Class Summary, March 28

Monday's class began with a wrap-up on Marx and the Manifesto. Dr. Layne brought up the way capital was valued above all else in the world. She used our own families as a collective example. Each of us has family members who wish for our major in college to be practical, i.e. profitable, rather than what we really want.

This talk about majors segues nicely for the main topic of class, Kierkegaard. Like many college students, Kierkegaard couldn't find a major in school. Even the abstract nature of philosophy turned him off. The writer from Copenhagen prioritized living over abstract thinking, and based much of his work on the importance of the decision (Miami Heat Bandwagoner). Kierkegaard used many pseudonyms in his work, and the pseudonyms spoke from the first person perspective. In his work Either/Or Kierkegaard uses five different pseudonyms as personae. He sought to leave the reader alone with the work, implying that the intention of the author is not the meaning of the text. These works focused on living and decisiveness earned Kierkegaard the title of "Father of Existentialism."

In existentialism, existence comes first. Kierkegaard stressed the importance of giving life meaning and living an authentic life. He focused on emotions such as anxiety and despair, which were genuinely human feelings that pushed us to make decisions. Kierkegaard cared not for universal truths, but for subjective truths. That is a truth that a person lives by and bases his or her life on. We learned that Dr. Layne loves Tyler and wants to maaarrrryyy him. (And did)

Dr. Layne then explained Kierkegaard's Three Stages on Life's Way, which are the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious. We all fall into one of these three categories. A move from one sphere to another is a movement of the will, simplified by Kierkegaard as a "leap." Human reason cannot explain or support these leaps. The litmus test for each level is a person's answer to the question, "What is the good life?"

For the aesthete, life is focused on the present. An aesthete is essentially a detached on-looker in life. He/she focuses on the immediate and worries not of reflective thought. Also, everything is amoral in this worldview. The aesthete does not see past or present, and only views life as a series of disconnected "nows." Kierkegaard, who was once an aesthete, criticizes this worldview for its lack of authenticity. He says that aesthetes have no authentic selves and do not know who they are. He says they will feel the despair or the "unwillingness to be oneself." In this, they would be guilty of double ignorance in refusing to pursue the ethical life when they know it is better.

Then class ended because it was 1:22.