The 10th International Kierkegaard Conference

 

The 10th International Kierkegaard Conference took place at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN this past June. The conference lasted an entire week from the 15th to the 19th and was one of the most fun and intellectually stimulating conferences I have ever attended. There were scholars from more than 25 countries across the globe and from some very prestigious universities including Oxford, Georgetown, Tübingen, Toronto, and St. Andrew’s, among many others. 

The conference began with a sumptuous dinner and my keynote address immediately afterward. I was really grateful for that, going at the very beginning of the conference, I mean, because that way I could relax and enjoy the rest of the papers without worrying that I might need to incorporate some of the points others had made earlier in my own presentation. I had enormous fun with my presentation. Like most philosophers, I generally read papers at conferences, rather than give them extemporaneously. Philosophical papers tend to be pretty conceptually complex and so presenting them extemporaneously, can be dangerous in that one risks inadvertently omitting some important details. This time, though, knowing that I was going after dinner (and after the standard cocktail reception before dinner), I decided I should make my presentation fun. I put together some slides to help listeners to keep track of the important points, and that left me free to be more spontaneous in my delivery.  

Anna Söderquist, the Curator of the Kierkegaard library explained to me in advance of the conference that my talk would be videoed and posted online. I was actually required to sign a release so they could film me. That said, the video does not appear to be up yet, which leads me to believe that there might have been some technical problem with the video. I will keep you posted, however. And please do the same for me. That is, if you happen across the video of my talk, let me know so that I can include a link to it on this blog. 

I plan to post a summary of my talk at a later date. Here I just wanted to give some general information about the conference and what a wonderful opportunity it was to reconnect with people, such as Andy Burgess, whom I hadn’t seen in years and to learn what other Kierkegaard are up to these days. 

There were far too many speakers to list here. But you can view the list of speakers, and the titles of the talks, on the attached conference program. One of the highlights of the conference for me was a talk entitled “K-Philosophy and Kierkegaard: Asian Readings on Faith, Suicide, and the Hope of Love,” by Robert Oh, of the Kierkegaard Research Center in Korea. Oh, who is an ordained minister, and others in Korea are doing really incredible work using Kierkegaard to combat depression among young people in Korea. Oh even has a book with the same title as his presentation, that is available as both an ebook through Amazon at a very modest price of $5.35 (the paperback is $9.91). Depression is rife among young people in the U.S. as well, and particularly among college students, so I’ve purchased a copy of Oh’s book myself. 

The conference concluded with a talk by Brian Söderquist, of St. Olaf, entitled “Kierkegaard and Words,” and a series of translation workshops based on language families. I attended the “German languages group” and enjoyed the very spirited discussion among those present, including Heiko Schulz, one of my favorite Kierkegaard scholars because of his deep sympathy with Kierkegaard’s thought and the unsurpassed rigor of his conceptual analyses. 

There were lots of great talks, though, as you will see from the program, and Brian and Anna could not have been more gracious hosts. If I am not mistaken, this is the first international Kierkegaard conference since Brian and Anna took over the reins of the Hong Kierkegaard Library at St. Olaf. The wonderful job they did bodes well for future conferences!