Wednesday, June 21, 2006

How Commonplace

By coincidence, I just read 2 novels in a row where the protagonist quotes Kierkegaard. The books are: Straight Cut, by Madison Smartt Bell, and The Moviegoer, by Walker Percy.

Both protagonists are made queasy by the quotidian. Neither actually uses this latinate q-word. One author calls it "dailiness." The other calls it "everydayness."

I had imagined this whole quotidian-as-quandary business came from Heidegger. Nope. It goes back at least to Kierkegaard.

Everyday I learn something new.
What a quotidian thing to do!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Heidegger was a fiend when it came to Kierkegaard. Heidegger haphazardly copied and perverted Kierkegaard's concepts without crediting him. Read Kierkegaard's works, such as The Present Age and Sickness Unto Death, and then read Heidegger's Being and Time. It is basically a secularized Kierkegaard.

John Enright said...

That is really interesting. I didn't know that. Thank you.