The final volume (XXVI) of Princeton's Kierkegaard's Writings series, the Cumulative Index provides wide-ranging navigation to the preceding twenty-five volumes in the series. Composed of over 90,000 entries, the Cumulative Index offers access to Kierkegaard's complex authorship and the extraordinary range of subjects he addressed in his writing. Covering the series' historical introductions, primary works, supplementary material (journal entries), and footnotes, the Cumulative Index provides a comprehensive entryway to the series' more than 11,000 pages of text. Readers (...) are able to survey via extended entries Kierkegaard's dual authorship(pseudonymous and signed), his frequent biblical references and allusions, his references to Christianity, God, and love, and his frequent use of analogies. A cumulative collation of the extensive supplementary material (over 4,000 journal entries) is also included, giving researchers and avid readers the opportunity to correlate and examine items from the current series, Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers , and the original Danish Søren Kierkegaards Papirer. (shrink)

This is the most comprehensive anthology of Søren Kierkegaard's works ever assembled in English. Drawn from the volumes of Princeton's authoritative Kierkegaard's Writings series by editors Howard and Edna Hong, the selections represent every major aspect of Kierkegaard's extraordinary career. They reveal the powerful mix of philosophy, psychology, theology, and literary criticism that made Kierkegaard one of the most compelling writers of the nineteenth century and a shaping force in the twentieth. With an introduction to Kierkegaard's (...) writings as a whole and explanatory notes for each selection, this is the essential one-volume guide to a thinker who changed the course of modern intellectual history. The anthology begins with Kierkegaard's early journal entries and traces the development of his work chronologically to the final The Changelessness of God . The book presents generous selections from all of Kierkegaard's landmark works, including Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, Works of Love , and The Sickness unto Death , and draws new attention to a host of such lesser-known writings as Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions and The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air . The selections are carefully chosen to reflect the unique character of Kierkegaard's work, with its shifting pseudonyms, its complex dialogues, and its potent combination of irony, satire, sermon, polemic, humor, and fiction. We see the esthetic, ethical, and ethical-religious ways of life initially presented as dialogue in two parallel series of pseudonymous and signed works and later in the "second authorship" as direct address. And we see the themes that bind the whole together, in particular Kierkegaard's overarching concern with, in his own words, "What it means to exist . . . what it means to be a human being." Together, the selections provide the best available introduction to Kierkegaard's writings and show more completely than any other book why his work, in all its creativity, variety, and power, continues to speak so directly today to so many readers around the world. (shrink)

This book explores the multiple meaning of the notion of otherness in Søren Kierkegaard’s thought. Leo Stan discusses in detail the threefold structure of human existence in Kierkegaard’s authorship as a whole, both pseudonymous and self-signed.

The final volume of Princeton's Kierkegaard's Writings series, the Cumulative Index provides wide-ranging navigation to the preceding twenty-five volumes. Composed of over 90,000 entries, the Cumulative Index offers access to Kierkegaard's complex authorship and the extraordinary range of subjects he addressed in his writing. Covering the series' historical introductions, primary works, supplementary material, and footnotes, the Cumulative Index provides a comprehensive entryway to more than 11,000 pages of text. Readers are able to survey via extended entries (...) class='Hi'>Kierkegaard's dual authorship, pseudonymous and signed; his numerous biblical allusions; his references to Christianity, God, and love; and his frequent use of analogies. A cumulative collation of the extensive supplementary material is also included, giving researchers and avid readers the opportunity to cross-reference Kierkegaard's Writings with his journals and papers published elsewhere in both English and Danish. (shrink)

For Self-Examination and its companion piece Judge for Yourself! are the culmination of Soren Kierkegaard's "second authorship," which followed his Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Among the simplest and most readily comprehended of Kierkegaard's books, the two works are part of the signed direct communications, as distinguished from his earlier pseudonymous writings. The lucidity and pithiness and earnestness and power, of For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourself! are enhanced when, as Kierkegaard requested, they are read aloud. They (...) contain the well-known passsages on Socrates' defense speech, how to read, the lover's letter, the royal coachman and the carriage team, and the painter's relation to his painting. The aim of awakening and inward deepening is signaled by the opening section on Socrates in For Self-Examination and is pursued in the context of the relations of Christian ideality, grace, and response. The secondary aim, a critique of the established order, links the works to the final polemical writings that appear later after a four-year period of silence. Originally published in 1944. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

The Corsair affair has been called the "most renowned controversy in Danish literary history." At the center is Søren Kierkegaard, whose pseudonymous Stages on Life's Way occasioned a frivolous and dishonorable review by Peder Ludvig Møller. Møller was associated with The Corsair, a publication notorious for gossip and caricature. The editor was Meïr Goldschmidt, an acquaintance of Kierkegaard's and an admirer of his early work. Kierkegaard struck back at not only Møller and Goldschmidt but at the paper as (...) a whole. The present volume contains all of the documents relevant to this dispute, plus a historical introduction that recapitulates the sequence of events surrounding the controversy. Parts I and II contain articles both signed by and attributed to Kierkegaard in response to the affair. A supplement includes writings pertaining to the Corsair affair by Goldschmidt and Møller, as well as unpublished pieces by Kierkegaard from his journals and papers. Although the immediate occasion was literary, for Kierkegaard the issues as well as the consequences were ethical, social, philosophical, and religious. Howard Hong argues that the most important consequence was wholly unexpected and unintended: the second phase of Kierkegaard's authorship. (shrink)

