Popis knihy

The present volume brings to the reader a set of articles with a broad thematic scope, whose common denominator is indicated in the title of the book: Kierkegaard and Great Philosophers. It is the second volume of a larger project entitled Acta Kierkegaardiana, initiated by the Kierkegaard Society in Slovakia in early 2007 with the aim of promoting the ideological heritage of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. Although the Acta Kierkegaardiana project has had an international character from its very beginning, it has shifted from being a primarily Central European initiative to being a worldwide co-operative venture. The international spirit of the project is expressed also in the fact that the present volume has been published as a joint work of the Kierkegaard Society in Slovakia, the University of Barcelona, and Sociedad Iberoamericana de Estudios Kierkegaardianos. The aim of the present volume is to introduce the academic and general public to Kierkegaard’s thought in the broader context of the history of philosophy and history of ideas. The Danish thinker is analysed in connection with philosophers and theologians who yielded inspiration for his thought, in the light of the works of his contemporaries, as well as from the perspective of the reception of his thought in the 20th and 21st centuries. The studies collected in this volume are not intended exclusively for specialized researchers of Kierkegaard’s philosophy; rather they are offered to all those who wish to become more familiar with Kierkegaard’s place in the history of Western philosophy and theology. The articles in the first section focus on Kierkegaard’s dialogue with and/or critique of other prominent figures of European philosophy (Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Trendelenburg), or compare his ideas to the concepts found in other thinkers and writers of the 19th century (Proudhon, Dostoyevsky). Kierkegaard’s inspiration by religious writers (Abraham a Sancta Clara) and key personalities in the field of aesthetics (Mozart) is also among the topics discussed in this first section. The second section of this volume contains articles that for the most part analyse the reception of Kierkegaard’s thought in the philosophical milieu of the 20th century, whereby a relatively broad variety of approaches to Kierkegaard is presented (existentialism, pragmatism, Kierkegaard and Great Philosophers  postmodernism). The main focus of some of the included articles is the connection between Kierkegaard and contemporary philosophers (Habermas, Taylor, McDowell), as well as Kierkegaard’s impact on the formation of 20th century theology (Tillich). Yet another object of analysis is the reception of Kierkegaard in the Spanish-speaking (Zambrano) and Romanian-speaking (Eliade, etc.) contexts. The Postscript contains an article by the American promoter of Kierkegaard’s heritage, Junius Stenseth, whose son Jonathan is the author of the bookplate used by the Hong Kierkegaard Library, which appears with the Library’s permission also on the front cover of the present volume. A short presentation of the city of Šaľa—the seat of the Kierkegaard Collection and the sponsor of this project—is included at the end of the book. The contributors to this volume comprise authors from Argentina, Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Mexico, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S., thus bringing together scholars from four different continents. The idea of producing a ten-volume series of Acta Kierkegaardiana was originally inspired by the Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana series, edited by Niels Thulstrup and Marie Mikulová Thulstrup, whose sixteen volumes appeared in Copenhagen in 1978-1988. It is our hope that the present series will provide a new impetus for further research into Kierkegaard’s thought and that it will supply useful material to all those interested in the Danish thinker. Last, but not least, we would like to thank our colleague, Patrick Stokes, for his valuable assistance with copy-editing the contributions appearing in this volume. The Editors