27. Kierkegaard in the Present Age, by Gordon D. Marino. Preface by Philip Rieff. ISBN 0-87462-604-8. ©2001. Paperbound. 125 pp. $15
“This book moves from Kierkegaard to Freud. In some ways, as some older readers will see for themselves, Gordon Marino’s Kierkegaard in the Present Age has as its precursor my Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (lst edition, 1959); except that, as one prescient early reviewer, Philip Toynbee, noted: for all its courtesy and cunning, Mr. Rieff’s book amounts to a severe indictment of Freud.
“Professor Marino does not descend to severe indictment. His generosity of spirit, and power of mind, make both his Kierkegaard and my Freud equally instructive in matters of life and death, and, in Chapter Seven, in matters of life after death. Nevertheless, the mind Marino calls ‘my Kierkegaard’—Marino’s inseparable from Kierkegaard’s—wins over this old Freud reader. As Professor Marino’s old teacher, I gladly accept the gentle defeat of my old man, Freud, by his young man, Kierkegaard. (Alas, Kierkegaard was never old. He died at the age of forty-two.) It is, after all, my success, as Professor Marino’s teacher, to be superseded by my student. This book represents in print that great dialectical teaching tradition in which one work of artful intellect does not so much supercede another as answer to it.
“The style of Marino’s art is different from mine. My Freud is formal, impersonal. Marino’s Kierkegaard is informal, intensely personal. The reader will find himself butttonholed by a masterly conversationalist. For the time being, dear reader, you would do well to let Professor Marino do all the talking.” — Philip Rieff, Benjamin Franklin Professor of Sociology & University Professor Emeritus, University of Pennsylvania
Dr. Gordon Marino is Curator of the Hong/Kierkegaard Library at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. His areas of specialization include History of Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, and Kierkegaard. Professor Marino is co-author of The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard. His articles have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, New York Times Magazine, Wall Street Journal, and other periodicals.
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