The Feast of Life or the Feast of Reason – Kierkegaard Versus Plato

Abstract

The article consists of three sections. The first section “Dialogue at the intersection of literature and philosophy” analyzes the fundamental differences between the two modes of human intellectual activity – philosophy and literature on the basis of Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka’s philosophy. Nevertheless, the intersection is possible in the form of dialogue. The second chapter “Negative existential maeutics” is dedicated to Kierkegaard’s conception of existential maeutics in comparison with the Socratic maeutics. The stress is put upon its negative characteristics – the distance, the interruption, the situation of existential shock. These restrictions are necessary to allow the participants’ self-knowing. The third chapter explores they ways how Kierkegaard in his fragments In Vino Veritas reenacts Plato’s dialogue Symposium in order to demonstrante his strategy of negative existential maeutics in practice. If the goal the classical maeutics is the birth of knowledge during the process of conversation, then Kierkegaard’s goal is the birth of subjectivity and self-recognition.

“The thought is transparent in the dialogue, and the action in the situation” (Søren Kierkegaard)