Scholars have largely overlooked philosopher Soren Kierkegaard’s thoughts on occupational, vocational, and work topics, although he did concern himself with occupational topics. This theoretical piece explores Kierkegaard’s concept of “leveling” (Nivelleringen), connecting it to human resource development (HRD) and organizational socialization processes, which are often conducted by HRD departments. Organizational socialization is important as it provides newcomers with functional and cultural information. Similar to the concept of leveling, however, organizational socialization can provide employees with taken-for-granted socially constructed definitions of the self. This article proposes expanding edification and capability for individuals in the workplace via Kierkegaardian indirect communication in HRD and organizational socialization practices.

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In this piece the author takes a journey into the meaning of quests through the philosophical terrain of existential phenomenology and authenticity. Unlike quest narratives in literature and popular culture, our life narratives are not yet finished, but ongoing. Comparing the idea of existential homelessness with its undeniable and constant change to that of autoethnographic writing, he examines narrative and memory and how current life events change our understandings of past narratives and our sense of identity. Our life narratives are made up of fragmented thoughts and ideas, the stories others told before we were born—and will tell about us after we are gone.

<p>In William Golding’s Free Fall, the novel ends without its protagonist, Sammy Mountjoy, receiving the atonement he seeks. As a consequence, the novel ends in an unresolved manner, leaving Sammy in a state of suspension. Despite having a metaphysical awakening in a Nazi POW camp, the consequences of his enlightenment do not reflect the way the Sammy retrospectively narrates the tale of his life. The existentialist theories of Danish thinker and writer Søren Kierkegaard offer a solution to the dilemma. Kierkegaard’s theories concerning the aesthetic, ethical and religious spheres of life, as well as his concept of ‘existential dread’, may be used to show that Sammy is able to make a ‘leap of faith’ from the aesthetic to the ethical sphere. However, because of his inability to make the last leap into the metaphysical sphere of life, he does not attain the insight he needs, namely that he is ‘a child of the finite and infinite’. The essay relates the ways Sammy Mountjoy fits into the Sartrean and Kierkegaardian expressions of existentialism, soon moving on to describe the details of Kierkegaard’s thought concerning the three spheres of life and the concept of ‘dread’. Sammy’s preoccupation with the present, his focus on the exterior rather than the interior and his inability to commit himself to people or situations fit neatly into the criterion for the aesthetic sphere of life. This, in turn, leads him to a state of dread, which reaches its climax in the dark cupboard. When released from his imprisonment Sammy has reached a state of awareness concerning the “vital morality” between people, previously a foreign concept. However, Kierkegaard points out that also the ethical sphere is flawed, leaving the religious/metaphysical sphere as Sammy’s ultimate destination. By failing to make the final ‘leap of faith’, due to a misguided conception of the boundaries between the ethical and the Absolute, Sammy falls short of the resolution he desires and the forgiveness he seeks from the three people that have influenced him the most. Thus an explanation is proposed to the unresolved manner in which Free Fall ends.</p>

<p>This essay concerns itself with the historical background to what it refers to as <em>existential pedagogy</em>, which designates the way in which existential literature presumably seeks to affect the reader so that he experiences his existence as isolated, and how this is done through the employment of harsh and uncompromising language and rhetorical devices. The assumption underlying this project is that there is a pedagogical purpose to the existential manner of de-livery, and this essay traces this purpose back to how in the 18th century certain thinkers – Johann Georg Hamann and Friedrich Schlegel – came to look back at Socrates rhetorical en-deavour in order to perfect their own desire to place the question of ‘meaning’, ‘knowledge’ or ‘truth’ into the hands of the receiving individual – the reader of a text or the student of a teacher. By studying the manner in which Hamann and Schlegel used this Socratic rhetoric in their own authorship, I seek to establish how they considered it vital that the recipient experi-enced himself as thoroughly alone in order to cultivate his ability to infuse meaning into the world. The essay continues to examine how Sören Kierkegaard – in his capacity as the mythi-cal ‘father of existentialism’ – conceived of the Socratic rhetoric as lacking in sufficiently accounting for the despair and sinfulness he saw as being intertwined with experiencing one-self as lonely and ignorant. By studying how Kierkegaard approached the reader in his pseu-donymous and existential literature, the essay makes it clear that the existential pedagogy util-ized by Kierkegaard works in order to simultaneously infuse the reader with a feeling of isola-tion and ignorance, as it, through repeatedly focusing on the despair involved in that condi-tion, provoked the reader into taking action, despite (or, existentially, because he was) being taught that he, on account of his inevitable loneliness and ignorance, could not.</p>