First published in English in 1968, Kierkegaard's Authorship begins with a brief account of the life and meaning of Kierkegaard and concludes with the brief treatment of his relation to multifaceted existentialism. By reviewing the total authorship and by making available much of the fruit of widespread research, this work throws into relief Kierkegaard's central purposes and makes it possible to avoid some of the dubious interpretations which have grown out of more narrowly selective study. This (...) critical introduction and guide is especially important because Kierkegaard's style was deliberately indirect and distorted and even more because half of the works are actually antagonistic to Kierkegaard's own views. By the pseudonymous works he intended to lead into truth through a process of frustration, provoking the reader into existence. In another sense, the body of the book is also a biography for, in a degree perhaps without parallel in world history, the library which he created was his deed and life. This is an important read for scholars and researchers of Philosophy specially existentialism. (shrink)

Exceptionally Common Courage provides an extended, close reading of Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard's well-known, pseudonymous book about Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac. It then fits this (in)famous work into the broader and puzzling corpus that includes both other pseudonymous works and signed discourses by this same mercurial author. Though not the first to tackle Kierkegaard from the direction of either a single work or the whole authorship, this two-in-one book relates whole and part to whole and (...) part in a way that reads like a genuine musical counterpoint. The scholarly debates inevitably generated by any treatment of Fear and Trembling are here addressed in ways that arise from a detailed interpretation of the text itself without letting secondary material interrupt the primary train of thought. Along the way, Kierkegaard's ideas are brought into conversation with a much broader than usual cannon of interlocutors, including such figures as Elizabeth Stuart Phelps and James Baldwin, R.H. Tawney and Wendell Berry. And by the end, the complex movement of the entire authorship becomes audible above the various isolated and doctrinaire notes typically highlighted in comparable studies. The recurring melody is about existential courage, about the risk of emotionally investing in earthly goods against the ambiguous inevitability of their loss. Woven throughout Kierkegaard's so-called esthetic and religious writings, this common task of facing threats to the integral meaning of human experience stands out in arresting color. As the chapters unfold, this understanding of faith as a form of courage provides not just direction, but a topographical score for what is originally a highly indirect and elusive textual arrangement. (shrink)

After deciding to terminate his authorship with the pseudonymous Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard composed reviews as a means of writing without being an author. Two Ages, here presented in a definitive English text, is simultaneously a review and a book in its own right. In it, Kierkegaard comments on the anonymously published Danish novel Two Ages, which contrasts the mentality of the age of the French Revolution with that of the subsequent epoch of rationalism. Kierkegaard commends the author's (...) shrewdness, and his critique builds on the novel's view of the two generations. With keen prophetic insight, Kierkegaard foresees the birth of an impersonal cultural wasteland, in which the individual will either be depersonalized or obliged to find an existence rooted in "equality before God and equality with all men." This edition, like all in the series, contains substantial supplementary material, including a historical introduction, entries from Kierkegaard's journals and papers, and the preface and conclusion of the original novel. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Visual Introduction The Contemporary Discussion – Kierkegaard the Writer.

Søren Kierkegaard, the nineteenth-century Danish philosopher rediscovered in the twentieth century, is a major influence in contemporary philosophy, religion, and literature. He regarded Either/Or as the beginning of his authorship, although he had published two earlier works on Hans Christian Andersen and irony. The pseudonymous volumes of Either/Or are the writings of a young man and of Judge William. The ironical young man's papers include a collection of sardonic aphorisms; essays on Mozart, modern drama, and boredom; and "The (...) Seducer's Diary." The seeming miscellany is a reflective presentation of aspects of the "either," the esthetic view of life. Part II is an older friend's "or," the ethical life of integrated, authentic personhood, elaborated in discussions of personal becoming and of marriage. The resolution of the "either/or" is left to the reader, for there is no Part III until the appearance of Stages on Life's Way. The poetic-reflective creations of a master stylist and imaginative impersonator, the two men write in distinctive ways appropriate to their respective positions. (shrink)

After deciding to terminate his authorship with the pseudonymous Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard composed reviews as a means of writing without being an author. Two Ages, here presented in a definitive English text, is simultaneously a review and a book in its own right. In it, Kierkegaard comments on the anonymously published Danish novel Two Ages, which contrasts the mentality of the age of the French Revolution with that of the subsequent epoch of rationalism. Kierkegaard commends the author's (...) shrewdness, and his critique builds on the novel's view of the two generations. With keen prophetic insight, Kierkegaard foresees the birth of an impersonal cultural wasteland, in which the individual will either be depersonalized or obliged to find an existence rooted in "equality before God and equality with all men." This edition, like all in the series, contains substantial supplementary material, including a historical introduction, entries from Kierkegaard's journals and papers, and the preface and conclusion of the original novel. (shrink)

Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions was the last of seven works signed by Kierkegaard and published simultaneously with an anonymously authored companion piece. Imagined Occasions both complements and stands in contrast to Kierkegaard's pseudonymously published Stages on Life's Way. The two volumes not only have a chronological relation but treat some of the same distinct themes. The first of the three discourses, "On the Occasion of a Confession," centers on stillness, wonder, and one's search for God--in contrast to (...) the speechmaking on erotic love in "In Vino Veritas," part one of Stages. The second discourse, "On the Occasion of a Wedding," complements the second part of Stages, in which Judge William delivers a panegyric on marriage. The third discourse, "At a Graveside," sharpens the ethical and religious earnestness implicit in Stages's "'Guilty'/'Not Guilty'" and completes this collection. (shrink)

This study engages in a detailed examination of Kierkegaard’s works of literary and dramatic criticism, including those works directed at interpreting Kierkegaard’s own authorship, with a specific concern for both what Kierkegaard and Kierkegaard’s anonyms and pseudonyms write about the nature and practice of authorship, as well as how the Kierkegaardian authors practice authorship themselves. Moving through five chapters, each devoted to one or more works of Kierkegaard’s criticism, the study develops a new approach to reading Kierkegaard (...) – a new Kierkegaardian hermeneutic – that begins always with the character of the author. This new approach avoids the challenges of critics of biographical criticism, such as Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida, by positing the author always as a work of fiction him- or herself, the creation of an unknown and ever anonymous “author of the author”. (shrink)

In Philosophical Fragments the pseudonymous author Johannes Climacus explored the question: What is required in order to go beyond Socratic recollection of eternal ideas already possessed by the learner? Written as an afterword to this work, Concluding Unscientific Postscript is on one level a philosophical jest, yet on another it is Climacus's characterization of the subjective thinker's relation to the truth of Christianity. At once ironic, humorous, and polemical, this work takes on the "unscientific" form of a mimical-pathetical-dialectical compilation (...) of ideas. Whereas the movement in the earlier pseudonymous writings is away from the aesthetic, the movement in Postscript is away from speculative thought. Kierkegaard intended Postscript to be his concluding work as an author. The subsequent "second authorship" after The Corsair Affair made Postscript the turning point in the entire authorship. Part One of the text volume examines the truth of Christianity as an objective issue, Part Two the subjective issue of what is involved for the individual in becoming a Christian, and the volume ends with an addendum in which Kierkegaard acknowledges and explains his relation to the pseudonymous authors and their writings. The second volume contains the scholarly apparatus, including a key to references and selected entries from Kierkegaard's journals and papers. (shrink)

Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript is a classic of existential literature. It concludes the first and richest phase of Kierkegaard's pseudonymous authorship and is the text that philosophers look to first when attempting to define Kierkegaard's own philosophy. Familiar Kierkegaardian themes are introduced in the work, including truth as subjectivity, indirect communication, the leap, and the impossibility of forming a philosophical system for human existence. The Postscript sums up the aims of the preceding pseudonymous works (...) and opens the way to the next part of Kierkegaard's increasingly tempestuous life: it can thus be seen as a cornerstone of his philosophical thought. This volume offers the work in a new and accessible translation by Alastair Hannay, together with an introduction that sets the work in its philosophical and historical contexts. (shrink)

This book deals with a central problem in the writings of Soren Kierkegaard, the themes of time and the self as developed in the pseudonymous writings. Arguing that a most effective way to grasp the unity of Kierkegaard's dialectic of the stages of existence is to focus on the dramatic presentation of time and the self that appears at each stage, Mark C. Taylor pursues these themes from the viewpoints of theology, philosophy, psychology, and related areas of study. (...) The author works from the original texts and makes much use of untranslated primary and secondary material. His concluding evaluation offerse a critical perspective from which to view Kierkegaard's interpretation of time and selfhood and indicates the importance of Kierkegaard's work for our time. Mark C. Taylor teaches religion at Williams College. Originally published in 1975. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

This book is an analysis of Kierkegaard's account of the self from a unique perspective, that of a character introduced by one of Kierkegaard's pseudonymous authors, Johannes de silentio. This character is seen once in a brief vignette in Fear and Trembling, but Hough argues that this character is a necessary lens for looking across Kierkegaard's vast authorship, both the pseudonymous works as well as the works that Kierkegaard himself signed. This character sketch, (...) often overlooked in Kierkegaard scholarship, is crucial to understanding what Kierkegaard calls the life of faith, and, therefore, the nature of a fully realized human self. (shrink)

The first comprehensive introduction to cover the entire span of Kierkegaard’s authorship. Explores how the two strands of his writing—religious discourses and pseudonymous literary creations—influenced each other Accompanies the reader chronologically through all the philosopher’s major works, and integrates his writing into his biography Employs a unique “how to” approach to help the reader discover individual texts on their own and to help them closely examine Kierkegaard’s language Presents the literary strategies employed in Kierkegaard’s work to give (...) the reader insight into subtext. (shrink)

