\\neq 0$
On the other hand, if we had $\overline{\mathbb{F}_p}\subseteq\mathbb{F}_p(T)$, then we would have that there were some $\frac{f}{g}\in \mathbb{F}_p(T)$ such that …

linear algebra - Definition of Infinite Dimensional Vector Space ...
Sep 24, 2020 · In the text i am referring for Linear Algebra , following definition for Infinite dimensional vector space is given . The Vector Space V(F) is said to be infinite dimensional …

$\\sin(x)$ infinite product formula: how did Euler prove it?
I know that $\sin(x)$ can be expressed as an infinite product, and I've seen proofs of it (e.g. Infinite product of sine function). I found How was Euler able to create an infinite product for …

How can I define $e^x$ as the value of infinite series?
Stack Exchange Network. Stack Exchange network consists of 183 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow, the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their …