SKC Annual Conference 2022
The Textuality of Kierkegaard’s Thought: Words, Images, Phenomena, and Concepts
After several years dedicated to specific topics in Kierkegaard’s authorship, the SKC Annual Conference 2022 turns to the textuality of Kierkegaard’s thought.
Kierkegaard is a theologian, a philosopher, a psychologist, a poet, but first and foremost he is a writer who combines these various intellectual activities in his texts. This makes him a particularly difficult author who constantly defies our attempts to label him and challenges our interpretative endeavors to make sense of his thought.
To work with Kierkegaard’s thought — his theories, concepts, and ideas — is therefore to work with his texts. This may seem an obvious observation. In a time, however, with increasing political pressure to use our intellectual efforts to solve specific societal challenges, Kierkegaard’s text is at risk of disappearing in — or at least subsiding into the background of — our attempt to argue for the contemporary relevance of Kierkegaard’s thought.
It is well-known that, for Kierkegaard, how we think and act is just as important as what we think and do, and it is our hope that this conference will shed light on how Kierkegaard writes about the many topics that are at stake in the authorship.
A number of more specific questions arise from this basic research question: What is the roles of images in Kierkegaard’s authorship? How does the affective character of Kierkegaard’s writing shape his argument? What is the relation between phenomena and concepts? How are we to understand and make sense of the pseudonyms? How does Kierkegaard use narratives and narrativity? What is the relation between indirect and direct communication? How are we to make sense of Kierkegaard’s ambiguous approach to and use of the poetical? What kinds of literary genre does Kierkegaard make use of? What is the theoretical role of mood (stemning)?
Programme
Wednesday, August 10
13:00-13:15 Joakim Garff: Words of Welcome
Afternoon Session (Chairperson: Ettore Rocca)
13:15-13:45 Vincent Delecroix: Kierkegaard as a failed writer. On Adorno's Kierkegaard.
13:45-14:15 Discussion
14:15-14:30 Break
14:30-15:00 Elisabete Sousa: Kierkegaard and travel literature
15:00-15:30 Discussion
15:30-16:00 Dallas Callaway: Intentio Operis and Striving After Textual Meaning within Kierkegaard’s Challenging Authorship
16:00-16:30 Discussion
16:30-18:00 Reception at the Marketplace
Thursday, August 11
Morning Session (Chairperson: Vincent Delecroix)
10:00-10:30 Lilian Munk Rösing: Who speaks? A literary perspective on voice in Kierkegaard
10:30-11:00 Discussion
11:00-11:15 Break
11:15-11:45 Michael Strawser: Between Mood and Spirit: Kierkegaard’s Conception of Death as the Teacher of Earnestness
11:45-12:15 Discussion
12:15-13:15 Lunch Break
Afternoon Session (Chairperson: Lilian Munk Rösing)
13:15-13:45 Ville Hämäläinen: “My dear reader—but to whom am I speaking?” Kierkegaard’s Indirect Rhetoric
13:45-14:15 Discussion
14:15-14:45 Sheridan Hough: “What is the Happiest Life?” Some Observations from Quidam, Johannes de silentio, and a Sixteen Year Old Girl (Me)
14:45-15:15 Discussion
15:15-15:30 Break
15:30-16:00 Joakim Garff: “The Intriguing Secret of All The Machinery”. Textuality, Formation and Identity in Kierkegaard
16:00-16:30 Discussion
Friday, August 12
Morning Session (Chairperson: Ingolf Dalferth)
10:00-10:30 Elizabeth Li: Typographical Acts of Thought: Emphasising Existence in Postscript
10:30-11:00 Discussion
11:00-11:15 Break
11:15-11:45 Bjarke Mørkøre Stigel Hansen: Address of Existence
11:45-12:15 Discussion
12:15-13:15 Lunch Break
Afternoon Session (Chairperson: George Pattison)
13:15-13:45 Philipp Schwab: Speaking and Taking back. Climacus, Kierkegaard and the “First and Last Explanation”
13:45-14:15 Discussion
14:15-14:30 Joakim Garff: Concluding Words