Søren Kierkegaard

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Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

Sketch of Søren Kierkegaard by Niels Christian Kierkegaard,

c. 1840
Full name Søren Aabye Kierkegaard
5 May 1813
Born
Copenhagen, Denmark
11 November 1855 (aged 42)
Died
Copenhagen, Denmark
Era 19th-century philosophy
Region Western philosophy
Danish Golden Age Literary and Artistic
Tradition, precursor to Continental philosophy,[1]
[2]
Existentialism (agnostic, atheistic, Christian),
School
Postmodernism, Post-structuralism, Existential
psychology, Absurdism, Neo-orthodoxy, and
many more
Main Christianity, metaphysics, epistemology,
interests aesthetics, ethics, psychology, philosophy
Regarded as the father of Existentialism, angst,
Notable existential despair, Three spheres of human
ideas existence, knight of faith, infinite qualitative
distinction, leap of faith
Influenced by[show]
Influenced[show]
Signature

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (English pronunciation: /ˈsɔrən ˈkɪərkəɡɑrd/ or /ˈkɪərkəɡɔr/;

Danish: [ˈsœːɐn ˈkʰiɐ̯kəˌɡ̊ɒˀ]  ( listen)) (5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855) was a Danish
philosopher, theologian and religious author interested in human psychology. He strongly
criticized the philosophies of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph
Schelling and Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel and the Christianity of the State Church
versus the Free Church.

Much of his philosophical work deals with the issues of how one lives as a "single
individual", giving priority to concrete human reality over abstract thinking, and
highlighting the importance of personal choice and commitment.[4]

His theological work focuses on Christian ethics, institution of the Church, and on the
difference between purely objective proofs of Christianity and a subjective relationship to
Jesus Christ,[5] the God-Man, which comes from faith.[6][7]

His psychological work explores the emotions and feelings of individuals when faced
with life choices.[8] His thinking was influenced by Socrates and the Socratic method.

Kierkegaard's early work was written under various pseudonymous characters who
present their own distinctive viewpoints and interact with each other in complex
dialogue.[9] He assigns pseudonyms to explore particular viewpoints in-depth, which may
take up several books in some instances, while Kierkegaard, openly or under another
pseudonym, critiques that position. He wrote many Upbuilding Discourses under his own
name and dedicated them to the "single individual" who might want to discover the
meaning of his works. Notably, he wrote:

"Science and scholarship want to teach that becoming objective is the way. Christianity
teaches that the way is to become subjective, to become a subject."[10] The scientist can
learn about the world by observation but can the scientist learn about the inner workings
of the spiritual world by observation? Kierkegaard said no, and he said it emphatically.[11]
In 1847 Kierkegaard described his own view of the single individual.

"God is not like a human being; it is not important for God to have visible evidence so
that he can see if his cause has been victorious or not; he sees in secret just as well.
Moreover, it is so far from being the case that you should help God to learn anew that it is
rather he who will help you to learn anew, so that you are weaned from the worldly point
of view that insists on visible evidence. (...) A decision in the external sphere is what
Christianity does not want; (...) rather it wants to test the individual’s faith."[12]

Contents
[hide]
 1 Early years (1813–1836)
o 1.1 Journals
o 1.2 Regine Olsen and graduation (1837–1841)
 2 Authorship (1843–1846)
o 2.1 Pseudonymous authorship
o 2.2 The Corsair Affair
 3 Authorship (1847–1855)
o 3.1 Attack upon the State Church and Death
 4 Reception
o 4.1 19th century reception
o 4.2 Early 20th century reception
 4.2.1 German and English translators of Kierkegaard's works
o 4.3 Later 20th century reception
 5 Philosophical view of Søren Kierkegaard
o 5.1 Philosophical criticism
 6 Kierkegaard's influence on theology, philosophy, and psychology
 7 Selected bibliography
 8 Notes
 9 References
o 9.1 Book
o 9.2 Web
o 9.3 Audio

 10 External links

[edit] Early years (1813–1836)

Kierkegaard in a coffee-house, an oil sketch by Christian Olavius, 1843

Søren Kierkegaard was born to an affluent family in Copenhagen. His mother, Ane
Sørensdatter Lund Kierkegaard, had served as a maid in the household before marrying
his father, Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard. She was an unassuming figure: quiet, plain,
and not formally educated. She is not directly referred to in Kierkegaard's books,
although she affected his later writings[citation needed]. His father was a "very stern man, to all
appearances dry and prosaic, but under his "rustic cloak" manner he concealed an ardent
imagination which not even his great age could blunt"[13] who read the philosophy of
Christian Wolff. Kierkegaard preferred the comedies of Ludvig Holberg[14] and the
writings of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing[15] and of course Socrates.

Copenhagen in the 1830s and 1840s had crooked streets where carriages rarely went.
Kierkegaard loved to walk those streets. In 1848, Kierkegaard wrote, "I had real Christian
satisfaction in the thought that, if there were no other, there was definitely one man in
Copenhagen whom every poor person could freely accost and converse with on the street;
that, if there were no other, there was one man who, whatever the society he most
commonly frequented, did not shun contact with the poor, but greeted every maidservant
he was acquainted with, every manservant, every common laborer." [16] At one end of the
town was Our Lady's Church where Bishop Mynster preached the Gospel and at the other
end was the Royal Theatre where Fru Heiberg performed aesthetic plays.[17] Kierkegaard
walked between the two of them.

Based on a speculative interpretation of anecdotes in Kierkegaard's unpublished journals,

especially a rough draft to a story called "The Great Earthquake",[18] some early
Kierkegaard scholars argued that Michael believed he had earned God's wrath and that
none of his children would outlive him. He is said to have believed that his personal sins,
perhaps indiscretions like cursing the name of God in his youth or impregnating Ane out
of wedlock, necessitated this punishment. Though five of his seven children died before
he did, both Kierkegaard and his brother Peter Christian Kierkegaard, outlived him.[19]
Peter, who was seven years Kierkegaard's elder, later became bishop in Aalborg.[19]

Kierkegaard attended the School of Civic Virtue, Østre Borgerdyd Gymnasium, in 1830
when the school was situated in Klarebodeme, where he studied Latin and history among
other subjects. He went on to study theology at the University of Copenhagen, but he
wasn't interested in historical works, philosophy dissatisfied him, and he couldn't see
"dedicating himself to Speculation".[20] He said, "What I really need to do is to get clear
about "what am I to do", not what I must know". He wanted to "lead a completely human
life and not merely one of knowledge."[21] Kierkegaard didn't want to be a philosopher[22]
and he didn't want to preach a Christianity that was an illusion.[23] "But he had learned
from his father that one can do what one wills, and his father's life had not discredited
this theory."[24] He became a spy for God. In 1848 Kierkegaard wrote, "Supposing that I
had been free to use my talents as I pleased (and that it was not the case that another
Power was able to compel me every moment when I was not ready to yield to fair
means), I might from the first moment have converted my whole productivity into the
channel of the interests of the age, it would have been in my power (if such betrayal were
not punished by reducing me to naught) to become what the age demands, and so would
have been (Goetheo-Hegelian) one more testimony to the proposition that the world is
good, that the race is the truth and that this generation is the court of last resort, that the
public is the discoverer of the truth and its judge, &c. For by this treason I should have
attained extraordinary success in the world. Instead of this I became (under compulsion) a
spy.[25][26]

One of the first physical descriptions of Kierkegaard comes from an attendee, Hans
Brøchner, at his brother Peter's wedding party in 1836: "I found [his appearance] almost
comical. He was then twenty-three years old; he had something quite irregular in his
entire form and had a strange coiffure. His hair rose almost six inches above his forehead
into a tousled crest that gave him a strange, bewildered look."[27]

Kierkegaard's mother "was a nice little woman with an even and happy disposition,"
according to a grandchild's description. She was never mentioned in Kierkegaard's works.
Ane died on 31 July 1834, age 66, possibly from typhus.[28] His father died on 8 August
1838, age 82. On 11 August, Kierkegaard wrote:

My father died on Wednesday (the 8th) at 2:00 A.M. I so deeply desired that he might
have lived a few years more, and I regard his death as the last sacrifice of his love for me,
because in dying he did not depart from me but he died for me, in order that something, if
possible, might still come of me. Most precious of all that I have inherited from him is his
memory, his transfigured image, transfigured not by his poetic imagination (for it does
not need that), but transfigured by many little single episodes I am now learning about,
and this memory I will try to keep most secret from the world. Right now I feel there is
only one person (E. Boesen) with whom I can really talk about him. He was a "faithful
friend." [29]

[edit] Journals

The cover of the first English edition of The Journals, edited by Alexander Dru in 1938
People understand me so little that they do not even understand when I complain of being
misunderstood.
—Søren Kierkegaard ,  Journals Feb. 1836

According to Samuel Hugo Bergmann, "Kierkegaard journal's are one of the most
important sources for an understanding of his philosophy".[30] Kierkegaard wrote over
7000 pages in his journals on events, musings, thoughts about his works and everyday
remarks.[31] The entire collection of Danish journals has been edited and published in 13
volumes which consist of 25 separate bindings including indices. The first English
edition of the journals was edited by Alexander Dru in 1938.[32] The style is "literary and
poetic [in] manner".[33] Kierkegaard saw his journals as his legacy:
I have never confided in anyone. By being an author I have in a sense made the public
my confidant. But in respect of my relation to the public I must, once again, make
posterity my confidant. The same people who are there to laugh at one cannot very well
be made one's confidant.[34]

Kierkegaard's journals are also the source of many aphorisms credited to the philosopher.
The following passage, from 1 August 1835, is perhaps his most oft-quoted aphorism and
a key quote for existentialist studies: "What I really need is to get clear about what I must
do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every act. What
matters is to find a purpose, to see what it really is that God wills that I shall do; the
crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am
willing to live and die."[35]

Although his journals clarify some aspects of his work and life, Kierkegaard took care
not to reveal too much. Abrupt changes in thought, repetitive writing, and unusual turns
of phrase are some among the many tactics he uses to throw readers off track.
Consequently, there are many varying interpretations of his journals. Kierkegaard did not
doubt the importance his journals would have in the future. In a journal entry in
December 1849, he wrote: "Were I to die now the effect of my life would be exceptional;
much of what I have simply jotted down carelessly in the Journals would become of great
importance and have a great effect; for then people would have grown reconciled to me
and would be able to grant me what was, and is, my right."[36]

[edit] Regine Olsen and graduation (1837–1841)

Main article: Regine Olsen

Regine Olsen, a muse for Kierkegaard's writings

An important aspect of Kierkegaard's life, generally considered to have had a major

influence on his work, was his broken engagement to Regine Olsen (1822–1904).
Kierkegaard and Olsen met on 8 May 1837 and were instantly attracted but sometime
around 11 August 1838 he had second thoughts. In his journals, Kierkegaard wrote about
his love for her:

You, sovereign queen of my heart, Regina, hidden in the deepest secrecy of my breast, in
the fullness of my life-idea, there where it is just as far to heaven as to hell—unknown
divinity! O, can I really believe the poets when they say that the first time one sees the
beloved object he thinks he has seen her long before, that love like all knowledge is
recollection, that love in the single individual also has its prophecies, its types, its myths,
its Old Testament. Everywhere, in the face of every girl, I see features of your beauty, but
I think I would have to possess the beauty of all the girls in the world to extract your
beauty, that I would have to sail around the world to find the portion of the world I want
and toward which the deepest secret of my self polarically points—and in the next
moment you are so close to me, so present, so overwhelmingly filling my spirit that I am
transfigured to myself and feel that here it is good to be. You blind god of erotic love!
You who see in secret, will you disclose it to me? Will I find what I am seeking here in
this world, will I experience the conclusion of all my life's eccentric premises, will I fold
you in my arms, or: Do the Orders say: March on? Have you gone on ahead, you, my
longing, transfigured do you beckon to me from another world? O, I will throw
everything away in order to become light enough to follow you.[37]

On 8 September 1840, Kierkegaard formally proposed to Olsen. Kierkegaard soon felt

disillusioned about the prospects of the marriage. He broke off the engagement on 11
August 1841, though it is generally believed that the two were deeply in love. In his
journals, Kierkegaard mentions his belief that his "melancholy" made him unsuitable for
marriage, but his precise motive for ending the engagement remains unclear.[19][38] The
following quote from his Journals sheds some light on the motivation.

"... and this terrible restlessness—as if wanting to convince myself every moment that it
would still be possible to return to her—O God, would that I dared to do it. It is so hard;
my last hope in life I had placed in her, and I must deprive myself of it. How strange, I
had never really thought of getting married, but I never believed that it would turn out
this way and leave so deep a wound. I have always ridiculed those who talked about the
power of women, and I still do, but a young, beautiful, soulful girl who loves with all her
mind and all her heart, who is completely devoted, who pleads—how often I have been
close to setting her love on fire, not to a sinful love, but I need merely have said to her
that I loved her, and everything would have been set in motion to end my young life. But
then it occurred to me that this would not be good for her, that I might bring a storm upon
her head, since she would feel responsible for my death. I prefer what I did do; my
relationship to her was always kept so ambiguous that I had it in my power to give it any
interpretation I wanted to. I gave it the interpretation that I was a deceiver. Humanly
speaking, that is the only way to save her, to give her soul resilience. My sin is that I did
not have faith, faith that for God all things are possible, but where is the borderline
between that and tempting God; but my sin has never been that I did not love her. If she
had not been so devoted to me, so trusting, had not stopped living for herself in order to
live for me—well, then the whole thing would have been a trifle; it does not bother me to
make a fool of the whole world, but to deceive a young girl.—O, if I dared return to her,
and even if she did not believe that I was false, she certainly believed that once I was free
I would never come back. Be still, my soul, I will act firmly and decisively according to
what I think is right. I will also watch what I write in my letters. I know my moods. But
in a letter I cannot, as when I am speaking, instantly dispel an impression when I detect
that it is too strong."[39]

Kierkegaard turned attention to his examinations. On May 13, 1841 Kierkegaard wrote,
"I have no alternative than to suppose that it is God's will that I prepare for my
examination and that it is more pleasing to him that I do this than actually coming to
some clearer perception by immersing myself in one or another sort of research, for
obedience is more precious to him than the fat of rams."[40] The death of his father and the
death of Poul Moller also played a part in his decision.

On September 29, 1841, Kierkegaard wrote and defended his dissertation, On the
Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates. The university panel considered
it noteworthy and thoughtful, but too informal and witty for a serious academic thesis.[41]
The thesis dealt with irony and Schelling's 1841 lectures, which Kierkegaard had
attended with Mikhail Bakunin, Jacob Burckhardt, and Friedrich Engels; each had come
away with a different perspective.[42] Kierkegaard graduated from university on 20
October 1841 with a Magister Artium, which today would be designated a Ph.D. He was
able to fund his education, his living, and several publications of his early works with his
family's inheritance of approximately 31,000 rigsdaler,.[32]

[edit] Authorship (1843–1846)

Kierkegaard published some of his works using pseudonyms and for others he signed his
own name as author. On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates was
his university thesis, mentioned above. His first book, De omnibus dubitandum est
(Latin: "Everything must be doubted"), was written in 1841-42 but was not published
until after his death. It was written under the pseudonym "Johannes Climacus".[43]

Either/Or was published February 20, 1843; it was mostly written during Kierkegaard's
stay in Berlin, where he took notes on Schelling's Philosophy of Revelation.[44] Edited by
Victor Eremita, the book contained the papers of an unknown "A" and "B" Kierkegaard
writes in Either/Or, "one author seems to be enclosed in another, like the parts in a
Chinese puzzle box,";[45] the puzzle box would prove to be complicated. Kierkegaard
claimed to have found these papers in a secret drawer of his secretary.[46] In Either/Or he
stated that arranging the papers of "B" was easy because "B" was talking about ethical
situations, whereas arranging the papers of "A" was more difficult because he was talking
about chance, so he left the arranging of those papers to chance.[47] Both the ethicist and
the aesthetic writers were discussing outer goods, but Kierkegaard was more interested in
inner goods. Three months after the publication of Either/Or he published Two
Upbuilding Discourses where he writes, "There is talk of the good things of the world, of
health, happy times, prosperity, power, good fortune, a glorious fame. And we are
warned against them; the person who has them is warned not to rely on them, and the
person who does not have them is warned not to set his heart on them. About faith there
is a different kind of talk. It is said to be the highest good, the most beautiful;, the most
precious, the most blessed riches of all, not to be compared with anything else, incapable
of being replaced. Is it distinguished from the other good things, then, by being the
highest but otherwise of the same kind as they are-transient and capricious, bestowed
only upon the chosen few, rarely for the whole of life? If this were so, then it certainly
would be inexplicable that in these sacred places it is always faith and faith alone that is
spoken of, that it is eulogized and celebrated again and again."[48]

Two Upbuilding Discourses, 1843 was published under his own name, rather than a
pseudonym. On October 16, 1843 Kierkegaard published three books: Fear and
Trembling, under the pseudonym Johannes de Silentio, Repetition as Constantin
Constantius, and Three Upbuilding Discourses, 1843 under his own name.[49] He later
published Four Upbuilding Discourses, 1843, again using his own name.

In 1844 he published Two Upbuilding Discourses, 1844, and Three Upbuilding

Discourses, 1844 under his own name, Philosophical Fragments under the pseudonym
Johannes Climacus, The Concept of Anxiety under two pseudonyms Vigilius Haufniensis,
with a Preface, by Nicolaus Notabene, and finally Four Upbuilding Discourses, 1844
under his own name.

Kierkegaard published Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions under his own name on
April 29, and Stages on Life's Way edited by Hilarius Bookbinder, April 30, 1845.
Kierkegaard went to Berlin for a short rest. Upon returning he published his Discourses
of 1843-44 in one volume, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, May 29, 1845.

[edit] Pseudonymous authorship

Either/Or, one of Kierkegaard's works, was authored under the pseudonyms "A" and "B",
or Judge William, and edited under the pseudonym Victor Eremita.

Pseudonyms were used often in the early 19th century as a means of representing
viewpoints other than the author's own; examples include the writers of the Federalist
Papers and the Anti-Federalist Papers. Kierkegaard employed the same technique.

This was part of Kierkegaard's theory of "indirect communication." He wrote, "No

anonymous author can more slyly hide himself, and no maieutic can more carefully
recede from a direct relation than God can. He is in the creation, everywhere in the
creation, but he is not there directly, and only when the single individual turns inward
into himself (consequently only in the inwardness of self-activity) does he become aware
and capable of seeing God."[50] According to several passages in his works and journals,
such as The Point of View of My Work as an Author, Kierkegaard used pseudonyms in
order to prevent his works from being treated as a philosophical system with a systematic
structure.[51] In the Point of View, Kierkegaard wrote:

The movement: from the poet (from aesthetics), from philosophy (from speculation), to
the indication of the most central definition of what Christianity is—from the
pseudonymous ‘Either/Or’, through ‘The Concluding Postscript’ with my name as editor,
to the ‘Discourses at Communion on Fridays’, two of which were delivered in the Church
of our Lady. This movement was accomplished or described uno tenore, in one breath, if
I may use this expression, so that the authorship integrally regarded, is religious from first
to last—a thing which everyone can see if he is willing to see, and therefore ought to see.
"[52][53]
Later he would write:

... As is well-known, my authorship has two parts: one pseudonymous and the other
signed. The pseudonymous writers are poetic creations, poetically maintained so that
everything they say is in character with their poetized individualized personalities;
sometimes I have carefully explained in a signed preface my own interpretation of what
the pseudonym said. Anyone with just a fragment of common sense will perceive that it
would be ludicrously confusing to attribute to me everything the poetized characters say.
Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, I have expressed urged that anyone who quotes
something from the pseudonyms will not attribute the quotation to me (see my postscript
to Concluding Postscript). It is easy to see that anyone wanting to have a literary lark
merely needs to take some verbatim quotations from "The Seducer," then from Johannes
Climacus, then from me, etc., print them together as if they were all my words, show how
they contradict each other, and create a very chaotic impression, as if the author were a
kind of lunatic. Hurrah! That can be done. In my opinion anyone who exploits the poetic
in me by quoting the writings in a confusing way is more or less a charlatan or a literary
toper.[54]

Early Kierkegaardian scholars, such as Theodor W. Adorno and Thomas Henry Croxall
argue that the entire authorship should be treated as Kierkegaard's own personal and
religious views.[55] This view leads to confusions and contradictions which make
Kierkegaard appear philosophically incoherent.[56] Many later scholars, such as the post-
structuralists, have interpreted Kierkegaard's work by attributing the pseudonymous texts
to their respective authors. Postmodern Christians present a different interpretation of
Kierkegaard's works.[57] Kierkegaard uses the category of "The Individual"[58] to stop[59]
the endless Either/Or.[60]

Kierkegaard's most important pseudonyms,[61] in chronological order, are:

 Victor Eremita, editor of Either/Or

 A, writer of many articles in Either/Or
 Judge William, author of rebuttals to A in Either/Or
 Johannes de silentio, author of Fear and Trembling
 Constantin Constantius, author of the first half of Repetition
 Young Man, author of the second half of Repetition
 Vigilius Haufniensis, author of The Concept of Anxiety
 Nicolaus Notabene, author of Prefaces
 Hilarius Bookbinder, editor of Stages on Life's Way
 Johannes Climacus, author of Philosophical Fragments and Concluding
Unscientific Postscript
 Inter et Inter, author of The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress
 H.H., author of Two Ethical-Religious Essays
 Anti-Climacus, author of The Sickness Unto Death and Practice in Christianity

[edit] The Corsair Affair

On 22 December 1845, Peder Ludvig Møller, a young author of Kierkegaard's generation
who studied at the University of Copenhagen at the same time as Kierkegaard, published
an article indirectly criticizing Stages on Life's Way. The article complimented
Kierkegaard for his wit and intellect, but questioned whether he would ever be able to
master his talent and write coherent, complete works. Møller was also a contributor to
and editor of The Corsair, a Danish satirical paper that lampooned everyone of notable
standing. Kierkegaard published a sarcastic response, charging that Møller's article was
merely an attempt to impress Copenhagen's literary elite.

A caricature of Kierkegaard published in The Corsair, a satirical journal

Kierkegaard wrote two small pieces in response to Møller, The Activity of a Traveling
Esthetician and Dialectical Result of a Literary Police Action. The former focused on
insulting Møller's integrity while the latter was a directed assault on The Corsair, in
which Kierkegaard, after criticizing the journalistic quality and reputation of the paper,
openly asked The Corsair to satirize him.[62]

Kierkegaard's response earned him the ire of the paper and its second editor, also an
intellectual Kierkegaard's own age, Meïr Aron Goldschmidt.[63] Over the next few
months, The Corsair took Kierkegaard up on his offer to "be abused", and unleashed a
series of attacks making fun of Kierkegaard's appearance, voice, and habits. For months,
Kierkegaard perceived himself to be the victim of harassment on the streets of Denmark.
In a journal entry dated March 9, 1846, Kierkegaard made a long, detailed explanation of
his attack on Møller and The Corsair, and also explained that this attack made him
rethink his strategy of indirect communication.[64]

On February 27, 1846 Kierkegaard published Concluding Unscientific Postscript to

Philosophical Fragments, under his first pseudonym, Johannes Climacus. On March 30,
1846 he published Two Ages: A Literary Review, under his own name. A critique of the
novel Two Ages (in some translations Two Generations) written by Thomasine Christine
Gyllembourg-Ehrensvärd, Kierkegaard made several insightful observations on what he
considered the nature of modernity and its passionless attitude towards life. Kierkegaard
writes that "the present age is essentially a sensible age, devoid of passion [...] The trend
today is in the direction of mathematical equality, so that in all classes about so and so
many uniformly make one individual".[65] In this, Kierkegaard attacks the conformity and
assimilation of individuals into "the crowd"[66] which becomes the standard for truth,
since it is the numerical.

