Tag Archives: Kierkegaard

Russell Johnson: “Nonviolent Revolution: Gandhi and Kierkegaard on Means and Ends”

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Russell Johnson

PhD candidate, Philosophy of Religions

Nonviolent Revolution: Gandhi and Kierkegaard on Means and Ends

Tuesday, January 24, 5:00pm, Swift 200

Gandhi famously asserted “as the means, so the end” and that the means and the end are inseparable. This idea, though taken up by Martin Luther King Jr., has been widely ignored by scholars, and few (including Gandhi) attempt to make arguments in its favor. This paper shows that Søren Kierkegaard’s theory of communication provides one way to show the connection between means and ends, and points toward a communicative approach to ethics.

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Eric Ziolkowski on “Kierkegaard and the History of Religions”

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Eric Ziolkowski (Lafayette College)

“Kierkegaard and the History of Religions”

Co-sponsored with the Religion and Literature Club

Thursday, May 21, 3:30 pm

Swift Hall, 106

Abstract:

Kirkegaard’s life coincided with the period that led up to the emergence of comparative religion or Religionswissenschaft, a.k.a. the “History of Religions,” as an academically recognized scholarly pursuit.  This talk considers the bearing of Kirkegaard’s writings, and of their reception, upon the development of HR, mainlty from the early twentieth century up through Eliade.  For better or worse, far from figuring as an irrelevant or theological persona non grata in relation to HR, Kierkegaard was embraced by some of its formative contributors as a datum, as a theorist, and ultimately, in one notable case, as an existential soul mate.