The Lily's Tongue offers a nuanced, sustained reading of what Maughan-Brown calls the "Lily Discourses"--four discourses that Kierkegaard wrote about the instruction in the Gospel of Matthew to "consider the lilies." Kierkegaard suggests that the lilies are "authoritative" rather than merely "figural" or "metaphorical." The aim of this book is to explore what exactly Kierkegaard means by asking, How do texts speak with authority? In Maughan-Brown's reading, Kierkegaard argues that the key to a text's authority is in the act of (...) reading itself. No text can have authority unless the reader grants it that authority. That is because, paradoxically, no text can avoid or escape the use of figural language. If the lilies speak authoritatively it is precisely because they are also figural. Texts do not speak directly; their tongue is always the lily's tongue. Drawing on the work of Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Benjamin, and Derrida, The Lily's Tongue situates Kierkegaard's reading of Matthew at the intersection of theological, philosophical, political, and literary investigations of figural language. It uniquely contributes to the ongoing discussion of Kierkegaard's theory and practice of "indirect communication" by introducing four pivotal signed discourses into this debate. In so doing, Maughan-Brown reveals a groundbreaking theory of figure--one that ultimately requires a renewed reading of the major pseudonymous works. (shrink)

The Lonely Labyrinth winds the suggestion that "Kierkegaard was a profoundly sick man, and that the character of his sickness established a privileged perspective for the understanding of his work." In the light of this thesis, his "works turn out to be, not abstruse theologico-philosophical treatises or mysterious aesthetic essays, but successive moves in a complicated dialectic of therapy." They are "efforts... to find not truth but health." Part One of Thompson's book sketches the biographical, psychological, philosophical, and literary background (...) of Kierkegaard's authorship. Part Two--the major division of the book--offers readings of the pseudonymous works from Either/or through Concluding Unscientific Postscript. (shrink)

Elrod has produced a serious and comprehensive examination of Kierkegaard’s ontology in which he takes the study of the self as the unifying ground for philosophic and theological thought. Unification is Elrod’s consistent theme. Although the title of his work acknowledges Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous corpus as an independent body within the authorship, any such assertion of autonomy—which would effectively subdivide the religious and the secular—is finally denied. Elrod, in fact, mediates all distinctions between the aesthetic and religious modalities of (...) Kierkegaard’s thought by finding within the aesthetic corpus a development of selfhood utterly consistent with Christianity’s quest for self-fulfillment. (shrink)

Authorship is a complicated subject in Kierkegaard's work, which he surely recognized, given his late attempts to explain himself in On My Work as an Author. From the use of multiple pseudonyms and antonyms, to contributions across a spectrum of media and genres, issues of authorship abound. Why did Kierkegaard write in the ways he did? Before we assess Kierkegaard's famous thoughts on faith or love, or the relationship between 'the aesthetic,' 'the ethical,' and 'the religious,' (...) we must approach how he expressed them. Given the multi-authored nature of his works, can we find a view or voice that is definitively Kierkegaard's own? Can entries in his unpublished journals and notebooks tell us what Kierkegaard himself thought? How should contemporary readers understand inconsistencies or contradictions between differently named authors? We cannot make definitive claims about Kierkegaard's work as a thinker without understanding Kierkegaard's work as an author. This collection, by leading contemporary Kierkegaard scholars, is the first to systematically examine the divisive question and practice of authorship in Kierkegaard from philosophical, literary and theological perspectives. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook Jahrgang: 20 Heft: 1 Seiten: 179-200.

The essay emphasizes the unsolvable tension between activity and passivity implied in Kierkegaard’s reduplication as an author of authors. To characterize the different approaches to pseudonymity, I will use the term Halvbefaren [the inexperienced seaman] to refer to a reading that appeals only to Kierkegaard’s or to the pseudonyms’ authority over the authorship, and Helbefaren [the experienced seaman] to refer to another interpretation that recognizes that unsolvable tension between them. Recurring to the sailing metaphor implicit in these terms that (...) appear in Climacus’ Postscript, I defend the thesis that the pseudonyms open the authorship from within, overcoming Kierkegaard as a usual author, as the only captain of the entire authorship. The mutiny performed by the pseudonyms cannot be resolved by simply transferring the authority to the pseudonyms themselves, and it creates a subjective space in the authorship so it becomes a matter of the experience of the reader. (shrink)

Because Kierkegaard so stubbornly personalizes all of his corpus, and because he so engrosses reviewers in the structural subtleties of his works, he has tended to resist serious placement within the larger contexts of philosophical tradition and our own social world. In this book, the author attempts to remedy these deficiencies. Consistently, he evades preoccupation with Kierkegaard’s pervasive personality to grapple intellectually with the problems that he raised. Taylor studies Kierkegaard’s notions of self and temporality, relating S. K. both to (...) thinkers as dear to him as Plato and Hegel, and as distant from him as Augustine and Freud. His book is intensive and rigorous: he breaks down, clarifies, and attempts to trace the furthest implications of Kierkegaard’s thought. Yet, in dismissing the problematic nature of Kierkegaard’s self-presentation to speak of his study of "the self," Taylor perhaps understates Kierkegaard’s significant point: that such study is, in itself, problematic. At times his logical reconstruction of Kierkegaard’s renderings tends to negate aspects of their compelling ambiguity. (shrink)

