Kierkegaard's Socratic Art [Paperback]

Benjamin Daise (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2000

The thesis for which this book offers support is Kierkegaards claim that he was a midwife for Christendom. The idea of midwifery is to develop the authors means of an analysis of portions of Platos Meno. That analysis leads to sensitivity in decisions about ascribing views articulated in the texts that are consideredprimarily Philosophical Fragmentsto Kierkegaard or to his pseudonyms. Consequently, Daise offers detailed textual analysis of the questions that are explicitly addressed in Philosophical Fragments, in order to show that what are ostensibly traditional metaphysical and epistemological issues are not those kinds of questions at all and that the formulation of the questions is demanded by the maieutic requirements of the environment in which Kierkegaard wrote.

Daise directly confronts interpretations of the Climacian writings that see Climacus as presenting traditional kinds of responses to theological or metaphysical questions. It is necessary for the author to provide some criticism of plausible accounts of portions of Fragments and Postscript that see Climacus as holding the kind of view he denies that he holds. Daise does this as part of an effort to provide analysis of textual language that shows the concern of Climacus to be, not just primarily existential, but wholly existential in character.

Since Kierkegaard hints at but does not develop an ethical justification for indirect communication, Daise examines possible arguments for the ethical requirement of indirect communication by Kierkegaard in order to assess Kierkegaards claim.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Benjamin Daise is professor of philosophy at Hobart and William Smith Colleges.

Product Details

• Paperback: 134 pages
• Publisher: Mercer Univ Pr (January 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 086554655X
• ISBN-13: 978-0865546554
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,481,526 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Clarity!, May 23, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Kierkegaard's Socratic Art (Paperback)

Put simply, Daise is a uniquely clear thinker. His ability to unpack -- to truly and comprehensively unpack -- the social context for a particular idea lends dimension and accessibility to his readings. Anyone interested in Kierkegaard generally, or the Fragments particularly is urged to read this book. The author achieves a refreshing clarity that is rare in a field that sometimes speaks only to itself through scholarly references and tireless over-explanations.

I have been reading Kierkegaard for years and have consulted many secondary sources that simply don't compare to this one. Daise provides interprative keys that will make it valuable not only to the philosophical community (concerned as they are with textual fidelity) but also to the general reader who has an interest in the failures of a modernity which prefigures our own world so thoroughly.

Lastly, in an age currently dominated by irony, at times hip, tragic, subversive and liberating, one could truly benefit by returning to the orignal jester, the romantic rebel and perhaps greatest voice for our current contradictions and deepest anxieties. Daise is an incomparable guide, a true student of Kierkegaard's texts and the wider world which gave birth to them. It is a rare event when someone can bring clarity to a thinker who waged war against all clarity. This work deserves alot of attention.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars was Kierkegaard, too, among the prophets, October 15, 2001

By 

J. C. Woods "silvannus" (Malden, MA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Kierkegaard's Socratic Art (Paperback)

It was a proverb in Israel, "Was Saul, too, among the prophets (1 Samuel 10.12)?" Saul was a madman and prophesied out of his madness. Does that also make him a prophet? One questions whether Kierkegaard, too, was among the philosophers (e.g. see Alistair Hannay's comparatively inept handling of this question at the beginning of his Kierkegaard. His problem is that, while there is much unphilosophical about Kierkegaard, Hannay's book is part of the "Arguments of the Philosophers" series. To argue in a book labeled "Arguments of Philosophers" that his subject is no philosopher would seemingly set him afoul of Godel's theorem.). Daise's theory seems to be tha Kierkegaard was not a philosopher, which he argues persuasively. All the more so, because he picks up on his real opposition. Not Hannay who claims Kierkegaard is some sort of para-philosopher, but Strawser who, in his book, Both-And, claims that the question is indeterminable, that Kierkegaard left a corpus than may be consistently interpreted in any of two ways or, as he provocatively puts it, you can't deconstruct Kierkegaard because he has already deconstructed himself. Daise argues, successfully I think, that this interpretation is superficial and that there are grounds, within the individual documents and the corpus as a whole that lead us to a single valid interpretation.