As part of his analysis of the "crowd", Kierkegaard accused newspapers of decay and
decadence. Kierkegaard stated Christendom had "lost its way" by recognizing "the
crowd," as the many who are moved by newspaper stories, as the court of last resort in
relation to "the truth." Truth comes to a single individual, not all people at one and the
same time. Just as truth comes to one individual at a time so does love. One doesn't love
the crowd but does love their neighbor, who is a single individual. He says, "never have I
read in the Holy Scriptures this command: You shall love the crowd; even less: You
shall, ethico-religiously, recognize in the crowd the court of last resort in relation to "the
truth."[67] Kierkegaard takes out his wrath on the crowd, the public, and especially the
newspapers in this short sample of his work. In this quote he also gives an inkling of what
true Christianity is like. God must be the middle term.[68]

The crowd is untruth. And I could weep, in every case I can learn to long for the eternal,
whenever I think about our age's misery, even compared with the ancient world's greatest
misery, in that the daily press and anonymity make our age even more insane with help
from "the public," which is really an abstraction, which makes a claim to be the court of
last resort in relation to "the truth"; for assemblies which make this claim surely do not
take place. That an anonymous person, with help from the press, day in and day out can
speak however he pleases (even with respect to the intellectual, the ethical, the religious),
things which he perhaps did not in the least have the courage to say personally in a
particular situation; every time he opens up his gullet—one cannot call it a mouth—he
can all at once address himself to thousands upon thousands; he can get ten thousand
times ten thousand to repeat after him—and no one has to answer for it; in ancient times
the relatively unrepentant crowd was the almighty, but now there is the absolutely
unrepentant thing: No One, an anonymous person: the Author, an anonymous person: the
Public, sometimes even anonymous subscribers, therefore: No One. No One! God in
heaven, such states even call themselves Christian states. One cannot say that, again with
the help of the press, "the truth" can overcome the lie and the error. O, you who say this,
ask yourself: Do you dare to claim that human beings, in a crowd, are just as quick to
reach for truth, which is not always palatable, as for untruth, which is always deliciously
prepared, when in addition this must be combined with an admission that one has let
oneself be deceived! Or do you dare to claim that "the truth" is just as quick to let itself
be understood as is untruth, which requires no previous knowledge, no schooling, no
discipline, no abstinence, no self-denial, no honest self-concern, no patient labor! No,
"the truth," which detests this untruth, the only goal of which is to desire its increase, is
not so quick on its feet. Firstly, it cannot work through the fantastical, which is the
untruth; its communicator is only a single individual. And its communication relates itself
once again to the single individual; for in this view of life the single individual is
precisely the truth. The truth can neither be communicated nor be received without being
as it were before the eyes of God, nor without God's help, nor without God being
involved as the middle term, since he is the truth. It can therefore only be communicated
by and received by "the single individual," which, for that matter, every single human
being who lives could be: this is the determination of the truth in contrast to the abstract,
the fantastical, impersonal, "the crowd" - "the public," which excludes God as the middle
term (for the personal God cannot be the middle term in an impersonal relation), and also
thereby the truth, for God is the truth and its middle term. Søren Kierkegaard,
Copenhagen, Spring 1847

[edit] Authorship (1847–1855)

Kierkegaard's manuscript of The Sickness Unto Death[69]

Kierkegaard began to write again in 1847. His first work in this period was Edifying
Discourses in Diverse Spirits,[38] which included Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing, and
Works of Love, both authored under his own name. There had been much discussion in
Denmark about the pseudonymous authors until the publication of Concluding
Unscientific Discourses where he openly admitted to be the author of the books because
people began wondering if he was, in fact, a Christian or not.[70]

In 1848 he published Christian Discourses under his own name and The Crisis and a
Crisis in the Life of an Actress under the pseudonym Inter et Inter. Kierkegaard also
developed The Point of View of My Work as an Author, his autobiographical explanation
for his prolific use of pseudonyms. The book was finished in 1848, but not published
until after his death.

The Second edition of Either/Or and The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air were
both published early in 1849. Later in 1849 he published The Sickness Unto Death, under
the pseudonym Anti-Climacus; four months later he wrote Three Discourses at the
Communion on Fridays under his own name. Another work by Anti-Climacus, Practice
in Christianity, was published in 1850, but edited by Søren Kierkegaard. This work was
called Training in Christianity when Walter Lowrie translated it in 1941.

In 1851, Kierkegaard began openly presenting his case for Christianity to the "Single
Individual". In Practice In Christianity, his last pseudonymous work, he said, "In this
book, originating in the year 1848, the requirement for being a Christian is forced up by
the pseudonymous authors to a supreme ideality."[71] He now pointedly referred to the
single individual in his next three publications; For Self-Examination, Two Discourses at
the Communion on Fridays, and in 1852 Judge for Yourselves!.[72][73] In 1843 he had
written in Either/Or "I ask: What am I supposed to do if I do not want to be a
philosopher, I am well aware that I like other philosophers will have to mediate the past.
For one thing, this is no answer to my question “What am I supposed to do?” for even if I
had the most brilliant philosophical mind there ever was, there must be something more I
have to do besides sitting and contemplating the past. Second, I am a married man and far
from being a philosophical brain, but in all respect I turn to the devotees of this science to
find out what I am supposed to do. But I receive no answer, for philosophy mediates the
past and is in the past-philosophy hastens so fast into the past that, as a poet says of and
antiquarian, only his coattails remain in the present. See, here you are at one with the
philosophers. What unites you is that life comes to a halt. For the philosopher, world
history is ended, and he mediates. This accounts for the repugnant spectacle that belongs
to the order of the day in our age-to see young people who are able to mediate
Christianity and paganism, who are able to play games with the titanic forces of history,
and who are unable to tell a simple human being what he has to do here in life, nor do
they know what they themselves have to do." [74] A journal entry about Practice in
Chrisianity from 1851 clarifies his intention.

What I have understood as the task of the authorship has been done. It is one idea, this
continuity from Either/Or to Anti-Climacus, the idea of religiousness in reflection. The
task has occupied me totally, for it has occupied me religiously; I have understood the
completion of this authorship as my duty, as a responsibility resting upon me. Whether
anyone has wanted to buy or to read has concerned me very little. At times I have
considered laying down my pen and, if anything should be done, to use my voice.
Meanwhile I came by way of further reflection to the realization that it perhaps is more
appropriate for me to make at least an attempt once again to use my pen but in a different
way, as I would use my voice, consequently in direct address to my contemporaries,
winning men, if possible. The first condition for winning men is that the communication
reaches them. Therefore I must naturally want this little book to come to the knowledge
of as many as possible. If anyone out of interest for the cause—I repeat, out of interest for
the cause—wants to work for its dissemination, this is fine with me. It would be still
better if he would contribute to its well-comprehended dissemination. I hardly need say
that by wanting to win men it is not my intention to form a party, to create secular,
sensate togetherness; no, my wish is only to win men, if possible all men (each
individual), for Christianity. A request, an urgent request to the reader: I beg you to read
aloud, if possible; I will thank everyone who does so; and I will thank again and again
everyone who in addition to doing it himself influences others to do it. Journals of Søren
Kierkegaard, June 1, 1851

[edit] Attack upon the State Church and Death

I ask: what does it mean when we continue to behave as though all were as it should be,
calling ourselves Christians according to the New Testament, when the ideals of the New
Testament have gone out of life? The tremendous disproportion which this state of affairs
represents has, moreover, been perceived by many. They like to give it this turn: the
human race has outgrown Christianity.
—Søren Kierkegaard, Journals, p.446 (19 June 1852)[32]
Kierkegaard mounted an attack on Christian institutions in his final years. He felt the
established state church was detrimental to individuals.

Kierkegaard's final years were taken up with a sustained, outright attack on the Danish
National Church by means of newspaper articles published in The Fatherland
(Fædrelandet) and a series of self-published pamphlets called The Moment (Øjeblikket).
[75]

Kierkegaard first moved to action after Professor (soon bishop) Hans Lassen Martensen
gave a speech in church in which he called the recently deceased Bishop Jakob P.
Mynster a "truth-witness, one of the authentic truth-witnesses."[6] Kierkegaard explained,
in his first article, that Mynster's death permitted him—at last—to be frank about his
opinions. He later wrote that all his former output had been "preparations" for this attack,
postponed for years waiting for two preconditions: 1) both his father and bishop Mynster
should be dead before the attack and 2) he should himself have acquired a name as a
famous theologic writer.[76] Kierkegaard's father had been Mynster's close friend, but
Søren had long come to see that Mynster's conception of Christianity was mistaken,
demanding too little of its adherents. Kierkegaard strongly objected to the portrayal of
Mynster as a 'truth-witness'.

During the ten issues of Øjeblikket the aggressiveness of Keirkegaard's language

increased; the “thousand danish priests“ “playing Christianity“ were eventually called
“man-eaters“ after having been “liars“, “hypocrites“ and “destroyers of christianity" in
the first issues. This verbal violence caused a sensation in Denmark, but today
Kierkegaard is often considered to have lost control of himself during this campaign.[77]

Before the tenth issue of his periodical The Moment could be published, Kierkegaard
collapsed on the street and was taken to a hospital. He stayed in the hospital for over a
month and refused to receive communion from a pastor. At that time Kierkegaard
regarded pastors as mere political officials, a niche in society who was clearly not
representative of the divine. He said to Emil Boesen, a friend since childhood who kept a
record of his conversations with Kierkegaard, that his life had been one of immense
suffering, which may have seemed like vanity to others, but he did not think it so.[38]

Søren Kierkegaard's grave in Assistens Kirkegård

Kierkegaard died in Frederik's Hospital after being there for over a month, possibly from
complications from a fall he had taken from a tree in his youth. He was interred in the
Assistens Kirkegård in the Nørrebro section of Copenhagen. At Kierkegaard's funeral, his
nephew Henrik Lund caused a disturbance by protesting the burying of Kierkegaard by
the official church. Lund maintained that Kierkegaard would never have approved, had
he been alive, as he had broken from and denounced the institution. Lund was later fined
for his public disruption of a funeral.[19]

In Kierkegaard's pamphlets and polemical books, including The Moment, he criticized

several aspects of church formalities and politics.[78] According to Kierkegaard, the idea
of congregations keeps individuals as children since Christians are disinclined from
taking the initiative to take responsibility for their own relation to God. He stresses that
"Christianity is the individual, here, the single individual."[79] Furthermore, since the
Church was controlled by the State, Kierkegaard believed the State's bureaucratic mission
was to increase membership and oversee the welfare of its members. More members
would mean more power for the clergymen: a corrupt ideal.[80] This mission would seem
at odds with Christianity's true doctrine, which, to Kierkegaard, is to stress the
importance of the individual, not the whole.[32] Thus, the state-church political structure is
offensive and detrimental to individuals, since anyone can become "Christian" without
knowing what it means to be Christian. It is also detrimental to the religion itself since it
reduces Christianity to a mere fashionable tradition adhered to by unbelieving
"believers", a "herd mentality" of the population, so to speak.[81] In the Journals,
Kierkegaard writes:

If the Church is "free" from the state, it's all good. I can immediately fit in this situation.
But if the Church is to be emancipated, then I must ask: By what means, in what way? A
religious movement must be served religiously—otherwise it is a sham! Consequently,
the emancipation must come about through martyrdom—bloody or bloodless. The price
of purchase is the spiritual attitude. But those who wish to emancipate the Church by
secular and worldly means (i.e. no martyrdom), they've introduced a conception of
tolerance entirely consonant with that of the entire world, where tolerance equals
indifference, and that is the most terrible offence against Christianity. [...] the doctrine of
the established Church, its organization, are both very good indeed. Oh, but then our
lives: believe me, they are indeed wretched.[82]

[edit] Reception
Søren Kierkegaard has been interpreted and reinterpreted since he published his first
book. Some authors change with the times as their productivity progresses and sometimes
interpretations of an author changes with each new generation. The interpretation of
Søren Kierkegaard is still in the process of becoming.

[edit] 19th century reception

In September 1850, the Western Literary Messenger wrote: "While Martensen with his
wealth of genius casts from his central position light upon every sphere of existence,
upon all the phemomena of life, Søren Kierkegaard stands like another Simon Stylites,
upon his solitary column, with his eye unchangeably fixed upon one point. Upon this he
places his microscope and examines it minutest atoms; scrutinizes its most fleeting
movements; its innermost changes, upon this he lectures, upon this he writes again and
again, infinite volumes. Everything exists for him in this one point. But this point is-the
human heart: and as he ever reflects this changing heart in the eternal unchangeable, in
‘that’ “which became flesh and dwelt among us,” and as he amidst his wearisome logical
wanderings often says divine things, he has found in the gay, lively Copenhagen not a
small public, and that principally of the ladies. The philosophy of the heart must be near
to them". The Western literary messenger, Volume 13, Issue 1 - Volume 14, Issue 5,
1850 p. 182[83]

In 1855, the Danish National Church published his obituary. Kierkegaard did have an
impact there judging from the following quote from their article: “The fatal fruits which
Dr. Kierkegaard show to arise from the union of Church and State, have strengthened the
scruples of many of the believing laity, who now feel that they can remain no longer in
the Church, because thereby they are in communion with unbelievers, for there is no
ecclesiastical discipline. Thus, the desire of leaving the Church becomes increasingly
strengthened among them. They wish to see J. Lursen (the reader) ordained. One of his
friends has lately declared in their journal, that pious laymen are more fit to ordain
ministers than the unbelieving priests. An independent Lutheran Church was formed at
Copenhagen last December.’’ Evangelical Christendom: Christian Work and the News of
the Churches (1855), The Doctrines of Dr Kierkegaard, P. 129[83]

Changes did occur in the administration of the Church and these changes are linked to
Kierkegaard's writings. The Church noted that dissent was “something foreign to the
national mind.” On April 5, 1855 the Church enacted new policies, “every member of a
congregation is free to attend the ministry of any clergyman, and is not, as formerly,
bound to the one whose parishioner he is”. In March 1857, compulsory infant baptism
was abolished. The King as the head of the Church changed and a debate over having a
constitution or not evolved, Martensen was for the establishment of a Church
Constitution and Gruntvig didn't want any written rules at all. Immediately following this
announcement the “agitation occasioned by Kierkegaard" is mentioned. Kierkegaard is
accused of Weigelianism and Darbyism, but the article goes on to say, “One great truth
has been made prominent, viz (namely): That there exists a worldly-minded clergy; that
many things in the Church are rotten; that all need daily repentance; that one must never
be contented with the existing state of either the Church or her pastors. But there is no
truth in the assertion that Christianity does not aim at the formation of the Church, or
Christianizing the world; that the Church is a mere Babel: that where there is no suffering
for Christ’s sake, the Gospel of the New Testament is at an end.” Evangelical
Christendom , Volumes 11-12 J.S. Phillips, 1857 Denmark: Remarks on the State of the
Danish National Church, by The Rev. Dr. Kalkar, Copenhagen, August 1, 1858. p. 269-
274 quote from page 269-270[83]

Hans Martensen wrote a monograph about Kierkegaard in 1856, a year after his death,
Dr. S. Kierkegaard mod Dr. H. Martensen: et indlaeg[84] but it hasn't been translated into
English and mentioned him extensively in Christian Ethics, (1871). "Kierkegaard's
assertion is therefore perfectly justifiable, that with the category of "the individual" the
cause of Christianity must stand and fall; that, without this category, Pantheism had
conquered unconditionally. From this, at a glance, it may be seen that Kierkegaard ought
to make common cause with those philosophic and theological writers who specially
desire to promote the principle of Personality as opposed to Pantheism. This is, however,
very far from being the case. For those views which upheld the category of existence and
personality, in opposition to this abstract idealism, did not do this in the sense of an either
—or, but in that of a both—and. They strove after unity of existence and idea, which may
be specially seen from the fact that they desired system, totality. Martensen accused
Kierkegaard and Alexandre Vinet of not giving society its due. He said both of them put
the individual above society, and in so doing, above the Church. Christian ethics :
(General part) Vol. XXXIX, by Hans Martensen, Translated by C. Spence p. 206-236[83]

Another early critic was Magnús Eiríksson who criticized Martensen and wanted
Kierkegaard as his ally in his fight against speculative theology.

Otto Pfleiderer in The Philosophy of Religion: On the Basis of Its History (1887), says,
Kierkegaard presents an anti-rational view of Christianity. He goes on to say the ethical
side of a human being has to disappear completely in his one-sided view of faith as the
highest good. He writes, "Kierkegaard can only find true Christianity in entire
renunciation of the world, in the following of Christ in lowliness and suffering especially
when met by hatred and persecution on the part of the world. Hence his passionate
polemic against ecclesiastical Christianity, which he says has fallen away from Christ by
coming to a peaceful understanding with the world and conforming itself to the world’s
life. True Christianity, on the contrary, is constant polemical pathos, a battle against
reason, nature, and the world; its commandment is enmity with the world; its way of life
is the death of the naturally human. The Philosophy of Religion: On the Basis of Its
History, Otto Pfleiderer, 1887 P. 212 [83]
An article from an 1889 dictionary of religion gives the reader a good idea of how Søren
Kierkegaard was regarded at that time. “Having never left his native city more than a few
days at a time, excepting once, when he went to Germany to study Schelling's
philosophy. He was the most original thinker and theological philosopher the North ever
produced. His fame has been steadily growing since his death, and he bids fair to become
the leading religio-philosophical light of Germany, not only his theological, but also his
aesthetic works have of late become the subject of universal study in Europe. (...) Søren
Kierkegaard’s writings abound in psychological observations and experiences, great
penetration and dexterous experimentations, all of which enable him to speak of that
which but few know and fewer still can express, his diction is noble, his dialectics refined
and brilliant; scarcely a page of his can be found which is not rich in poetic sentiment and
passionate though pure enthusiasm. It is generally conceded that his literary productions
overflow with intellectual wonders, still it must be said that he is often more fascinating
and seductive than convincing. He defined his task to be “to call attention to
Christianity," to make himself an instrument to summon people to the truly Human. Ideal
or true Christianity, so little known, as he claimed, and to which he wanted to call
attention, is neither a theory, scientific or otherwise, but a life and a mode of existence; a
life which nature can neither define nor teach. It is an existence rooted wholly in the
beyond, though it must be realized in actual life. Christian truth is not and cannot be the
subject of science, for it is not objective, but purely subjective. He does not deny the
value of objective science; he admits its use and necessity in a real world, but he utterly
discards any claims it may lay to the spiritual relations of the Christian—relations which
are and can be only subjective, personal, and individual. Defined, his perception is this,
"Subjectivity is the truth"— a doubtful proposition, and only true with regard to the One
who could say about himself, "I am the truth." Rightly understood, it is the speculative
principle of Protestantism; but wrongly conceived, it leads to a denial of the church idea.
The main element of this philosophy would not have met with any determined opposition
had Kierkegaard moderated his language. As it was he defiantly declared war against all
speculation as a source of Christianity, and opposed those who seek to speculate on faith
—as was the case in his day and before—thereby striving to get an insight into the truths
of revelation. Speculation, he claimed, leads to a fall, and to a falsification of the truth.”
The Concise Dictionary of Religious Knowledge and Gazetteer 1889, Kierkegaard,
Søren Aaby, Edited by, Talbot Wilson Chambers, Frank Hugh Foster, Samuel Macauley
Jackson p. 473-475[83]

The dramatist Henrik Ibsen became interested in Kierkegaard and introduced his work to
the rest of Scandinavia.

[edit] Early 20th century reception

The first academic to draw attention to Kierkegaard was his fellow Dane Georg Brandes,
who published in German as well as Danish. Brandes gave the first formal lectures on
Kierkegaard in Copenhagen and helped bring Kierkegaard to the attention of the rest of
the European intellectual community.[85] Brandes published the first book on
Kierkegaard's philosophy and life. Sören Kierkegaard, ein literarisches Charakterbild.
Autorisirte deutsche Ausg (1879)[86] and compared him to Hegel in Reminiscences of my
Childhood and Youth[87] (1906).

He also introduced Friedrich Nietzsche to Europe in 1915 by writing a biography about

him.[88] Brandes opposed Kierkegaard's ideas.[89] He wrote elegantly about Christian
doubt. "But my doubt would not be overcome. Kierkegaard had declared that it was only
to the consciousness of sin that Christianity was not horror or madness. For me it was
sometimes both. I concluded there from that I had no consciousness of sin, and found this
idea confirmed when I looked into my own heart. For however violently at this period I
reproached myself and condemned my failings, they were always in my eyes weaknesses
that ought to be combatted, or defects that could be remedied, never sins that necessitated
forgiveness, and for the obtaining of this forgiveness, a Saviour. That God had died for
me as my Saviour,—I could not understand what it meant; it was an idea that conveyed
nothing to me. And I wondered whether the inhabitants of another planet would be able
to understand how on the Earth that which was contrary to all reason was considered the
highest truth." Reminiscences of My Childhood and Youth, By George Brandes
September, 1906 P. 108[83]

He also mentions him extensively in volume 2 of his 6 volume work, Main Currents in
Nineteenth Century Literature.[83]

In Danish Romanticism there is none of Friedrich Schlegel's audacious immorality, but

neither is there anything like that spirit of opposition which in him amounts to genius; his
ardour melts, and his daring moulds into new and strange shapes, much that we accept as
inalterable. Nor do the Danes become Catholic mystics. Protestant orthodoxy in its most
petrified form flourishes with us: so do supernaturalism and pietism; and in
Grundtvigianism we slide down the inclined plane which leads to Catholicism; but in this
matter, as in every other, we never take the final step; we shrink back from the last
consequences. The result is that the Danish reaction is far more insidious and covert than
the German. Veiling itself as vice does, it clings to the altars of the Church, which have
always been a sanctuary for criminals of every species. It is never possible to lay hold of
it, to convince it then and there that its principles logically lead to intolerance, inquisition,
and despotism. Kierkegaard, for example, is in religion orthodox, in politics a believer in
absolutism, towards the close of his career a fanatic. Yet—and this is a genuinely
Romantic trait—he all his life long avoids drawing any practical conclusions from his
doctrines; one only catches an occasional glimpse of such a feeling as admiration for the
Inquisition, or hatred of natural science. Main Currents in Nineteenth, Century Literature
Vol. 2 Georg Brandes, 1906 Introduction p. 11

During the 1890s, Japanese philosophers began disseminating the works of Kierkegaard,
from the Danish thinkers.[90] Tetsuro Watsuji was one of the first philosophers outside of
Scandinavia to write an introduction on the philosophy of Kierkegaard in 1915.

