Autopsia : Self, Death, and God after Kierkegaard and Derrida PDF

There are certain things that can be explained and certain things that cannot be explained.

This book is about the latter. It is a book about death: how death interrupts and influences the reflection on the self.

It is a book about God: a detailed and critical discussion on how Kierkegaard and Derrida apply the concept of God in their philosophical reflections.

The most ground-breaking analysis concerns the famous passage on the self (A.A) in The Sickness unto Death, where the author combines logical, rhetorical and dialectical means to establish a new perspective on Kierkegaard’s thinking in general.

The Cartesian doubt then constitutes a common trait for his detailed and rigorous analysis of Derrida and Kierkegaard on death, madness, faith, and rationality – showing how they both seek to break up the Hegelian Aufhebung from within, but still remain dependent on Hegel. After Kierkegaard and Derrida, the certainty and total uncertainty of death – and of God as infinite other – gives the self a basic, though non-foundational, responsibility.

The significance of this responsibility, of this other, of this death, requires sustained and thorough consideration.

Where others mark a conclusion, this book therefore marks a point of departure: reflecting on oneself at the graveside of a dead man – thus introducing an Autopsia.