Read more
The result of the modern suspicion of speech, Hall concludes, is a demonic, musical spiritlessness.
List of contents
Acknowledgments Abbreveations Prologue: KierkegaardOs Critique of the Modern Age I. Sensuality and Spirit Spirit as Psyche Spirit as Pneuma Architecture and Scuopture: Psychical Paradigms of Aesthetic Immediacy Music and Speech: Pneumatic Paradigms of Aesthetic and Existential Immediacy II. Dabhar and Existential Immediacy Speech and Human Being Speech and Being Human Word and Spirit Freedom and Temporality Efficacy and Contingency III. Don Giovanni, Music, and the Demonic Immediacy of Sensuality Music, Wordlessness, and Anxiety The Demonic Retreat from the Word Music and Sensuous Immediacy Lyricism and Reflective Immediacy IV. Faust, Romantic Irony, and the Demonic Immediacy of Spirituality The Faustian Project Faust and Modernity Modern Science and Mathematics-as-Music The Humanities and Speech-as-Music V. Post-Modernism and the Triumph of the Demonic Speaking as Reading, Speaking as Writing, and Writing as Music Coping with the Flux Epilogue: Mastered Irony and the Recovery of Spirit Notes Index
About the author
Ronald L. Hall
Summary
By means of a Kierkegaardian critique of postmodernism, this work argues that the postmodernist flirtation with Kierkegaard ignores the existential import of his thought. It offers a different interpretation of Kierkegaard's conception of the self, according to which spirit is essentially linked to the speech act.
