Kierkegaard on the Couch - Happy Days Blog - NYTimes.com - The Diigo Meta page

• 11 Nov 09
  

  robyonemoto

  faith theology

• 03 Nov 09
  

  Erwin Beck
• 30 Oct 09
  

  Jeremy Price

  kierkegaard psychology philosophy interesting

• 

  nafto001
• 

  turkey_burger
  • These days, confide to someone that you are in despair and he or she will likely suggest that you seek out professional help for your depression. While despair used to be classified as one of the seven deadly sins, it has now been medicalized and folded into the concept of clinical depression. If Kierkegaard were on Facebook or could post a You Tube video, he would certainly complain that we, who have listened to Prozac, have become deaf to the ancient distinction between psychological and spiritual disorders, between depression and despair.
  • he warns, “Happiness is the greatest hiding place for despair.”
  • 3 more annotations...

  • • For those who do not immediately pitch the book across the room, the magister continues, “A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity.” Despair occurs when there is an imbalance in this synthesis. From there Kierkegaard goes on to present a veritable portrait gallery of the forms that despair can take. Too much of the expansive factor, of infinitude, and you have the dreamer who cannot make anything concrete. Too much of the limiting element, and you have the narrow minded individual who cannot imagine anything more serious in life than bottom lines and spread sheets.

      
      

    • An individual in despair despairs over something. So it seems for a moment, but only for a moment; in the same moment the true despair or despair in its true form shows itself. In despairing over something, he really despaired over himself, and now he wants to be rid of himself. For example, when the ambitious man whose slogan is “Either Caesar or nothing” does not get to be Caesar, he despairs over it … precisely because he did not get to be Caesar, he cannot bear to be himself.

      
      

      In America, there is endless talk of the importance of having a dream — that is, a dreamed-up self that you will to become: a millionaire, a surgeon, or maybe the next Dylan or George Clooney. But master of suspicion that Kierkegaard was, he goes on to note that while the man who has failed to become Caesar would have been in seventh heaven if he had realized his dream, that state would have been just as despairing in another way — because in that giddy self-satisfied condition, he would never have come to grasp his true self.

    • But the spiritual travails only begin when that chagrin consumes the awareness that we are something more than our emotions and projects. Does the depressive identify himself completely with his melancholy? Has the never ending blizzard of inexplicable sad thoughts caused him to give up on himself, and to see his suffering as a kind of fever without significance?

      
      

      If so, Kierkegaard would bid him to consider a spiritual consultation on his despair, to go along with his trip to the mental health clinic.

• 

  Graham Frey

  Have we lost the distinction between psychological and spiritual disorders, between depression and despair?

  diigo

• 29 Oct 09
  

  T. Rex Bean

  keirkegaard despair marino philosophy

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  aaron500
• 

  Dean Kastel

  Kierkegaard

• 

  hsumaker Dooglia

  "Kierkegaard begins “Sickness” with this famous albeit slightly ironic bit of word play:
  
  A human being is a spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation relating itself to itself in the relation.
  
  For those who do not immediately pitch the book across the room, the magister continues, “A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity.” Despair occurs when there is an imbalance in this synthesis. From there Kierkegaard goes on to present a veritable portrait gallery of the forms that despair can take. Too much of the expansive factor, of infinitude, and you have the dreamer who cannot make anything concrete. Too much of the limiting element, and you have the narrow minded individual who cannot imagine anything more serious in life than bottom lines and spread sheets. "

  hellish running fear kierkegaard

  • Kierkegaard begins “Sickness” with this famous albeit slightly ironic bit of word play:

    
    

    A human being is a spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation relating itself to itself in the relation.

    
    

    For those who do not immediately pitch the book across the room, the magister continues, “A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity.” Despair occurs when there is an imbalance in this synthesis. From there Kierkegaard goes on to present a veritable portrait gallery of the forms that despair can take. Too much of the expansive factor, of infinitude, and you have the dreamer who cannot make anything concrete. Too much of the limiting element, and you have the narrow minded individual who cannot imagine anything more serious in life than bottom lines and spread sheets.

• 

  mpohorilak

  "n. If Kierkegaard were on Facebook or could post a You Tube video, he would certainly complain that we, who have listened to Prozac, have become deaf to the ancient distinction between psychological and spiritual disorders, between depression and despair."

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  stuart flack

  this is kind of thing I could imagine that we'd get from a presenter either before or after a program. we'd probably have to give them another 250 bucks for it, but it would be worth if we promoted it properly.
  
  Also, this guy could be a great ad to a sports program or program on boxing.

  2010 Body

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  Jonathan Ellinghaus
• 

  jlearn 2.0

  spirituality

• 

  Saul Zackson

  Have we lost the distinction between psychological and spiritual disorders, between depression and despair?

  diigo

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