The volume investigates how human existence is shaped by the tensions between activity and passivity, autonomy and dependence, immanence and transcendence. The central theme is the problematic nature of subjectivity - not as a stable foundation, but as a dynamic, self-relating process marked by vulnerability, temporality, and relationality.
On Human Ambiguity explores the philosophical question of what it means to be human by examining the inherent ambiguity of subjectivity. Drawing on over two decades of work by Danish philosopher Arne Grøn, the volume investigates how human existence is shaped by the tensions between activity and passivity, autonomy and dependence, immanence and transcendence. The central theme is the problematic nature of subjectivity - not as a stable foundation, but as a dynamic, self-relating process marked by vulnerability, temporality, and relationality.
Grøn's methodological approach is phenomenological-hermeneutic and existential, combining historical-contextual analysis with dialectical reflection. The book engages critically with key figures in Western philosophy - including Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Levinas - and integrates perspectives from theology, ethics, religious studies, psychology, and art theory. It develops an interdisciplinary framework that reformulates the metaphysical problematic of subjectivity and advances existential hermeneutics as an indispensable mode of philosophical inquiry.
The volume's findings emphasize that subjectivity is always embedded in context, exposed to alterity, and shaped by imagination, memory, and ethical responsibility. Religion is not merely an object of philosophical inquiry but a perspective that challenges rationality and reveals the limits of ethical understanding, especially in confronting liminal experiences such as guilt, forgiveness, and trauma.
Table of contents:
Foreword
Ambiguous Subjectivity: On the Limits of Human Understanding
Part 1 - Ambiguity of Subjectivity
1. Subjektivität: Begriff und Problem
2. Homo subiectus
3. Subjectivity, Passion and Passivity
4. Imagination and Subjectivity
5. Subjectivity and Transcendence: Problems and Perspectives
Part 2 - The Challenge of Religion
6. Religion und Subjektivität - in existenzieller und pragmatischer Perspektive
7. Die Aufgabe der Religionsphilosophie
8. Religion as a Philosophical Challenge
9. Beyond? - Horizon, Immanence, and Transcendence
10. Jenseits? Nietzsches Religionskritik Revisited.
11. Im Horizont des Unendlichen. Religionskritik nach Nietzsche
Part 3 - Hermeneutics, Trust, and Limits
12. Kommunikation. Entre nous
13. Widerfahrnis und Verstehen
14. Die hermeneutische Situation - die Hermeneutik der Situation
15. Eindruck - Ausdruck
16. Trust, Sociality, Selfhood
17. Grenzen des Vertrauens
18. Picturing Forgiveness after Atrocity
19. The Limit of Ethics - The Ethics of the Limit
Part 4 - Time, Transcendence, and Liminality
20. Erinnerung und Nachdenken
21. Time and History
22. Time and Transcendence: Religion and Ethics
23. Religion and (In)humanity
24. Das Bild und das Heilige
25. Unanschaulich. Tod, Zeit, Antlitz
