Ways of Dying: the Double Death in Kierkegaard and Blanchot

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

  • Cathrine Bjørnholt Michaelsen
Focusing mainly on Christian Discourses and the discourse “At a Graveside,”
this paper seeks to unfold and discuss the various ways of dying depicted
by Kierkegaard. By engaging Maurice Blanchot’s conception of a “double death,”
I will argue that different relations to death are attributed to the pagan and to the
believer. Special attention is drawn to the divergent temporalities that apparently
define the possibilities and impossibilities of dying. This approach also involves
an investigation of the “dispersion” and the “contemporaneity” pertaining to the
dying pagan and the dying believer, respectively.
“Numquam enim erit homini peius in morte, quam ubi erit mors ipsa sine morte.”¹
“Wiederholung ist nur in Gestalt der Treue nicht Endlosigkeit, sondern Erfüllung.”²
1. St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, XIII, 11.
2. Karl Jaspers, Philosophie. II. Existenzerhellung, Berlin, Heidelberg and New York: Springer-Verlag 1973, p. 228.
Original languageEnglish
JournalKierkegaard Studies Yearbook
Pages (from-to)255-283
Number of pages29
ISSN1430-5372
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2014

ID: 100179013