Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Kierkegaard and von Hildebrand

I discovered Soren Kierkegaard when I was young (when, as Willa Cather says in O, Pioneers, one "cannot feel that the heart lives at all unless it is still at the mercy of storms; unless its strings can scream to the touch of pain.") He seemed to me to be all about passion and feeling and searching for what is right and true. In my own painfully halting search, I felt I'd found a kindred spirit when I read this quote from him:

"I have just now come from a party of which I was the life and soul; witticisms streamed from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me, but I went away—yes, the dash should be as long as the radius of the earth's orbit——————and wanted to shoot myself. " (Journal)

He seemed to have said something for every stage of my life. Later in my journey to Catholicism, I adopted this from Kierkegaard:

"Purity of heart is to will one thing."

So, it is with great pleasure that I stumbled upon this article by Alice von Hildebrand. She successfully redeems Kierkegaard in his relationship with women. She says, "I am going to take to Kierkegaard's defense and show that the few regrettable things he wrote about women are largely compensated by the beautiful things he wrote about them, and that his insights into the female personality and role in human and religious life could only come from the pen of someone who has loved."

You can read Dr. von Hildebrand's "Beautiful Words about Women" here at Catholic Culture.

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