Harald Høffding has an article about him in A brief history of modern philosophy[83]
(1900). Hoffding mentions Kierkegaard in his Philosophy of Religion 1906, (online but
not in public domain), and the American Journal of Theology (1908) has an article about
Hoffding's Philosophy of Religion. Then Hoffding repents of his previous convictions in
The problems of philosophy (1913)[83]

The Encyclopaedia of religion and ethics had an acticle about him in (1908). The
beginning of the article says, “The life of Søren Kierkegaard has but few points of contact
with the external world; but there were, in particular, three occurrences-a broken
engagement, and attack by a comic paper, and the use of a word by H. L. Martensen-
which must be referred to as having wrought with extraordinary effect upon his
peculiarly sensitive and high-strung nature. The intensity of his inner life, again-which
finds expression in his published works, and even more directly in his notebooks and
diaries (also published)—cannot be properly understood without some reference to his
father.” Encyclopaedia of religion and ethics, Vol. 7 (1908), by James Hastings, John
Alexander Sebie and Louis H. Gray p. 696[83]

Theodor Haecker wrote and essay titled, Kierkegaard and the Philosophy of Inwardness
in 1913 and David F. Swenson wrote a biography of Søren Kierkegaard in 1920.[83] Lee
M. Hollander translated parts of Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, Stages on Life's Way,
and Preparations for the Christian Life (Practice in Christianity) into English in 1923,[91]
but no one paid attention to the work. Swenson said,

It would be interesting to speculate upon the reputation that Kierkegaard might have
attained, and the extent of the influence he might have exerted, if he had written in one of
the major European languages, instead of in the tongue of one of the smallest countries in
the world. Scandinavian studies and notes, Volume 6 No. 7: Søren Kierkegaard, By
David F Swenson, University of Minnesota, Editor A. M. Sturtevant, Feb 1920, p.41

[edit] German and English translators of Kierkegaard's works

Hermann Gottsche published Kierkegaard's Journals in 1905. It took academics 50 years

to arrange his journals.[92] Kierkegaard's main works were translated into German by
Christoph Schrempf from 1909 onwards,[93] a German edition of Kierkegaard's collected
works was done by Emmanuel Hirsch from 1950 on.[93]

In the 1930s, the first academic English translations,[94] by Alexander Dru, David F.
Swenson, Douglas V. Steere, and Walter Lowrie appeared, under the editorial efforts of
Oxford University Press editor Charles Williams.[2][95] Thomas Henry Croxall, another
early translator, Lowrie, and Dru all hoped that people would not just read about
Kierkegaard but would go on and actually read his works.[96] Dru published an English
translation of Kierkegaard's Journals in 1958;[97] Alastair Hannay has translated some of
Kierkegaard's works.

[edit] Later 20th century reception

Kierkegaard's comparatively early and manifold philosophical and theological reception

in Germany was one of the decisive factors of expanding his works, influence, and
readership throughout the world.[98][99] Important for the first phase of his reception in
Germany was the establishment of the journal Zwischen den Zeiten (Between the Ages) in
1922 by a heterogeneous circle of Protestant theologians: Karl Barth, Emil Brunner,
Rudolf Bultmann and Friedrich Gogarten.[100] Their thought would soon be referred to as
dialectical theology.[100] At roughly the same time, Kierkegaard was discovered by several
proponents of the Jewish-Christian philosophy of dialogue in Germany,[101] namely by
Martin Buber, Ferdinand Ebner, and Franz Rosenzweig.[102] In addition to the philosophy
of dialogue, existential philosophy has its point of origin in Kierkegaard and his concept
of individuality.[103] Martin Heidegger sparsely refers to Kierkegaard in Being and Time
(1927),[104] obscuring how much he owes to him.[105][106][107] In 1935, Karl Jaspers
emphasized Kierkegaard's (and Nietzsche's) continuing importance for modern
philosophy.[108] Walter Kaufmann discussed Sartre, Jaspers, and Heidegger in relation to
Kierkegaard, and Kierkegaard in relation to the crisis of religion.[109]

[edit] Philosophical view of Søren Kierkegaard

Main article: Philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard

Kierkegaard has been called a philosopher, a theologian,[110] the Father of Existentialism,

both atheistic and theistic variations,[111] a literary critic,[66] a social theorist,[112] a
humorist,[113] a psychologist,[8] and a poet.[114] Two of his influential ideas are
"subjectivity",[115] and the notion popularly referred to as "leap of faith".[2][116]

Kierkegaard's manuscript of Philosophical Fragments.[69]

The leap of faith is his conception of how an individual would believe in God or how a
person would act in love. Faith is not a decision based on evidence that, say, certain
beliefs about God are true or a certain person is worthy of love. No such evidence could
ever be enough to pragmatically justify the kind of total commitment involved in true
religious faith or romantic love. Faith involves making that commitment anyway.
Kierkegaard thought that to have faith is at the same time to have doubt. So, for example,
for one to truly have faith in God, one would also have to doubt one's beliefs about God;
the doubt is the rational part of a person's thought involved in weighing evidence, without
which the faith would have no real substance. Someone who does not realize that
Christian doctrine is inherently doubtful and that there can be no objective certainty about
its truth does not have faith but is merely credulous. For example, it takes no faith to
believe that a pencil or a table exists, when one is looking at it and touching it. In the
same way, to believe or have faith in God is to know that one has no perceptual or any
other access to God, and yet still has faith in God.[117] As Kierkegaard writes, "doubt is
conquered by faith, just as it is faith which has brought doubt into the world".[118][119]

Kierkegaard also stressed the importance of the self, and the self's relation to the world,
as being grounded in self-reflection and introspection. He argued in Concluding
Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments that "subjectivity is truth" and "truth
is subjectivity." This has to do with a distinction between what is objectively true and an
individual's subjective relation (such as indifference or commitment) to that truth. People
who in some sense believe the same things may relate to those beliefs quite differently.
Two individuals may both believe that many of those around them are poor and deserve
help, but this knowledge may lead only one of them to decide to actually help the poor.
[120]

Kierkegaard primarily discusses subjectivity with regard to religious matters. As already

noted, he argues that doubt is an element of faith and that it is impossible to gain any
objective certainty about religious doctrines such as the existence of God or the life of
Christ. The most one could hope for would be the conclusion that it is probable that the
Christian doctrines are true, but if a person were to believe such doctrines only to the
degree they seemed likely to be true, he or she would not be genuinely religious at all.
Faith consists in a subjective relation of absolute commitment to these doctrines.[121]

[edit] Philosophical criticism

Kierkegaard's famous philosophical critics in the 20th century include Theodor Adorno
and Emmanuel Levinas. Atheistic philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin
Heidegger support many aspects of Kierkegaard's philosophical views, but criticize and
reject some of his religious views.[122][123]

Several Kierkegaardian scholars[who?] argue Adorno's take on Kierkegaard's philosophy

has been less than faithful to the original intentions of Kierkegaard. One critic of Adorno
writes that his book Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic is "the most irresponsible
book ever written on Kierkegaard"[124] because Adorno takes Kierkegaard's pseudonyms
literally, and constructs an entire philosophy of Kierkegaard which makes him seem
incoherent and unintelligible. Another reviewer says that "Adorno is [far away] from the
more credible translations and interpretations of the Collected Works of Kierkegaard we
have today."[56]

Levinas' main attack on Kierkegaard is focused on his ethical and religious stages,
especially in Fear and Trembling. Levinas criticises the leap of faith by saying this
suspension of the ethical and leap into the religious is a type of violence. He states:

Kierkegaardian violence begins when existence is forced to abandon the ethical stage in
order to embark on the religious stage, the domain of belief. But belief no longer sought
external justification. Even internally, it combined communication and isolation, and
hence violence and passion. That is the origin of the relegation of ethical phenomena to
secondary status and the contempt of the ethical foundation of being which has led,
through Nietzsche, to the amoralism of recent philosophies.[125]

Levinas points to the Judeo-Christian belief that it was God who first commanded
Abraham to sacrifice Isaac and that it was an angel who commanded Abraham to stop. If
Abraham were truly in the religious realm, he would not have listened to the angel to stop
and should have continued to kill Isaac. "Transcending ethics" seems like a loophole to
excuse would-be murderers from their crime and thus is unacceptable.[126] One interesting
consequence of Levinas' critique is that it seems to reveal that Levinas views God not as
an absolute moral agent but as a projection of inner ethical desire.[127]

On Kierkegaard's religious views, Sartre offers an objection to the existence of God: If

existence precedes essence, it follows from the meaning of the term sentient that a
sentient being cannot be complete or perfect. In Being and Nothingness, Sartre's phrasing
is that God would be a pour-soi [a being-for-itself; a consciousness] who is also an en-soi
[a being-in-itself; a thing]: which is a contradiction in terms.[122][128] Critics of Sartre have
rebutted this objection by stating that it fails as it rests on a false dichotomy and a
misunderstanding of the traditional Christian view of God.[129]

Sartre agrees with Kierkegaard's analysis of Abraham undergoing anxiety (Sartre calls it
anguish), but Sartre doesn't agree that God told him to do it. In his lecture, Existentialism
is a Humanism, Sartre wonders if Abraham ought to have doubted whether God actually
spoke to him or not.[122] In Kierkegaard's view, Abraham's certainty had its origin in that
'inner voice' which cannot be demonstrated or shown to another ("The problem comes as
soon as Abraham wants to be understood"[cite this quote]). To Kierkegaard, every external
"proof" or justification is merely on the outside and external to the subject.[130]
Kierkegaard's proof for the immortality of the soul, for example, is rooted in the extent to
which one wishes to live forever.[131]

[edit] Kierkegaard's influence on theology, philosophy,

and psychology

The Søren Kierkegaard Statue in Copenhagen

Many 20th-century philosophers, both theistic and atheistic, and theologians drew many
concepts from Kierkegaard, including the notions of angst, despair, and the importance of
the individual. His fame as a philosopher grew tremendously in the 1930s, in large part
because the ascendant existentialist movement pointed to him as a precursor, although he
is now seen as a highly significant and influential thinker in his own right.[132] As
Kierkegaard was raised as a Lutheran,[133] he is commemorated as a teacher in the
Calendar of Saints of the Lutheran Church on 11 November and in the Calendar of Saints
of the Episcopal Church with a feast day on 8 September.

Philosophers and theologians influenced by Kierkegaard include Hans Urs von Balthasar,
Karl Barth, Simone de Beauvoir, Niels Bohr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Emil Brunner, Martin
Buber, Rudolf Bultmann, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Abraham Joshua Heschel,
Karl Jaspers, Gabriel Marcel, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Reinhold Niebuhr, Franz
Rosenzweig, Jean-Paul Sartre, Joseph Soloveitchik, Paul Tillich, Miguel de Unamuno.[134]
Paul Feyerabend's epistemological anarchism in the philosophy of science was inspired
by Kierkegaard's idea of subjectivity as truth. Ludwig Wittgenstein was immensely
influenced and humbled by Kierkegaard,[135] claiming that "Kierkegaard is far too deep
for me, anyhow. He bewilders me without working the good effects which he would in
deeper souls".[135] Karl Popper referred to Kierkegaard as "the great reformer of Christian
ethics, who exposed the official Christian morality of his day as anti-Christian and anti-
humanitarian hypocrisy".[136]

The comparison between Nietzsche and Kierkegaard that has become customary, but is
no less questionable for that reason, fails to recognize, and indeed out of a
misunderstanding of the essence of thinking, that Nietzsche as a metaphysical thinker
preserves a closeness to Aristotle. Kierkegaard remains essentially remote from Aristotle,
although he mentions him more often. For Kierkegaard is not a thinker but a religious
writer, and indeed not just one among others, but the only one in accord with the
destining belonging to his age. Therein lies his greatness, if to speak in this way is not
already a misunderstanding. Heidegger: Nietzsche's Word, "God is Dead." P. 94

Contemporary philosophers such as Emmanuel Lévinas, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jacques

Derrida, Jürgen Habermas, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Richard Rorty, although sometimes
highly critical, have also adapted some Kierkegaardian insights.[137][138][139] Hilary Putnam
admires Kierkegaard, "for his insistence on the priority of the question, 'How should I
live?'".[140]

Kierkegaard has also had a considerable influence on 20th-century literature. Figures

deeply influenced by his work include W. H. Auden, Jorge Luis Borges, Don DeLillo,
Hermann Hesse, Franz Kafka,[141] David Lodge, Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy,
Rainer Maria Rilke, J.D. Salinger and John Updike.[142]

Kierkegaard's profound influence on psychology is evident. He is widely regarded as the

founder of Christian psychology[143] and of existential psychology and therapy.[8]
Existentialist (often called "humanistic") psychologists and therapists include Ludwig
Binswanger, Viktor Frankl, Erich Fromm, Carl Rogers, and Rollo May. May based his
The Meaning of Anxiety on Kierkegaard's The Concept of Anxiety. Kierkegaard's
sociological work Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age provides an
interesting critique of modernity.[66] Kierkegaard is also seen as an important precursor of
postmodernism.[137] In popular culture, he has been the subject of serious television and
radio programmes; in 1984, a six-part documentary Sea of Faith: Television series
presented by Don Cupitt featured a programme on Kierkegaard, while on Maundy
Thursday in 2008, Kierkegaard was the subject of discussion of the BBC Radio 4
programme presented by Melvyn Bragg, In Our Time.

Kierkegaard predicted his posthumous fame, and foresaw that his work would become
the subject of intense study and research. In his journals, he wrote:

What the age needs is not a genius—it has had geniuses enough, but a martyr, who in
order to teach men to obey would himself be obedient unto death. What the age needs is
awakening. And therefore someday, not only my writings but my whole life, all the
intriguing mystery of the machine will be studied and studied. I never forget how God
helps me and it is therefore my last wish that everything may be to his honour.[144]

In 1784 Immanuel Kant challenged the thinkers of Europe to think for themselves.[145]

"Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a proportion of men, long after
nature has released them from alien guidance (natura-liter maiorennes), nonetheless
gladly remain in lifelong immaturity, and why it is so easy for others to establish
themselves as their guardians. It is so easy to be immature. If I have a book to serve as
my understanding, a pastor to serve as my conscience, a physician to determine my diet
for me, and so on, I need not exert myself at all. I need not think, if only I can pay: others
will readily undertake the irksome work for me. The guardians who have so benevolently
taken over the supervision of men have carefully seen to it that the far greatest part of
them (including the entire fair sex) regard taking the step to maturity as very dangerous,
not to mention difficult. Having first made their domestic livestock dumb, and having
carefully made sure that these docile creatures will not take a single step without the go-
cart to which they are harnessed, these guardians then show them the danger that
threatens them, should they attempt to walk alone. Now this danger is not actually so
great, for after falling a few times they would in the end certainly learn to walk; but an
example of this kind makes men timid and usually frightens them out of all further
attempts.

In 1854 Søren Kierkegaard wrote a note To “My Reader” of a similar nature.

When a man ventures out so decisively as I have done, and upon a subject moreover
which affects so profoundly the whole of life as does religion, it is to be expected of
course that everything will be done to counteract his influence, also by misrepresenting,
falsifying what he says, and at the same time his character will in every way be at the
mercy of men who count that hay have no duty towards him but that everything is
allowable. Now, as things commonly go in this world, the person attacked usually gets
busy at once to deal with every accusation, every falsification, every unfair statement,
and in this way is occupied early and late in counterattacking the attack. This I have no
intention of doing. ... I propose to deal with the matter differently, I propose to go rather
more slowly in counteracting all this falsification and misrepresentation, all these lies and
slanders, all the prate and twaddle. Partly because I learn from the New Testament that
the occurrence of such things is a sign that one is on the right road, so that obviously I
ought not to be exactly in a hurry to get rid of it, unless I wish as soon as possible to get
on the wrong road. And partly because I learn from the New Testament that what may
temporally be called a vexation, from which according to temporal concepts one might
try to be delivered, is eternally of value, so that obviously I ought not to be exactly in a
hurry to try to escape, if I do not wish to hoax myself with regard to the eternal. This is
the way I understand it; and now I come to the consequence which ensues for thee. If
thou really has ever had an idea that I am in the service of something true-well then,
occasionally there shall be done on my part what is necessary, but only what is strictly
necessary to thee, in order that , if thou wilt exert thyself and pay due attention, thou shalt
be able to withstand the falsifications and misrepresentations of what I say, and all the
attacks upon my character-but thy indolence, dear reader, I will not encourage. If thou
does imagine that I am a lackey, thou hast never been my reader; if thou really art my
reader, thou wilt understand that I regard it as my duty to thee that thou art put to some
effort, if thou art not willing to have the falsifications and misrepresentations, the lies and
slanders, wrest from thee the idea that I am in the service of something true. Attack Upon
Christianity, by Søren Kierkegaard, 1853-1854 Translated, with an Introduction and
Notes by Walter Lowrie, New Introduction by Howard A. Johnson, Princeton University
Press 1944, 1968 p. 95-96

[edit] Selected bibliography

For a complete bibliography, see List of works by Søren Kierkegaard

 (1841) On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates (Om

Begrebet Ironi med stadigt Hensyn til Socrates)
 (1843) Either/Or (Enten-Eller)
 (1843) Two Upbuilding Discourses, 1843
 (1843) Fear and Trembling (Frygt og Bæven)
 (1843) Three Upbuilding Discourses, 1843
 (1843) Repetition (Gjentagelsen)
 (1843) Four Upbuilding Discourses, 1843
 (1844) Two Upbuilding Discourses, 1844
 (1844) Three Upbuilding Discourses, 1844
 (1844) Philosophical Fragments (Philosophiske Smuler)
 (1844) The Concept of Anxiety (Begrebet Angest)
 (1844) Four Upbuilding Discourses, 1844
 (1845) Stages on Life's Way (Stadier paa Livets Vei)
 (1846) Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments
(Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift)
 (1847) Edifying Discourses in Diverse Spirits (Opbyggelige Taler i forskjellig
Aand), which included Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing
 (1847) Works of Love (Kjerlighedens Gjerninger)
 (1848) Christian Discourses (Christelige Taler)
  (1848) The Point of View of My Work as an Author "as good as finished" (IX A
293)
 (1849) The Sickness Unto Death (Sygdommen til Døden)
 (1849) Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays
 (1850) Practice in Christianity (Indøvelse i Christendom)

