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2Abraham’s Faith: Both the Aesthetic and the Ethical in Fear and TremblingPhilosophies 9 (3): 75. 2024.In this paper, I examine Johannes de Silentio’s presentation of the faith of Abraham, deriving therefrom a new way of conceiving his notion of faith as a paradoxical co-inhabiting of both the aesthetic and the ethical stages, rather than as a rejection, synthesis, or overcoming of them. Relying largely upon Silentio’s account of Abraham’s faith as anxious but not doubting, I argue that the interpretations of Fear and Trembling by Alastair Hannay and Mark C. Taylor fail to account for some essent…Read more
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2Authorship and Accountability: Kierkegaard and Anonymity in the PressJournal of Religious Ethics. forthcoming.Søren Kierkegaard was engaged with the press in a variety of ways throughout his authorship. Although studies of Kierkegaard's interactions with the public press of his time have largely focused on his dispute with the satirical newspaper, Corsaren, in this paper I examine his first engagement with the press—a mostly anonymous newspaper dispute with the Danish social activist, Orla Lehmann, about the freedom of the press in Denmark—as a lens through which to understand his thoughts on the press …Read more
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11The continental philosophy of film reader (edited book)Bloomsbury Academic. 2018.The first collection of its kind, The Continental Philosophy of Film Reader is the essential anthology of writings by continental philosophers on cinema, representing the last century of film-making and thinking about film, as well as all of the major schools of Continental thought: phenomenology and existentialism, Marxism and critical theory, semiotics and hermeneutics, psychoanalysis, and postmodernism. Included here are not only the classic texts in continental philosophy of film, from Benja…Read more
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Asa nisi masa: Kierkegaardian repetition in Fellini's 8 1/2In David P. Nichols (ed.), Transcendence and Film: Cinematic Encounters with the Real, Lexington Books. 2019.
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9Foucault and Nietzsche: A Critical Encounter (edited book)Bloomsbury. 2018.Foucault's intellectual indebtedness to Nietzsche is apparent in his writing, yet the precise nature, extent, and nuances of that debt are seldom explored. Foucault himself seems sometimes to claim that his approach is essentially Nietzschean, and sometimes to insist that he amounts to a radical break with Nietzsche. This volume is the first of its kind, presenting the relationship between these two thinkers on elements of contemporary culture that they shared interests in, including the nature …Read more
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10Authorship and Authority in Kierkegaard's Writings (edited book)Bloomsbury Academic. 2018.Authorship is a complicated subject in Kierkegaard's work, which he surely recognized, given his late attempts to explain himself in On My Work as an Author. From the use of multiple pseudonyms and antonyms, to contributions across a spectrum of media and genres, issues of authorship abound. Why did Kierkegaard write in the ways he did? Before we assess Kierkegaard's famous thoughts on faith or love, or the relationship between 'the aesthetic,' 'the ethical,' and 'the religious,' we must approac…Read more
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24Foucault, Nietzsche, and the promise–threat of philologyPhilosophy and Social Criticism 44 (1): 24-40. 2018.In this paper, I examine Foucault’s reading of Nietzsche—and Nietzsche’s influence on Foucault—in light of Foucault’s frequent treatment of Nietzsche as a certain kind of philologist. Running contrary to most contemporary readings of Nietzsche, which depict him as abandoning philology for philosophy relatively early on, I argue that Foucault understands Nietzsche’s distinctive philosophical style as indicative of a persistently philological approach to traditionally philosophical questions—and t…Read more
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29Who is the author of The Point of View? Issues of authorship in the posthumous KierkegaardPhilosophy and Social Criticism 38 (6): 569-589. 2012.Kierkegaard scholars have made much of Kierkegaard’s posthumously published The Point of View for My Work as an Author, and the work does seem to provide a key to interpreting Kierkegaard’s infamous authorial difficulties – not the least of which is the meaning of pseudonymity in his work. Considerations of the book’s authorship itself are, however, exceptionally rare. In this article, I open an inquiry into issues of authorship that arise within the work, both in terms of what The Point of View…Read more
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37Teaching the Ubermensch: Denial and Overcoming in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra INew Nietzsche Studies 6 (3-4): 35-51. 2005.
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6Kierkegaard and the Ingenious Creature: Authorial Unity and Co-Authorship in On My Work as an AuthorKierkegaard Studies Yearbook 2010 (1): 267-288. 2010.
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29Zarathustra's Germanity: Luther, Goethe, NietzscheJournal of Nietzsche Studies 27 (1): 42-63. 2004.
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66Nietzsche and the Approach of TragedyInternational Philosophical Quarterly 43 (3): 333-350. 2003.In a small portion of The Origin of German Tragic Drama, Walter Benjamin engages in a critique of Nietzsche’s understanding of tragedy in The Birth of Tragedy. He argues that Nietzsche’s account divests individuals of significance in the tragic worldview. The corrective to Nietzsche’s view, according to Benjamin, is a reflective, historical approach to the Greek social and literary phenomenon of tragic poetry. I argue that Benjamin’s approach to tragedy and to The Birth of Tragedy is inherently …Read more
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54Ironic midwives: Socratic maieutics in Nietzsche and KierkegaardPhilosophy and Social Criticism 35 (6): 627-648. 2009.In this article, I argue that despite their philosophical differences, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard share a philosophical method or style rooted in the irony of Socrates. Such irony, when used to distance the author of a written work from its reader, effects the same sort of relationship between the author and the truth as was characteristic of Socrates. Thus, by way of writing in a certain, artful way, both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche are able to pull away from their readers, depriving themselves of…Read more
Joseph Westfall
University of Houston, Downtown
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University of Houston, DowntownProfessor
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Film |
Philosophy of Music |
Søren Kierkegaard |
Roland Barthes |