For over a century, the Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard has been at the center of a number of important discussions, concerning not only philosophy and theology, but also, more recently, fields such as social thought, psychology, and contemporary aesthetics, especially literary theory. Despite his relatively short life, Kierkegaard was an extraordinarily prolific writer, as attested to by the 26-volume Princeton University Press edition of all of his published writings. But Kierkegaard left behind nearly as much unpublished writing, most of which (...) consists of what are called his "journals and notebooks." Kierkegaard has long been recognized as one of history's great journal keepers, but only rather small portions of his journals and notebooks are what we usually understand by the term "diaries." By far the greater part of Kierkegaard's journals and notebooks consists of reflections on a myriad of subjects--philosophical, religious, political, personal. Studying his journals and notebooks takes us into his workshop, where we can see his entire universe of thought. We can witness the genesis of his published works, to be sure--but we can also see whole galaxies of concepts, new insights, and fragments, large and small, of partially completed but unpublished works. Kierkegaard's Journals and Notebooks enables us to see the thinker in dialogue with his times and with himself. Volume 6 of this 11-volume series includes four of Kierkegaard's important "NB" journals, covering the months from early May 1849 to the beginning of 1850. At this time Denmark was coming to terms with the 1848 revolution that had replaced absolutism with popular sovereignty, while the war with the German states continued, and the country pondered exactly what replacing the old State Church with the Danish People's Church would mean. In these journals Kierkegaard reflects at length on political and, especially, on ecclesiastical developments. His brooding over the ongoing effects of his fight with the satirical journal Corsair continues, and he also examines and re-examines the broader personal and religious significance of his broken engagement with Regine Olsen. These journals also contain reflections by Kierkegaard on a number of his most important works, including the two works written under his "new" pseudonym Anti-Climacus and his various attempts at autobiographical explanations of his work. And, all the while, the drumbeat of his radical critique of "Christendom" continues and escalates. Kierkegaard wrote his journals in a two-column format, one for his initial entries and the second for the extensive marginal comments that he added later. This edition of the journals reproduces this format, includes several photographs of original manuscript pages, and contains extensive scholarly commentary on the various entries and on the history of the manuscripts being reproduced. (shrink)

As a spiritual autobiography, Kierkegaard's The Point of View for My Work as an Author stands among such great works as Augustine's Confessions and Newman's Apologia pro Vita Sua. Yet Point of View is neither a confession nor a defense; it is an author's story of a lifetime of writing, his understanding of the maze of greatly varied works that make up his oeuvre. Upon the imminent publication of the second edition of Either/Or, Kierkegaard again intended to cease writing. (...) Now was the time for a direct "report to history" on the authorship as a whole. In addition to Point of View, which was published posthumously, the present volume also contains On My Work as an Author, a contemporary substitute, and the companion piece Armed Neutrality. (shrink)

This essay examines texts from Kierkegaard's signed and pseudonymous authorship on immortality and the resurrection, challenging the received opinion that Kierkegaard's account of eternal life merely connotes a temporal, existential modality of experience as a present eternity. Kierkegaard's thoughts on immortality are more complicated than this reading allows. I demonstrate that Kierkegaard's ideas on the afterlife emerge out of a context in which the topic had been vigorously debated in both Germany and Denmark (...) for more than a decade. In responding to these debates, Kierkegaard establishes a "new argument" for immortality that stands as a robust account of the Christian resurrection and highlights the power of a personal God at the center of life, death, and post-mortem existence. (shrink)

This book studies the use of biblical quotations in Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous works, as well as Kierkegaard’s hermeneutical methods in general. Kierkegaard’s mode of writing in these works—indeed, the very method of indirect communication—consists in a certain appropriation of the Bible. Kierkegaard thus becomes God’s “plagiarist,” repeating the Bible by reinscribing it into his own texts, where it becomes a part of his philosophical discourse and relates to most of his conceptual constructions.The Bible might also be called a gift, but (...) a gift that does not belong to Kierkegaard, one he merely passes along to his reader. The invisible omnipresence of God’s Word in the pseudonymous works, as opposed to the signed ones, forces us to revisit the entire distinction between the religious and the aesthetic. (shrink)

Early Polemical Writings covers the young Kierkegaard's works from 1834 through 1838. His authorship begins, as it was destined to end, with polemic. Kierkegaard's first published article touches on the theme of women's emancipation, and the other articles from his student years deal with freedom of the press. Modern readers can see the seeds of Kierkegaard's future career these early pieces. In "From the Papers of One Still Living," his review of Hans Christian Andersen's novel Only (...) a Fiddler, Kierkegaard rejects the notion that environment is decisive in determining the fate of genius. He also puts forward his belief that each person needs a life-view or life for which and by which to live, a thought he explores further in the comic play The Battle between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars. (shrink)

According to Stoic moral psychology, emotions are cognitive responses to perceived value in the contingent world. This dissertation begins by defending a contemporary version of this descriptive theory; it then proceeds with a critique of the Stoics' normative thesis that emotions involve amorally deplorable kind of cognitive error. I distinguish two senses in which this thesis is historically put forward, and show that both are thematically pertinent. The structural variant, as I call it, is a qualified critique of the particular (...) cognitive flaws to which emotions are liable; the fundamental argument, on the other hand, is that emotions are categorically unreliable. My goal in the rest of the dissertation is to respond to each aspect of normative Stoicism with a positive account of how it might be possible for a moral agent to avoid false emotion without doing away with emotion altogether. This means explaining how a person's emotional perception might become reliable rather than sentimental within a given moral context, and indicating what axiological conditions must generally obtain if emotion is justifiable in any case. In doing so, I draw largely upon Kierkegaard's pseudonymous and signed writings, while also engaging with other relevant philosophical texts along the way. I argue that a morality of virtue and narrative awareness is necessary for accurate emotional perception; then, I attempt to define the conditions on which a qualified value realism might be tenable. It is one thing to argue for the importance of emotion in human life, as a number of recent studies have done, but it is quite another to show how we might cultivate truthful, and avoid false, emotion. The outcome of this inquiry into the possibility of reliable emotion is a positive account of the ideal state in which one could trust oneself to be rational in being passionate. (shrink)