[edit] Notes
1. ^ This classification is anachronistic; Kierkegaard was an exceptionally unique thinker
and his works do not fit neatly into any one philosophical school or tradition, nor did he
identify himself with any. His works are considered precursor to many schools of thought
developed in the 20th and 21st centuries. See 20th century receptions in Cambridge
Companion to Kierkegaard.
2. ^ a b c (Hannay & Marino, 1997)
3. ^ The influence of Socrates can be seen in Kierkegaard's Sickness Unto Death and Works
of Love.
4. ^ (Gardiner, 1969)
5. ^ Point of View Lowrie p. 41, Practice in Christianity, Hong 1991 Chapter VI p. 233ff,
Works of Love IIIA p. 91ff
6. ^ a b (Duncan, 1976)
7. ^ Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments Hong p. 15-17, 555-610
Either/Or II p. 14, 58, 216-217, 250 Hong
8. ^ a b c (Ostenfeld & McKinnon, 1972)
9. ^ (Howland, 2006)
10. ^ Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Hong, 1992 p. 131
11. ^ Philosophical Fragments and Concluding Postscript both deal with objectively
demonstrated Christianity. It can't be done per SK.
12. ^ Works of Love 1847 Hong 1995 p. 145 See The Point of View of my Work as an
Author, 1848 by Walter Lowrie p. 133-134 for more about the single individual
13. ^ Johannes Climacus, by Søren Kierkegaard p. 17
14. ^ See David F. Swenson's 1921 biography of SK, p. 2, 13
15. ^ Concluding Unscientific Postscript p. 72ff Hong
16. ^ The Point of View of My Work as An Author: A Report to History, by Søren
Kierkegaard, written in 1848, published in 1859 by his brother Peter Kierkegaard
Translated with introduction and notes by Walter Lowrie, 1962 Harper Torchbooks p. 48-
49
17. ^ Søren Kierkegaard by Johannes Hohlenberg, translated by T.H. Croxall, Pantheon
Books, 1954 ISBN 53008941
18. ^ (Watkin, 2000)
19. ^ a b c d (Garff, 2005)
20. ^ Johannes Climacus, by Søren Kierkegaard p. 29
21. ^ Kierkegaard's Journals Gilleleie, August 1, 1835 Either/Or Vol II p. 361-362
22. ^ Johannes Climacus, by Søren Kierkegaard p. 22-23, 29-30, p. 32-33, 67-70, 74-76
23. ^ Point of View Lowrie 28-30
24. ^ Johannes Climacus, by Søren Kierkegaard p. 23
25. ^ Point of View Lowrie p. 89, Practice in Christianity p. 90-91
26. ^ see Malcolm Muggeridge The Third Testament
http://www.plough.com/ebooks/thirdtestament.html
27. ^ (Garff, 2005, p. 113); Also available in Encounters With Kierkegaard: A Life As Seen
by His Contemporaries, p. 225.
28. ^ Kierkegaard, by Josiah Thompson, Published by Alfred p. Knoff, inc, 1973 p. 14-15,
43-44 ISBN 0-394-47092-3
29. ^ Journals & Papers of Søren Kierkegaard IIA 11 August 1838
30. ^ (Bergmann, 1991, p. 2)
31. ^ Given the importance of the journals, references in the form of (Journals, XYZ) are
referenced from Dru's 1938 Journals. When known, the exact date is given; otherwise,
month and year, or just year is given.
32. ^ a b c d (Dru, 1938)
33. ^ (Conway & Gover, 2002, p.25)
34. ^ (Dru, 1938, p.221)
35. ^ (Søren Kierkegaard's Journals & Papers IA Gilleleie, August 1, 1835)
36. ^ (Dru, 1938, p. 354)
37. ^ Journals & Papers of Søren Kierkegaard IIA 11 August 1838
http://www.naturalthinker.net/trl/texts/Kierkegaard,Soren/JournPapers/II_A.html
38. ^ a b c (Hannay, 2003)
39. ^ Journals & Papers of Søren Kierkegaard IIIA 166
40. ^ Journals & Papers of Søren Kierkegaard IIA 11 May 13, 1839
41. ^ (Kierkegaard, 1989)
42. ^ Tristram Hunt, Marx's General: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels (Henry
Holt and Co., 2009: ISBN 0-8050-8025-2), pp. 45-46.
43. ^ Johannes Climacus: or. De omnibus dubitandum est, and A sermon. Translated, with an
assessment by T. H. Croxall 1958 B 4372 .E5 1958
44. ^ Kierkegaards notes on Schelling's work are included in Hong's 1989 translation of the
Concept of Irony
45. ^ Either/Or vol I, Swenson p. 9
46. ^ Either/Or Vol I Preface Swenson p. 3-6
47. ^ Either/Or Vol I Preface Swenson p. 7-8, also see Concluding Unscientific Postscript,
Hong, 1992 p. 555ff for a relationship of Religiousness A to Religiousness B
48. ^ Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, The Expectancy of Faith p. 9-10 Hong
49. ^ Fear and Trembling, Hong, 1983 Translator's introduction p. xiv
50. ^ Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Hong 1992 p. 243
51. ^ (Carlisle, 2006)
52. ^ (The Point of View of My Work as An Author: Lowrie p. 142-143)
53. ^ See also Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments Volume I, by
Johannes Climacus, edited by Søren Kierkegaard, Copyright 1846 – Edited and
Translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong 1992 Princeton University Press p.
251-300 for more on the Pseudonymous authorship.
54. ^ Journals & Papers of Søren Kierkegaard X 6 b 145 1851
55. ^ (Adorno, 1989)
56. ^ a b (Morgan)
57. ^ (Evans, 1996)
58. ^ POV Lowrie P. 133-134
59. ^ POV Lowrie p. 74-75
60. ^ Either/Or Vol I Swenson, p. 13-14
61. ^ (Malantschuk & Hong, 2003)
62. ^ Kierkegaard, Søren. Dialectical Result of a Literary Police Action in Essential
Kierkegaard.
63. ^ (Kierkegaard, 1978, pp. vii–xii)
64. ^ See Chapter VII of Søren Kierkegaard by David F Swensen below in Web p. 27-32 for
a fuller account of this affair
65. ^ (Kierkegaard, 2001, p. 86)
66. ^ a b c (Kierkegaard, 2001)
67. ^ The Crowd is Untruth |http://www.ccel.org/ccel/kierkegaard/untruth/files/untruth.html
68. ^ Works of Love Hong p. 44-60
69. ^ a b (Royal Library of Denmark, 1997)
70. ^ Point of View p. 20-24, 41-42, Concluding Unscientific Postscript Hong 1992 p. 251ff
71. ^ Practice in Christianity, Hong 1991 Editor's Preface
72. ^ Point of View 1962 Lowrie p. 6-9, 24, 30, 40, 49, 74-77, 89
73. ^ (Lowrie, 1968)
74. ^ Either/Or II Hong p. 171ff
75. ^ (Lowrie, 1962)
76. ^ For instance in "Hvad Christus dømmer om officiel Christendom.“ 1855.
77. ^ For instance: In Lindhardt: Vækkelser og Kirkelige Retninger i Danmark. Det Danske
Forlag 1951, the attack is coined as “pathological“. And in Danstrup and Koch's
Danmarks Historie it is called “sygeligt“ Vol. 11, p.398
78. ^ (Kierkegaard, 1998b)
79. ^ (Kirmmse, 2000)
80. ^ (Walsh, 2009)
81. ^ (Kierkegaard, 1999)
82. ^ (Dru, 1938, p. 429)
83. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l see the link to the text in section Web below
84. ^ http://www.archive.org/details/drskierkegaardm00hangoog
85. ^ (Hall, 1983)
86. ^ http://www.archive.org/details/srenkierkegaard00brangoog
87. ^ http://www.archive.org/stream/reminiscencesmy00brangoog#page/n110/mode/1up p.
98-108
88. ^ Friedrich Nietzsche, by George Brandes 1906 not in pd but online
89. ^ 1911 Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica/Søren Kierkegaard
90. ^ (Masugata, 1999)
91. ^ See "Selections from the writings of Kierkegaard" in external links below. Also
honorarium for Hollander http://www.utexas.edu/faculty/council/2000-
2001/memorials/SCANNED/hollander.pdf
92. ^ Buch des Richters: Seine Tagebücher 1833-1855, (8 volumes) Hermann Gottsched
(1905) the link is below in web
93. ^ a b (Bösl, 1997, p. 12)
94. ^ An independent English translation of selections/excerpts of Kierkegaard appeared in
1923 by Lee Hollander, and published by the University of Texas at Austin.
95. ^ See Michael J. Paulus, Jr. From A Publisher’s Point Of View: Charles Williams’s Role
In Publishing Kierkegaard In English -- online --
96. ^ Kierkegaard studies, with special reference to (a) the Bible (b) our own age. Thomas
Henry Croxall, Published: 1948 p. 16-18
97. ^ The Journals Of Kierkegaard (1958)
http://www.archive.org/details/journalsofkierke002379mbp
98. ^ (Stewart, 2009)
99. ^ (Bösl, 1997, p. 13)
100. ^ a b (Bösl, 1997, p. 14)
101. ^ The German Wikipedia has an article on Dialogphilosophie.
102. ^ (Bösl, 1997, p. 16-17)
103. ^ (Bösl, 1997, p. 17)
104. ^ Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, Notes to pages 190, 235, 338
105. ^ (Bösl, 1997, p. 19)
106. ^ (Beck, 1928)
107. ^ (Wyschogrod, 1954)
108. ^ (Jaspers, 1935)
109. ^ Audio recordings of Kaufmann's lectures http://www.archive.org/search.php?
query=walter%20kaufmann
110. ^ (Kangas, 1998)
111. ^ (McGrath, 1993, p. 202)
112. ^ (Westphal, 1997)
113. ^ (Oden, 2004)
114. ^ (MacKey, 1971)
115. ^ Kierkegaard is not an extreme subjectivist; he would not reject the importance
of objective truths.
116. ^ The Danish equivalent to the English phrase "leap of faith" does not appear in
the original Danish nor is the English phrase found in current English translations of
Kierkegaard's works. Kierkegaard does mention the concepts of "faith" and "leap"
together many times in his works. See Faith and the Kierkegaardian Leap in Cambridge
Companion to Kierkegaard.
117. ^ (Kierkegaard, 1992, pp. 21–57)
118. ^ (Kierkegaard, 1976, p. 399)
119. ^ Elsewhere, Kierkegaard uses the Faith/Offense dichotomy. In this dichotomy,
doubt is the middle ground between faith and taking offense. Offense, in his terminology,
describes the threat faith poses to the rational mind. He uses Jesus' words in Matthew
11:6: "And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me". In Practice in
Christianity, Kierkegaard writes: "Just as the concept of "faith" is an altogether
distinctively Christian term, so in turn is "offense" an altogether distinctively Christian
term relating to faith. The possibility of offense is the crossroad, or it is like standing at
the crossroad. From the possibility of offense, one turns either to offense or to faith, but
one never comes to faith except from the possibility of offense" (p. 80). In the footnote,
he writes, "in the works of some psuedonymous writers it has been pointed out that in
modern philosophy there is a confused discussion of doubt where the discussion should
have been about despair. Therefore one has been unable to control or govern doubt either
in scholarship or in life. "Despair," however, promptly points in the right direction by
placing the relation under the rubric of personality (the single individual) and the ethical.
But just as there is a confused discussion of "doubt instead of a discussion of "despair, "
So also the practice has been to use the category "doubt" where the discussion ought to be
about "offense." The relation, the relation of personality to Christianity, is not to doubt
or to believe, but to be offended or to believe. All modern philosophy, both ethically, and
Christianly, is based upon frivolousness. Instead of deterring and calling people to order
by speaking of being despairing and being offended, it has waved to them and invited
them to become conceited by doubting and having doubted. Modern philosophy, being
abstract, is floating in metaphysical indeterminateness. Instead of explaining this about
itself and then directing people (individual persons) to the ethical, the religious, the
existential, philosophy has given the appearance that people are able to speculate
themselves out of their own skin, as they so very prosaically say, into pure appearance."
(Practice in Christianity, trans. Hong 1991, p.80.) He writes that the person is either
offended that Christ came as a man, and that God is too high to be a lowly man who is
actually capable of doing very little to resist. Or Jesus, a man, thought himself too high to
consider himself God (blasphemy). Or the historical offense where God a lowly man
 comes into collision with an established order. Thus, this offensive paradox is highly
resistant to rational thought.
120. ^ (Pattison, 2005)
121. ^ (Kierkegaard, 1992)
122. ^ a b c (Sartre, 1946)
123. ^ (Dreyfus, 1998)
124. ^ (Westphal, 1996, p. 9)
125. ^ Emmanuel Levinas, Existence and Ethics, (1963) (as cited in Lippitt, 2003, p.
136)
126. ^ (Katz, 2001)
127. ^ (Hutchens, 2004)
128. ^ (Sartre, 1969, p. 430)
129. ^ Swinburne Richard, The Coherence of Theism
130. ^ (Stern, 1990)
131. ^ (Kosch, 1997)
132. ^ (Weston, 1994)
133. ^ (Hampson, 2004)
134. ^ Unamuno refers to Kierkegaard in his book The Tragic Sense of Life, Part IV,
In The Depths of the Abyss
http://www.archive.org/stream/thetragicsenseof00unamuoft#page/106/mode/1up
135. ^ a b (Creegan, 1989)
136. ^ (Popper, 2002)
137. ^ a b (Matustik & Westphal, 1995)
138. ^ (MacIntyre, 2001)
139. ^ (Rorty, 1989)
140. ^ (Pyle, 1999, p. 52-53)
141. ^ (McGee, 2006)
142. ^ (Updike, 1997)
143. ^ (Society for Christian Psychology)
144. ^ (Dru, 1938, p.224)
145. ^ see An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? (1784)
http://www.english.upenn.edu/~mgamer/Etexts/kant.html

[edit] References
[edit] Book

 Adorno, Theodor W. (1989). Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 0-8166-1186-6
 Angier, Tom. (2006). Either Kierkegaard/or Nietzsche: Moral Philosophy in a
New Key. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing. ISBN 0-7546-5474-5
 Beck, M. (1928). Referat und Kritik von M.Heidegger: Sein und Zeit, in:
Philosophische Hefte 1 7 (German)
 Bergmann, Samuel Hugo. (1991). Dialogical philosophy from Kierkegaard to
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 Kierkegaard, Søren. (1978). Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present
Age, A Literary Review, trans. by Howard and Edna Hong. Princeton: Princeton
University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-14076-6
 Kosch, Michelle. (1996). Freedom and reason in Kant, Schelling, and
Kierkegaard. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-928911-0
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Thought. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 0-631-19896-2
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  Pattison, George. (2005). The Philosophy of Kierkegaard. Montreal: McGill-
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Marx. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-29063-5
 Pyle, Andrew. (1999). Key philosophers in conversation: the Cogito interviews.
London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-18036-8
 Rorty, Richard. (1989). Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-36781-6
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Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel. ISBN 87-7421-963-4 (In Danish with synopsis in
English)
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 Staubrand, Jens. (2009). Søren Kierkegaard: International Bibliography Music
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 Stern, Kenneth. (1990). "Kierkegaard on Theistic Proof" in Religious Studies.
Cambridge, Vol. 26, p. 219-226.
 Stewart, Jon. (2009). Kierkegaard's International Reception, Vol. 8. Farnham,
Surrey: Ashgate Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7546-6496-3
 Updike, John. (1997). "Foreword" in The Seducer's Diary by Søren Kierkegaard.
Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01737-9
 Walsh, Sylvia. (2009). Kierkegaard: Thinking Christianly in an Existential Mode.
Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-920836-4
 Watkin, Julia. (2000). Kierkegaard. Continuum International Publishing Group,
ISBN 978-0-8264-5086-9
 Westfall, Joseph. (2007). The Kierkegaardian Author: Authorship and
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1-55753-089-9
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521-47719-0
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Existence London: Routledge.

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[edit] Audio

 Walter Kaufmann "Prof. Kaufmann discusses Sartre, Jaspers, Heidegger,

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 This page was last modified on 23 January 2011 at 20:42.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%B8ren_Kierkegaard
26 January 2011

Søren Kierkegaard
First published Tue Dec 3, 1996; substantive revision Fri May 8, 2009

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (b. 1813, d. 1855) was a profound and prolific writer in the
Danish “golden age” of intellectual and artistic activity. His work crosses the boundaries
of philosophy, theology, psychology, literary criticism, devotional literature and fiction.
Kierkegaard brought this potent mixture of discourses to bear as social critique and for
the purpose of renewing Christian faith within Christendom. At the same time he made
many original conceptual contributions to each of the disciplines he employed. He is
known as the “father of existentialism”, but at least as important are his critiques of Hegel
and of the German romantics, his contributions to the development of modernism, his
literary experimentation, his vivid re-presentation of biblical figures to bring out their
modern relevance, his invention of key concepts which have been explored and
redeployed by thinkers ever since, his interventions in contemporary Danish church
politics, and his fervent attempts to analyse and revitalise Christian faith.

 1. Kierkegaard's Life
 2. Kierkegaard's Rhetoric
 3. Kierkegaard's Aesthetics
 4. Kierkegaard's Ethics
 5. Kierkegaard's Religion
 6. Kierkegaard's Politics
 7. Chronology of Kierkegaard's Life and Works
 Bibliography
 Other Internet Resources
 Related Entries

1. Kierkegaard's Life
Kierkegaard led a somewhat uneventful life. He rarely left his hometown of Copenhagen,
and travelled abroad only five times — four times to Berlin and once to Sweden. His
prime recreational activities were attending the theatre, walking the streets of
Copenhagen to chat with ordinary people, and taking brief carriage jaunts into the
surrounding countryside. He was educated at a prestigious boys' school
(Borgerdydskolen), then attended Copenhagen University where he studied philosophy
and theology. His teachers at the university included F.C. Sibbern, Poul Martin Møller,
and H.L. Martensen.

Sibbern and Møller were both philosophers who also wrote fiction. The latter in
particular had a great influence on Kierkegaard's philosophico-literary development.
Martensen also had a profound effect on Kierkegaard, but largely in a negative manner.
Martensen was a champion of Hegelianism, and when he became Bishop Primate of the
Danish People's Church, Kierkegaard published a vitriolic attack on Martensen's
theological views. Kierkegaard's brother Peter, on the other hand, was an adherent of
Martensen and himself became a bishop in the church. Kierkegaard regarded Martensen
as one of his chief intellectual rivals. Martensen was only five years his senior, but was
already lecturing at Copenhagen University when Kierkegaard was a student there.
Martensen also anticipated Kierkegaard's first major literary project, by publishing a
book on Faust. Kierkegaard, who had been working up a project on the three great
medieval figures of Don Juan, Faust and Ahasuerus (the wandering Jew), abandoned his
own project when Martensen's book appeared, although he later incorporated much of the
work he had done into Either/Or.

Another very important figure in Kierkegaard's life was J.L. Heiberg, the doyen of
Copenhagen's literati. Heiberg, more than any other person, was responsible for
introducing Hegelianism into Denmark. Kierkegaard spent a good deal of energy trying
to break into the Heiberg literary circle, but desisted once he had found his own voice in
The Concept of Irony. Kierkegaard's first major publication, From the Papers of One Still
Living, is largely an attempt to articulate a Heibergian aesthetics - which is a modified
version of Hegel's aesthetics. In From the Papers of One Still Living, which is a critical
review of Hans Christian Andersen's novel Only A Fiddler, Kierkegaard attacks Andersen
for lacking life-development (Livs-Udvikling) and a life-view (Livs-Anskuelse) both of
which Kierkegaard deemed necessary for someone to be a genuine novelist
(Romandigter).

Kierkegaard's life is more relevant to his work than is the case for many writers. Much of
the thrust of his critique of Hegelianism is that its system of thought is abstracted from
the everyday lives of its proponents. This existential critique consists in demonstrating
how the life and work of a philosopher contradict one another. Kierkegaard derived this
form of critique from the Greek notion of judging philosophers by their lives rather than
simply by their intellectual artefacts. The Christian ideal, according to Kierkegaard, is
even more exacting since the totality of an individual's existence is the artefact on the
basis of which s/he is judged by God for h/er eternal validity. Of course a writer's work is
an important part of h/er existence, but for the purpose of judgement we should focus on
the whole life not just on one part.

In a less abstract manner, an understanding of Kierkegaard's biography is important for

an understanding of his writing because his life was the source of many of the
preoccupations and repetitions within his oeuvre. Because of his existentialist orientation,
most of his interventions in contemporary theory do double duty as means of working
through events from his own life. In particular Kierkegaard's relations to his mother, his
father, and his fiancée Regine Olsen pervade his work. Kierkegaard's pseudonym
Johannes Climacus says of Socrates that “his whole life was personal preoccupation with
himself, and then Governance comes and adds world-historical significance to it.”
Similarly, Kierkegaard saw himself as a “singular universal” whose personal
preoccupation with himself was transfigured by divine Governance into universal
significance.

Kierkegaard's relation to his mother is the least frequently commented upon since it is
invisible in his work. His mother does not rate a direct mention in his published works, or
in his diaries — not even on the day she died. However, for a writer who places so much
emphasis on indirect communication, and on the semiotics of invisibility, we should
regard this absence as significant. Johannes Climacus in Concluding Unscientific
Postscript remarks, “... how deceptive then, that an omnipresent being should be
recognisable precisely by being invisible.” Kierkegaard's mother, who was not well
educated, is represented in his writings by the mother-tongue (Danish). Kierkegaard was
deeply enamoured of the Danish language and worked throughout his writings to assert
the strengths of his mother-tongue over the invasive, imperialistic influences of Latin and
German. With respect to the former, Kierkegaard had to petition the king to be allowed to
write his philosophy dissertation On the Concept of Irony with constant reference to
Socrates in Danish. Even though permission was granted he was still required to defend
his dissertation publicly in Latin. Latin had been the pan-European language of science
and scholarship. In Denmark, in Kierkegaard's time, German language and culture were
at least as dominant as Latin in the production of knowledge. In defiance of this,
Kierkegaard revelled in his mother-tongue and created some of the most beautifully
poetic prose in the Danish language — including a paean to his mother-tongue in Stages
On Life's Way. In Repetition Constantin Constantius congratulates the Danish language
on providing the word for an important new philosophical concept, viz. Gjentagelse
(repetition), to replace the foreign word “mediation”. In general, the Danish language is
Kierkegaard's umbilical attachment to the mother whereas Latin and German represent
the law of the father, especially when employed in systematic scholarship (Videnskab).

The influence of Kierkegaard's father on his work has been frequently noted. Not only
did Kierkegaard inherit his father's melancholy, his sense of guilt and anxiety, and his
pietistic emphasis on the dour aspects of Christian faith, but he also inherited his talents
for philosophical argument and creative imagination. In addition Kierkegaard inherited
enough of his father's wealth to allow him to pursue his life as a freelance writer. The
themes of sacrificial father/son relationships, of inherited sin, of the burden of history,
and of the centrality of the “individual, human existence relationship, the old text, well
known, handed down from the fathers” (Postscript) are repeated many times in
Kierkegaard's oeuvre. The father's sense of guilt was so great (for having cursed God? for
having impregnated Kierkegaard's mother out of wedlock?) that he thought God would
punish him by taking the lives of all seven of his children before they reached the age of
34 (the age of Jesus Christ at his crucifixion). This was born out for all but two of the
children, Søren and his older brother Peter. Søren was astonished that they both survived
beyond that age. This may explain the sense of urgency that drove Kierkegaard to write
so prolifically in the years leading up to his 34th birthday.

Kierkegaard's (broken) engagement to Regine Olsen has also been the focus of much
scholarly attention. The theme of a young woman being the occasion for a young man to
become “poeticized” recurs in Kierkegaard's writings, as does the theme of the sacrifice
of worldly happiness for a higher (religious) purpose. Kierkegaard's infatuation with
Regine, and the sublimated libidinal energy it lent to his poetic production, were crucial
for setting his life course. The breaking of the engagement allowed Kierkegaard to devote
himself monastically to his religious purpose, as well as to establish his outsider status
(outside the norm of married bourgeois life). It also freed him from close personal
entanglements with women, thereby leading him to objectify them as ideal creatures, and
to reproduce the patriarchal values of his church and father.

2. Kierkegaard's Rhetoric
Kierkegaard's central problematic was how to become a Christian in Christendom. The
task was most difficult for the well-educated, since prevailing educational and cultural
institutions tended to produce stereotyped members of “the crowd” rather than to allow
individuals to discover their own unique identities. This problem was compounded by the
fact that Denmark had recently and very rapidly been transformed from a feudal society
into a capitalist society. Universal elementary education, large-scale migration from rural
areas into cities, and greatly increased social mobility meant that the social structure
changed from a rigidly hierarchical one to a relatively “horizontal” one. In this context it
became increasingly difficult to “become who you are” for two reasons: (i) social
identities were unusually fluid; and (ii) there was a proliferation of normalizing
institutions which produced pseudo-individuals.

Given this problematic in this social context Kierkegaard perceived a need to invent a
form of communication which would not produce stereotyped identities. On the contrary,
he needed a form of rhetoric which would force people back onto their own resources, to
take responsibility for their own existential choices, and to become who they are beyond
their socially imposed identities. In this undertaking Kierkegaard was inspired by the
figure of Socrates, whose incessant irony undermined all knowledge claims that were
taken for granted or unreflectively inherited from traditional culture. In his dissertation
On the Concept of Irony with constant reference to Socrates Kierkegaard argued that the
historical Socrates used his irony in order to facilitate the birth of subjectivity in his
interlocutors. Because they were constantly forced to abandon their pat answers to
Socrates' annoying questions, they had to begin to think for themselves and to take
individual responsibility for their claims about knowledge and value.

Kierkegaard sought to provide a similar service for his own contemporaries. He used
irony, parody, satire, humor, and deconstructive techniques in order to make
conventionally accepted forms of knowledge and value untenable. He was a gadfly —
constantly irritating his contemporaries with discomforting thoughts. He was also a
midwife — assisting at the birth of individual subjectivity by forcing his contemporaries
to think for themselves. His art of communication became “the art of taking away” since
he thought his audience suffered from too much knowledge rather than too little.

Hegelianism promised to make absolute knowledge available by virtue of a science of

logic. Anyone with the capacity to follow the dialectical progression of the purportedly
transparent concepts of Hegel's logic would have access to the mind of God (which for
Hegel was equivalent to the logical structure of the universe). Kierkegaard thought this to
be the hubristic attempt to build a new tower of Babel, or a scala paradisi — a dialectical
ladder by which humans can climb with ease up to heaven. Kierkegaard's strategy was to
invert this dialectic by seeking to make everything more difficult. Instead of seeing
scientific knowledge as the means of human redemption, he regarded it as the greatest
obstacle to redemption. Instead of seeking to give people more knowledge he sought to
take away what passed for knowledge. Instead of seeking to make God and Christian
faith perfectly intelligible he sought to emphasize the absolute transcendence by God of
all human categories. Instead of setting himself up as a religious authority, Kierkegaard
used a vast array of textual devices to undermine his authority as an author and to place
responsibility for the existential significance to be derived from his texts squarely on the
reader.

Kierkegaard distanced himself from his texts by a variety of devices which served to
problematize the authorial voice for the reader. He used pseudonyms in many of his
works (both overtly aesthetic ones and overtly religious ones). He partitioned the texts
into prefaces, forewords, interludes, postscripts, appendices. He assigned the
“authorship” of parts of texts to different pseudonyms, and invented further pseudonyms
to be the editors or compilers of these pseudonymous writings. Sometimes Kierkegaard
appended his name as author, sometimes as the person responsible for publication,
sometimes not at all. Sometimes Kierkegaard would publish more than one book on the
same day. These simultaneous books embodied strikingly contrasting perspectives. He
also published whole series of works simultaneously, viz. the pseudonymous works on
the one hand and on the other hand the Edifying Discourses published under his own
name.

All of this play with narrative point of view, with contrasting works, and with contrasting
internal partitions within individual works leaves the reader very disoriented. In
combination with the incessant play of irony and Kierkegaard's predilection for paradox
and semantic opacity, the text becomes a polished surface for the reader in which the
prime meaning to be discerned is the reader's own reflection. Christian faith, for
Kierkegaard, is not a matter of learning dogma by rote. It is a matter of the individual
repeatedly renewing h/er passionate subjective relationship to an object which can never
be known, but only believed in. This belief is offensive to reason, since it only exists in
the face of the absurd (the paradox of the eternal, immortal, infinite God being incarnated
in time as a finite mortal).

Kierkegaard's “method of indirect communication” was designed to sever the reliance of

the reader on the authority of the author and on the received wisdom of the community.
The reader was to be forced to take individual responsibility for knowing who s/he is and
for knowing where s/he stands on the existential, ethical and religious issues raised in the
texts.

While much of Kierkegaard's writing is presented indirectly, under various pseudonyms,

he did write some works under his own name. These works fall into three genres: (i)
deliberations; (ii) edifying discourses; and (iii) reviews. The point of indirect
communication is to position the reader to relate to the truth with appropriate passion,
rather than to communicate the truth as such. In a review, however, it is appropriate to be
objective, especially in drawing out a novel's life-view and life-development. A
deliberation [Overveielse], on the other hand, ought to be provocative, and turn the
reader's assumptions topsy-turvy. It draws on irony, the comic and is high-spirited, in
order to get thoughts into motion prior to action. A deliberation is a weighing-up, as a
propaedeutic to action. An edifying discourse [Opbyggelige Tale], by contrast, “rests in a
mood” and presupposes that the reader is already in faith. It seeks to build up the faith
that it presupposes. Typically Kierkegaard's Edifying Discourses invite “that single
individual, my reader” to dwell with a biblical passage for the sake of building up faith.

Kierkegaard's “inverted Christian dialectic” was designed not to make the word of God
easier to assimilate, but to establish more clearly the absolute distance that separates
human beings from God. This was in order to emphasize that human beings are
absolutely reliant on God's grace for salvation.

3. Kierkegaard's Aesthetics
Kierkegaard presents his pseudonymous authorship as a dialectical progression of
existential stages. The first is the aesthetic, which gives way to the ethical, which gives
way to the religious. The aesthetic stage of existence is characterized by the following:
immersion in sensuous experience; valorization of possibility over actuality; egotism;
fragmentation of the subject of experience; nihilistic wielding of irony and scepticism;
and flight from boredom.

