Kierkegaard, forgetting and existence
Wed Mar 17, 2010
141 Words
Reading though the excellent introduction to Kierkegaard's philosophy
in the Guardian
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/mar/15/kierkegaard-philosophy-existentialism),
it is pointed out that one of the key underlying principles of his
philosophy is that we have forgotten what it means to exist, and that
the cause of this forgetting is the ever growing amount of knowledge
in the world (a state of affairs that is now ever more apparent even
than in his time).
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in the Guardian
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/mar/15/kierkegaard-philosophy-existentialism),
it is pointed out that one of the key underlying principles of his
philosophy is that we have forgotten what it means to exist, and that
the cause of this forgetting is the ever growing amount of knowledge
in the world (a state of affairs that is now ever more apparent even
than in his time).
I am dubious about this claim. I think it likely that we have always
been forgetting this questions. In the trials of agrarian society the
question is pushed aside by concerns of the harvest. In the hold of a
religious society such questions are givens and not open to
inspection. It's always a hard question, and I'm sure that modernism
causes it's disappearance more than any other state. Of course I
could be wrong.