Volume 13: Kierkegaard's Influence on the Social Sciences

Kierkegaard has long been known as a philosopher and theologian, but his contributions to psychology, anthropology and sociology have also made an important impact on these fields. In many of the works of his complex authorship, Kierkegaard presents his intriguing and unique vision of the nature and mental life of human beings individually and collectively. The articles featured in the present volume explore the reception of Kierkegaard's thought in the social sciences. Of these fields Kierkegaard is perhaps best known in psychology, where The Concept of Anxiety and The Sickness unto Death have been the two most influential texts. With regard to the field of sociology, social criticism, or social theory, Kierkegaard's Literary Review of Two Ages has also been regarded as offering valuable insights about some important dynamics of modern society..

Contents: Preface; Jean Baudrillard: the seduction of Jean Baudrillard, Stuart Kendall; Ernest Becker: a Kirkegaardian theorist of death and human nature, Rick Anthony Furtak; Ludwig Binswanger: Kierkegaard's influence on Binswanger's work, Elisabetta Basso; Mircea Eliade: on religion, cosmos, and agony, Leo Stan; Erik Erikson: artist of moral development, Edward F. Mooney; Erich Fromm: the integrity of the self and the practice of love, John Lippitt; Anthony Giddens: Kierkegaard and the risk of existence, Søren Landkildehus; René Girard: from mimetic desire to anonymous masses, Diego Giordano; Carl Gustav Jung: a missed connection, Anthony Rudd; Julia Kristeva: tales of horror and love, Edward F. Mooney; Jacques Lacan: Kierkegaard as a Freudian questioner of the soul avant la letter, J.D. Mininger; Rollo May: existential psychology, Poul Houe; Carl R. Rogers: 'to be that self which one truly is', Simon D. Podmore; Max Weber: Weber's existential choice, Dustin Feddon; Irvin Yalom: the 'throw-ins' of psychotherapy, Almut Furchert; Slavoj Zizek: mirroring the absent god, Leo Stan; Indexes.

Jon Stewart is an Associate Research Professor in the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.