NAZISM AND STALINISM IN THE LIGHT OF KIERKEGAARD’S THOUGHT

• Authors: Bojan Žalec
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The general aim of this article is to contribute to the answer how studying of Kierkegaard could help us to understand societal and political life. The author illustrates Kierkegaard’s usefulness by example of an innovative and illuminative Bellinger’s interpretation of Nazism and Stalinism given in Kierkegaard’s terms of anxiety and stages of existence. Bellinger interprets Hitler and Nazism as an extreme pathological example of the aesthetic stage and anxiety before the good, and Stalinism as an extreme pathological example of the ethical stage and anxiety before the evil. On this basis we may also speak about the importance of Kierkegaard for the understanding of depth motivation for political violence and crime.

Keywords

EN

KIERKEGAARD; NAZISM; STALINISM; BELLINGER

• Publisher: Institute of Philosophy, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Filozofia (Philosophy)
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 69
• Issue: 5
• Pages: 443 – 450

Contributors

author

Bojan Žalec

• Institute of Philosophy and Social Ethics, Faculty of Theology, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia