RT Article
T1 A Perspectival Account of Acedia in the Writings of Kierkegaard
JF Religions
VO 11
IS 2
A1 Brandt, Jared
A1 Dahm, Brandon
A1 McAllister, Derek
LA English
PB MDPI
YR 2020
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1726101045
AB Søren Kierkegaard is well-known as an original philosophical thinker, but less known is his reliance upon and development of the Christian tradition of the Seven Deadly Sins, in particular the vice of acedia, or sloth. As acedia has enjoyed renewed interest in the past century or so, commentators have attempted to pin down one or another Kierkegaardian concept (e.g., despair, heavy-mindedness, boredom, etc.) as the embodiment of the vice, but these attempts have yet to achieve any consensus. In our estimation, the complicated reality is that, in using slightly different but related concepts, Kierkegaard is providing a unique look at acedia as it manifests differently at different stages on life’s way. Thus, on this “perspectival account”, acedia will manifest differently according to whether an individual inhabits the aesthetic, ethical, or religious sphere. We propose two axes for this perspectival account. Such descriptions of how acedia manifests make up the first, phenomenal axis, while the second, evaluative axis, accounts for the various bits of advice and wisdom we read in the diagnoses of acedia from one Kierkegaardian pseudonym to another. Our aim is to show that Kierkegaard was not only familiar with the concept of acedia, but his contributions helped to develop and extend the tradition.
K1 Deadly Sins
K1 Kierkegaard
K1 Acedia
K1 Aesthetic
K1 Boredom
K1 Despair
K1 Ethical
K1 Immediacy
K1 Religious
K1 sloth
DO 10.3390/rel11020080