This article explores Kierkegaard’s largely overlooked 1838 paper “Telegraph Messages from a Mousvoyant to a Clairvoyant concerning the Relation between Xnty and Philosophy,” and argues that it can be read as a polemic against the speculative unity of philosophy and Christianity and speculative thought’s epistemological optimism, especially targeting the Danish speculative theologian Hans Lassen Martensen. It will be suggested that the “Telegraph Messages” offer a corrective to this view by separating Christianity and philosophy and underlining the ambiguity of human existence (...) and the paradoxicality of the religious sphere, thus foreshadowing key themes in Kierkegaard’s mature pseudonymous authorship. (shrink)

Who might reasonably be nominated as the funniest philosopher of all time? With this anthology, Thomas Oden provisionally declares Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)--despite his enduring stereotype as the melancholy, despairing Dane--as, among philosophers, the most amusing. Kierkegaard not only explored comic perception to its depths but also practiced the art of comedy as astutely as any writer of his time. This collection shows how his theory of comedy is integrated into his practice of comic perception, and how both are integral (...) to his entire authorship. Kierkegaard's humor ranges from the droll to the rollicking; from farce to intricate, subtle analysis; from nimble stories to amusing aphorisms. In these pages you are invited to meet the wife of an author who burned her husband's manuscript and a businessman who, even with an abundance of calling cards, forgot his own name. You will hear of an interminable vacillator whom archeologists found still pacing thousands of years later, trying to come to a decision. Then there is the emperor who became a barkeeper in order to stay in the know. The Humor of Kierkegaard is for anyone ready to be amused by human follies. Those new to Kierkegaard will discover a dazzling mind worth meeting. Those already familiar with his theory of comedy will be delighted to see it concisely set forth and exemplified. Others may have read Kierkegaard intensively without having ever really noticed his comic side. Here they will find what they have been missing. (shrink)

This volume contains a new translation, with a historical introduction by the translators, of two works written under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus. Through Climacus, Kierkegaard contrasts the paradoxes of Christianity with Greek and modern philosophical thinking. In Philosophical Fragments he begins with Greek Platonic philosophy, exploring the implications of venturing beyond the Socratic understanding of truth acquired through recollection to the Christian experience of acquiring truth through grace. Published in 1844 and not originally planned to appear under the pseudonym Climacus, (...) the book varies in tone and substance from the other works so attributed, but it is dialectically related to them, as well as to the other pseudonymous writings. The central issue of Johannes Climacus is doubt. Probably written between November 1842 and April 1843 but unfinished and published only posthumously, this book was described by Kierkegaard as an attack on modern speculative philosophy by "means of the melancholy irony, which did not consist in any single utterance on the part of Johannes Climacus but in his whole life.... Johannes does what we are told to do--he actually doubts everything--he suffers through all the pain of doing that, becomes cunning, almost acquires a bad conscience. When he has gone as far in that direction as he can go and wants to come back, he cannot do so.... Now he despairs, his life is wasted, his youth is spent in these deliberations. Life does not acquire any meaning for him, and all this is the fault of philosophy." A note by Kierkegaard suggests how he might have finished the work: "Doubt is conquered not by the system but by faith, just as it is faith that has brought doubt into the world!.". (shrink)

