Thank you professor for sharing your extensive knowledge about Soren Kierkegaard and world history. I particularly want to praise you for your beautifully thought- out summation to lecture three. I gained a whole new understanding of why history is vital to humanity's understanding of exactly how we arrived at the present moment thinking what we think. Your explanation of Adam and Eve's expulsion from the perfect garden into the east of Eden is so satisfying. Indeed, once the genie is out of the bottle it can never be put back in. I have wished for many years that somehow it could, especially now with the advent of AI and it's horrific potential for harm. Alas, we hear the same ignorance towards the misuse of it by those who continue to plow ahead blindly in the name of human progress and the advancement of knowledge. Such a familiar refrain echos throughout history. Onward and upward; nothing to see or fear here! Keep striving, keep competing; continue to demonize everyone standing in the way of progress. Isn't it so very ironic that the endgame of all our knowlege is mastery over nature in this wider world, to which our parents were caste, to only strive to create the very paradise from which we were caste? Thank you sir.
Great question the one you raised! Let me answer it in an interpretation... God was not against knowledge but against knowledge away from him. That is the dangerous issue... When we consider ourselves autonomous from God and therefore no moral or ethic rule govern us. Since we are free we will be able to do so, but God is warning us that we will be loosing Paradise, same as Adan and Eve lost it after eating from the tree of knowledge instead of learning from God....
It seems that K was really stretching to make positive comparisons between Christ (Jewish, promoting a firm ethical/moral program in opposition to traditionalists with equally firm programs) and Socrates (a-gnostic, with not a program but a process to 'sell', in opposition to free-thinking and somewhat amoral rhetoricians with fluid allegiances). It also seems far from settled that all of the sophists were consigned to 'apostasy', even by Plato/Socrates, who seemed to accord respect to the likes of Protagoras and Gorgias...?
I think your understanding of Jesus is wrong. You say he promotes his "firm ethics" in opposition to people who have their different firm ethical programme. I think this is wrong. Jesus did not promote an alternative ethic to the mainstream in his time. He did not really speak of ethics, but of following the holy Law (Torah) of God. And he opposed the mainstream not in religious jurisprudence, but in declaring that the time had come when the God of Israel would be ruler to the people of God. This point requires some elaboration, which I borrow from bishop prof. Tom Wright. At the time of Jesus, the priests of the Jerusalem temple offered sacrifices of animals and food to the most holy God. The temple was intended to be a site where God's blessings would be sent to Israel and the whole world. But at the time of Jesus, there was a tension in Jewish religion because people believed that the sacrifices which they offered, were pointless. The sacrifices were result in what they were intended to: make up for the sins of Israel, so that God would remove his punishment of the people. For they believed that since Jerusalem was ruled by a non-Jew (the Roman emperor), God was holding their sins against them, - and so the temple sacrifices didn't work. Because of this, the Jewish religion developed an understanding of the sacrifices as symbols or signs of something else. With scriptural support from the Old Testament, they believed that the sacrifices were stand-ins for a life of charity. As one Jewish teacher of the law says in the Gospel of Mark, ch. 12 v. 33: "To love him [God] with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices." So Jewish spirituality at Jesus' move the emphasis of religiosity from temple sacrifices to moral behavior. Yet Jews believed a time would come when sacrifices would again be offered, and God would be happy to receive the sacrifices, unlike at that time. This belief is reflected in several of the books of the prophets in the Old Testament. Those future sacrifices would bring God's blessings to Israel, and remove the foreign rulers, among other things. It would, as the prophets say, bring about the healing of the blind, the end of evil, the happiness of the poor (See Isaiah 29,17-24). This was imagined to happen as God became the ruler of Israel. Jesus' revolutionary message was that the blessings God would give Israel in the future, were coming right then. He said (Matthew 11,5): "The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor." Jesus is thus claiming that the rule, or the kingdom of God was coming. The newness of his message is that the kingdom of God didn't come by everyone following the Torah. It came by God's intervention into history, presenting a king, Jesus Christ, to the Jews. So Jesus' uniqueness is that he says the blessings of God aren't a result of following rules, but are entirely a result of God's decision to give the blessings. They are undeserved, unmerited.
Be honest and righteous and you'll live in eternity, but read Camus's The Fall first. Yeah, we're pathetic. The opportunity to live in eternity, and the opportunity for some pathetic petty local advantage.
This interpretation of the story of the Eden's Garden and The Fall was very disappointing. Is the whole point of this story to make an argument against seeking for knowledge? Does this interpretation take into account all the elements of the story satisfactorily?
