Abstract
Life is the “theme of our time” as Ortega would say. Yet, as the work of Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka shows it, life is not always questioned in depth. According to her reflections on the ontopoietic genesis of life, we will focus our interest on life, from the point of view of Kierkegaard’s thought. What is life in concreto? Life as the ontopoietic progress of the impulse of existing emerges in the auto-individualization of the being. Our task to comprehend a praxical movement of life in Kierkegaard’s work is to be considered from the point of view of the classical philosophy with the distinction Aristotle made between two notions of life: ζωη (Zoé) and βιος (Bios). By ζωη, the Stagirite means life in general, referring to what is common to all the living beings and makes them animate. It is the act of being alive in the manner of a plant that grows and dies. In her book on the soul of the plants, Hedwig Conrad-Martius will guide us step by step through the world-of-life and lead us to the presence of the plant in the sense that it has a life of its own, “a life that is existentially fixed on a ground”. That thought is not different from Kierkegaard’s existential questioning: how do we make the difference between the animal kingdom and the vegetal kingdom? What can we learn about life in general from the vegetal kingdom, and of course about our lives as Individuals (Den Enkelke)? The Lily of the field and the Birds of the air, two metaphors for Kierkegaard to tell us about life, will illustrate our researches on a life to be built.
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Notes
- 1.
Aristote, De l’âme (De Anima), trad. Par E. Barbotin, Les Belles Lettres, Paris, 1989.
- 2.
Aristote, Parties des animaux, trad. Par J.M. Le Blond, Aubier, Paris, 1945.
- 3.
S. Kierkegaard, Correspondance, trad. Anne-Christine Habbard, Ed. Des Syrtes, Paris, 2003.
- 4.
S. Kierkegaard, Correspondance, trad. Anne-Christine Habbard, Ed. Des Syrtes, Paris, 2003, p. 77.
- 5.
Michel Cornu, Contrepoint philosophique, « L’existant est plus que la Vie », Rubrique Philosophie, Février 2005 : « Ce serait si commode de le (l’existant) dissoudre dans le simple flux vital, d’en faire un objet de science, une simple fonction variable de l’économie ».
http://www.contrepointphilosophique.ch/Philosophie/Sommaire/Existence.html
- 6.
H. Arendt, La philosophie de l’existence et autres essais Ed. Payot et Rivages, Paris, 2000, p. 61.
- 7.
Ibid.
- 8.
S. Kierkegaard, La Reprise, Essai de psychologie expérimentale (Repetition, an essay in experimental psychology) Robert Laffont, Paris, 1993, (1843), p. 12.
- 9.
S. Kierkegaard, Le concept d’angoisse (Concept of anxiety), trad. K. Ferlov et J. Gateau, Gallimard, Paris, 1935, (1844).
- 10.
J. Colette, L’existentialisme, Paris, P.U.F, « Que sais-je ? », 4e édition, 2007, p. 14.
- 11.
S. Kierkegaard, Post-Scriptum définitif et non scientifique aux Miettes philosophiques (Concluding unscientific postscript to The philosophical crumbs), Ed. l’Orante, Paris, 1977, (1846).
- 12.
Ibid. p. 9.
- 13.
S. Kierkegaard, Le lis des champs et l’oiseau du ciel, In Œuvres complètes, trad. Tissseau, tome XVI, Paris, 1976, (1849).
- 14.
That is called « Great Plan of Life » . Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, “The Great Plan of Life” In Phenomenology of Life’s Return to the Sources of Western Philosophy, Analecta Husserliana LII, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998.
- 15.
Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, La plénitude du Logos dans la registre de la vie, La métaphysique dans les nouvelles Lumières, trad. Claire Hill, L’Harmattan, Paris, 2011.
- 16.
Ibid., p. 10.
- 17.
Ibid., p. 101.
- 18.
S. Kierkegaard, Le lis des champs et l’oiseau du ciel, op.cit, p. 160.
- 19.
Ibid., p. 162.
- 20.
M. Heidegger, Etre et Temps, traduction E. Martineau, Ed. Numérique, 1985.
- 21.
S. Kierkegaard, L’Instant, trad. Tisseau, In Œuvres Complètes, trad. Tissseau, Paris, 1976, (1855).
- 22.
That is the Kierkegaard’s First Edifying Discourse.
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Gontier, E. (2014). Ontopoietic Process of Life in Kierkegaard’s Books: Zoe and Bios. In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) Phenomenology of Space and Time. Analecta Husserliana, vol 117. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02039-6_8
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