"As we are so we make": Life as Composition in Soren Kierkegaard and Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Abstract

This paper will explore the idea of one's life as a work of art, a composition, which each person creates along the lines of their own Life-View. The two thinkers whose forms of creation will be considered are Søren Kierkegaard and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Specifically, the notion of a human life's being a contrapunctual, polyphonic composition undertaken against the cantus firmus of the divine will be used to look at various themes found within the Kierkegaardian authorship and it concomitant lifework. The first part of the paper explores the notion of the poetic composition of the person as found in Kierkegaard. The second part explores the notion of a polyphonic life as described in Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison. The third and final section deals with the differences and similarities between Kierkegaard's and Bonhoeffer's viewpoints.