Kierkegaard

1. Kierkegaard's rhetoric is on the basis that it is extremely difficult to become who you are for two reasons. One social identities were unusually fluid and there was a proliferation of normalizing institutions which produced pseudo-individuals. Through this rhetoric he focused on the individual rather than the “crowd”.
2. Hegel says that absolute knowledge is available by virtue of a science of logic. Kierkegaard thinks that it scientific knowledge is the largest obstacle to redemption. He also says that instead of giving people knowledge we should seek out what people try to pass as knowledge. Kierkegaard inverts Hegel’s dialectic.
3. He states that we should see worldly things in their spiritual opposites. As an example he says we should see hope as in hopelessness. He uses to establish the distance human beings and God have. That as humans we rely on God and he is merciful.
4. Kierkegaard's stages are the aesthetic, ethical, religious stages.
1. Aesthetic: This stage is subdivided into three parts were in the lowest part of the aesthetic stage the human being lives to please physical desires, in a “drink, eat, be merry” lifestyle. Then he moves to the “busy man of affairs” this is where the man is still living for a worldly and selfish pleasure the pleasure is that of success in the world, such as making a clever business deal. Then comes the appreciation of culture such as art, music, literature.
2. Ethical: This stages is when the human makes a commitment to one particular role, in relationship to persons and life. In this stage the person has a genuine and non-fragmented identity, role, and place in life, defined by his commitment to others and self, and has now chosen himself whereas before, in the aesthetic stage, there was no self behind the empty and transient role. In this stage instead of acting for self-pleasure, one's actions in the role are motivated by the commitment to others. The person in the ethical stage considers the needs of others and community when making decisions.
3. Religious: This stage is when the human gives up all material object to follow God. This is the hardest stage because the gain is not a material gain, but rather a spiritual gain.
5. Is based on Abraham's would-be sacrifice of his son Isaac is not for the sake of social norms, but is the result of a “teleological suspension of the ethical”. That is, Abraham recognizes a duty to something higher than both his social duty not to kill an innocent person and his personal commitment to his beloved son, viz. his duty to obey God's commands.
6. He uses this story because Abraham was about to commit murder and was going to kill his son Isaac, in order to commit to God. In this example Abraham is forced to disregard ethical demands for a higher authority.
7. A knight of faith never gives up hope in God. He believes God's promise and goodness, though it was not logical given what he was asked to do. He believes two mutually exclusive ideas at the same time, what Kierkegaard calls "divine madness." This is Kierkegaard's "double movement of infinity." The wisdom of God is foolishness to the world.
8. It outlines a theory of human development in which consciousness progresses from an essentially hedonistic, aesthetic mode to one characterized by ethical imperatives arising from the maturing of human conscience.
9. Deals primarily with the Christian conception of agape love in contrast with erotic love or preferential love given to friends and family. Kierkegaard uses this value virtue to understand the existence and relationship of the individual Christian. Many of the chapters take a mention of love from the New Testament and center reflections about the transfer of individuals from secular modes (the stages of the aesthetic and ethical) to genuine religious experience and existence. The actual relationships and experiences of disciples and of Christ are characterized here as tangible models for behavior.

sources:  

"Kierkegaard." Kierkegaard. Accessed February 2, 2015. http://www.kareyperkins.com/percy/kierkegaard.html.

 McDonald, William. "Søren Kierkegaard." Stanford University. December 3, 1996. Accessed February 2, 2015. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kierkegaard/.html.