Learn more about motivationandinspiration with this collection
How to create a cosy and comfortable home environment
How to cultivate a sense of gratitude and contentment
The benefits of slowing down and enjoying simple pleasures
Kierkegaard believed that the finite is not all there is to being human. There is also the infinite — the recognition that we have the capacity to choose and direct our lives in essentially any way we can dream. But spending too much time gawping at the cosmos of possibilities we face is not entirely healthy. For a lot of people, it’s terrifying.
64
298 reads
MORE IDEAS ON THIS
For many of us, the finite side, the reality and necessity of life, is all there is: a world that Kierkegaard calls “aesthetic.” The problem is that if we live only for our needs and whims, then life will rattle by without anything bigger. When we live only for the aesth...
69
355 reads
Both sides have their sirens’ calls that beckon us with promises of comfort, and both risk rendering us unable to move forward authentically in our lives. For the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, the wise but hard task of life is to walk the path between thes...
64
478 reads
The thing is to understand myself: the thing is to find a truth which is true for me.
67
267 reads
Kierkegaard’s advice is that we must each “learn to be anxious.” We must take a stand where we will but get used to facing outward. We must take a step along that narrow bridge between the infinite and finite. After all, like a spinning top, we risk toppling and losing our very selves when we sto...
63
228 reads
It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand.
65
281 reads
...even the richest personality is nothing before he has chosen himself, and on the other hand even what one might call the poorest personality is everything when he has chosen himself; for the great thing is not to be this or that but to be oneself, and this everyone ...
65
209 reads
Christ was crucified because he would have nothing to do with the crowd (even though he addressed himself to all). He did not want to form a party, an interest group, a mass movement, but wanted to be what he was, the truth, which is related to the single individual. T...
65
191 reads
In terms of making meaningful and authentic decisions, we are a species walking a narrow bridge with two chasms framing our way: the finite and the infinite. On the finite side lie the fixed conditions of everything we are. These are the facts of our existence that force us to li...
72
625 reads
We must recognize that we are puny and insignificant — primates running on hormones and synapses. But we must also recognize that we are powerful beyond belief, that each of our decisions reaches out into the future, and that our decisions define our future. Embracing and living with this paradox...
67
177 reads
Most of us can remember the anxious vertigo that comes in those “infinite” moments of life, when you leave your parents’ home, end a relationship, or stare at the blank first page of a novel. To know the infinite is also to be dreadfully aware of the vastness of the future. In a phrase Ki...
64
278 reads
For many people, the anxiety and panic that comes from confronting the vast potential of life is crippling. There’s a paralysis that comes in being unable to choose, because there are too many choices to make, and too many potential options to choose from. For so much of our live...
66
230 reads
CURATED FROM
bigthink.com
12 ideas
·3.61K reads
According to Søren Kierkegaard, we are each pulled in two directions: toward the "finite" or the "infinite." When we lean too far in either direction, we risk living stagnant and inauthentic lives.
“
Related collections
More like this
The time we have in this world is finite and it is our most valuable resource. With each passing day, we inch closer to death. But that does not mean our lives are meaningless. On the contrary, one could view this with excitement and understand that because life is not infinite, because there is ...
We hate waiting as it breaks the day’s flow, putting us in limbo. This wait mode is what gets to us, as it pulls us to the present moment, which we are trying to avoid most of the time by remaining distracted in the world. This time can be used to unlock the defa...
SF, the good SF at lest, is working on the same big questions we keep asking as human beings, but from a place of scientific understanding rather than assuming everything is God-made:
Read & Learn
20x Faster
without
deepstash
with
deepstash
with
deepstash
Access to 200,000+ ideas
—
Access to the mobile app
—
Unlimited idea saving & library
—
—
Unlimited history
—
—
Unlimited listening to ideas
—
—
Downloading & offline access
—
—
Personalized recommendations
—
—
Supercharge your mind with one idea per day
Enter your email and spend 1 minute every day to learn something new.
I agree to receive email updates