SKC Workshop Spring 2025

Niels Wilde Langballe

(Aarhus University, Denmark)

Kierkegaard's Topological Realism

Within different emerging schools of thought in contemporary continental philosophy, realism has witnessed a revival. For a long time, the relation between human and world has been on the top of the agenda and different theoretical approaches have competed about finding the most original correlate be it language, spirit, ideology or culture. The question does not concern: What is reality but what is our access to reality even if this access is always already given? Epistemology has become first philosophy, but does that entail that philosophy is banned from topics concerning “the great outdoors” like the origin of the Universe, the accretion of Earth or the emergence of life? Why is Søren Kierkegaard interesting in this context? Based on my book, Isotopography: Kierkegaard’s Topological Realism, I will try to answer exactly this question.