This newly translated Fear and Trembling, a founding document of modern philosophy and existentialism, could not be more apt for these perilous times. First published in 1843 under the pseudonym "Johannes de silentio" (John of Silence), Søren Kierkegaard's richly resonant Fear and Trembling has for generations stood as a pivotal text in the history of moral philosophy, inspiring such artistic and philosophical luminaries as Edvard Munch, W. H. Auden, Walter Benjamin, and existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. Retelling the biblical story of (...) the binding of Isaac, Kierkegaard expounds on the ordeal of Abraham, who was commanded to sacrifice his son in an exceptional test of faith. Disgusted at the self-certainty of his own age, Kierkegaard investigates the paradox underlying Abraham's decision to allow his duty to God to take precedence over his duties to his family. Now, in a new era of immense uncertainty and dislocation, renowned Kierkegaard scholar Bruce H. Kirmmse, in his accessible translation and engaging introduction, eloquently brings this classic work to a new generation of readers, demonstrating Kierkegaard's enduring power to illuminate the terrible wonder of faith. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Becoming a Self: A Reading of Kierkegaard’s “Concluding Unscientific Postscript by Merold WestphalM. Jamie FerreiraMerold Westphal. Becoming a Self: A Reading of Kierkegaard’s “Concluding Unscientific Postscript.” West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1996. Pp. xiii + 261. Cloth, $32.95. Paper, $16.95.The Purdue University Press Series in the History of Philosophy describes itself as attempting to provide insight into a philosopher by means of a focus on a single (...) major text. Such a focus is unusual for a series in the history of philosophy, and Westphal’s [End Page 144] accomplishment in this study is a fine example of how fruitfully this can be done. Commentary on over six hundred pages of Kierkegaard’s Postscript is presented in ten manageable chapters, which follow the order of the Postscript and deal with segments of it ranging from as few as twelve pages to as many as one hundred and seventy-five pages. The result is a commentary which can wonderfully guide students through the Postscript in its entirety, or through the assignment of individual chapters to accompany discrete reading selections. Westphal’s discussions are informed by an unusually wide-ranging knowledge of the history of philosophy—he considers the text not only in relation to Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, and Hegel, as others commentators have, but also brings to this work his clear strengths in phenomenological, existential, and postmodern thought (so we get useful comparisons with Gadamer, Derrida, Levinas, Heidegger, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre, among others). Lying behind Westphal’s entire approach to the book is his desire to address the two most common major criticisms of Kierkegaard’s thought, namely, that it is individualist and irrationalist. Thus, the major perspective from which everything is approached is the tension between the fallible yet responsible self—more precisely, the tension between individual and society, and the tension between irrationalist (voluntarist, blind) and rationalist. Westphal does a superb job of laying out the diversity of protests Climacus is registering in the Postscript—against Platonic intellectualism, against systematic philosophical speculation, and against the rhetorical compromising embodied in the “priest-orator.” There are, of course (as one would expect), sensible, suggestive, illuminating, and detailed exegeses of passages concerning all the significant themes associated with Climacus (approximation, appropriation, leap, direct communication, second reflection, dialectic, etc). Westphal examines the Postscript in the light of the distinction between Socratic religion and the non-Socratic (Christian) alternative found in the earlier Philosophical Fragments, to which this Postscript is an admittedly peculiar postscript, and employs material from much of Kierkegaard’s other work, including journal entries. With respect to the (in)famous category of leap, Westphal incorporates contemporary discussions of volitionalism and presents a fine summary of ways in which willing (decision) can be viewed as indirect, yet allowing the relevance of an ethics of belief. In fact, regarding even the commentary on “Truth Is Subjectivity,” where one might feel nothing new could be said, he manages to be innovative, by identifying “four moments” in the presentation of a theory of subjectivity (a satire, a parable, a definition, and a portrait) which make the chapter much more manageable for teaching. After considering Climacus’s presentation of the relation between Religiousness A and Religiousness B, Westphal appends a discussion of his own creation, Religiousness C (Chapter XIV). But all of this discussion would be unhelpful to a reader who does not fully appreciate the role of pseudonymity and indirect communication in Kierkegaard’s works; so Westphal prefaces his entire discussion with a fine chapter on pseudonymity which can be used even in courses where the entire book is not required reading. This chapter, relating pseudonymity to twentieth-century discussions of themes such as the effacement of the author of a text and the forfeiture of the privilege of authorship, is part of a three-chapter introduction setting the Postscript in relation to Kierkegaard’s biography, pseudonymity, and the familiar theory of the aesthetic, ethical, and religious stages. This entire introduction is written in a remarkably [End Page 145] engaging style which will surely seduce readers new to Kierkegaard and his creation, Johannes Climacus. For example, Westphal announces that “the flow of Regina’s... (shrink)

Introduction 1 -- Ancient Greece -- Reason and the irrational : Sophocles' Oedipus tyrannus -- Psuchê : literature and moral psychology from Homer to Sophocles -- Aristotle's poetics : Oedipus and the problem of tragedy -- Psuchê redux : philosophy and the new psychology -- Psychologizing Oedipus : reason and unreason in Aristotle's ethics -- Golden age denmark -- Kierkegaard's retrieval of Greek tragedy -- Tragedy as historical idea : either/or ancient drama reflected in the modern -- Stages on (...) life's way : Hamartia in the wake of modernity -- Fear and trembling : tragedy, comedy, and the heroism of Abraham -- The concept of anxiety : fate and the tragic logos of a second ethics -- Beyond eudaimonism : tragic virtue and the practice of eternity -- Moral psychology in the pseudonyms, search for a method ethicscontra ethics : Climacus on eternal happiness and tragic virtue -- Kierkegaard and the tragedy of authorship. (shrink)

The Danish word 'incognito' means to appear in disguise, or to act under an unfamiliar, assumed name (or title) in order to avoid identification. As a concept, incognito occurs in several of Kierkegaard’s works, but only becomes a subject of reflection in two: the Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments by Johannes Climacus and Practice in Christianity by Anti-Climacus. Both pseudonyms develop the concept from their own perspective and must be understood on their own terms. Johannes Climacus treats incognito as (...) a category of existence, defining it as a comic contradiction that creates a disguise in order to hide and protect the inwardness of the existing individual. However, Anti-Climacus treats incognito as a category of communication. He defines it as “a sign of contradiction” that creates a disguise in order to activate and disclose the inwardness of a listener or reader. (shrink)

