{"title":"Listening for Kierkegaardian echoes in Lyotard: the paradox of faith and Lyotard’s ethical turn","authors":"E. Li, Katie Crabtree","doi":"10.1080/21692327.2018.1542611","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper seeks to discern the Kierkegaardian echoes present in the writings of the French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard. While these thinkers share a number of commonalities such as their resistance to categorisation and their imaginative and complex writing styles, Lyotard’s engagement with Kierkegaard has been largely dismissed as inconsequential. However, a modest yet consistent device invoked by Lyotard is Kierkegaard’s paradox of faith from Fear and Trembling. While these references to Kierkegaard read as terse blips in Lyotard’s texts, this paper argues that the Kierkegaardian echoes that can be heard in Lyotard’s writings are crucial for a deeper understanding of Lyotard’s ethical turn. Rather than being insignificant, Lyotard’s direct as well as second-hand engagement with Kierkegaard has profound effects on his philosophy of the differend. By exploring Lyotard’s enigmatic, yet brief appeals to the paradox of faith, this paper shows that Lyotard strikes a chord with Kierkegaard by using the paradox of faith as an intertextual reference to a critique of Hegelian mediation and for discussing the ethical dilemmas inherent to one of the most shocking and incomprehensible events of the twentieth century, Auschwitz.","PeriodicalId":42052,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Philosophy and Theology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2019-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21692327.2018.1542611","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"International Journal of Philosophy and Theology","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21692327.2018.1542611","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"PHILOSOPHY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
ABSTRACT This paper seeks to discern the Kierkegaardian echoes present in the writings of the French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard. While these thinkers share a number of commonalities such as their resistance to categorisation and their imaginative and complex writing styles, Lyotard’s engagement with Kierkegaard has been largely dismissed as inconsequential. However, a modest yet consistent device invoked by Lyotard is Kierkegaard’s paradox of faith from Fear and Trembling. While these references to Kierkegaard read as terse blips in Lyotard’s texts, this paper argues that the Kierkegaardian echoes that can be heard in Lyotard’s writings are crucial for a deeper understanding of Lyotard’s ethical turn. Rather than being insignificant, Lyotard’s direct as well as second-hand engagement with Kierkegaard has profound effects on his philosophy of the differend. By exploring Lyotard’s enigmatic, yet brief appeals to the paradox of faith, this paper shows that Lyotard strikes a chord with Kierkegaard by using the paradox of faith as an intertextual reference to a critique of Hegelian mediation and for discussing the ethical dilemmas inherent to one of the most shocking and incomprehensible events of the twentieth century, Auschwitz.
期刊介绍:
International Journal of Philosophy and Theology publishes scholarly articles and reviews that concern the intersection between philosophy and theology. It aims to stimulate the creative discussion between various traditions, for example the analytical and the continental traditions. Articles should exhibit high-level scholarship but should be readable for those coming from other philosophical traditions. Fields of interest are: philosophy, especially philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and philosophical ethics, and systematic theology, for example fundamental theology, dogmatic and moral theology. Contributions focusing on the history of these disciplines are also welcome, especially when they are relevant to contemporary discussions.