Reference no: EM131468049

Instruction: Please read the reading material in the link below, and answer the question. Please answer the question base on the provided reading material

Reading Material:  

1) Kierkegaard, The Present Moment

2) The following paragraph:

Kierkegaard is a Christian philosopher. That means that he is trying to argue against the philosophers like Kant and the Romantics after him that God is not ''behind the screen'' of phenomena. He is trying to argue that God is the eternal savior of the sinful human being and that God became human in Jesus Christ. Kierkegaard will not rely upon arguments from the scriptures, but will try to show that philosophy cannot solve the problems it tries to solve (the relation between God and the world; the relation between the things on one side of the screen and the things -- God, reason, will -- on the other side). Kierkegaard uses the negative results of philosophy to try to get people to look for answers elsewhere, especially in the idea that maybe reason cannot solve everything. If this is true, then the relation between God and the world is not about connecting one side of the screen with the other, but about connecting the individual person with the infinite God, regardless of the world as a whole. The question then is: How is God related to Me, the actual living person, not Me, the ''split-screen'' person who Kant talks about, with part of me on one side (not important) and the other part of me (Reason, or Will) on the other side of the screen. The actual living Me, not Reason or Will. The problem, Kierkegaard says, is to find the actual living Me under all the fashions of the age, to discover who you really are and just a face you wear for other people. In other words, the actual living Me is Me as an Individual, this one person I am, and not a role (teacher, student, etc). When you discover this, you can discover God, not because he is ''in'' you, but because God is, just as you are, an absolute Individual and not a role (Reason, Will). He turns you into an Individual because he asks you to relate to him as an Individual and not as a member of a group, not even of a group of ''Christians.'' Now, Kierkegaard does not think that it is useful to write in such a way he tells you who you are. He writes in such a way that to make you think, and sometimes he writes in such a way that fashionable ideas that you think are right start to look silly. That's what he's doing in the text you read for this class. He is playing with the question of where you, the Individual, are. Are you an individual because you are a member of some group? How could that be? If you care about being an individual, because only you as an individual can have an existence after death or an eternal life, then you better worry if you count on eternal life because you are member of any group. That's why Kierkegaard thinks the idea that Christian is a name for a member of a group is crazy. If being a Christian is a way to get eternal life, then you better be an Individual Christian, and a Group Christian. But how do you do this? How do you become an Individual? Kierkegaard says that it will take an act of courage, an act that divides you from all groups. What that act is, is not clearly stated by Kierkegaard in our reading

Question:

Near the center of the reading material, Kierkegaard writes: "But the thing of supreme importance is to be rid of the crowd". Why is the 'crowd' a problem according to Kierkegaard? Why is the 'seriousness' of the individual opposed to the 'crowd'? And why do individuals get absorbed into the 'crowd'?

Attachment:- Reading.rar