Abrahim Khan

This paper examines a political theory implict in Kierkegaard's critique of the novel Two Ages. To achieve that aim, it views Kierkegaard as a political radical relative to modern liberalism and aristocratic conservatism of the 1840's in Denmark, by juxtaposing him to Locke. Basic to the theory is a notion of individuality which relies on three interlocking concepts: will, equality, and autonomy. That notion in turn supports ideas of authority and leadership that throw further light on Kierkegaard's understanding of the relation between religion and politics and suggests what is central to the political logic operative in the critique in his publication Literary Review.

This paper presents a view of melancholy based on Kierkegaard's insight of the self, showing that this dimension of depression is anticipatory of threat to well-being. The view of self, contrasted with a view presuming a connection between two factors only — body and mind — has a third factor or ethico-spiritual element. Taken as an explanatory category, this factor allows for making a distinction between melancholy as crisis and melancholy as ailment, and has implication detecting and treating the latter. That is, in the initial patient-physician dialogue, the physician might be expected to indicate whether she/he is open to consider the possibility of a third factor as an explanatory category in the formation of self-hood. Such indication would provide for patients with an inkling of their own condition, a basis for making a choice about whom they will accept as caregiver

This work is an exposition of Salighed, a concept at the heart of Kierkegaard's thought, and the dialectical starting point for his reflections on what it means to live a genuinely human life. Kierkegaard studies to date appear to have underestimated the importance of the word and the concepts that lie behind it—perhaps because the word appears easily translated into the English forms of "eternal happiness" or "blessedness." This, suggests Khan, does little justice to the concepts behind the word, and does even less justice to the relationships of the concept of Salighed to other concepts crucial to Kierkegaard's thought. Khan's approach to this word/concept study has been greatly augmented by his use of the computer in analyzing word-relatedness, context, and frequency of occurrence, both within individual works and in comparing one work with a context of the Kierkegaard corpus. The volume will, of course, be of interest to students of Kierkegaard. It will also be of interest to those scholars intrigued by the possibilities of using computers in linguistic research and in literary studies.

El tercer volumen de la obra estética de Kierkegaard publicada en 1843 reúne cuatro discursos que forman el objeto de estudio de este análisis. La intención es presentar una imagen del pensamiento religioso de Kierkegaard, mostrar la dimensiones temáticas de este tercer volumen, a la par de clarificar las interrelaciones de los discursos y ofrecer una herramienta que subraya las ideas principales por medio del listado de vocabulario de alta frecuencia de ocurrencias. Las preguntas principales que se atienden en este trabajo son: ¿cuáles son las sesenta principales palabras utilizadas en el tercer volumen de los discursos de 1843? ¿cuáles son las tres dimensiones textuales primarias de este volumen? y ¿cuál es el núcleo o en qué se enfoca este volumen? El método que se utiliza en este análisis consiste en la construcción de una versión de los discursos legible para una máquina sobre la cual se aplican técnicas de análisis computacional que a partir de una lista de sesenta palabras anormalmente frecuentes en los cuatro discursos del tercer volumen genera una matriz que arroja porcentajes y estadísticas que ayudan al investigador a reconstruir el núcleo de la obra analizada, así como a identificar los argumentos principales y los puntos en común que el mapeo arroja de la comparación de las partes del texto.