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Eternal Loneliness: Art and Religion in Kierkegaard and Zen

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

George Pattison
George Pattison
Affiliation:
Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk
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Extract

When we compare a thinker as complex and many–sided as Søren Kierkegaard with a cultural phenomenon as significant as Zen Buddhism it is unlikely that we will be able to come up with any simple formula by which to summarize the results of the comparison. But the value of such comparative studies need not in any case lie in the conclusions we reach but in the intrinsic interest and importance of the material itself, in the questions and insights raised by both similarities and dissimilarities. All this is still true if we confine the field of comparison to a very specific area, as here, where we are concerned with the relationship between art and religion in Kierkegaard and Zen. For this is of course no marginal issue: the distinction between the aesthetic and the religious is fundamental to the whole structure of Kierkegaard's authorship while the arts provde one of the main manifestations of the spirit of Zen. Our line of enquiry may be narrow but it takes us straight to the heart of the matter and the questions which it raises are crucial to the overall assessment of both Kierkegaard and Zen and of the relationship between them.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , September 1989 , pp. 379 - 392
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

page 000 note 1 For a full exposition of Kierkegaard's aesthetics cf. Pattison, G. L., Kierkegaard's Theory and Critique of Art: Its Theological Significance. Ph.D. thesis, Univ. of Durham, 1983.Google Scholar (Available on microfilm.)

page 000 note 2 Hegel, G. W. F., Aesthetics (English tr.) (London: OUP, 1975), p. 31.Google Scholar

page 000 note 3 Ibid. p. 29.

page 382 note 1 Cf. Kierkegaard, Søren, S'amlede V'aerker (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1962):, III pp. 126ff.Google Scholar

page 382 note 2 Ibid. p. 196.

page 383 note 1 Cf. Bloom, Harold, ‘Freud's Concept of Defence and the Poetic Will’ in Smith, J. (ed.), The Literary Freud (New Haven: Yale UP, 1980), p. 6.Google Scholar

page 383 note 2 Kierkegaard, Søren, Papirer (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1909–1948) III A 62.Google Scholar

page 384 note 1 Kierkegaard, , SV XVI, pp. 122ff.Google Scholar

page 384 note 2 Ibid. XVII, p. 153.

page 385 note 1 Kierkegaard, , journals and Papers (English tr.) (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1975), IV p. 93Google Scholar (cf. Papirer XI2 A 202).

page 386 note 1 Cf. Kierkegaard, , Christelige Taler (SV XIII)Google Scholar and Opbyggelige Taler i Forskjellig Aand (SV, XI), especially pp. 176ff.

page 386 note 2 Kierkegaard, , journals and Papers Vol 2 (1970), p. 12Google Scholar (cf. Papirer VIII A 649).

page 386 note 3 Ibid. Vol. 3 (1975), p. 258 (cf. Papirer VI A 91).

page 386 note 4 Ibid. p. 262 (cf. Papirer VII1B 209).

page 387 note 1 Watts, Alan, The Way of Zen (Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1962), p. 194.Google Scholar

page 387 note 2 Suzuki, D. T., Mysticism, Christian and Buddhist (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1957), p. 136.Google Scholar

page 387 note 3 Idem.Essays in Zen Buddhism. Third series (London: Rider, 1953), p. 327.

page 388 note 1 Ibid. p. 324.

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page 389 note 3 Ibid. p. 51.

page 390 note 1 As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975), p. 45.

page 391 note 1 Cf. Kierkegaard, , SV x pp. 81ff.Google Scholar Also many other places.