The figure of the aesthete in the first volume of Either-Or is an ironic portrayal of
German romanticism, but it also draws on medieval characters as diverse as Don Juan,
Ahasverus (the wandering Jew), and Faust. It finds its most sophisticated form in the
author of “The Seducer's Diary”, the final section of Either-Or. Johannes the seducer is a
reflective aesthete, who gains sensuous delight not so much from the act of seduction but
from engineering the possibility of seduction. His real aim is the manipulation of people
and situations in ways which generate interesting reflections in his own voyeuristic mind.
The aesthetic perspective transforms quotidian dullness into a richly poetic world by
whatever means it can. Sometimes the reflective aesthete will inject interest into a book
by reading only the last third, or into a conversation by provoking a bore into an
apoplectic fit so that he can see a bead of sweat form between the bore's eyes and run
down his nose. That is, the aesthete uses artifice, arbitrariness, irony, and wilful
imagination to recreate the world in his own image. The prime motivation for the aesthete
is the transformation of the boring into the interesting.

This type of aestheticism is criticized from the point of view of ethics. It is seen to be
emptily self-serving and escapist. It is a despairing means of avoiding commitment and
responsibility. It fails to acknowledge one's social debt and communal existence. And it is
self-deceiving insofar as it substitutes fantasies for actual states of affairs.

But Kierkegaard did not want to abandon aesthetics altogether in favor of the ethical and
the religious. A key concept in the Hegelian dialectic, which Kierkegaard's
pseudonymous authorship parodies, is Aufhebung (sublation). In Hegel's dialectic, when
contradictory positions are reconciled in a higher unity (synthesis) they are both annulled
and preserved (aufgehoben). Similarly with Kierkegaard's pseudo-dialectic: the aesthetic
and the ethical are both annulled and preserved in their synthesis in the religious stage.
As far as the aesthetic stage of existence is concerned what is preserved in the higher
religious stage is the sense of infinite possibility made available through the imagination.
But this no longer excludes what is actual. Nor is it employed for egotistic ends.
Aesthetic irony is transformed into religious humor, and the aesthetic transfiguration of
the actual world into the ideal is transformed into the religious transubstantiation of the
finite world into an actual reconciliation with the infinite.

But the dialectic of the pseudonymous authorship never quite reaches the truly religious.
We stop short at the representation of the religious by a self-confessed humorist
(Johannes Climacus) in a medium which, according to Climacus's own account,
necessarily alienates the reader from true (Christian) faith. For faith is a matter of lived
experience, of constant striving within an individual's existence. According to Climacus's
metaphysics, the world is divided dualistically into the actual and the ideal. Language
(and all other media of representation) belong to the realm of the ideal. No matter how
eloquent or evocative language is it can never be the actual. Therefore, any representation
of faith is always suspended in the realm of ideality and can never be actual faith.

So the whole dialectic of the pseudonymous authorship is recuperated by the aesthetic by

virtue of its medium of representation. In fact Johannes Climacus acknowledges this
implicitly when at the end of Concluding Unscientific Postscript he revokes everything
he has said, with the important rider that to say something then to revoke it is not the
same as never having said it in the first place. His presentation of religious faith in an
aesthetic medium at least provides an opportunity for his readers to make their own leap
of faith, by appropriating with inward passion the paradoxical religion of Christianity into
their own lives.

As a poet of the religious Kierkegaard was always preoccupied with aesthetics. In fact,
contrary to popular misconceptions of Kierkegaard which represent him as becoming
increasingly hostile to poetry, he increasingly referred to himself as a poet in his later
years (all but one of over ninety references to himself as a poet in his journals date from
after 1847). Kierkegaard never claimed to write with religious authority, as an apostle.
His works represent both less religiously enlightened and more religiously enlightened
positions than he thought he had attained in his own existence. Such representations were
only possible in an aesthetic medium of imagined possibilities like poetry.

4. Kierkegaard's Ethics
Like the terms “aesthetic” and “religious”, the term “ethics” in Kierkegaard's work has
more than one meaning. It is used to denote both: (i) a limited existential sphere, or stage,
which is superseded by the higher stage of the religious life; and (ii) an aspect of life
which is retained even within the religious life. In the first sense “ethics” is synonymous
with the Hegelian notion of Sittlichkeit, or customary mores. In this sense “ethics”
represents “the universal”, or more accurately the prevailing social norms. The social
norms are seen to be the highest court of appeal for judging human affairs — nothing
outranks them for this sort of ethicist. Even human sacrifice is justified in terms of how it
serves the community, so that when Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia he is
regarded as a tragic hero since the sacrifice is required for the success of the Greek
expedition to Troy (Fear and Trembling).

Kierkegaard, however, does recognize duties to a power higher than social norms. Much
of Fear and Trembling turns on the notion that Abraham's would-be sacrifice of his son
Isaac is not for the sake of social norms, but is the result of a “teleological suspension of
the ethical”. That is, Abraham recognizes a duty to something higher than both his social
duty not to kill an innocent person and his personal commitment to his beloved son, viz.
his duty to obey God's commands.

But in order to arrive at a position of religious faith, which might entail a “teleological
suspension of the ethical”, the individual must first embrace the ethical (in the first
sense). In order to raise oneself beyond the merely aesthetic life, which is a life of drifting
in imagination, possibility and sensation, one needs to make a commitment. That is, the
aesthete needs to choose the ethical, which entails a commitment to communication and
decision procedures.

The ethical position advocated by Judge Wilhelm in “Equilibrium Between the Aesthetic
and the Ethical in the Composition of Personality” (Either-Or II) is a peculiar mix of
cognitivism and noncognitivism. The metaethics or normative ethics are cognitivist,
laying down various necessary conditions for ethically correct action. These conditions
include: the necessity of choosing seriously and inwardly; commitment to the belief that
predications of good and evil of our actions have a truth-value; the necessity of choosing
what one is actually doing, rather than just responding to a situation; actions are to be in
accordance with rules; and these rules are universally applicable to moral agents.

The choice of metaethics, however, is noncognitive. There is no adequate proof of the

truth of metaethics. The choice of normative ethics is motivated, but in a noncognitive
way. The Judge seeks to motivate the choice of his normative ethics through the
avoidance of despair. Here despair (Fortvivlelse) is to let one's life depend on conditions
outside one's control (and later, more radically, despair is the very possibility of despair
in this first sense). For Judge Wilhelm, the choice of normative ethics is a noncognitive
choice of cognitivism, and thereby an acceptance of the applicability of the conceptual
distinction between good and evil.

From Kierkegaard's religious perspective, however, the conceptual distinction between

good and evil is ultimately dependent not on social norms but on God. Therefore it is
possible, as Johannes de Silentio argues was the case for Abraham (the father of faith),
that God demand a suspension of the ethical (in the sense of the socially prescribed
norms). This is still ethical in the second sense, since ultimately God's definition of the
distinction between good and evil outranks any human society's definition. The
requirement of communicability and clear decision procedures can also be suspended by
God's fiat. This renders cases such as Abraham's extremely problematic, since we have
no recourse to public reason to decide whether he is legitimately obeying God's command
or whether he is a deluded would-be murderer. Since public reason cannot decide the
issue for us, we must decide for ourselves as a matter of religious faith.

5. Kierkegaard's Religion
Kierkegaard styled himself above all as a religious poet. The religion to which he sought
to relate his readers is Christianity. The type of Christianity that underlies his writings is a
very serious strain of Lutheran pietism informed by the dour values of sin, guilt,
suffering, and individual responsibility. Kierkegaard was immersed in these values in the
family home through his father, whose own childhood was lived in the shadow of
Herrnhut pietism in Jutland. Kierkegaard's father subsequently became a member of the
lay Congregation of Brothers [Brødremenighed] in Copenhagen, which he and his family
attended in addition to the sermons by Bishop J. P. Mynster.
For Kierkegaard Christian faith is not a matter of regurgitating church dogma. It is a
matter of individual subjective passion, which cannot be mediated by the clergy or by
human artefacts. Faith is the most important task to be achieved by a human being,
because only on the basis of faith does an individual have a chance to become a true self.
This self is the life-work which God judges for eternity.

The individual is thereby subject to an enormous burden of responsibility, for upon h/er
existential choices hangs h/er eternal salvation or damnation. Anxiety or dread (Angest) is
the presentiment of this terrible responsibility when the individual stands at the threshold
of momentous existential choice. Anxiety is a two-sided emotion: on one side is the dread
burden of choosing for eternity; on the other side is the exhilaration of freedom in
choosing oneself. Choice occurs in the instant (Øjeblikket), which is the point at which
time and eternity intersect — for the individual creates through temporal choice a self
which will be judged for eternity.

But the choice of faith is not made once and for all. It is essential that faith be constantly
renewed by means of repeated avowals of faith. One's very selfhood depends upon this
repetition, for according to Anti-Climacus, the self “is a relation which relates itself to
itself” (The Sickness Unto Death). But unless this self acknowledges a “power which
constituted it,” it falls into a despair which undoes its selfhood. Therefore, in order to
maintain itself as a relation which relates itself to itself, the self must constantly renew its
faith in “the power which posited it.” There is no mediation between the individual self
and God by priest or by logical system (contra Catholicism and Hegelianism
respectively). There is only the individual's own repetition of faith. This repetition of
faith is the way the self relates itself to itself and to the power which constituted it, i.e. the
repetition of faith is the self.

Christian dogma, according to Kierkegaard, embodies paradoxes which are offensive to

reason. The central paradox is the assertion that the eternal, infinite, transcendent God
simultaneously became incarnated as a temporal, finite, human being (Jesus). There are
two possible attitudes we can adopt to this assertion, viz. we can have faith, or we can
take offense. What we cannot do, according to Kierkegaard, is believe by virtue of
reason. If we choose faith we must suspend our reason in order to believe in something
higher than reason. In fact we must believe by virtue of the absurd.

Much of Kierkegaard's authorship explores the notion of the absurd: Job gets everything
back again by virtue of the absurd (Repetition); Abraham gets a reprieve from having to
sacrifice Isaac, by virtue of the absurd (Fear and Trembling); Kierkegaard hoped to get
Regine back again after breaking off their engagement, by virtue of the absurd
(Journals); Climacus hopes to deceive readers into the truth of Christianity by virtue of
an absurd representation of Christianity's ineffability; the Christian God is represented as
absolutely transcendent of human categories yet is absurdly presented as a personal God
with the human capacities to love, judge, forgive, teach, etc. Kierkegaard's notion of the
absurd subsequently became an important category for twentieth century existentialists,
though usually devoid of its religious associations.
According to Johannes Climacus, faith is a miracle, a gift from God whereby eternal truth
enters time in the instant. This Christian conception of the relation between (eternal) truth
and time is distinct from the Socratic notion that (eternal) truth is always already within
us — it just needs to be recovered by means of recollection (anamnesis). The condition
for realizing (eternal) truth for the Christian is a gift (Gave) from God, but its realization
is a task (Opgave) which must be repeatedly performed by the individual believer.
Whereas Socratic recollection is a recuperation of the past, Christian repetition is a
“recollection forwards” — so that the eternal (future) truth is captured in time.

Crucial to the miracle of Christian faith is the realization that over against God we are
always in the wrong. That is, we must realize that we are always in sin. This is the
condition for faith, and must be given by God. The idea of sin cannot evolve from purely
human origins. Rather, it must have been introduced into the world from a transcendent
source. Once we understand that we are in sin, we can understand that there is some
being over against which we are always in the wrong. On this basis we can have faith
that, by virtue of the absurd, we can ultimately be atoned with this being.

6. Kierkegaard's Politics
Kierkegaard is sometimes regarded as an apolitical thinker, but in fact he intervened
stridently in church politics, cultural politics, and in the turbulent social changes of his
time. His earliest published essay, for example, was a polemic against women's
liberation. It is a reactionary apologetic for the prevailing patriarchal values, and was
motivated largely by Kierkegaard's desire to ingratiate himself with factions within
Copenhagen's intellectual circles. This latter desire gradually left him, but his relation to
women remained highly questionable.

One of Kierkegaard's main interventions in cultural politics was his sustained attack on
Hegelianism. Hegel's philosophy had been introduced into Denmark with religious zeal
by J.L. Heiberg, and was taken up enthusiastically within the theology faculty of
Copenhagen University and by Copenhagen's literati. Kierkegaard, too, was induced to
make a serious study of Hegel's work. While Kierkegaard greatly admired Hegel, he had
grave reservations about Hegelianism and its bombastic promises. Hegel would have
been the greatest thinker who ever lived, said Kierkegaard, if only he had regarded his
system as a thought-experiment. Instead he took himself seriously to have reached the
truth, and so rendered himself comical.

Kierkegaard's tactic in undermining Hegelianism was to produce an elaborate parody of

Hegel's entire system. The pseudonymous authorship, from Either-Or to Concluding
Unscientific Postscript, presents an inverted Hegelian dialectic which is designed to lead
readers away from knowledge rather than towards it. This authorship simultaneously
snipes at German romanticism and contemporary Danish literati (with J.L. Heiberg
receiving much acerbic comment).

This intriguing pseudonymous authorship received little popular attention, aimed as it

was at the literary elite. So it had little immediate effect as discursive action. Kierkegaard
sought to remedy this by provoking an attack on himself in the popular satirical review
The Corsair. Kierkegaard succeeded in having himself mercilessly lampooned in this
publication, largely on personal grounds rather than in terms of the substance of his
writings. The suffering incurred by these attacks sparked Kierkegaard into another highly
productive phase of authorship, but this time his focus was the creation of positive
Christian discourses rather than satire or parody.

Eventually Kierkegaard became more and more worried about the direction taken by the
Danish People's Church, especially after the death of the Bishop Primate J.P. Mynster. He
realized he could no longer indulge himself in the painstakingly erudite and poetically
meticulous writing he had practised hitherto. He had to intervene decisively in a popular
medium, so he published his own pamphlet under the title The Instant. This addressed
church politics directly and increasingly shrilly.

There were two main foci of Kierkegaard's concern in church politics. One was the
influence of Hegel, largely through the teachings of H.L. Martensen; the other was the
popularity of N.F.S. Grundtvig, a theologian, educator and poet who composed most of
the pieces in the Danish hymn book. Grundtvig's theology was diametrically opposed to
Kierkegaard's in tone. Grundtvig emphasized the light, joyous, celebratory and communal
aspects of Christianity, whereas Kierkegaard emphasized seriousness, suffering, sin,
guilt, and individual isolation. Kierkegaard's intervention failed miserably with respect to
the Danish People's Church, which became predominantly Grundtvigian. His intervention
with respect to Hegelianism also failed, with Martensen succeeding Mynster as Bishop
Primate. Hegelianism in the church went on to die of natural causes.

Kierkegaard also provided critical commentary on social change. He was an untiring

champion of “the single individual” as opposed to “the crowd”. He feared that the
opportunity of achieving geniune selfhood was diminished by the social production of
stereotypes. He lived in an age when mass society was emerging from a highly stratified
feudal order and was contemptuous of the mediocrity the new social order generated. One
symptom of the change was that mass society substitutes detached reflection for engaged
passionate commitment. Yet the latter is crucial for Christian faith and for authentic
selfhood according to Kierkegaard.

Kierkegaard's real value as a social and political thinker was not realized until after his
death. His pamphleteering achieved little immediate impact, but his substantial
philosophical, literary, psychological and theological writings have had a lasting effect.
Much of Heidegger's very influential work, Being And Time, is indebted to Kierkegaard's
writings (though this goes unacknowledged by Heidegger). Kierkegaard's social realism,
his deep psychological and philosophical analyses of contemporary problems, and his
concern to address “the present age” were taken up by fellow Scandinavians Henrik Ibsen
and August Strindberg. Ibsen and Strindberg, together with Friedrich Nietzsche, became
central icons of the modernism movement in Berlin in the 1890s. The Danish literary
critic Georg Brandes was instrumental in conjoining these intellectual figures: he had
given the first university lectures on Kierkegaard and on Nietzsche; he had promoted
Kierkegaard's work to Nietzsche and to Strindberg; and he had put Strindberg in
correspondence with Nietzsche. Taking his cue from Brandes, the Swedish literary critic
Ola Hansson subsequently promoted this conjunction of writers in Berlin itself. Berlin
modernism self-consciously sought to use art as a means of political and social change. It
continued Kierkegaard's concern to use discursive action for social transformation.

7. Chronology of Kierkegaard's Life and Works

1813 born May 5 in Copenhagen (Denmark)
1830 matriculated to the university of Copenhagen
1834 mother died
1837 met Regine Olsen
1838 father died
- From the Papers of One Still Living. Published against his Will by S. Kierkegaard
(Af en endnu Levendes Papirer — Udgivet mod hans Villie af S. Kierkegaard)
1840 passed final theological examination
- proposed to Regine Olsen, who accepted him
1841 broke off his engagement to Regine Olsen
- defended his dissertation On the Concept of Irony with constant reference to
Socrates (Om Begrebet Ironi med stadigt Hensyn til Socrates)
- trip to Berlin, where he attended lectures by Schelling
1842 returned from Berlin
1843 Either-Or: A Fragment of Life edited by Victor Eremita (Enten-Eller. Et Livs-
Fragment, udgivet af Victor Eremita)
- second trip to Berlin
- Two Edifying Discourses by S. Kierkegaard (To opbyggelige Taler)
- Fear and Trembling: A Dialectical Lyric by Johannes de Silentio (Frygt og Bœven.
Dialektisk Lyrik af Johannes de Silentio)
- Repetition: A Venture in Experimenting Psychology by Constantin Constantius
(Gjentagelsen. Et Forsøg i den experimenterende Psychologi af Constantin
Constantius) (published the same day as Fear and Trembling)
- Three Edifying Discourses by S. Kierkegaard (Tre opbyggelige Taler)
- Four Edifying Discourses by S. Kierkegaard (Fire opbyggelige Taler)
1844 Two Edifying Discourses by S. Kierkegaard (To opbyggelige Taler)
- Three Edifying Discourses by S. Kierkegaard (Tre opbyggelige Taler)
- Philosophical Fragments or a Fragment of Philosophy by Johannes Climacus,
published by S. Kierkegaard (Philosophiske Smuler eller En Smule Philosophie. Af
 Johannes Climacus. Udgivet af S. Kierkegaard)
- The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically-Oriented Reflection on the
Dogmatic Problem of Original Sin by Vigilius Haufniensis (Begrebet Angest. En
simpel psychologisk-paapegende Overveielse i Retning of det dogmatiske Problem
om Arvesynden af Vigilius Haufniensis)
- Prefaces: Light Reading for Certain Classes as the Occasion may Require by
Nicolaus Notabene (Forord. Morskabslœsning for enkelte Stœnder efter Tid og
Lejlighed, af Nicolaus Notabene) (published on the same day as The Concept of
Anxiety)
- Four Edifying Discourses by S. Kierkegaard (Fire opbyggelige Taler)
1845 Three Addresses on Imagined Occasions by S. Kierkegaard (Tre Taler ved tœnkte
Leiligheder)
- Stages On Life's Way: Studies by Various Persons, compiled, forwarded to the
press, and published by Hilarious Bookbinder (Stadier paa Livets Vej. Studier af
Forskjellige. Sammenbragte, befordrede til Trykken og udgivne af Hilarius
Bogbinder)
- third trip to Berlin
- Eighteen Edifying Discourses by S. Kierkegaard (a collection of the remaindered
Edifying Discourses from 1843 and 1844)
- in an article in Fœdrelandet Frater Taciturnus (a character from Stages on Life's
Way) asked to be lambasted in The Corsair
1846 Kierkegaard lampooned in The Corsair
- Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments: A Mimetic-
Pathetic-Dialectic Compilation, An Existential Plea, by Johannes Climacus,
published by S. Kierkegaard (Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift til de
philosophiske Smuler. — Mimisk-pathetisk-dialektisk Sammenskrift, Existentielt
Indlœg, af Johannes Climacus. Udgiven af S. Kierkegaard)
- A Literary Review: “Two Ages” — novella by the author of “An Everyday Story”
— reviewed by S. Kierkegaard (En literair Anmeldelse af S. Kierkegaard)
1847 Edifying Discourses in Different Spirits by S. Kierkegaard (Opbyggelige Taler i
forskjellig Aand af S. Kierkegaard)
- Works of Love: Some Christian Reflections in the Form of Discourses by S.
Kierkegaard (Kjerlighedens Gjerninger. Nogle christelige Overveielser i Talers
Form, af S. Kierkegaard)
- Regine marries Fritz Schlegel
1848 Christian Discourses by S. Kierkegaard (Christelige Taler, af S. Kierkegaard)
- The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress by Inter et Inter (Krisen og en
Krise i en Skuespillerindes Liv af Inter et Inter)
- The Point of View for my Work as an Author: A Direct Communication, A Report
 to History (Synspunktet for min Forfatter-Virksomhed. En ligefrem Meddelelse,
Rapport til Historien, af S. Kierkegaard) (unpublished)
1849 second edition of Either-Or
- The Lilies of the Field and the Birds of the Air: Three devotional discourses by S.
Kierkegaard (Lilien paa Marken og Fuglen under Himlen. Tre gudelige Taler af S.
Kierkegaard)
- Two Ethico-Religious Treatises by H.H. (Tvende ethisk-religieuse Smaa-
Afhandlinger. Af H.H.)
- The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian psychological exposition for edification and
awakening by Anti-Climacus, edited by S. Kierkegaard (Sygdommen til Døden. En
christelig psychologisk Udvikling til Opvœkkelse. Af Anticlimacus. Udgivet af S.
Kierkegaard)
- “The High Priest” — “The Publican” — and “The Woman taken in Sin”: three
addresses at Holy Communion on Fridays by S. Kierkegaard (“Yppersteprœsten”
— “Tolderen” — “Synderinden”, tre Taler ved Altergangen om Fredagen. Af S.
Kierkegaard)
1850 Training in Christianity by Anti-Climacus, Nos. I, II, III, edited by S. Kierkegaard
(Indøvelse i Christendom. Af Anti-Climacus — Udgivet af S. Kierkegaard)
- An Edifying Discourse by S. Kierkegaard (En opbyggelig Tale. Af S. Kierkegaard)
1851 On My Activity As A Writer by S. Kierkegaard (Om min Forfatter-Virksomhed. Af
S. Kierkegaard)
- Two Discourses at Holy Communion on Fridays by S. Kierkegaard (To Taler ved
Altergangen om Fredagen)
- For Self-Examination: Recommended to the Contemporary Age by S. Kierkegaard
(Til Selvprøvelse, Samtiden anbefalet. Af S. Kierkegaard)
- Judge For Yourselves! Recommended to the present time for Self-Examination.
Second series, by S. Kierkegaard (Dømmer Selv! Til Selvprøvelse Samtiden
anbefalet. Anden Rœkke, af S. Kierkegaard) (published posthumously 1876)
1854 Bishop Mynster died
- Martensen appointed bishop
- “Was Bishop Mynster ‘a witness to the truth,’ one of ‘the true witnesses to the
truth’ — is this the truth?” by S. Kierkegaard in Fœdrelandet (“Var Biskop
Mynster et ‘Sandhedsvidne’, et af ‘de rette Sandhedsvidner’, er dette Sandhed?” Af
S. Kierkegaard) (the first of 21 articles in Fœdrelandet)
1855 This Must Be Said, So Let It Be Said, by S. Kierkegaard (Dette skal siges; saa vœre
det da sagt. Af S. Kierkegaard)
- The Instant by S. Kierkegaard (Øjeblikket. Af S. Kierkegaard)
- Christ's Judgement on Official Christianity by S. Kierkegaard (Hvad Christus
dømmer om officiel Christendom. Af S. Kierkegaard)
 - God's Unchangeability: A Discourse by S. Kierkegaard (Guds Uforanderlighed.
En Tale — Af S. Kierkegaard)
- Kierkegaard died November 11.

