About the book
The book offers a three-step itinerary into Kierkegaard’s thinking. It opens with an investigation of his biblical background, providing textual evidence that categories such as “repetition,” “stages,” “life’s way,” and “leap” find their true meaning in a scriptural framework. Then it focuses on the superhuman revolutionary conception of love discussed in Works of Love (1847), considering the relation to the unchangeable evermoving God as the basic condition for self-upbringing, and becoming neighbour to oneself as the fundamental task in Christian life. Eventually, it outlines Kierkegaard’s attack against both religious conformism and rational mysticism’s claim to overcome Christianity. It concludes with two addenda respectively devoted to exploring analogies between Kierkegaard’s communicative strategy and the film Ordet (1954) by C. Th. Dreyer, and to considering Kierkegaard’s religiousness in the light of the modern/archaic dichotomy stressed by Mircea Eliade.
About the author
Igor Tavilla (Ph.D at the University of Parma, Italy) currently works as a high school philosophy teacher. The main topics of his research are: Kierkegaard’s theory of communication related to the new media, with particular focus on cinema; the influence of the Bible on Kierkegaard’s main categories; the Romanian philosophy of religion in the interwar period, regarding Nae Ionescu’s experientialism, and, more recently, Ioan Petru Culianu’s cognitive approach to history of religion. As a translator he has published several works transposed from Danish and Romanian to the Italian language. He has contributed to various international refereed reviews and regularly collaborates with the bilingual on-line journal Orizzonti culturali italo-romeni. His publications include: Io voglio onestà. Contro le menzogne del cristianesimo ufficiale (Castelvecchi, Roma 2022), Conoscenza metafisica ed esperienza religiosa (Stamen, Roma 2020); Søren Kierkegaard. Un genio in una città provinciale (Castelvecchi, Roma 2018).
Reviews
Gabriel Badea: „Kierkegaard Renaissance” în viziunea lui Igor Tavilla (RO): http://www.orizonturiculturale.ro/ro_recenzii_Gabriel-Badea-9.html
Alberto Siclari: L'amore per il prossimo (ITA): https://www.francoangeli.it/riviste/articolo/75030
Eric Ziolkowski: Igor Tavilla: The Reader, the Lover, the Prophet: Views on Kierkegaard (ENG): https://utpjournals.press/doi/abs/10.3138/tjt-2024-0007
