Aaron J Goldman
I am a researcher at the Centre for Theology and Religious Studies at Lund University in Sweden. I completed my PhD in Philosophy of Religion in 2021 with the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. My primary expertise is in modern European philosophical and religious thought, though I am also more broadly interested in ethics, conceptions of the self, theories and methods in the study of religion, and the history of Christian theology. My fundamental research questions involve the role that religious ideas play in the architecture of the human being as a moral, intellectual, and political agent: How does the human's subjective encounter with the ideas of God and freedom structure moral obligation? What roles do concepts such as freedom, love, justice, eternality, and sin play in shaping the self? How do contradictions between ideals of divine justice and the reality of unjust suffering disturb or motivate moral engagement?
My current major project (Kierkegaard, Modernity & Critique; funded by the Crafoord Foundation) investigates plausible contributions of Kierkegaard's concept of faith to pressing questions about public rationality.
I also have served as a researcher and steering committee member on Lund University's research platform on Christianity and Nationalism, where I conducted research on the interface between nationalist politics and conspiracisms from a perspective empowered by modern European philosophy and classic theories of religion. I now continue this research effort for two collaborate projects since early 2023: At the End of the World, a large research program housed at Lund University, funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (PI: Jayne Svenungsson); and Beyond Truth and Lies, a collaborative project housed at Lund, funded by the LMK Foundation (PI: Patrik Fridlund). I am a member of Lund University's research profile in Human Rights (PI: Lena Hallendius).
In addition to my positions at Harvard University and Lund University, I have served as a visiting researcher at the University of Copenhagen's Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre (2016–2018, 2023) and a guest researcher for a brief period at St. Olaf College's Hong Kierkegaard Library (summer 2015). Before beginning my doctoral studies, I received my MA in Religious Studies at the University of Virginia in 2010, and a BA in Religious Studies and a BS in Biology from Indiana University, Bloomington, in 2008.
I have academic side interests in environmental and animal ethics; how present-day scientistic and technological movements deploy (consciously or unconsciously) ideas from the history of philosophy and religious thought; video games as texts; science-fiction and horror literature; and methods for conducting pop culture criticism.
Phone: +46462224916
Address: Centre for Theology and Religious Studies
Joint Faculty of Humanities and Theology
Lund University
Helgonavägen 3, LUX B331
Box 192, 221 00 Lund, Sweden
My current major project (Kierkegaard, Modernity & Critique; funded by the Crafoord Foundation) investigates plausible contributions of Kierkegaard's concept of faith to pressing questions about public rationality.
I also have served as a researcher and steering committee member on Lund University's research platform on Christianity and Nationalism, where I conducted research on the interface between nationalist politics and conspiracisms from a perspective empowered by modern European philosophy and classic theories of religion. I now continue this research effort for two collaborate projects since early 2023: At the End of the World, a large research program housed at Lund University, funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (PI: Jayne Svenungsson); and Beyond Truth and Lies, a collaborative project housed at Lund, funded by the LMK Foundation (PI: Patrik Fridlund). I am a member of Lund University's research profile in Human Rights (PI: Lena Hallendius).
In addition to my positions at Harvard University and Lund University, I have served as a visiting researcher at the University of Copenhagen's Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre (2016–2018, 2023) and a guest researcher for a brief period at St. Olaf College's Hong Kierkegaard Library (summer 2015). Before beginning my doctoral studies, I received my MA in Religious Studies at the University of Virginia in 2010, and a BA in Religious Studies and a BS in Biology from Indiana University, Bloomington, in 2008.
I have academic side interests in environmental and animal ethics; how present-day scientistic and technological movements deploy (consciously or unconsciously) ideas from the history of philosophy and religious thought; video games as texts; science-fiction and horror literature; and methods for conducting pop culture criticism.
Phone: +46462224916
Address: Centre for Theology and Religious Studies
Joint Faculty of Humanities and Theology
Lund University
Helgonavägen 3, LUX B331
Box 192, 221 00 Lund, Sweden
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Through exegesis of Kierkegaard’s works, the dissertation identifies two elements of Kierkegaard’s presentation of Christian faith that recur throughout his authorship. The first is an axiom that undergirds Kierkegaard’s conception of the good life, namely that for the best possible life to be lived (that is, the Christian life), a person must ultimately be individually responsible for their own happiness or unhappiness. The second is a complex juxtaposition between Christianity and alternative, non-Christian worldviews (collectively called ‘Paganism’ by Kierkegaard) which Kierkegaard performs to provoke his reader into making the decision to affirm Christianity. If, with the assistance of God, the individual does so (that is, has faith), their desires and motivations are reorganized to enable a higher form of happiness and a new form of moral engagement (love for the neighbor).
The dissertation characterizes this juxtaposition through a stagecraft analogy: the mechane, a crane that lifts a theater actor to simulate flight. The analogy highlights the relationship of asymmetrical dependence between Kierkegaard’s accounts of Christianity and non-Christian alternatives. For an actor to take flight (happiness) with the mechane (Christianity), the hoist (faith) that suspends them must be supported by a tension force from the ground (‘Paganism’). Faith requires awareness that the theological and anthropological scaffolding that makes Christian faith possible is transcendent and distinctive. But at the same time, to avoid compromising the transcendence and distinctiveness of faith, the individual cannot completely foreclose the possibility of that which Christianity negates, for example, through rational proofs or research into the historical origins of the Christian tradition.
Through exegesis of Kierkegaard’s works, the dissertation identifies two elements of Kierkegaard’s presentation of Christian faith that recur throughout his authorship. The first is an axiom that undergirds Kierkegaard’s conception of the good life, namely that for the best possible life to be lived (that is, the Christian life), a person must ultimately be individually responsible for their own happiness or unhappiness. The second is a complex juxtaposition between Christianity and alternative, non-Christian worldviews (collectively called ‘Paganism’ by Kierkegaard) which Kierkegaard performs to provoke his reader into making the decision to affirm Christianity. If, with the assistance of God, the individual does so (that is, has faith), their desires and motivations are reorganized to enable a higher form of happiness and a new form of moral engagement (love for the neighbor).
The dissertation characterizes this juxtaposition through a stagecraft analogy: the mechane, a crane that lifts a theater actor to simulate flight. The analogy highlights the relationship of asymmetrical dependence between Kierkegaard’s accounts of Christianity and non-Christian alternatives. For an actor to take flight (happiness) with the mechane (Christianity), the hoist (faith) that suspends them must be supported by a tension force from the ground (‘Paganism’). Faith requires awareness that the theological and anthropological scaffolding that makes Christian faith possible is transcendent and distinctive. But at the same time, to avoid compromising the transcendence and distinctiveness of faith, the individual cannot completely foreclose the possibility of that which Christianity negates, for example, through rational proofs or research into the historical origins of the Christian tradition.