Module description
This module engages with a core text – Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling (1843) - in order to facilitate philosophical reflection on the religious life (as opposed to philosophical analysis of the content of religious doctrine). Using methods of close textual reading, interpretation and analysis, students address key questions about the nature of the religious life, and the task of thinking about this philosophically. Kierkegaard’s text is used as a starting point for discussion of key themes such as imagination and the good life; religious identity; suffering and the gift; faith and reason; and virtue in a religious context. The text also provides an entry-point into critical reflection on a specifically modern religious situation, described by thinkers such as Nietzsche and Heidegger – following Kierkegaard – as a ‘crisis of value’, as the ‘death of God’, and as ‘nihilism’. In addition to the core text, students will be required to read sources by a range of historical and contemporary thinkers, and they will also be expected to engage with recommended secondary literature.
For more information please refer to the module description.
Assessment details
For full year students: One 3-hour examination (100%)
For Semester 1 Study Abroad Students only: One 4,000 word essay in lieu of exam (100%)
Teaching pattern
One one-hour weekly lecture and one one-hour weekly seminar over ten weeks.