Monday, January 7, 2008

December 19, 2007 WGA Theater

Day 4 Part 1/3

3 comments:

Daniel said...

From The Sickness Unto Death

A. Despair is a Sickness in the Spirit, of the Self, and Accordingly can take Three Forms: in Despair Not to Be Conscious of Having a Self (not despair in the strict sense); in Despair Not to Will to Be Oneself; in Despair to Will to Be Oneself.

Man is 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's relating itself to itself in the relation; the self is not the relation but is the relation's relating itself to itself. A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity, in short, it is a synthesis. A synthesis is a relation between two factors. Considered in this way, a human being is still not a self.

In the relation between two, the relation is the third as a negative unity, and the two relate to the relation, and in the relation to the relation; thus under the under the qualifications of the physical the relation between the psychical and the physical is a relation. , when man is regarded as soul. If, however, the relation relates itself to itself, the relation is then a positive third, and this is the self.

Such a relation that relates itself to itself, a self, must either have established itself or have been established by another.

If the relation that relates itself to itself is established by another, then the relation is indeed the third, but this relation ,the third, is yet again a relation and relates itself to that which established the entire relation.

-Kierkegaard, (translation by Howard & Edna Hong)

Daniel said...

Another excerpt from The Sickness Unto Death:

"A reference may be made a this point to the most dialectical frontier between despair and sin, to what could be called a poet-existence verging on the religious, an existence that has something in common with the despair of resignation, except the concept of God is present. Such a poet-existence, as is discernible in the position and conjunction to of the categories, will be the most eminent poet-existence...Every poet-existence (esthetics notwithstanding) is sin, the sin of poetizing instead of being, of relating to the good and the true through the imagination instead of being that--that is, existentially striving to be that. The poet-existence under consideration here is different from despair in that it does have a conception of God or is before God, but it is exceedingly dialectical and is as if an impenetrable dialectical labyrinth concerning the extent to which it is obscurely conscious of being sin. A poet like that can have a very profound religious longing, and the conception of God is taken up into despair. He loves God above all, God who is his only consolation in his secret anguish, and yet he loves the anguish and will not give it up. He would like so very much to be himself before God, but with the exclusion of the fixed point where the self suffers; there in despair he does not will to be himself. he hopes that eternity will take it away, and here it time, no matter how much he suffers under it, he cannot resolve to take it upon himself, cannot humble himself under it in faith...he actually allows himself to be--perhaps unconsciously--to poetize God as somewhat different from what God is, a bit more like a fond father who indulges his child's wish far too much...He became unhappy in the religious life, dimly understands that he is required to give up this anguish--that is, in faith to humble himself under it and take it upon himself as a part of the self--for he wants to keep it apart from himself, and precisely in this way he holds on to it, although he no doubt believes this is supposed to result in parting from it as far as possible, giving it up to the greatest extent humanly possible (this, like every word from a person in despair, is inversely correct and consequently to be understood inversely). But in faith to take it upon himself--that he cannot do, that is, in essence he is unwilling or here his self ends in vagueness...He has only the first element of faith--despair--and within it an intense longing for the religious. His conflict is actually this: Has he been called? Does his thorn in the flesh signify that he is to be used for the extraordinary? Before God, is it entirely in order to be the extraordinary he has become? Or is the thorn in the flesh that under which he must humble himself in order to attain the universally human?

-Anti-Climactus (Kierkegaard)

Unknown said...

beautiful.

i love this man