Winner of the John Templeton Award for Theological Promise 2009
Series: Kierkegaard Studies. Monograph Series 17
About this Title
There are certain things that can be explained and certain things that cannot be explained. This book is about the latter. It is a book about death: how death interrupts and influences the reflection on the self. It is a book about God: a detailed and critical discussion on how Kierkegaard and Derrida apply the concept of God in their philosophical reflections.
The most ground-breaking analysis concerns the famous passage on the self (A.A) in The Sickness unto Death, where the author combines logical, rhetorical and dialectical means to establish a new perspective on Kierkegaard’s thinking in general. The Cartesian doubt then constitutes a common trait for his detailed and rigorous analysis of Derrida and Kierkegaard on death, madness, faith, and rationality – showing how they both seek to break up the Hegelian Aufhebung from within, but still remain dependent on Hegel.
After Kierkegaard and Derrida, the certainty and total uncertainty of death – and of God as infinite other – gives the self a basic, though non-foundational, responsibility. The significance of this responsibility, of this other, of this death, requires sustained and thorough consideration. Where others mark a conclusion, this book therefore marks a point of departure: reflecting on oneself at the graveside of a dead man – thus introducing an Autopsia.