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Thank you professor for sharing your extensive knowledge about Soren Kierkegaard and world history. I particularly want to praise you for your beautifully thought- out summation to lecture three. I gained a whole new understanding of why history is vital to humanity's understanding of exactly how we arrived at the present moment thinking what we think. Your
explanation of
Adam and Eve's expulsion from the perfect garden into the east of Eden is so satisfying. Indeed, once the genie is out of the bottle it can never be put back in. I have wished for many years that somehow it could, especially now with the advent of AI and it's horrific potential for harm. Alas, we hear the same ignorance towards the misuse of it by those who continue to plow ahead blindly in the name of human progress and the advancement
of knowledge. Such a familiar refrain echos throughout history. Onward and upward; nothing to see
or fear here! Keep striving, keep competing; continue to demonize everyone standing in the way of progress. Isn't it so very ironic that the endgame of all our knowlege is mastery over nature in this wider world, to which our parents were caste, to only strive to create the very paradise from which we were caste?
Thank you sir.
I’m loving these lectures! Thank you so much for your work!
His conclusion is riveting (42:10 onwards) tying together the previous points and showing their relevance today.
Amazing lecture!!! Thanks you Professor!!!
Well, I haven't listened to this but I'm very interested to hear, as Kierkgaard called Socrates the most interesting man that lived.
6:35 mesmo sendo crente eu não sabia dessa
Who of us can live with doubt? We fill in the gaps.
32:20
Great question the one you raised! Let me answer it in an interpretation... God was not against knowledge but against knowledge away from him. That is the dangerous issue... When we consider ourselves autonomous from God and therefore no moral or ethic rule govern us. Since we are free we will be able to do so, but God is warning us that we will be loosing Paradise, same as Adan and Eve lost it after eating from the tree of knowledge instead of learning from God....
The volume is too low and needs turned up.
It seems that K was really stretching to make positive comparisons between Christ (Jewish, promoting a firm ethical/moral program in opposition to traditionalists with equally firm programs) and Socrates (a-gnostic, with not a program but a process to 'sell', in opposition to free-thinking and somewhat amoral rhetoricians with fluid allegiances). It also seems far from settled that all of the sophists were consigned to 'apostasy', even by Plato/Socrates, who seemed to accord respect to the likes of Protagoras and Gorgias...?
I think your understanding of Jesus is wrong. You say he promotes his "firm ethics" in opposition to people who have their different firm ethical programme. I think this is wrong. Jesus did not promote an alternative ethic to the mainstream in his time. He did not really speak of ethics, but of following the holy Law (Torah) of God. And he opposed the mainstream not in religious jurisprudence, but in declaring that the time had come when the God of Israel would be ruler to the people of God. This point requires some elaboration, which I borrow from bishop prof. Tom Wright.
At the time of Jesus, the priests of the Jerusalem temple offered sacrifices of animals and food to the most holy God. The temple was intended to be a site where God's blessings would be sent to Israel and the whole world. But at the time of Jesus, there was a tension in Jewish religion because people believed that the sacrifices which they offered, were pointless. The sacrifices were result in what they were intended to: make up for the sins of Israel, so that God would remove his punishment of the people. For they believed that since Jerusalem was ruled by a non-Jew (the Roman emperor), God was holding their sins against them, - and so the temple sacrifices didn't work.
Because of this, the Jewish religion developed an understanding of the sacrifices as symbols or signs of something else. With scriptural support from the Old Testament, they believed that the sacrifices were stand-ins for a life of charity. As one Jewish teacher of the law says in the Gospel of Mark, ch. 12 v. 33: "To love him [God] with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices." So Jewish spirituality at Jesus' move the emphasis of religiosity from temple sacrifices to moral behavior.
Yet Jews believed a time would come when sacrifices would again be offered, and God would be happy to receive the sacrifices, unlike at that time. This belief is reflected in several of the books of the prophets in the Old Testament. Those future sacrifices would bring God's blessings to Israel, and remove the foreign rulers, among other things. It would, as the prophets say, bring about the healing of the blind, the end of evil, the happiness of the poor (See Isaiah 29,17-24). This was imagined to happen as God became the ruler of Israel.
Jesus' revolutionary message was that the blessings God would give Israel in the future, were coming right then. He said (Matthew 11,5): "The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor." Jesus is thus claiming that the rule, or the kingdom of God was coming. The newness of his message is that the kingdom of God didn't come by everyone following the Torah. It came by God's intervention into history, presenting a king, Jesus Christ, to the Jews.
So Jesus' uniqueness is that he says the blessings of God aren't a result of following rules, but are entirely a result of God's decision to give the blessings. They are undeserved, unmerited.
11:10
Volume is too low.
So God wants us to be without knowledge, to be ignorant.
Listen again. That's not what he's implying.
Be honest and righteous and you'll live in eternity, but read Camus's The Fall first. Yeah, we're pathetic. The opportunity to live in eternity, and the opportunity for some pathetic petty local advantage.
This interpretation of the story of the Eden's Garden and The Fall was very disappointing. Is the whole point of this story to make an argument against seeking for knowledge?
Does this interpretation take into account all the elements of the story satisfactorily?
Listen again . Not at all what he's saying. It's beautiful.
And what has the knowledge, the dichotomy, of good and evil gained mankind???