Jamie Aroosi, "The Dialectical Self: Kierkegaard, Marx, and the Making of the Modern Subject" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2019)

Jul 24, 2019

The Dialectical Self

Kierkegaard, Marx, and the Making of the Modern Subject

Jamie Aroosi

Hosted by Lilly Goren

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Summary

Jamie Aroosi has written an important book that brings together the theoretical work of Karl Marx and Soren Kierkegaard in a kind of intellectual encounter. Noting the common historical context for both authors, and how they both came to their philosophical approaches from and the through the work by G. W. F. Hegel, Aroosi explores the connected theoretical and historical connections of Marx and Kierkegaard. The book is structured around the concept of freedom and selfhood, as both Marx and Kierkegaard are concerned about the alienation of the self and unfreedom. The book traces these ideas from bondage, through emancipation, freedom, and finally putting this freedom into action, in the book’s final section, praxis. The Dialectical Self: Kierkegaard, Marx, and the Making of the Modern Subject (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019) argues that these two theorists were writing and analyzing the complicated political, religious, economic, and spiritual times in which they lived, and that their work, especially as it is focused towards the future, may be particularly important for contemporary readers and scholars to consider. Aroosi also makes the case that this intellectual pairing, crossing disciplinary boundaries and silos, is both novel and logical, that Marx and Kierkegaard are complimentary thinkers and should be put into this intellectual dialogue.

Lilly J. Goren is professor of Political Science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She co-edited the award-winning Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012).