Kierkegaard: Existence and Identity in a Post-Secular World

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In his perceptive and provocative new book, Alastair Hannay contests two prejudices that have dogged the appreciation of Soren Kierkegaards writings. These are that to grasp their contemporary impact, the religious focus must be referred to his personal background, and that their varied voices mirror a fragmentation in his own relationship to self and society. It was for paying lip-service to their own values that Kierkegaard castigated his society, his diagnosis being that this was one of many ways in which more pressing and disturbing questions of existence were typically evaded. It is in the renowned thinker's own struggle for selfhood that Hannay sees his prescient anticipation of the current focus on issues relating to integration, acceptance and identity. By cultivating a role as the social misfit within his innate exceptionality Kierkegaard deliberately exposed himself to the problems to which an age gripped by identity politics is now responding. By cleverly examining the relation between his richly conceived polemics and Kierkegaards own preoccupation with identity, Hannay has written an essential new text for Kierkegaard scholars and students of Continental philosophy and existentialism.

Reviews

Alastair Hannay has written another brilliant and exemplary study. No one knows the corpus better nor approaches it with such sustained imaginative and subtle flair. * Edward F. Mooney, Professor Emeritus of Religion and Philosophy, Syracuse University, USA *
Alastair Hannay is amongst the most respected Kierkegaard translators and interpreters and his latest book takes us deep into the inner drama of Kierkegaards notion of selfhood and of the inner distress that drove his view that human beings showed an infinite need of God. But Hannay write as more than an expositor: he also shows how and why this difficult and paradoxical philosophy can help nurture a sense of self that is not dependent on the identity politics of our time and that provides a defence against the anger on which such politics feeds and that it too often amplifies. * George Pattison, Professor of Theology and Modern European Thought, University of Glasgow, Scotland *
A masterful translator and one of the most perspicacious interpreters of Kierkegaard, Alastair Hannay seamlessly weaves together Kierkegaards life and works. His book delivers a clear, concise, and convincing response to long-standing questions about Kierkegaards understanding of the self. Hannay also gives Kierkegaard a voice at the table of current debates about identity politics and secularization. * Gordon Marino, Professor of Philosophy, Hong Kierkegaard Library, St. Olaf College, USA *

Author Bio

Alastair Hannay is Professor Emeritus at the University of Oslo. He has published numerous articles and books on Kierkegaard, including Kiekegaard: A Biography (2001) and Kierkegaard and Philosophy: Selected Essays (2003).