Bibliography
 Adorno, Theodor W., Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic,trans. Robert
Hullot-Kentor, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989.
 Agacinski, Sylviane, Aparté: Conceptions and Deaths of Søren Kierkegaard,
trans. Kevin Newmark, Tallahassee: Florida State University Press, 1988.
 Bigelow, Pat, Kierkegaard & The Problem Of Writing, Tallahassee: Florida State
University Press, 1987.
 Billeskov Jansen, F.J., Studier i Søren Kierkegaards litterœre Kunst, Copenhagen:
Rosenkilde & Bagger, 1951.
 Bloom, Harold (ed.), Søren Kierkegaard, New York: Chelsea House Publishers,
1989.
 Brandes, Georg, Søren Kierkegaard. En kritisk Fremstilling i Grundrids,
Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1877.
 Derrida, Jacques, The Gift of Death, trans. David Wills, Chicago & London:
University of Chicago Press, 1995.
 Diderichsen, Adam, Den Sårede Odysseus: Kierkegaard og subjektivitetens
genese, København: Hans Reitzels Forlag, 1998.
 Dooley, Mark, The Politics of Exodus: Kierkegaard's ethics of responsibility,
New York: Fordham University Press, 2001.
 Ferguson, Harvie, Melancholy and the Critique of Modernity: Søren
Kierkegaard's Religious Psychology, London & New York: Routledge, 1995.
 Ferreira, M. Jamie, Transforming Vision: Imagination and Will in
Kierkegaardian Faith, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.
 Ferreira, M. Jamie, Love's Grateful Striving: A Commentary on Kierkegaard's
Works of Love, Oxford University Press, 2001.
 Garff, Joachim, Den søvnløse: Kierkegaard lœst æstetisk/biografisk, Copenhagen:
C.A.Reitzels Forlag, 1995.
 Garff, Joachim, SAK: Søren Aabye Kierkegaard: en biografi, København: Gad,
2000.
 Grøn, Arne, The Concept of Anxiety in Søren Kierkegaard, translated by Jeanette
B.L. Knox, Macon: Mercer University Press, 2008.
 Grøn, Arne, Subjektivitet og negativitet: Kierkegaard, Copenhagen: Gyldendal,
1997.
 Hall, Ronald L., Word and Spirit: A Kierkegaardian Critique of the Modern Age,
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.
 Hannay, Alastair, Kierkegaard, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982.
 Henriksen, Aage, Kierkegaards Romaner, Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1954.
 Houe, Poul, Gordon D. Marino, & Sven Hakon Rossel (eds), Anthropology and
Authority: Essays on Søren Kierkegaard, Amsterdam-Atlanta, GA: Editions
Rodopi B.V., 2000.
 Jegstrup, Elsebet (ed.), The New Kierkegaard, Bloomington and Indianapolis:
Indiana University Press, 2004.
 Kirmmse, Bruce H., Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark, Bloomington: Indiana
State University Press, 1990.
 Kirmmse, Bruce H.(ed.), Encounters with Kierkegaard: A Life as Seen by His
Contemporaries , trans. Bruce H. Kirmmse &n Virginia R. Laursen, Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996.
 Lippitt, John, Humour and Irony in Kierkegaard's Thought , London: Macmillan
& New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000.
 Lowrie, Walter, Kierkegaard, 2 volumes, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1962.
 Mackey, Louis, Points of View: Readings of Kierkegaard, Tallahassee: Florida
State University Press, 1986.
 Malantschuk, Gregor, Frihed og Eksistens. Studier i Søren Kierkegaards
tœnkning, Copenhagen: C.A.Reitzels Forlag, 1980.
 Malik, Habib C., Receiving Søren Kierkegaard: The Early Impact and
Transmission of His Thought , Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of
America Press, 1997.
 Matustík, Martin J., Postnational Identity: Critical Theory and Existential
Philosophy in Habermas, Kierkegaard, and Havel, New York & London: The
Guilford Press, 1993.
 Mulhall, Stephen, Inheritance and Originality: Wittgenstein, Heidegger,
Kierkegaard, Oxford University Press, 2001.
 Nordentoft, Kresten, Kierkegaard's Psychology, trans. Bruce H. Kirmmse,
Pittsburgh, Pa.: Duquesne University Press, 1978.
 Pattison, George, Kierkegaard: The Aesthetic and the Religious, London:
Macmillan, 1992.
 Pattison, George, & Stephen Shakespeare (eds), Kierkegaard: the self in society,
New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998.
 Pojman, Louis, The Logic of Subjectivity, University of Alabama Press, 1984.
 Rée, Jonathan, & Jane Chamberlain (eds), Kierkegaard: A Critical Reader ,
Oxford: Blackwell, 1998.
 Roos, Carl, Kierkegaard og Goethe, Copenhagen: Gads Forlag, 1955.
 Rudd, Anthony, Kierkegaard and the Limits of the Ethical , Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1993.
 Schleifer, Ronald, & Robert Markley(eds), Kierkegaard and Literature: Irony,
Repetition, and Criticism, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984.
 Scopetea, Sophia, Kierkegaard og grœciteten: en kamp med ironi , Kœbenhavn:
C.A. Reitzel, 1995.
 Stewart, Jon (ed.), Kierkegaard's International Reception Tome III: The Near
East, Asia, Australia And The Americas, Ashgate, 2009.
 Taylor, Mark C., Journeys to Selfhood: Hegel & Kierkegaard, Berkeley, Los
Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1980.
 Theunissen, Michael, Kierkegaard's Concept of Despair, translated by Barbara
Harshav and Helmut Illbruck, Princeton University Press, 2005.
 Viallaneix, Nelly, Écoute, Kierkegaard: Essai sur la communication de la parole,
2 volumes, Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1979.
  Walsh, Sylvia, Living Poetically: Kierkegaard's Existential Aesthetics, University
Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994.
 Walsh, Sylvia, Living Christianly: Kierkegaard's Dialectic of Christian Existence,
Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005.
 Watkin, Julia, Historical Dictionary of Kierkegaard's Philosophy , Lanham,
Maryland & London: The Scarecrow Press, 2001.
 Weston, Michael, Kierkegaard and Modern Continental Philosophy, London:
Routledge, 1994.
 Westphal, Merold & Martin J. Matustik, Kierkegaard in Post/Modernity,
Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995.

Other Internet Resources

 Søren Kierkegaard Forskningscenteret
 International Kierkegaard Information
 The Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong Kierkegaard Library
 Royal Library Denmark Kierkegaard Manuscripts
 The Literary Encyclopedia entry on Kierkegaard
 Kierkegaard en español, at Universidad Iberoamericana

Related Entries
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich | individuals | personal identity | Socrates

Copyright © 2009 by
William McDonald <wmcdonal@metz.une.edu.au>
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kierkegaard/
26 January 2011

Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

 Søren Kierkegaard is an outsider in the history of
philosophy. His peculiar authorship comprises a baffling array of different narrative
points of view and disciplinary subject matter, including aesthetic novels, works of
psychology and Christian dogmatics, satirical prefaces, philosophical “scraps” and
“postscripts,” literary reviews, edifying discourses, Christian polemics, and retrospective
self-interpretations. His arsenal of rhetoric includes irony, satire, parody, humor, polemic
and a dialectical method of “indirect communication” – all designed to deepen the
reader’s subjective passionate engagement with ultimate existential issues. Like his role
models Socrates and Christ, Kierkegaard takes how one lives one’s life to be the prime
criterion of being in the truth. Kierkegaard’s closest literary and philosophical models are
Plato, J.G. Hamann, G.E. Lessing, and his teacher of philosophy at the University of
Copenhagen Poul Martin Møller, although Goethe, the German Romantics, Hegel, Kant
and the logic of Adolf Trendelenburg are also important influences. His prime theological
influence is Martin Luther, although his reactions to his Danish contemporaries N.F.S.
Grundtvig and H.L. Martensen are also crucial. In addition to being dubbed “the father of
existentialism,” Kierkegaard is best known as a trenchant critic of Hegel and Hegelianism
and for his invention or elaboration of a host of philosophical, psychological, literary and
theological categories, including: anxiety, despair, melancholy, repetition, inwardness,
irony, existential stages, inherited sin, teleological suspension of the ethical, Christian
paradox, the absurd, reduplication, universal/exception, sacrifice, love as a duty,
seduction, the demonic, and indirect communication.

Table of Contents

1. Life (1813-55)
1. Father and Son: Inherited Melancholy
2. Regina Olsen: The Sacrifice of Love
3. The Master of Irony and the Seductions of Writing
4. The “Authorship”: From Melancholy to Humor
5. The “Second Authorship”: Self-Sacrifice, Love, Despair, and the God-
Man
6. The Attack on the Danish People’s Church
 2. The “Aesthetic Authorship”
1. On the Concept of Irony and Either/Or
2. Fear and Trembling and Repetition
3. Philosophical Fragments, The Concept of Anxiety, and Prefaces
4. Stages on Life’s Way and Concluding Unscientific Postscript
3. The Edifying Discourses
1. Sermons, Deliberations, and Edifying Discourses
2. Direct and Indirect Communication
3. That Single Individual, My Reader
4. The “Second Authorship”
1. Works of Love
2. Anti-Climacus
3. The Attack on the Church
5. References and Further Reading

1. Life (1813-55)
a. Father and Son: Inherited Melancholy

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was born on May 5th 1813 in Copenhagen. He was the seventh
and last child of wealthy hosier, Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard and Ane Sørensdatter
Lund, a former household servant and distant cousin of Michael Kierkegaard. This was
Michael Kierkegaard’s second marriage, which came within a year of his first wife’s
death and four months into Ane Lund’s first pregnancy. Michael Kierkegaard was a
deeply melancholic man, sternly religious and carried a heavy burden of guilt, which he
imposed on his children. Søren Kierkegaard often lamented that he had never had a
childhood of carefree spontaneity, but that he had been “born old.” As a starving
shepherd boy on the Jutland heath Michael had cursed God. His surname derived from
the fact that his family was indentured to the parish priest, who provided a piece of the
church (Kirke) farm (Gaard) for the family’s use. The name Kirkegaard (in older spelling
Kierkegaard) more commonly means ‘churchyard’ or ‘cemetery.’ A sense of doom and
death seemed to hover over Michael Kierkegaard for most of his 82 years. Although his
material fortunes soon turned around dramatically, he was convinced that he had brought
a curse on his family and that all his children were doomed to die by the age attained by
Jesus Christ (33). Of Michael’s seven children, only Peter Christian and Søren Aabye
survived beyond this age.

At age 12 Michael Kierkegaard was summoned to Copenhagen to work for his uncle as a
journeyman in the cloth trade. Michael turned out to be an astute businessman and by the
age of 24 had his own flourishing business. He subsequently inherited his uncle’s fortune,
and augmented his wealth by some felicitous investments during the state bankruptcy of
1813 (the year, as Søren later put it, in which so many bad notes were put into
circulation). Michael retired young and devoted himself to the study of theology,
philosophy and literature. He bequeathed to his surviving sons Peter and Søren not only
material wealth, but also supremely sharp intellect, a fathomless sense of guilt, and a
relentless burden of melancholy. Although his father was wealthy, Søren was brought up
rather stringently. He stood out at school because of his plain, unfashionable apparel and
spindly stature. He learned to avoid teasing only by honing a caustic wit and a canny
appreciation of other people’s psychological weaknesses. He was sent to one of
Copenhagen’s best schools, The School of Civic Virtue [Borgerdydskolen], to receive a
classical education. More than twice as much time was devoted to Latin in this school
than to any other subject. Søren distinguished himself academically at school, especially
in Latin and history, though according to his classmates he struggled with Danish
composition. This became a real problem later, when he tried desperately to break into
the Danish literary scene as a writer. His early publications were characterized by
complex Germanic constructions and excessive use of Latin phrases. But eventually he
became a master of his mother tongue, one of the two great stylists of Danish in his time,
together with Hans Christian Andersen. Kierkegaard’s father is a constant presence in his
authorship. He appears in stories of sacrifice, of inherited melancholy and guilt, as the
archetypal patriarch, and even in explicit dedications at the beginning of several edifying
discourses. Kierkegaard’s mother, on the other hand, never gets a mention in any of the
writings – not even in his journal on the day of her death. His mother-tongue, though, is
omnipresent. If we conjoin this fact with the remark in Concluding Unscientific
Postscript (1846) that “… an omnipresent person should be recognizable precisely by
being invisible,” we could speculate that the mother is even more present than the father,
pervading all but the foreign language insertions in the texts. But whether or not there is
any substance in this speculation, the invisibility of the mother and the treatment of
women in general are indicative of Kierkegaard’s uneasy relationship with the opposite
sex.

b. Regina Olsen: The Sacrifice of Love

Søren drifted into the study of theology at the University of Copenhagen, but soon
broadened his study to include philosophy and literature. He started rather desultorily,
and enjoyed a relatively dissolute time, even aspiring to cut the figure of a dandy. He ran
up debts, which his father reluctantly paid, but eventually knuckled down to finish his
degree when his father died in 1838. It seemed he was destined for a life as a pastor in the
Danish People’s Church. In 1840, just before he enrolled at the Pastoral Seminary, he
became engaged to Regina Olsen. This engagement was to form the basis of a great
literary love story, propagated by Kierkegaard through his published writings and his
journals. It also provided an occasion for Kierkegaard to define himself further as an
outsider. For several years (at least since 1835) Kierkegaard had been dabbling with the
idea of becoming a writer. The wealth he had inherited from his father enabled him to
support himself comfortably without the need to work for a living. But it was not really
enough to support a wife, let alone a wife and children. Furthermore, Kierkegaard
harbored an undisclosed secret, something dark and personal, which he thought it his
duty to confide to a wife, but which he dared not. Whether it was some sexual
indiscretion, an inherited sexual disease, his innate melancholy, an egotistical mania to
become a writer, or something else, we can only speculate. But when it came to the
crunch, it seemed sufficient to make him break off the engagement rather than to reveal it
to Regina. Thereafter, Kierkegaard frequently used marriage as a trope for “the universal”
– especially for the universal demands made by social mores. Correlatively, becoming an
“exception” was both a task and constantly in need of justification. The tortuous dialectic
of universal and exception, worked out in terms of the sacrifices of love, subsequently
informs much of Either/Or, Repetition, Fear and Trembling, Prefaces, and Stages on
Life’s Way. A frequent foil for the trope of marriage as the universal is the figure of a
young man “poeticized” by a broken engagement, who thereby becomes “an exception.”
Only when the young man is “poeticized” in the direction of the religious, however, is
there any question of his being a “justified exception.” Kierkegaard’s ultimate
justification for breaking off his own engagement was his dedication to a life of writing
as a religious poet, under the direction of divine Governance. As a measure of the
importance the relationship to Regina had for his life, Kierkegaard adapted a line from
Virgil’s Aeneid II,3 as “a motto for part of his life’s suffering”: Infandum me jubes
Regina renovare dolorem (“Queen [Regina], the sorrow you bid me revive is
unspeakable”).

c. The Master of Irony and the Seductions of Writing

During the period of his engagement Kierkegaard was also busy writing his Master’s
dissertation in philosophy, On the Concept of Irony: with constant reference to Socrates
(1841). This was later automatically converted to a doctorate (1854). Kierkegaard had
petitioned the king to write his dissertation in Danish – only the third such request to be
granted. Usually academic dissertations had to be written and defended in Latin.
Kierkegaard was allowed to write his dissertation in Danish, but had to condense it into a
series of theses in Latin, to be defended publicly in Latin, before the degree would be
awarded. Almost immediately after his dissertation defense, Kierkegaard broke off his
engagement to Regina. He then undertook the first of four journeys to Berlin – his only
trips abroad apart from a brief trip to Sweden. During this first trip to Berlin Kierkegaard
completed most of the first volume of Either/Or (much of the second volume already
having been completed).

Throughout the second half of the 1830s Kierkegaard had aspired to become part of the
pre-eminent literary set in Copenhagen. This centered on Professor J.L. Heiberg,
playwright, philosopher, aesthetician, journal publisher, and doyen of Copenhagen’s
literati. Heiberg had been credited with introducing Hegel’s philosophy to Denmark,
though in fact there had already been lectures on Hegel by the Norwegian philosopher
Henrik Steffens among others. Nevertheless, the fact that Heiberg gave Hegel’s work his
imprimatur accelerated its acceptance into mainstream Danish intellectual life. By the end
of the 1830s Hegelianism dominated Copenhagen’s philosophy, theology and aesthetics.
Of course this engendered some resistance, including that from Kierkegaard’s professors
of philosophy F.C. Sibbern and Poul Martin Møller. One of Hegelianism’s most
illustrious local exponents was Kierkegaard’s archrival H.L. Martensen (professor of
theology at Copenhagen University, later Bishop Primate of the Danish People’s
Church). Martensen, just five years senior to Kierkegaard, was firmly entrenched in the
Heiberg literary set, and anticipated at least one of Kierkegaard’s pet literary projects –
an analysis of the figure of Faust. In his journals, as part of his practice at becoming a
writer, Kierkegaard had been fascinated with three great literary figures from the Middle
Ages, who he thought embodied the full range of modern aesthetic types. These figures
were Don Juan, Faust, and the Wandering Jew. They embodied sensuality, doubt and
despair respectively. Martensen’s publication on Faust pre-empted Kierkegaard’s
budding literary project, though the latter eventually found expression in the first volume
of Either/Or (1843). Meanwhile, Kierkegaard continued to seek Heiberg’s seal of
approval. His first major breakthrough was an address to the University of Copenhagen’s
Student Association on the issue of freedom of the press. This was a satirical
conservative riposte to a previous address in favor of more liberal press laws, and was the
first broadside by Kierkegaard in a long career of lambasting the popular press, especially
insofar as it supported political agitation for democracy. In this instance, however, it
seemed motivated more by a desire to showcase his wit and erudition than by any deeper
engagement with the political issues. The freedom of the press had been severely
undermined by King Frederik VI’s ordinance of 1799, and was threatened with full
censorship by his press legislation of 1834. The Society for the Proper Use of Press
Freedom was formed in 1835 to combat this development. Kierkegaard followed up his
speech with an article in Heiberg’s paper, The Copenhagen Flying Post (1836). The
article, published pseudonymously, was so clever and polished that some people mistook
it for the work of Heiberg himself. This amounted to his calling card for invitation to the
Heiberg literary salon. Kierkegaard followed this with further pseudonymous articles on
the same topic. But his first monograph was a 70-page review of Hans Christian
Andersen’s novel, Only a Fiddler. This too was a strategic move to break into the inner
sanctum of Heiberg’s circle. Andersen was emerging as a major talent in Danish letters,
having published poetry, plays and two novels, which had almost immediately been
translated into German. Only a Fiddler was on a topic dear to Kierkegaard’s heart –
genius. Andersen’s prime claim was that genius needs nurturing, and can succumb to
circumstance and disappear without trace. Kierkegaard, in his book-length review From
the Papers of One Still Living (1838), disagreed stridently, maintaining that the spark of
genius could never be extinguished, but only augmented by adversity. Furthermore, he
developed a theory of the novel in which he asserted that to be worth its salt, a novel had
to be informed by a “life-view” and a “life-development.” He criticized Andersen’s novel
for its dependence on contingent features from Andersen’s own life, rather than being
transfigured by a mature philosophy of life with clarity of purpose. He contrasted
Andersen’s novel unfavorably in this respect with the novel by Heiberg’s mother,
Thomasine Gyllembourg, A Story of Everyday Life. Kierkegaard was to return to
Gyllembourg as a novelist in his review of her Two Ages in A Literary Review (1846). He
was also to write a review of the work of Heiberg’s wife Louise, Denmark’s leading
actress, in The Crisis and A Crisis in the Life of an Actress (1848).

d. The “Authorship”: From Melancholy to Humor

Neither the articles in Heiberg’s papers, nor the monograph on Andersen as novelist had
gained Kierkegaard secure membership of Heiberg’s circle – though he was an
occasional visitor there. With the breaking of his engagement to Regina, the completion
of a major academic book (The Concept of Irony), his decision to devote himself to
writing, and the trip to Berlin both to audit Schelling’s lectures (along with Karl Marx,
Jacob Burckhardt and other luminaries) and to concentrate on his new literary project
(Either/Or), Kierkegaard was about to embark on what he later, retrospectively, called his
“authorship.” This was eventually to comprise all the “aesthetic” pseudonymous works
from Victor Eremita’s Either/Or to Johannes Climacus’s Concluding Unscientific
Postscript, the Edifying Discourses under Kierkegaard’s own name (up to 1846), and
Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age: A Literary Review (by S.
Kierkegaard). In short, these were the works published between Kierkegaard’s first and
final visits to Berlin.

Either/Or burst upon the Copenhagen reading public with great force. It was immediately
understood to be a major literary event. It was also regarded as scandalous by some, since
its first volume portrayed the cynical, bored aestheticism of the modern flâneur,
culminating in “The Seducer’s Diary.” Many, including Heiberg, took this to be a thinly
disguised account of Kierkegaard’s own treatment of Regina Olsen. Most of the reviews,
including Heiberg’s, concentrated on the scurrilous content of the first volume of the
book. But other reviews read the two-volume work as a whole, and discovered the
edifying and ethical framework in which the aesthetic point of view was to be assessed.
Nevertheless, Heiberg’s review deeply offended Kierkegaard, and marked the point at
which his relationship to Heiberg changed from aspiring associate to embittered critic.
Hereafter in the “authorship” Heiberg became the target of unrelenting satire. He and
Martensen were the main representatives of Danish Hegelianism, which is attacked at
various points in the “authorship” – particularly in Prefaces (1844) and in Concluding
Unscientific Postscript. It is worth noting that Hegel himself comes in for much less
criticism, and much more positive endorsement, in Kierkegaard’s work than is commonly
assumed. It is the Christian Hegelianism of Danish intellectuals that is the main target of
his critiques. The “authorship” comprises two parallel series of texts. On the one hand are
the pseudonymous works, which purportedly follow a dialectical trajectory of existential
“stages” from the aesthetic, through the ethical, to the religious, and ultimately to the
paradoxical religious stage of Christian faith. On the other hand are the Edifying
Discourses, which are published under Kierkegaard’s own name, which resemble
sermons on biblical texts, and which are addressed to a readership already presumed to be
Christian. The pseudonymous authorship starts with an existential type modeled on the
German Romantic aesthete – the ironic, urbane flâneur whose main concern is to avoid
boredom and to maintain a cerebral spectator’s interest in life and its sensuous pleasures.
Ironically, this aesthete is beset with melancholy. His greatest happiness is his
unhappiness, as the section of Either/Or entitled “The Unhappiest One” concludes.
Although boredom is stated to be the negative motivation for the aesthete’s actions, at a
deeper level we can discern that it is escape from melancholy and despair that are the real
motivators. As part of the dialectical framework of the “authorship,” Kierkegaard says
there are also intermediate states between the discrete existential stages. These he calls
“confinia” or border areas. Between the aesthetic and ethical stages lies the confinium of
irony. Between the ethical and religious stages lies the confinium of humor. Humor is
defined as “irony to a higher power” – so it does not wear its meaning on its sleeve. It is
also to be understood as an inclusive, magnanimous state of affirming “both/and” (both
the aesthetic and the ethical, both the tragic and the comic) rather than the ethically
exclusive “either/or.” The author of Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Johannes
Climacus is a self-professed “humorist” in this sense. Although he purports to give the
reader the truth about Christianity, he also “revokes” all he has said in that book. The
religious humorist purports to go beyond the aesthetic and the ethical by choosing the
religious exclusively, yet by virtue of the absurd, gets the aesthetic and the ethical back
again within the religious. In terms of his own psychological economy, Kierkegaard
seems to have been struggling to lose his melancholy and have it at the same time. It
seems to have served him as an essential motor of aesthetic productivity, but was also a
constant source of suffering from which he sought escape. For a long time Kierkegaard
reconciled himself to his life of aesthetic self-indulgence as an author with the idea that it
was all for a limited time. Once his “authorship’ was complete, he would retire from
writing and become a country pastor ministering to the souls of simple folk. Authorship
was both a demonic temptation and a means of self-justification as an exception to the
universal demands of society’s ethics. But just as he was on the point of completing the
“authorship,” Kierkegaard managed to provoke an attack on himself by the press, which
demanded further work as an author in response.

e. The “Second Authorship”: Self-Sacrifice, Love, Despair, and the God-

Man

Kierkegaard provoked an attack on himself by the journal The Corsair. The journal,
edited by the talented Jewish author Meïr Goldschmidt, specialized in ruthless satirical
attacks on contemporary Danish authors. Yet, perhaps because of the esteem in which
Goldschmidt held him, Kierkegaard had been spared. Kierkegaard found this favorable
treatment offensive (partly out of vanity, ostensibly because of his ongoing critique of the
press’s influence on public opinion). So he publicly challenged The Corsair to do its
worst. It did. It launched a series of attacks on Kierkegaard, more personal than literary,
and focused on his odd appearance and his relationship with Regina. In some wicked
caricatures it portrayed him with one trouser leg shorter than the other, with a sway back,
and riding on a woman’s (Regina’s) back with stick in hand. These caricatures made a
laughing stock of Kierkegaard in Copenhagen, to the extent that he was mocked in the
street and had to give up his habit of walking around the inner city to talk with all and
sundry.

