Kierkegaard and Death: (Philosophy of Religion)

Few philosophers have devoted such sustained, almost obsessive attention to the topic of death as Søren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard and Death brings together new work on Kierkegaard's multifaceted discussions of death and provides a thorough guide to the development, in various texts and contexts, of Kierkegaard's ideas concerning death. Essays by an international group of scholars take up essential topics such as dying to the world, living death, immortality, suicide, mortality and subjectivity, death and the meaning of life, remembrance of the dead, and the question of the afterlife. While bringing Kierkegaard's philosophy of death into focus, this volume connects Kierkegaard with important debates in contemporary philosophy.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction; Patrick Stokes and Adam Buben 1. Knights and Knaves of the Living Dead: Kierkegaard's Use of Living Death as a Metaphor for Despair; George Connell 2. To Die And Yet Not Die: Kierkegaard's Theophany of Death; Simon D. Podmore 3. Christian Hate: Death, Dying, and Reason in Pascal and Kierkegaard; Adam Buben 4. Suicide and Despair Marius; Timmann Mjaaland 5. Thinking Death Into Every Moment: The Existence-Problem of Dying in Kierkegaard's Postscript; Paul Muench 6. Death and Ethics in Kierkegaard's Postscript; David D. Possen 7. The Intimate Agency of Death; Edward F. Mooney 8. A Critical Perspective on Kierkegaard's "At a Graveside"; Gordon D. Marino 9. Life-Narrative and Death as the End of Freedom: Kierkegaard on Anticipatory Resoluteness; John J. Davenport 10. Heidegger and Kierkegaard on Death: The Existentiell and the Existential; Charles Guignon 11. Kierkegaard, Levinas, Derrida: The Death of the Other; Laura Llevadot 12. Derrida, Judge William, and Death; Ian Duckles 13. The Soft Weeping of Desire's Loss: Recognition, Phenomenality, and the One Who Is Dead in Kierkegaard's Works of Love; Jeremy J. Allen 14. Duties to the Dead? Earnest Imagination and Remembrance; Patrick Stokes 15. Kierkegaard's Understanding of the Afterlife; Tamara Monet Marks Contributors Index

About the Author :
Patrick Stokes is a Marie Curie Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire and an Honorary Fellow in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne. He is author of Kierkegaard's Mirrors: Interest, Self, and Moral Vision. Adam Buben is a Kierkegaard House Foundation Fellow at the Hong Kierkegaard Library, St. Olaf College, Minnesota. He has previously been a Fulbright Fellow at the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre, University of Copenhagen, and a visiting lecturer in philosophy at the University of Guam. He has articles published in Kierkegaard and Religious Pluralism, Kierkegaard and Japanese Thought, and in the Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources series (forthcoming).

Review :
"Starting from living death and the thought of death, and then moving through dying, recollecting the death of another, and finally future life, this volume brings together in a coherent way Kierkegaard's view on death and dying."—Andrew J. Burgess, University of New Mexico "Anyone, from scholar to Kierkegaard dabbler, can find something worthwhile here. Even those without any familiartiy with Kierkegaard might find this book an interesting starting point for discovering his work."—Lutheran Quarterly "[O]ne theme that runs throughout this impressive volume is that, for a variety of reasons, the thought of death is intimately related to the task of living well . . . Kierkegaard and Death succeeds admirably at demonstrating how the Kierkegaardian corpus presents us with something like a philosophy of finite existence, in a way that will open up avenues of further research and should also serve as essential reading for anyone who believes that reflecting on human mortality could perhaps be a fruitful enterprise after all."—Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews