Summary of Gordon Marino's Basic Writings of Existentialism

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was the father of existentialism. He was born in Copenhagen in 1813. He entered the University of Copenhagen in 1830, but it took him more than a decade to finish his degree. He passed his exams in 1840 and a year later completed his dissertation, On the Concept of Irony: With Constant Reference to Socrates.

#2 Kierkegaard wrote about the relation between ethics and religion, and he suggested that faith was about the attempt to follow Christ in his self-denial, suffering, and ultimately in his humiliation. He no longer wanted to participate in making a fool of God.

#3 The ethical is the universal, and it applies to everyone at all times. It is immanent in itself and has nothing outside itself that is its end, but it is its own end. The single individual, sensuously and psychically qualified in immediacy, is the individual who has his end in the universal.

#4 Faith is the paradox that the individual is higher than the universal, yet justified before it. It is a higher position that cannot be mediated, and yet it exists eternally. It is this paradox that Abraham believed in, and it is this paradox that makes faith exist.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822512894

IRB Media

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Insights on Gordon Marino's Basic Writings of Existentialism

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 11

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was the father of existentialism. He was born in Copenhagen in 1813. He entered the University of Copenhagen in 1830, but it took him more than a decade to finish his degree. He passed his exams in 1840 and a year later completed his dissertation, On the Concept of Irony: With Constant Reference to Socrates.

#2

Kierkegaard wrote about the relation between ethics and religion, and he suggested that faith was about the attempt to follow Christ in his self-denial, suffering, and ultimately in his humiliation. He no longer wanted to participate in making a fool of God.

#3

The ethical is the universal, and it applies to everyone at all times. It is immanent in itself and has nothing outside itself that is its end, but it is its own end. The single individual, sensuously and psychically qualified in immediacy, is the individual who has his end in the universal.

#4

Faith is the paradox that the individual is higher than the universal, yet justified before it. It is a higher position that cannot be mediated, and yet it exists eternally. It is this paradox that Abraham believed in, and it is this paradox that makes faith exist.

#5

The story of Abraham contains a teleological suspension of the ethical. Abraham acts by virtue of the absurd, for it is the absurd that he is higher than the universal. He sacrifices Isaac, and when the news reaches his house, the Greek maidens will blush with enthusiasm.

#6

The difference between the tragic hero and Abraham is clear. The tragic hero is still within the ethical. He allows a expression of the ethical to have its τλος in a higher expression of the ethical. He scales down the ethical relation between father and son or daughter and father to a feeling that has its dialectic in its relation to the idea of moral conduct.

#7

Abraham’s act is completely different from the act of the tragic hero. The tragic hero upholds the idea of the state, while Abraham’s act is completely unrelated to the idea of the state. The ethical in the sense of the moral is entirely beside the point in Abraham’s life.

#8

Abraham is an example of someone who sacrificed himself for something greater than himself, but he did so out of duty, which is not the same as sacrifice for love. The person who gives up the universal to grasp something higher that is not the universal is committing a spiritual trial, and there is no salvation for him.

#9

The ethical is suspended in the single individual, who exists as the single individual in contrast to the universal. The single individual does not sin, but his existence from the point of view of the idea is still sin.

#10

The single individual, in order to be legitimate, must level all existence to the idea of the state or society. It is a simple matter to mediate, for no one ever comes to the paradox that the single individual is higher than the universal.

#11

We are not concerned with the result of the lottery, only the process. We are not interested in the anxiety or distress that comes with it. We simply want to experience the result, just as we want to experience a book’s ending.

#12

The mother of God, Mary, is great because she was the favored one among women, but she is not great because of that. She is great because she was able to bear the child wondrously, but she did it after the manner of women.

#13

The story of Abraham contains a teleological suspension of the ethical. As the single individual he became higher than the universal. This is a paradox that cannot be mediated. How he entered into it is as inexplicable as how he remains in it.

#14

In Hegelian philosophy, the outer is higher than the inner. This is frequently illustrated by an example. The child is the inner, while the adult is the outer, and thus the child is determined by the external and the adult by the inner. But faith is the paradox that interiority is higher than exteriority.

#15

The paradox of faith is that the individual is higher than the universal, and that the individual determines his relationship to the universal by his relationship to the absolute, not his relationship to the absolute by his relationship to the individual.

#16

The paradox of the single individual can only be resolved by acknowledging that the individual is only the individual. As soon as an individual recognizes his absolute duty in the universal, he realizes that he is engaged in a spiritual trial, and if he truly resists it, he will not fulfill his duty.

#17

The story of Abraham contains a paradox. The ethical expression of his relation to Isaac is that the father