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The Essential Kierkegaard
This is the most comprehensive anthology of Soren 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.
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.
524 pages, Paperback
First published August 27, 1996
176 people are currently reading
7877 people want to read
About the author
Søren Kierkegaard
1,125 books6,395 followersSøren Aabye Kierkegaard was a prolific 19th century Danish philosopher and theologian. Kierkegaard strongly criticised both the Hegelianism of his time and what he saw as the empty formalities of the Church of Denmark. Much of his work deals with religious themes such as faith in God, the institution of the Christian Church, Christian ethics and theology, and the emotions and feelings of individuals when faced with life choices. His early work was written under various pseudonyms who present their own distinctive viewpoints in a complex dialogue.
Kierkegaard left the task of discovering the meaning of his works to the reader, because "the task must be made difficult, for only the difficult inspires the noble-hearted". Scholars have interpreted Kierkegaard variously as an existentialist, neo-orthodoxist, postmodernist, humanist, and individualist.
Crossing the boundaries of philosophy, theology, psychology, and literature, he is an influential figure in contemporary thought.
Kierkegaard left the task of discovering the meaning of his works to the reader, because "the task must be made difficult, for only the difficult inspires the noble-hearted". Scholars have interpreted Kierkegaard variously as an existentialist, neo-orthodoxist, postmodernist, humanist, and individualist.
Crossing the boundaries of philosophy, theology, psychology, and literature, he is an influential figure in contemporary thought.
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June 15, 2023
Sören Kierkegaard, a 19th-century Danish philosopher and theologian, is not necessarily known as a direct contributor to psychology as a science, but his ideas and concepts have had a significant influence on psychology and existential therapy. Here are some of his contributions to psychology:
1. Emphasis on subjectivity: Kierkegaard believed that subjective experience was the most important thing in a person's life. His concept of "subjective truth" suggests that each person has their own truth about themselves and their lives, and that this truth should be respected and valued.
2. Concept of anxiety: Kierkegaard focused on anxiety as a basic and universal emotion experienced by human beings. He believed that anguish could be a positive force that could drive a person to make important decisions and face challenges.
3. Ethics of responsibility: Kierkegaard emphasized the importance of personal responsibility and decision making. His philosophy centered on the idea that each person has the freedom to choose his own path and is therefore responsible for the choices he makes.
4. Concept of faith: Kierkegaard is also known for his ideas on faith and religion. He believed that faith was a personal choice and could only be discovered through subjective experience.
In general, it can be said that Kierkegaard contributed to psychology and therapy by emphasizing the importance of subjectivity, personal responsibility, and decision-making, as well as the relevance of faith in people's lives.
1. Emphasis on subjectivity: Kierkegaard believed that subjective experience was the most important thing in a person's life. His concept of "subjective truth" suggests that each person has their own truth about themselves and their lives, and that this truth should be respected and valued.
2. Concept of anxiety: Kierkegaard focused on anxiety as a basic and universal emotion experienced by human beings. He believed that anguish could be a positive force that could drive a person to make important decisions and face challenges.
3. Ethics of responsibility: Kierkegaard emphasized the importance of personal responsibility and decision making. His philosophy centered on the idea that each person has the freedom to choose his own path and is therefore responsible for the choices he makes.
4. Concept of faith: Kierkegaard is also known for his ideas on faith and religion. He believed that faith was a personal choice and could only be discovered through subjective experience.
In general, it can be said that Kierkegaard contributed to psychology and therapy by emphasizing the importance of subjectivity, personal responsibility, and decision-making, as well as the relevance of faith in people's lives.
March 20, 2012
The case of Kierkegaard (as opposed to Kierkegaard’s case, which does not exist) is a conundrum. His polemy has been appropriated as mascot to the causes of existentialism, phenomenology, theology , philosophy and .....(fill in the blank. As long as it ends in ‘gy’. Go on), each drawing parasitically from his cornucopia (of groszartig gibberish) to substantiate their cause celebre.
This can be easily done. Because Kierkegaard is a virtuoso of the verbose, spinning square (linguistic) pegs into circles. But ultimately, he has NO platform. Which is not to say he has no purpose. He does: the justification of God (to be fair, God not deity), and to that end he labours from every conceivable direction, almost as if though not to miss a single base, even if means building his house on paradox: his own.
For the longest time, I didn’t want to believe that it was as simple as that: as many after him, (I suppose), I searched for cohesion, consistency, universality (of thought), for a narrative: after all, this man speaks like a philosopher (admittedly he denied it), and so he managed my expectations accordingly. