St. Francis, Dante, Michelangelo, Luther, and Kierkegaard, Essay Example

It is difficult to assess how their individuals actions and views created challenges for St. Francis, Dante, Michelangelo, Luther, and Kierkegaard, simply because each man’s impact on the world was so immense. Similarly, it is likely each of these great figures was abetted, if not motivated, by the reactions to the inherently radical work they achieved in their respective times and cultures. Greatness is always unique to the individual and the specific time and place, as it is often forged from those latter elements as a response of the mind and soul.

There is, nonetheless, a commonality I observe, and it is that any kind of radicalism must provide its own impulses. Challenging norms at these levels clearly requires intense commitment; as Luther was defying all of Western orthodoxy, so too was Kierkegaard flying in the face of 19^th century contemporary thinking. Consequently, the challenge aspect of their work becomes both irrelevant and greatly important. On one level, they could not entertain any ideas of consequences as impeding them; they presented challenges because they believed the norms demanded revision, which translates to a lack of faith in the nature of those norms. If whatever is challenged is incorrect, societal repercussions must be equally meaningless because they stem from misguided acceptance. At the same time, actually striving to change thinking relies on a deeply felt need to do so, which gives the existing norms great power. Each man, in viewing what was around him as unacceptable, took on the personal responsibility of altering it because the importance of the concept or thing itself was too massive to ignore.

To me, this is the most helpful element in the courses these men took. More exactly, if there is a visceral feeling that something is not right in the way that life is maintained or defined, it is first necessary to truly appreciate the importance of the subject itself. This then generates the passion – and effort – demanded to make a contrary stand to the world. Resistance from society then, in fact, must only reinforce the initial conviction that change must occur. Beyond even this, also, is that visceral component, which renders speculation about challenges and courses of action unimportant. It was, for each of these men, the imperative need to assert their beings that defined their presences to the world, and this is too immense a factor to be modified by external forces.