Still working my way through Searle, but reading a 1952 booklet of essays by William Hubben on Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky and Kafka. “Easily the most straightforward and easily understandable introduction to existentialism” says William Barrett (author of Irrational Man 1958, covering pretty much the same subjects).
Kierkegaard said …
“Life must be understood backwards, but lived forwards”
“Irony is the keenest medium for truth”
“Papers … published contrary to the will of the author”
(by a pseudonymic alter-ego, Phaedrus ?)
“The more concrete and positive we are in speaking about [it], the lower is the level of comprehending [it]”
(Wordsworth – “We murder to dissect” ?)
(Dostoevsky – “The lullness and death of order” ?)
“Belief is something to be lived, not comprehended in abstracto”
(Some things have to be believed to be seen ?)