But it galvanized him to begin a “second authorship.” This time the edifying discourses
under his own name were supplemented with works by the pseudonym Anti-Climacus.
Anti-Climacus represents an idealized Christian point of view – one that Kierkegaard
professed is higher than he had been able to achieve in his own life. The only other
pseudonyms to appear in this “second authorship” were Inter et Inter, author of The
Crisis and A Crisis in the Life of an Actress, and “H.H.” author of “Two Ethical-
Religious Essays.” In addition the “second authorship” comprises: Works of Love (1847),
The Sickness Unto Death (1849), Practice in Christianity (1850), as well as various
edifying discourses, including Edifying Discourses in Various Spirits (1847), The Lily of
the Field and the Bird of the Air (1849), Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays
(1849), Two Discourses at the Communion on Fridays (1851), and For Self-Examination
(1851). He also published a retrospective self-interpretation of his writings to date, On
My Work as an Author (under his own name – 1851). In addition Kierkegaard wrote
various works at this time which he decided not to publish. The most significant of these
are: The Book on Adler and The Point of View for My Work as an Author. The former
gives a detailed analysis of the “phenomenon” of Adolph Adler, a pastor in the Danish
People’s Church who claimed to have had a divine revelation. He was deemed mad by
the church authorities and pensioned off. Adler had been a leading Hegelian in the 1840s,
but on Kierkegaard’s analysis ends up being “a Satire on Hegelian Philosophy and the
Present Age.” Kierkegaard makes an immanent critique of Adler’s writings to
demonstrate their confusion and the absence of revelation. Kierkegaard published only
the addendum to The Book on Adler as “The Difference between a Genius and an
Apostle” in “Two Ethical Religious Essays.” The Point of View for My Work as an
Author sets out Kierkegaard’s (retrospective) interpretation of his authorship. It is
subtitled: “A Direct Communication, Report to History.” It explains in direct terms the
dialectic of indirect communication, but Kierkegaard was uncertain whether its directness
at that time was dialectically correct for the authorship and refrained from publishing it.
The “second authorship” reintroduces various concepts from the “aesthetic authorship,”
but “transfigured” by the light of Christian faith. One of the most significant of these is
“despair,” which is a transfigured version of “anxiety.” Both concepts are illuminated by
reference to the notion of sin, and both are constitutive of the dialectic of selfhood. Only
by acknowledging our ultimate dependence on God’s grace is it possible to overcome
despair, and to become a self (paradoxically by becoming as “nothing” before God).
Another concept transfigured in the “second authorship” is “love.” In the “aesthetic
authorship” “love” is understood in pagan terms, primarily as eros – or desire. Desire is
preferential, based on a lack (we only desire what we don’t have, according to Plato’s
Symposium), and is ultimately selfish. Christian love is understood as agape. It is self-
sacrificing, directed to the neighbor (without personal preference), is conceived as a
spiritual duty rather than a psychological feeling, and comes as a gift from God rather
than from the attraction between human beings. Its only perfect model is in the person of
Jesus Christ, the God-man. We can see in the journey from eros in the “aesthetic
authorship” to agape in the “second authorship” a personal attempt by Kierkegaard to
sublimate his selfish desire for Regina into a self-sacrificing universal duty to love the
neighbor. On his own terms this is impossible for a human being to achieve alone. It is
only possible if love as agape is received as a gift by the grace of God.

f. The Attack on the Danish People’s Church

The “authorship” and “second authorship” had been governed by Kierkegaard’s elaborate
method of “indirect communication.” This method, inspired by Socrates and Christ, is
designed to elicit self-examination from the reader in order to start the process of
existential transfiguration that is entailed by Christian faith. It is designed to make it
harder for the reader to appropriate the text objectively and dispassionately. Instead, the
text is folded back on itself, layered with riddles and paradoxes, and designed to be a
mirror in which the way the reader judges the text amounts to a self-judgment on the
reader. The different works in the “authorships” are related to one another dialectically,
so that a reader has to traverse a complicated journey to arrive at the threshold of
Christian faith. The method of indirect communication requires meticulous attention to
each word, and to the dialectical trajectory of the whole oeuvre. At times, the subtlety of
the method nearly drove Kierkegaard to distraction, and he had to rely on the intervention
of “Governance” [Styrelse], to let him know whether it was appropriate to publish the
works he had written. On the Point of View for My Work as an Author: A Report to
History, and The Book on Adler, failed to get Governance’s stamp of approval for
publication.

But ultimately Kierkegaard began to think that this elaborate method of indirect
communication, and his obsession with linguistic detail were temptations to the demonic.
Besides, time was running out and some direct, decisive intervention in Danish church
politics was necessary. This was precipitated by the death of the Bishop Primate of the
Danish People’s Church, J.P. Mynster (1854). Mynster had been the family pastor in
Michael Kierkegaard’s day, and Søren Kierkegaard had always had a filial respect for
him. But when the new Bishop Primate elect, H.L. Martensen, announced that Mynster
had been “a witness to the truth” Kierkegaard could not restrain himself. He launched a
stinging attack on the established church in a series of articles in the newspaper
Fædrelandet [The Fatherland], and by means of a broadsheet called The Instant [or more
literally "The Glint of an Eye"](1855) and in a series of other short, sharp pieces
including This Must Be Said, So Let It Be Said (1855), and What Christ Judges of Official
Christianity (1855). On September 28th 1855 Kierkegaard collapsed in the street. A few
days later he was admitted to Frederiksberg Hospital in Copenhagen, where he died on
November 11th.

2. The “Aesthetic Authorship”

a. On the Concept of Irony and Either/Or

Although Kierkegaard explicitly leaves On the Concept of Irony out of his “authorship,”
it functions as an important preface to that body of work. According to the theory of
existential stages contained in the authorship, irony functions as a “confinium” [border
area] between the aesthetic and the ethical. But it also functions as a point of entry to the
aesthetic. As Kierkegaard argues in On the Concept of Irony, irony is a midwife at the
birth of individual subjectivity. It is a distancing device, which folds immediate
experience back on itself to create a space of self-reflection. In Socrates it is incarnated as
“infinite negativity” – a force that undermines all received opinion to leave Socrates’
interlocutors bewildered – and responsible for their own thoughts and values. That is,
Socratic irony forces his interlocutors to reflect on themselves, to distance themselves
critically from their immediate beliefs and values.

Although the aesthetic can consist in immediate immersion in sensuous experience, as in

the case of Don Juan, Kierkegaard’s most developed portrait is of the reflective aesthete
in Either/Or volume 1. Faust is the first example of a reflective aesthete. He is lost in
reflective ennui and craves a return to immediate experience. This is the basis of his
attraction to Margarete, who embodies innocent immediacy. At its most extreme, the
aesthete is unhappily and utterly self-alienated by means of temporal dislocation. “The
Unhappiest One” – an echo of Hegel’s “unhappy consciousness” – hopes for that which
can only be remembered, and remembers that which can only be hoped. He or she lives
only in the modality of possibility and never in the modality of actuality, and therefore
fails to be self-present. Yet, by means of reflective self-knowledge, the prudent rotation
of moods and the arbitrary focus of interest, this “unhappiness” can be transformed into
the greatest happiness for the aesthete. The “infinitizing” element of possibility becomes
the realm of freedom, where even the most banal events can be “poeticized” by aesthetic
sensibility. Actuality is transformed into nothing more than an occasion for generating
reflective possibilities, rather than being an obstacle or a task. Johannes the seducer need
see only a dainty ankle descending from a carriage to reconstruct the whole woman – just
as Cuvier reconstructs the whole dinosaur from a single bone. The reconstruction, in the
case of Johannes however, is not for the sake of knowing what’s real, but is for the sake
of his own aesthetic titillation. If the actual doesn’t fit Johannes’ reflective desires, he
manipulates it and himself until he generates a story that satisfies him. His seduction of
Cordelia is not aimed at mere sexual consummation, but more at narrative consummation
– she is to be used as an occasion, and manipulated in whatever ways Johannes deems
necessary, to become the character in the story of seduction he has predetermined. But
this detachment from the actual, by self-centered immersion in reflective possibility, is
exactly what On the Concept of Irony had accused the German Romantics of achieving
with their use of irony. The first volume of Either/Or just gives us a more developed
version, artistically construed from the point of view of German Romantic irony. On the
Concept of Irony had already argued for the necessity to go beyond immersion in irony,
or mere possibility – to become a “master of irony,” so that irony could be used
strategically for ethical and religious ends. The title Either/Or presents us with a choice
between the aesthetic and the ethical. The first volume is written from the point of view
of the reflective aesthete, who has run astray in possibility. Although its main theme is
love, this is conceived selfishly as erotic desire. The papers that comprise volume 1 are
written ad se ipsum [to himself]. The aesthete’s brilliant pyrotechnics are demonically
self-enclosed, ironically cutting him off from genuine communication. The second
volume, on the other hand, is written by a judge, who advocates transparency and
openness in communication. It is written in the form of letters, as a direct communication
to the aesthetic author of the first volume. The letters implore him to realize the
limitations of his demonic self-enclosure, and to embrace his ethical duties to others.
Whereas the paradigm of love in volume 1 is seduction, the paradigm of love in volume 2
is marriage. Marriage is a trope for the universal claims of civic duty. It requires an open,
intimate, transparent, honest relation to an other. Yet the first section of volume 2 argues
for the aesthetic validity of marriage. Judge Wilhelm wants to persuade the aesthete that
ethical love is compatible with aesthetic love – that love in marriage does not exclude
sensual enjoyment and love of beauty as such, but only the selfishness of lust for “the
flesh.” The latter is a category excluded by Christianity. It pertains to the body and
psyche, to the exclusion of spirit, which is the definitive Christian category. Yet the
claims of the judge ring hollow. Either/Or is presented as a whole book, edited by Victor
Eremita (the victorious hermit). It presents us with a radical, exclusive choice between
the aesthetic and the ethical, yet the judge tries to show their compatibility in marriage.
The final word of the book belongs neither to the aesthete, the judge, nor even to the
pseudonymous editor, but to an anonymous parson. His sermon, “The Edification Which
Lies In The Fact That In Relation To God We Are Always In The Wrong,” alerts the
reader to the impossibility of escaping sin through ethics. The assumption shared by both
the aesthete and the ethicist is that love can provide a means for ascent to the divine.
Whereas erotic desire provides a means for the aesthete to ascend to a state of reflective
possibility unconstrained by actuality, in which he becomes his own creator-god, the
judge conceives ethical love to be a dialectical advance on aesthetic selfishness – in the
direction of God. The whole pseudonymous authorship, from Either/Or to Concluding
Unscientific Postscriptcan be read as a parody of the notion of a scala paradisi by means
of which humans can ascend to the divine. The original model for this ladder to paradise
is Plato’s account of love [eros] in the Symposium. But the model is appropriated by
many subsequent writers, including Augustine and Johannes Climacus, a sixth century
monk from Mt. Sinai, who wrote a book called Scala Paradisi. Kierkegaard borrows this
name for his pseudonymous author of Philosophical Fragments and Concluding
Unscientific Postscript. But it is in order to parody the notion that humans can ascend to
the divine under their own power. Each of the pseudonymous books in the “authorship”
makes a gesture of movement from human to divine, whether by means of the aesthetic
sublime, ethical virtue, the religious leap of faith, or philosophical dialectics. But in each
case the apparent movement is “revoked” in some way. Ultimately Kierkegaard endorses
the Lutheran view that human beings are radically dependent on God to descend to us.
Human beings have no inherent capacity for transcending their own immanence, but are
completely reliant on God’s grace to connect with alterity.

b. Fear and Trembling and Repetition

The next two books in the pseudonymous authorship, Fear and Trembling and
Repetition, are supposed to represent a higher stage on the dialectical ladder – the
religious. They are supposed to have moved beyond the aesthetic and the ethical. Fear
and Trembling explicitly problematizes the ethical, while Repetition problematizes the
notion of movement. Fear and Trembling reconstructs the story of Abraham and Isaac
from the Old Testament. It tries to understand psychologically, ethically and religiously
what Abraham was doing in obeying an apparent command from God to sacrifice his son.
It apparently concludes that Abraham is “a knight of faith” who is religiously justified in
his “teleological suspension of the ethical.” The ethic in question here is the civic virtue
championed by Judge Wilhelm in Either/Or – corresponding to Hegel’s Sittlichkeit
[customary morality]. The end for which this ethic is suspended is the unconditional
command of God. But such obedience raises difficult epistemological questions – how do
we distinguish the voice of God from, say, a delusional hallucination? The answer, which
induces fear and trembling, is that we can only do so by faith. Abraham can say nothing
to justify his actions – to do so would return him to the realm of human immanence and
the sphere of ethics. The difference between Agamemnon, who sacrificed his daughter
Iphigenia, and Abraham is that Agamemnon could justify his action in terms of
customary morality. The sacrifice, however painful, was demanded for the sake of the
success of the Greek military mission against Troy. Such sacrifices, for purposes greater
than the individuals involved, were intelligible to the society of the time. Abraham’s
sacrifice would have served no such purpose. It was unjustifiable in terms of prevailing
morality, and was indistinguishable from murder. The ineffability of Abraham’s action is
underscored by the pseudonym Kierkegaard chose as author of Fear and Trembling,
namely, Johannes de silentio. But while Fear and Trembling is supposed to have moved
beyond the aesthetic and the ethical, its subtitle is “a dialectical lyric.” Although its
subject matter is ineffable and its author silent, it effuses aesthetically on its theme. It
ends with an “Epilogue” that asserts that, as far as love and faith go, we cannot build on
what the previous generation has achieved. We have to begin from the beginning. We can
never “go further.”

Repetition begins with a discussion of the analysis of motion by the Eleatic philosophers.
It goes on to distinguish two forms of movement with respect to knowledge of eternal
truth: recollection and repetition. Recollection is understood on the model of Plato’s
anamnesis – a recovery of a truth already present in the individual, which has been
repressed or forgotten. This is a movement backwards, since it is retrieving knowledge
from the past. It can never discover eternal truth with which it was previously
unacquainted. In contrast, repetition is defined as “recollection forwards.” It is supposed
to be the definitive movement of Christian faith. The pseudonym Constantin Constantius
congratulates the Danish language on the word “Gjentagelse” [repetition], which more
literally means “taking again.” The emphasis in the Danish, then, is on the action
involved in the repetition of faith rather than on the intellection involved in recollection.
Christian faith is not a matter of intellectual reflection, but of living a certain sort of life,
namely, imitating [repeating] the life of Christ. Despite this verbal analysis of the
difference between recollection and repetition, the characters in Repetition fail to achieve
religious repetition. The pseudonymous author fails in his attempt to repeat a journey to
Berlin, and the “young man” who has been “poeticized” by love seems to move in the
direction of the religious, but ultimately gets no further than religious poetry. He becomes
obsessed with Job, the biblical paradigm of repetition. He substitutes the book of Job for
the beloved he has rejected, even taking it to bed with him. But in the end the “young
man” turns out to be no more than a fiction invented by Constantius as a psychological
experiment. He falls back into the realm of aesthetics, of mere possibility, a figment for
the psyche rather than the spirit.

c. Philosophical Fragments, The Concept of Anxiety, and Prefaces

In June 1844 Kierkegaard published three pseudonymous books: Philosophical

Fragments, The Concept of Anxiety, and Prefaces. Philosophical Fragments, the first
book by the pseudonym Johannes Climacus, tackles the question of how there can be an
historical point of departure for an eternal truth. This picks up from Constantius’
discussion of the difference between repetition and recollection. But Johannes uses the
perspective and vocabulary of philosophy, rather than Constantius’ aesthetic irony. He
introduces the paradox of the Christian incarnation as the stumbling block for any
attempts by reason to ascend logically to the divine. The idea that the eternal, infinite,
transcendent God could simultaneously be incarnated as a finite human being, in time, to
die on the cross is an offense to reason. It is even too absurd an idea for humans to have
invented, according to Climacus, so the idea itself must have a transcendent origin. In
order for humans to encounter transcendent, eternal truth other than through recollection,
the condition for reception of that truth must also have come from outside. If we have
Christian faith, it is Christ as teacher who is the condition for receiving this truth – and he
is conceived, precisely, as an incursion of the transcendent deity into the realm of human
immanence. There can be no ascent to this truth by reason and logic, contra Hegel, who
tries to demonstrate that “universal philosophical science” ultimately reveals “the
Absolute.”

The emphasis Climacus places on the paradox of the Christian incarnation, together with
his assertion that this causes offense to reason, have prompted many to the view that
Kierkegaard is an “irrationalist” about Christian faith. Some take this to mean that his
view of faith is contrary to reason, or transcendent of reason – in either case, exclusive of
reason. Others have sought to find means of reconciling Climacus’ claims with some
more extended notion of reason. It is important in considering these issues to distinguish
Kierkegaard’s position from that of his pseudonym, and to take into account the point of
view from which this consideration is made. Kierkegaard’s main aim in having Climacus
make these claims is to undermine the idea that philosophical reason can be used as a
scala paradisi. His principle target is Hegelianism, but he is also trying to distinguish
pagan (especially Platonic) epistemology from Christian epistemology. We must also
bear in mind that under the influence of Christian faith, all experience is transfigured
(“everything is new in Christ”). This includes the experience of reason, as well as ethics
and aesthetics. Ethics, for example, might be teleologically suspended in faith, but is
recouped within Christian faith – though it comes to have another meaning. It is no
longer merely customary morality, but is the morality sanctioned by Christian love,
which is deontological, centered on spirit rather than sympathy, self-sacrificing, and is
mediated by God (the “third” in every love relation). Similarly aesthetics is transfigured
under Christian faith, from self-serving reflections confined to the realm of possibility, to
the beauty inherent in altruistic self-effacing acts of love. Reason itself comes to have
another meaning under Christian faith, so that it no longer takes offense at the paradox,
but recognizes its necessity given the exigencies of relating the transcendent to the
immanent without reduction. Reason is recontextualized within existence, rather than
being elevated to absorb the whole of existence. Prefaces: Light Reading for Certain
Classes as the Occasion May Require reinforces the polemic against Hegel’s speculative
ladder of reason. Although much of its content is devoted to satirical broadsides at J.L.
Heiberg, H.L. Martensen, and the popular press in Copenhagen, its starting point is the
paradox of philosophical prefaces articulated in the preface to Hegel’s The
Phenomenology of Spirit. Hegel’s assumption is that a philosophical work should be a
sort of Bildungsroman – a narrative by means of which the reader’s consciousness is
dialectically developed in the course of reading. If we assume the reader is to learn
something from the process of reading the book, then he or she will not be in a position to
understand the conclusions of the book until they have worked their way through the
content. By the time they reach the end they will be conditioned by what they have read
to understand the conclusion. But a preface presents the conclusions to the book at the
outset. It is really an anticipatory postface rather than a preface. The reader will really
only be able to understand it after having read the book. It is meant for orientation of the
reader on embarking on the voyage of self-development represented by the book. But if it
is a direct bridge into the book, the subject matter itself, then it is really part of the book
rather than a preface. If, on the other hand, it stands radically outside the book, then it
can’t be a bridge into the book and is redundant. This gap between preface and book
parallels the gap Hegel draws between “particular philosophical sciences” (such as
aesthetics, and history of philosophy) and “universal philosophical science” (logic). The
former must be used as a contingent starting point, commensurate with the limited
knowledge of the reader, as a point of induction into logic. The particular can
retrospectively be subsumed within the universal, but cannot be expanded to become the
universal. It has been claimed, in accordance with this position, that if the reader
understands the preface to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, he or she understands the
whole of Hegel’s philosophy. But the condition for understanding the preface is already
to understand the whole of Hegel’s philosophy. The pseudonymous author of Prefaces,
Nicholas Notabene, is a pedant whose wife has forbidden him to be an author. He takes
an author to be a writer of books, and with cunning sophistry decides to write nothing but
prefaces “which are not the prefaces to any books.” Notabene’s prefaces are analogues of
human immanence – no amount of expansion will make them bridges to the transcendent.
All human immanence is a “preface” to the divine. Only once the divine has come to us
(in the incarnation or through direct revelation) can we retrospectively understand the
status of our prefatory lives as mere prefaces. For Kierkegaard there is only one book –
the bible. We are never “authors” of books, but only readers of “the old familiar text
handed down from the fathers.” On the same day as he published Prefaces Kierkegaard
also published On the Concept of Anxiety by Vigilius Haufniensis [Watchman of the
Harbor - namely, Copenhagen]. Its subtitle is “A Simple Psychologically Orienting
Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin.” It is supposed to be a serious
counterweight to the “light reading” of Prefaces. But it forms part of the same polemic
against immanent human efforts to reach the divine. From the points of view of
psychology and theological dogmatics it elaborates the theme of the sermon appended to
Either/Or – that against God we are always in the wrong. Sin is inescapable. Sin
ultimately consists in being outside of God. Only Jesus Christ, the God-man, is not in sin.
Sin consciousness comes into being as part of human psychological development. It is
absent from the innocent immediacy of childhood. It awakens with sexual desire – when
we want to possess another. Desire is here understood as a lack that we want to fill.
Possession, or incorporation of the other, is thought to be the way to fulfill the desire. In
erotic love it feels as though part of ourselves is outside of us, and needs to be
reintegrated (as in Aristophanes’ explanation of love in Plato’s Symposium). This is the
beginning of self-alienation and the loss of innocent immediacy. Self-alienation is a
necessary stage on the way to becoming a self. A self is a synthesis of finite and infinite,
temporal and eternal, body and soul, held together by spirit. Only with the diremption of
these aspects of the self, through self-alienation, does spirit arise. But spirit can only
achieve the synthesis of self if it acknowledges its absolute dependence in this task on
God (“the power that posits it”). Long before it gets to this stage, the person feels anxiety
in the face of self-alienation. Anxiety is an ambivalent state, “a sympathetic antipathy and
an antipathetic sympathy.” It is the intimation of the delights of freedom, but also of the
dread responsibility that is a consequence of freedom. Like vertigo, it is the simultaneous
fascination and fear of the abyss – a hypnotic possibility of falling that induces the
dizziness to actually fall. The main arena for the exercise of freedom is in becoming a
self. But this requires alienation from one’s immediate sensate being, taking ethical
responsibility for one’s relations to other people, and acknowledgement of one’s ultimate
dependence on God. Each of these entails risk – and hence anxiety. One of the risks
involved is the possibility of falling prey to the demonic. A key definition of this notion
is “self-enclosed reserve” [Indesluttethed] – a state in which the individual fails to relate
to an other as other, but returns into him or herself in narcissism or solipsism.
Kierkegaard feared that his convoluted, indirect writing could be his own form of the
demonic, and ultimately opted for more direct forms of communication.

d. Stages on Life’s Way and Concluding Unscientific Postscript

Like many of Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous works, Stages on Life’s Way repeats

elements from earlier pseudonymous works. In particular, it repeats the device of nesting
narrators within narrators, it repeats characters from Either/Or and Repetition, and it
“repeats” “The Seducer’s Diary” in “Quidam’s Diary.” The latter was originally
conceived at the same time as “The Diary of the Seducer” but was to differ by having the
seducer undermined by his own depression once he had won the girl. Stages also repeats
the idea built up over the sequence of pseudonymous works that human existence can be
conceived as falling into distinct “stages” or “spheres,” which are related in a dialectical
progression. Stages repeats the same stages that have already been traversed in the
preceding works, apparently without making any progress.

