How to Read Kierkegaard - Softcover

Caputo, John D.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393330788 ISBN 13: 9780393330786

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008

Synopsis

Intent upon letting the reader experience the pleasure and intellectual stimulation in reading classic authors, the How to Read series will facilitate and enrich your understanding of texts vital to the canon.

Soren Kierkegaard is one of the prophets of the contemporary age, a man whose acute observations on modern European life might have been written yesterday, whose work anticipated fundamental developments in psychoanalysis, philosophy, theology, and the critique of mass culture by more than a century.

John D. Caputo offers a compelling account of Kierkegaard as a thinker of particular relevance in our postmodern times, who set off a revolution that counts Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida among its heirs. His conceptions of truth as a self-transforming “deed” and his haunting account of the “single individual” seem to have been written especially with us in mind.

Extracts include Kierkegaard’s classic reading of the story of Abraham and Isaac, the revolutionary theory that truth is subjectivity, and his groundbreaking analysis of modern bourgeois life.

About this title

About the Author:

John D. Caputo is the Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion and Humanities at Syracuse University and a specialist in the interface between postmodern thought and contemporary religion. His latest books are The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event and After the Death of God, coauthored with Gianni Vattimo. He is also the author of On Religion.

Simon Critchley is a best-selling author and the Hans Jonas Professor at the New School for Social Research. His books include Very Little...Almost Nothing, Infinitely Demanding, The Book of Dead Philosophers, The Faith of the Faithless, Bowie, Memory Theatre and Suicide.

Review:

* 'These books let you encounter thinkers eyeball to eyeball by analysing passages from their work' Terry Eagleton, New Statesman * 'These deceptively slim volumes really are a course in "How to Read", not "How to Pretend to Have Read''' John Banville, Irish Times * 'Each author offers a smart take on how to approach reading his subject's works by providing historical and biographical detail, critical debate and sample excerpts of text' Sarah Sennott, Newsweek

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0393330788
• ISBN 13: 9780393330786
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 144