This essay concerns itself with the historical background to what it refers to as existential pedagogy, which designates the way in which existential literature presumably seeks to affect the reader so that he experiences his existence as isolated, and how this is done through the employment of harsh and uncompromising language and rhetorical devices. The assumption underlying this project is that there is a pedagogical purpose to the existential manner of de-livery, and this essay traces this purpose back to how in the 18th century certain thinkers – Johann Georg Hamann and Friedrich Schlegel – came to look back at Socrates rhetorical en-deavour in order to perfect their own desire to place the question of ‘meaning’, ‘knowledge’ or ‘truth’ into the hands of the receiving individual – the reader of a text or the student of a teacher. By studying the manner in which Hamann and Schlegel used this Socratic rhetoric in their own authorship, I seek to establish how they considered it vital that the recipient experi-enced himself as thoroughly alone in order to cultivate his ability to infuse meaning into the world. The essay continues to examine how Sören Kierkegaard – in his capacity as the mythi-cal ‘father of existentialism’ – conceived of the Socratic rhetoric as lacking in sufficiently accounting for the despair and sinfulness he saw as being intertwined with experiencing one-self as lonely and ignorant. By studying how Kierkegaard approached the reader in his pseu-donymous and existential literature, the essay makes it clear that the existential pedagogy util-ized by Kierkegaard works in order to simultaneously infuse the reader with a feeling of isola-tion and ignorance, as it, through repeatedly focusing on the despair involved in that condi-tion, provoked the reader into taking action, despite (or, existentially, because he was) being taught that he, on account of his inevitable loneliness and ignorance, could not.

In William Golding’s Free Fall, the novel ends without its protagonist, Sammy Mountjoy, receiving the atonement he seeks. As a consequence, the novel ends in an unresolved manner, leaving Sammy in a state of suspension. Despite having a metaphysical awakening in a Nazi POW camp, the consequences of his enlightenment do not reflect the way the Sammy retrospectively narrates the tale of his life. The existentialist theories of Danish thinker and writer Søren Kierkegaard offer a solution to the dilemma. Kierkegaard’s theories concerning the aesthetic, ethical and religious spheres of life, as well as his concept of ‘existential dread’, may be used to show that Sammy is able to make a ‘leap of faith’ from the aesthetic to the ethical sphere. However, because of his inability to make the last leap into the metaphysical sphere of life, he does not attain the insight he needs, namely that he is ‘a child of the finite and infinite’. The essay relates the ways Sammy Mountjoy fits into the Sartrean and Kierkegaardian expressions of existentialism, soon moving on to describe the details of Kierkegaard’s thought concerning the three spheres of life and the concept of ‘dread’. Sammy’s preoccupation with the present, his focus on the exterior rather than the interior and his inability to commit himself to people or situations fit neatly into the criterion for the aesthetic sphere of life. This, in turn, leads him to a state of dread, which reaches its climax in the dark cupboard. When released from his imprisonment Sammy has reached a state of awareness concerning the “vital morality” between people, previously a foreign concept. However, Kierkegaard points out that also the ethical sphere is flawed, leaving the religious/metaphysical sphere as Sammy’s ultimate destination. By failing to make the final ‘leap of faith’, due to a misguided conception of the boundaries between the ethical and the Absolute, Sammy falls short of the resolution he desires and the forgiveness he seeks from the three people that have influenced him the most. Thus an explanation is proposed to the unresolved manner in which Free Fall ends.

Is the Swedish author Stig Dagerman an existentialist? This work takes a close look at Dagerman’s novel Island of the Doomed to see if it is possible to consider it an expression of existentialist thinking and to see if it interacts with any specific existentialist tradition. Dagerman’s novel was compared with select works of five existentialist thinkers – Søren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Karl Jaspers, all read in the light of the four categories of existentialistic thinking identified by the Swedish scholar Lennart Koskinen. All the four categories appeared to be central themes within the novel and a few subcategories were identified. An analysis based on these subcategories showed that the novel had obvious similarities with all of the five existentialistic thinkers. The main conclusion of my work is thus: it is reasonable to consider Stig Dagerman’s novel Island of the Doomed an expression of existentialist thinking, but it doesn’t match any specific existentialist tradition. Dagerman is therefore to be considered an independent existentialist.

I begin by offering an account of two key strains in the history of philosophical dealings with death. Both strains initially seek to diminish fear of death by appealing to the idea that death is simply the separation of the soul from the body. According to the Platonic strain, death should not be feared since the soul will have a prolonged existence free from the bodily prison after death. With several dramatic modifications, this is the strain that is taken up by much of the mainstream Christian tradition. According to the Epicurean strain, death should not be feared since the tiny pthesiss that make up the soul leave the body and are dispersed at the moment of death, leaving behind no subject to experience any evil that might be associated with death. Although informed by millennia of further scientific discovery, this is the strain picked up on by contemporary atheistic, technologically advanced mankind. My primary goal is to demonstrate that philosophy has an often-overlooked alternative to viewing death in terms of this ancient dichotomy. This is the alternative championed by Søren Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger. Although both thinkers arise from the Christian tradition, they clearly react to Epicurean insights about death in their work, thereby prescribing a peculiar way of living with death that the Christian tradition seems to have forgotten about. Despite the association of Kierkegaard and Heidegger, there is a fundamental difference between them on the subject of death. In Being and Time Heidegger seems to rely on the phenomenology of death that Kierkegaard provides in texts such as "At a Graveside." It is interesting to notice, however, that this discourse, especially when seen in the light of Kierkegaard's more obviously religious works, might only be compelling to the aspiring Christian. If so, then perhaps there is a tension in both Heidegger's "methodologically atheistic" appropriation of Kierkegaard's ideas about death, and Heidegger's attempt to make these ideas compelling to the aspiring human. My secondary goal is to determine whether Heidegger takes the "existential philosophy of death" too far when he incorporates it into his early ontological project.

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