Kierkegaard on BYU Humanities

Kierkegaard preached loving condescension: getting down on someone's level in order to lift them up. He discussed authenticity and the fight against despair and resignation. Finally, he outlined three different levels of being: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. With that in mind, let us see how these principles can be applied to the BYU Humanities website.

To my mind, "loving condescension" in a website translates to a welcoming and robust interface. A Kierkegaardian website should introduce its purpose and content in a way that is easy to understand, even if its visitor has no prior knowledge of its subject. The BYU Humanities website does not do so. It fails to include an obvious mission statement or text box that outlines the goals of the website, or even "humanities" in general. Perhaps, one might argue, it would be insulting to the intelligence of most visitors to define "humanities." I doubt that. Most people would appreciate the gesture, even if they might not consider it necessary. Erring on the side of caution is essential for a website to be accessible to everyone. This idea of accessibility relates back to Plato and Aristotle, as a matter of fact.


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