THINKING ON THE EXISTENCE: PARADOX AND ONTOLOGY

Abstract

Although this paper is based on the thought of Sören Kierkegaard, it does not intend to offer a scholarly or specialized study of the philosopher. Its style is rather essayistic, nevertheless it seeks to avoid mere digressions as well as an arbitrary succession of themes. Reading Kierkegaard is not my only purpose here, even though it represents a significant part of this exposition. The study actually starts from a certain conceptual vision that could be summed up in the idea of the forgetfulness of the existential roots of thinking. It is divided into four parts. The first one delineates the philosophical problem taken as a starting point. In the second and third, I focused on some aspects of Kierkegaard's writings, especially those between 1843 and 1846, to show the fecundity of his paradoxical way of doing philosophy. Special attention was paid to the first chapter of “The concept of anguish”. In the last part, I examined some aspects of Kierkegaardian resonance in the works of Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger, though the latter was present throughout this study.