Out into the Middle of Life: The Age of Disintegration and Ecological Perspectives in Kierkegaard's Thought

This essay is an attempt to link aspects of Kierkegaard's experimental writings with new contemporary ecological perspectives which-in the act of interpenetration-are fusing philosophy, science, literature, anthropology, political thought, new economic perspectives, and visual and sound media, in order to open up new ways to live and flourish on a damaged planet-in our "age of disintegration." I present Kierkegaard's diagnosis of his time as "the age of disintegration" (from 1848) as something that can be connected to the contemporary socio-political conditions in late modernity, and to the new epoch on the horizon which we are now experiencing. I interpret Kierkegaard's expression "out into the middle of life" as the kernel of Kierkegaard's authorship of interruption and unsettling. I argue it can be implicitly included in aspects of ecological perspectives offered by innovative writers today.