It is another example of the false ladder to paradise, exemplified by Plato’s ladder of

eros. The first major section of Stages, “In Vino Veritas,” borrows its title from Plato’s
Symposium and is modeled explicitly on that work, both structurally and thematically. It
consists in a group of men at a banquet, each discoursing in turn on the nature of (erotic)
love. This section of the book is followed by “Some Reflections on Marriage” by Judge
Wilhelm, to give an ethical perspective on love. This is followed by “Quidam’s Diary,”
which is supposed to follow a trajectory from erotic love to religious consciousness. But
Quidam’s diary is framed by the words of Frater Taciturnus (a distorted repetition of
Johannes de silentio), in which he tells us that Quidam’s diary was retrieved from the
bottom of a lake. It was enclosed in a box with the key locked inside – a symbol of the
demonic. Later Frater Taciturnus tells the reader explicitly that Quidam is demonic “in
the direction of the religious.” Furthermore, like the “young man” from Repetition,
Quidam is only a fiction invented by Frater Taciturnus to illustrate a point. As we read
through Stages it looks as though we are progressing from the aesthetic, through the
ethical to the religious. But Frater Taciturnus pulls the ladder out from under our feet in
his “Letter to the Reader.” He even suggests that there might not be any reader, in which
case he is content to talk to himself – i.e. return demonically into himself, rather than
relate himself earnestly to an actual other. Concluding Unscientific Postscript repeats
these movements of Stages. It proclaims itself to be only a postscript to the Philosophical
Fragments, which any attentive reader of that book could have written, and contains an
extensive review of the pseudonymous authorship to date. The self-proclaimed humorist,
Johannes Climacus takes up the problematic of Philosophical Fragments of whether
there can be an historical point of departure for eternal truth. He seems to conclude that
since it is impossible to demonstrate the objective truth of Christianity’s claims, the most
the individual can do is to concentrate on the how of appropriation of those claims. This
issues in the extensive discussion of inwardness and subjectivity, which is usually taken
as the basis for the accusation that Kierkegaard is an “irrationalist.” Climacus, but not
Kierkegaard, proclaims that “truth is subjectivity” (as well as “subjectivity is untruth”).
Climacus also makes a distinction between two types of religiousness: “Religiousness A”
and “Religiousness B.” The former is the pagan conception of religion and is
characterized by intelligibility, immanence, and recognition of continuity between
temporality and eternity. Religiousness B is dubbed “paradoxical religiousness” and is
supposed to represent the essence of Christianity. It posits a radical divide between
immanence and transcendence, a discontinuity between temporality and eternity, yet also
claims that the eternal came into existence in time. This is a paradox and can only be
believed “by virtue of the absurd.” The distinction between “Religiousness A” and
“Religiousness B” is another expression of the distinction between recollection and
repetition, or between eros and agape, or between immanence and transcendence. It is
supposed to mark the gulf between Christianity and all other forms of faith. The paradox
of the Christian incarnation is presented as an offense to reason, which can only be
overcome by a leap of faith. But even a leap is under the control of the individual. It
might take more courage and induce more anxiety than the steady step-by-step ascension
of a ladder. One is out over 70000 fathoms. But Climacus is a humorist. Humor is
characterized as a means of “revoking” existence. Although Climacus writes about
Christian faith, he doesn’t live it. He represents in the modality of possibility what can
only be experienced in the modality of actuality. At the end of Concluding Unscientific
Postscript, Climacus explicitly revokes everything he has said – though he is careful to
add that to say something and revoke it is not the same as never having said it at all. That
is, at the end of the pseudonymous scala paradisi, the pseudonymous author proclaims
that what he has said is misleading – because it presents a continuity between immanent
human categories of thought and the divine in the form of analogy. But there is no
analogy to the divine. It is sui generis. It is “the book” to human life as “preface.”

3. The Edifying Discourses

a. Sermons, Deliberations, and Edifying Discourses

Simultaneously with the publication of the aesthetic pseudonymous works, Kierkegaard

published a series of works he called “Edifying Discourses” [Opbyggelige Taler]. These
were written under his own name and most of them were dedicated “To the Late Michael
Pedersen Kierkegaard, Formerly a Clothing Merchant Here in the City, My Father.”
Although they typically take a New Testament theme as their point of departure,
Kierkegaard explicitly denies that they are sermons. This is because he had not been
ordained, and so wrote “without authority.” They are also addressed to “that single
individual” and not to a congregation.

Kierkegaard distinguishes his “edifying discourses” as a genre from other works he calls
“deliberations” [Overveielser]. Edifying discourses “build up” whereas deliberations are
a “weighing up.” Edifying discourses presuppose Christian faith and terminology as
given and understood, and build on that. They are meant to augment the faith and love of
the Christian reader. Deliberations, while they may ostensibly deal with the same subject
matter, imply that the reader stands outside the matter being weighed. But this is in a
particular sense. In weighing something on a scale, we measure two weights against one
another. In deliberating, the reader weighs the temporal significance of the subject matter
against its eternal significance. The deliberation, as a type of writing, weighs into the
reader’s balance of temporal and eternal with polemical force. It is meant to turn the
normal, worldly view topsy-turvy. Works of Love is subtitled “Some Christian
Deliberations in the Form of Discourses.” It has the polemical, topsy-turvy nature of
deliberation, but contains within it the form of the discourse. Furthermore, one of the
explicit themes of these discourses is edification. But because of the framework of
deliberation, the discourses about edification are not necessarily for edification. They
don’t presuppose an understanding of the Christian categories, but are meant to lead the
reader to an understanding – through deliberation. The earlier pseudonymous book, The
Concept of Anxiety is subtitled “A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the
Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin.” Like Works of Love it is a serious weighing up of
various Christian concepts, in a manner designed to provoke readers to rethink the
relation between the temporal and eternal in their lives. Kierkegaard uses yet other related
genres besides deliberations and edifying discourses. The pseudonym Anti-Climacus uses
the subtitles “A Christian Psychological Exposition [Udvikling] for Edification and
Awakening” (The Sickness Unto Death) and “For Awakening and Making Inward”
(Practice in Christianity). These are written from an idealized Christian point of view, so
not only presuppose an understanding of the Christian categories, but seek to raise the
level of awareness to the highest level of Christian faith.

b. Direct and Indirect Communication

Kierkegaard struggled to find appropriate means of communication that would address

the inward nature of Christian faith. He thought his contemporaries had too much
(objective) knowledge, which needed stripping away, before they could achieve
awareness of individual inwardness. Everything was made too easy for people, with the
press providing ready-made opinions, popular culture providing ready-made values, and
speculative philosophy providing promissory notes in place of real achievements.
Kierkegaard’s task as a communicator was, initially, to make things more difficult. In
order to do this, he devised a method of indirect communication. This was designed to
confront the reader with paradox, contradiction, and difficulty by means of refraction of
the narrative point of view through pseudonyms, prefaces, postscripts, interludes,
preliminary expectorations, repetitions, irony, revocation and other devices that obscure
the author’s intention. These devices are meant to undermine the authority of the author,
so any “truths” contained in the text cannot merely be learned by rote or appropriated
“objectively.” Instead, the text is meant to supply a polished surface in which the reader
comes to see him or herself. The manner in which the reader appropriates the text,
understands it, and judges it will disclose more about the reader than about the text.

Part of the method of indirect communication was to juxtapose two series of texts: the
pseudonymous texts and the “edifying discourses.” The latter were published under
Kierkegaard’s own name, and were co-extensive with the pseudonymous authorship.
They are evidence that he was a religious author from the outset. The indirect method of
the pseudonymous works is often convoluted, obscure, and a combination of personal
confession and obfuscation (of those confessions). The whole of the pseudonymous
authorship from Either/Or to Concluding Unscientific Postscript can be read as a parody
of Hegel’s Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences – an enormously baroque conceit
that threatens to become demonic in its obscurity and labyrinthine complexity. This
complexity is balanced by the relatively simple thematic variations on biblical texts to be
found in the edifying discourses. The latter were direct communications – but addressed
only to Christians who could understand them. The indirect works, on the other hand,
were designed to seduce or deceive into the truth those who stand outside it – such as the
Danish Hegelians and their followers. By parodying Hegel’s Encyclopedia, Kierkegaard
was undermining the whole system on which the Danish Hegelians placed so much faith.
He supplemented his parody of Hegel with more specific jibes at particular Danish
Hegelians throughout the “authorship.” Kierkegaard continued to write edifying
discourses in conjunction with the “second authorship,” to accompany the works of the
pseudonym Anti-Climacus. After the “second authorship” he wrote Christian discourses
that were more polemical and strident than the edifying discourses. They were equally
“direct” – being published under his own name, but addressed different emotions and
values.

c. That Single Individual, My Reader

Kierkegaard’s edifying discourses are addressed to “that single individual, my reader.”

When he first used this address he meant it to apply to Regina Olsen. But he came to see
that it had a wider application. He had polemicized from his earliest writings against the
press, and against cultural and political tendencies to “level” individuals into
homogeneous masses. His term of loathing for the depersonalized, de-individualized
instrument of leveling was “the crowd.” It corresponds to Nietzsche’s notion of “the
herd” and to Heidegger’s notion of “das Man.” One subset of “the crowd” that especially
attracted Kierkegaard’s ire was “the reading public.” This was the anonymous mass,
consumer of the secondhand literary opinion of “reviewers.” Most reviewers, in
Kierkegaard’s opinion, were hasty, ill-informed panderers to public opinion, so that
reviewers and public fed off each other in a vicious circle. Reviews were even written
without the reviewer having read the book, then circulated through gossip by “the reading
public” as final judgment on the book. The anonymous circulation of public gossip is the
antithesis of serious engagement with truth on a personal level.

Christianity addresses the single individual. Its truths, according to Kierkegaard, must be
appropriated inwardly, seriously and with infinite passion. Just as we cannot die another’s
death, we cannot live another’s faith. Existing inwardly in passion as an individual is a
prerequisite for Christian faith. Having Christian faith is a prerequisite for understanding
the edifying discourses. So the edifying discourses are addressed to each single
individual. The pseudonymous works in the aesthetic authorship often have letters
addressed to the reader too. But, as in the case of the letters of Constantine Constantius
and Frater Taciturnus, they turn out to be soliloquies addressed to themselves more than
direct, open communications to a reader posited as genuinely other.

4. The “Second Authorship”

a. Works of Love
Works of Love was written under Kierkegaard’s own name. Its subtitle places it within
the genre of “Christian deliberations” – i.e. polemical weighings-up of Christian notions.
It does not presuppose an existential understanding of Christian love, as it would were it
an “edifying discourse,” but challenges the reader to open him or herself to the
specifically Christian understanding of love. For a reader who understands love
principally in terms of eros, the Christian notion of love as agape is counterintuitive.
Whereas eros is a preferential feeling of desire, agape is a spiritual duty to serve the
neighbor (without discrimination in terms of preference). Whereas eros is ultimately
selfish, aimed at satisfying the lover’s desire, agape is selfless, requiring self-sacrifice.
Whereas eros is often built on the visual objectification of the beloved, agape requires the
individual to become “transparent” and “as nothing” before God. Whereas eros is
typically a relation between two people, agape always involves God as the “third” in the
relation.

Works of Love concentrates not so much on the understanding of love as such, but on the
understanding of works of love. Love will be known as the fruit of these works of love.
Since God is love, it can only be known through the existential commitment of Christian
faith. This faith is only lived in the attempt to imitate the life of Christ. Christ’s life was
itself God’s principal work of love for human beings. It is only through this work of love
that we can know God as love. The only true work of love is helping someone else
achieve autonomy through Christian love. But if that person sees that he or she was
dependent on some other human being to achieve autonomy, that autonomy will be
undone. The human author of a work of love must disappear in the act of love, so that
only the love is perceived and only God is recognized as its author. This presents
Kierkegaard with a difficult task in writing Works of Love. If it helps its readers achieve
autonomy through an understanding of Christian love, and the readers recognize
Kierkegaard to be the author, it will fail to be a work of love. Kierkegaard has to
disappear as author in order for the book to function as a work of love. He resorts to the
device of the dash [Tankestreg] to achieve his disappearance. He explicitly talks about
this use of the dash during the course of Works of Love, and ends the penultimate section
of the book with a dash (unfortunately omitted from the English translation). The
conclusion that follows the dash is a presentation of the words of the Apostle John. As an
Apostle, John presents the word of God. The word of God is a record of the life of Christ,
which is God’s work of love. So God’s word is the work of love. Kierkegaard, by means
of the dash, erases his ego as an author to allow the word of God to shine through –
thereby preserving Works of Love as a work of love.

b. Anti-Climacus

Anti-Climacus is the pseudonymous author of two of Kierkegaard’s mature works: The

Sickness Unto Death (1849) and Practice in Christianity (1850). As his name indicates,
Anti-Climacus represents the antithesis of Johannes Climacus. As we have seen,
Climacus derives his name from the monk who wrote Scala Paradisi, thereby embracing
the idea that it is possible for human beings to ascend to heaven under their own power.
The “aesthetic” authorship, culminating in Concluding Unscientific Postscript, explores a
number of possible modes of scaling heaven – by means of erotic love, the Babel tower
of aesthetic poetry, ethical works, or speculative reason. All are found wanting. Having
established the absolute nature of transcendence through repeated parodies of these vain
attempts in the aesthetic authorship, Kierkegaard proceeds to show through Anti-
Climacus how various aesthetic concepts are transfigured from an ideal Christian point of
view.

The central notions explored in The Sickness Unto Death are “despair” and “the self.” In
this respect it is a Christian repetition of the central themes of The Concept of Anxiety,
with “despair” supplanting “anxiety.” Both explore the task of becoming a self from the
points of view of psychology and Christian faith. Both invoke sin as the greatest obstacle
to becoming a self. Yet paradoxically, becoming conscious of sin is a prerequisite for
faith and selfhood. Anti-Climacus distinguishes between “human being” and “self.” The
human being is a synthesis, of infinite and finite, temporal and eternal, freedom and
necessity, body and soul. The self, on the other hand, is the process of relating these
elements of synthesis to one another. The self is the task of maintaining the proper
equilibrium of the synthesis. But this task is beyond the capacity of a mere human being
alone. Willing to be a self is itself a form of despair. Not willing to be a self is also a form
of despair. Being unaware of the possibility of being a self is also a form of despair. The
only antidote to despair is Christian faith. Faith provides the missing element in the
synthesis, namely, an acknowledgement of God as the necessary underpinning of the self-
relation. But to become aware of God, one first has to become aware of one’s absolute
difference from God. This is the function of sin-consciousness. Sin-consciousness
presupposes God-consciousness. The ultimate form of despair is despairing over one’s
sin, and thereby failing to accept God’s forgiveness. Only through the movement of faith
can God’s grace be received and accepted, thereby acknowledging God’s absolute alterity
as well as our absolute dependence on God to be selves. Practice in Christianity
complements The Sickness Unto Death thematically. It deals with the appropriate
Christian response to divine grace, and with healing through penitence. But it also repeats
some of the themes of Philosophical Fragments and Concluding Unscientific Postscript.
In particular it revisits the themes of offense and the historical point of departure for
eternal truth. The latter is explored under the rubric of becoming contemporary with the
absolute. Christian faith is the only means for the immanent, temporal human being to
have contact with the transcendent, eternal truth, since that faith consists in believing that
Christ was the incarnation of God. That faith consists not merely in intellectual belief, but
in willingness to imitate the life of Christ to the utmost of one’s powers. Anti-Climacus
catalogues various ways in which we might take offense at someone claiming to be the
“God-man.” In the process he discusses the necessity for God, as transcendent, to use a
method of indirect communication. The God-man needs to be “incognito” – to arrive in
the unrecognizable form of a servant. He needs to suffer, to be spurned, to avoid any
possible direct revelation of His exalted status. Only by means of indirect
communication, rather than by direct revelation, will the individual come to relate to the
God-man through faith. The possibility of faith is the obverse of the possibility of
offense. Offense is underscored by means of the Almighty’s lowly incognito and indirect
method of communication.

c. The Attack on the Church

Kierkegaard came to think that perhaps indirect communication should be the exclusive
provenance of the God-man. He came increasingly to regard his own indirection, and his
love affair with language, to be demonic temptations. When the Bishop Primate of the
Danish People’s Church, his father’s old pastor J.P. Mynster, died in January 1854,
Kierkegaard felt free to attack the established church more directly and stridently. He had
suppressed some critical and potentially offensive writings while Mynster was still alive.
But he was precipitated into a full frontal attack when the new Bishop Primate, H.L.
Martensen, Kierkegaard’s old rival, publicly described the late Mynster as “a witness to
the truth.” Kierkegaard had respected Mynster as a pastor and a man, but found his
administration of the church wanting. Mynster had steered the church into closer relations
with the state, and had shored up the values of “Christendom” rather than “Christianity.”
The former was a phenomenon of cultural history; the latter was the vehicle of
passionate, inward individual faith. Given the leveling tendencies of “the present age,”
Christendom as a cultural phenomenon was on a collision course with Christian faith. It
threatened to replace “the single individual” with “the crowd” (under the guise of “the
congregation”), struggle with mediation, revolution with reflection, and works of love
with the welfare state. Worst, it threatened to usurp eternal truth with temporal gossip.
Therefore, to call its chief spokesman a “witness to the truth” provoked an extreme
reaction from Kierkegaard.

His discourses changed from gentle edifications to strident calls to arms. He moved from
a position of “armed neutrality” with respect to church politics, to one of decisive
intervention in “the instant.” “The Instant” [Øieblikket - literally 'the glint of an eye'] was
Kierkegaard’s final frenetic publication. The Concept of Anxiety had identified “the
instant” as the point of intersection of time and eternity. It is the moment of decision, the
moment of transfiguring vision, the moment of contemporaneity with Christ. It was also
the moment to let go of indirect communication and to speak directly. “The Instant” was
the name of a broadsheet Kierkegaard published to continue his attack on the state
church. He published ten issues between its inception in May 1855 and the last in
September 1855, when he collapsed and was admitted to hospital. But to speak directly,
having spoken for so long indirectly, is not the same as the “objective” direct
communication he originally resisted. It was not a direct communication about eternal
truth, but a timely intervention in contemporary politics. It was a verbal act, rather than a
measured contribution to literature. Another important part of the “second authorship”
consists in the self-reflections Kierkegaard wrote on his own work as an author. In 1851
he published On My Work as an Author, but had also written several other works that
were only published posthumously. These include The Point of View for my Work as an
Author: A Report to History (1859), Armed Neutrality, or My Position as a Christian
Author in Christendom (1880), and “Three Notes Concerning my Activity as an Author”
(1859). He also withheld from publication The Book on Adler, an extended study of
Adolph Adler, a prominent Hegelian and pastor in the Danish People’s Church. Adler
claimed to have received divine revelation, but Kierkegaard’s analysis of his writings
tries to demonstrate Adler’s confusion. Adler becomes, in Kierkegaard’s words, “a Satire
on Hegelian Philosophy and the Present Age.” Kierkegaard also used Adler’s case to
distinguish between “a genius” and “an apostle.” Another work, also published
posthumously, was “The Ethical and Ethico-religious Dialectic of Communication”
(1877). Kierkegaard agonized over whether to publish these direct communications about
his own strategies of communication and how he saw his activity as an author. Of
particular concern was how these direct writings would affect the complex dialectic of
direct and indirect communications he had set up in his “authorships.” Ultimately he
relied on the guidance of “Governance” [Styrelse] to decide whether or not to publish –
much as Socrates had relied on the warnings of his daimonion about whether to engage
people in philosophical cross-examination. Retrospectively, Kierkegaard regarded his
activity as an author to have been under the direction of Governance. He had not had a
clear view at the outset about the structure of his authorships, but had come to see that
what he had been directed to write was what was required for a religious poet in the
present age. He was a writer who overflowed with ideas – far too many to write down.
Therefore Governance had to sit him down like a schoolboy, and make him write as
though he were writing “a work assignment.” In much the same way as he disappeared
under the dash in works of love, Kierkegaard “disappears” in these accounts of his own
activity as a writer under the sign of “Governance.”

5. References and Further Reading

Kierkegaard’s Writings

Danish

 Breve og Aktstykker vedrørende Søren Kierkegaaard, ed. Niels Thulstrup,

Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1953-4.
 Søren Kierkegaards Papirer, ed. P.A. Heiberg, V. Kuhr & E. Torsting, second
edition Niels Thulstrup, Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1968-78.
 Søren Kierkegaards Samlede Værker, ed. A.B. Drachmann, J.L. Heiberg & H.D.
Lange, second edition, Copenhagen: Nordisk Forlag, 1920-36.
 Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter, ed. N.J. Cappelørn, et.al., Copenhagen: Gad, 1997-.
 English Kierkegaard’s Writings volumes 1-XXVI, ed. & trans. H.V. Hong, et.al.
Princeton University Press: 1978-2000.

Commentary

 Cappelørn, Niels Jørgen, Hermann Deuser, et.al. (eds), Kierkegaard Studies

Yearbook 1996-, Berlin & New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1996-
 Ferreira, M. Jamie, Love’s Grateful Striving: A Commentary on Kierkegaard’s
Works of Love, Oxford University Press, 2001
 Garff, Joakim, SAK: Søren Aabye Kierkegaard: en biografi, Copenhagen: Gad,
2000
 Hannay, Alastair, Kierkegaard: A Biography, Cambridge University Press, 2001
 Hannay, Alastair & Gordon Marino (eds), The Cambridge Companion to
Kierkegaard, Cambridge University Press, 1998
 Kirmmse, Bruce, Encounters With Kierkegaard, Princeton University Press, 1996
 Kirmmse, Bruce, Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark, Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1990
  Mackey, Louis, Points of View: Readings of Kierkegaard, Tallahassee: Florida
State University Press, 1986
 Malantschuk, Gregor, Kierkegaard’s Thought, ed. & trans. H.V. Hong & E.H.
Hong, Princeton University Press, 1971
 Pattison, George, Kierkegaard: The Aesthetic and the Religious, New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1992
 Perkins, Robert L (ed.), International Kierkegaard Commentary, Macon: Mercer
University Press
o This is a series of anthologies of essays, with each volume designed to
accompany the volumes comprising Kierkegaard’s Writings, op.cit.

Author Information

William McDonald
Email: wmcdonal@metz.une.edu.au
University of New England, Australia

Last updated: June 30, 2005 | Originally published: October/22/2002

Categories: 19th Century European, Philosophers

http://www.iep.utm.edu/kierkega/
26 January 2011