A comprehensive anthology of Kierkegaard’s writings that offers an unmatched introduction to one of the most original and influential modern philosophers This is the most comprehensive anthology of Søren Kierkegaard’s works ever published in English. Drawn from the volumes of Princeton’s authoritative Kierkegaard’s Writings series by editors Howard and Edna Hong, these carefully chosen selections represent every major aspect of Kierkegaard’s extraordinary output, which changed the course of modern intellectual history with its mix of philosophy, psychology, theology, and literary criticism. (...) The anthology reveals the most important themes of his work, especially what it means to exist and to be human, and captures the unique character of his writings, with their shifting pseudonyms, complex dialogues, and powerful combination of irony, satire, sermon, polemic, humor, and fiction. A superb introduction and guide to the Danish philosopher, The Essential Kierkegaard vividly demonstrates why his work continues to speak so directly to so many readers. Traces the full span of Kierkegaard’s writings, from his early journals to his final work Features generous selections from all of Kierkegaard’s most important works, including Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, Works of Love, and The Sickness unto Death Presents selections from lesser-known writings, including Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions and The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air Includes an introduction to Kierkegaard’s writings and explanatory notes for each selection. (shrink)

The A to Z of Kierkegaard's Philosophy provides a contextual introduction to Kierkegaard's 19th century world of Copenhagen, a chronology of events and key figures in his life, as well as definitions of the key systems of his thought-theology, existentialism, literature, and psychology. The extensive bibliographical section covers secondary literature and electronic materials of help to researchers. The appendix includes detailed information on his writings, along with a list of his pseudonyms.

Kierkegaard scholars have made much of Kierkegaard’s posthumously published The Point of View for My Work as an Author, and the work does seem to provide a key to interpreting Kierkegaard’s infamous authorial difficulties – not the least of which is the meaning of pseudonymity in his work. Considerations of the book’s authorship itself are, however, exceptionally rare. In this article, I open an inquiry into issues of authorship that arise within the work, both in terms of what (...) The Point of View has to say about the Kierkegaardian authorship, and also in terms of how (and by whom) the book is itself authored. I propose that The Point of View brings authorship to the fore as a philosophical issue and, contrary to the consensus view, I argue that – despite the fact that the book was clearly written by Søren Kierkegaard – the book’s author cannot be identified. (shrink)

Søren Kierkegaard, the nineteenth-century Danish philosopher rediscovered in the twentieth century, is a major influence in contemporary philosophy, religion, and literature. He regarded Either/Or as the beginning of his authorship, although he had published two earlier works on Hans Christian Andersen and irony. The pseudonymous volumes of Either/Or are the writings of a young man and of Judge William. The ironical young man's papers include a collection of sardonic aphorisms; essays on Mozart, modern drama, and boredom; and "The (...) Seducer's Diary." The seeming miscellany is a reflective presentation of aspects of the "either," the esthetic view of life. Part II is an older friend's "or," the ethical life of integrated, authentic personhood, elaborated in discussions of personal becoming and of marriage. The resolution of the "either/or" is left to the reader, for there is no Part III until the appearance of Stages on Life's Way. The poetic-reflective creations of a master stylist and imaginative impersonator, the two men write in distinctive ways appropriate to their respective positions. (shrink)

Kierkegaard’s life-long interest in the theater is well documented and reflects the deep impact of Golden Age Denmark’s vibrant theatrical culture on his thinking. Kierkegaard has extensive and excellent criticism of performances and dramatic characters both famous and obscure. Additionally, Kierkegaard has the rare distinction among philosophers of having had aspects of his life and work continually put upon the stage. The key areas of his philosophical project that are considered here alongside his theatrical aesthetic are: repetition, reflection and recollection (...) as they bear upon the aesthetics of time, the dialectical relationship between theatrics and religious life, the pseudonymous authorship in theatrical frame, and the ethical imitation of prototype. In text, Kierkegaard works out dramaturgically the limits of the communication of inwardness. Hence by examining the deep engagement between Kierkegaard and the theater, one can entertain the notion that theatricality is aesthetically necessary for his project as a whole. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the work of the Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard “The Point of View for My Work as an Author” which is the most complete statement on the topic of his use of pseudonyms. The purpose of the article is to reveal the meaning of “The Point of View” for the study of the thinker’s creativity, to identify and discuss work-related problems. The first part of the article is devoted to the history of the cre­ation and publication (...) of “The Point of View”. The interpretations of pseudonymity in “The Point of View” and “Concluding Unscientific Postscript” are compared, the dif­ference between the goals and circumstances of the creation of works is considered. The reasons why Kierkegaard postponed the publication of “The Point of View” and never published it are analyzed. In the second part of the article the content of “The Point of View” is considered. Kierkegaard's interpretation of authorship and re­lated problems are analyzed. Kierkegaard connects his interpretation with the modern crisis of Christianity and shows that in these conditions a direct message about Chris­tianity is impossible. A religious author who carries out indirect communication ap­pears as a new religious type. The formation of these views of the thinker and their sig­nificance in the context of his epoch are discussed. The author of the article shows that the last part of “The Point of View” is in contradiction with its first part. Next, the criti­cism of “The Point of View” is considered. The author concludes that the skeptical atti­tude towards the content of the work is fair, but it is more aimed at destroying ideas about the possible integrity of Kierkegaard’s work and is influenced by Derrida’s doc­trine of deconstruction. The contradiction between the parts of “The Point of View” may be a consequence of Kierkegaard’s religious views and his communicative strat­egy. Arguments are made in favor of a positive attitude to the work and problems are formulated, work on which will help clarify the topic of pseudonymity. The author con­cludes that “The Point of View” is an important source through which we can trace the change in Kierkegaard’s attitude to his work. (shrink)