Tornar-se cristão nas esferas existenciais do cristianismo em Søren Kierkegaard

Abstract

As from a decentralized investigation of the kierkegaardian corpus, we evidence three existential modalities of Christianity that we designate here as existential spheres of Christianity. These are identified with the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious. It would be possible to think, with reference to Kierkegaard's thought, an aesthetic Christianity, an ethical Christianity and a religious Christianity, all comprising distinct elements and, in some situations, reconcilable. Other spheres would be possible, but the focus of this thesis is on these three. The different spheres resonate in different ways of conceiving and living Christianity. These existential dimensions would not be in any way plastered, but linked to each other, where they would act in a dialogic way, even though they keep different categories, meanings and dynamics. In this way, for example, the religious sphere refers directly to the christic and the imitation to Christ, but it can contain aesthetic and undoubtedly ethical elements. The ethical dimension, in turn, directs the human person to choices and decision-making, but it would be present both in the religious experience and in the culture of Christendom. The latter, finally, would translate the aesthetic sphere of Christianity. This intertwining between different dimensions in Christianity does justice to the very fluid and unsystematic philosophy of the Danish thinker. In the same way that the existential stages in Kierkegaard concern the individual human being in his condition in concrete existence, the existential spheres of Christianity would refer to the personal and existential appropriation of each sphere by that same individual human being, the individual, so valued by Kierkegaard. The existential spheres of Christianity presented here have categories, dualities and dichotomies that exemplify and help in the understanding of each domain. Each existential sphere of Christianity helps in understanding the meaning of to become a Christian, a problematic that permeates all spheres. Thus, we seek to understand the mechanisms of this Christian becoming by exposing the concepts that illustrate each existential sphere, such as sin, marriage, christendom, contemporaneity, reduplication; and by the relation of the task of to become a Christian to the historical factor and to the post-christendom world.