‘Life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced’: Remembering Søren Kierkegaard | Philosophy - Scroll.in

November 11, 2020, marks the 165th death anniversary of the Danish philosopher by Richard Herrett, Scroll.in. 

“There is yet another man in me, not the physical, but the personal man.” Rabindranath Tagore, ‘Personality’, 1917

Photo: Sóren Kierkegaard | La Biblioteca Real de Dinamarca / Wikimedia Commons 

Personality, said Rabindranath Tagore, resides in our lived philosophy and our art. The Bard of Bengal was comfortable in his artistic skin. In his music, paintings, prose and poetry, we see the depth of his own personality – his “personal man”. A distinctly Tagorean term for the “reflective self”, the personal man’s truest manifestation was, of course, Tagore himself.

His creative drive for harmony between man and nature, individual and society, East and West, reshaped Indian philosophy and literature, and his 1917 Personality lectures in America introduced the heart of his philosophical approach to a new English-speaking audience.

Since moving to Santiniketan in 2019 I’ve had the opportunity the learn more about the extraordinary man behind the philosophy. Tagore was unique, and his impact immeasurable. But I was curious. What similar thinkers, if any, existed in the western tradition?

When Covid-19 first came into our lives, it was perhaps no surprise that the existential novel made a comeback. As people experienced a new kind of isolation many turned to such books for reflective insight, from the Russian classics, to Albert Camus’ The Plague. I wasn’t immune...

A humanist on the fringes

But who was the personal man? Clare Carlisle’s brilliant new book, Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard, brings to life this most complex and flawed of characters. She tells of how Kierkegaard’s niece, when seeing her uncle on his deathbed aged just forty-two, spoke of piercing blue eyes that “shone like stars” and which betrayed an incredible depth and spiritualism. If eyes really are the mirror of the soul they said a lot about the man.

Others said Kierkegaard’s eyes displayed “a mixture of good nature and malice”. For someone who understood that good and evil are to be found in every human heart, this tells us something of the battles that raged in his own, and of the internal contradictions he spent a lifetime trying to reconcile.

Read more...

Recommended Reading 

Philosopher of the Heart:
The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard

 Source: Scroll.in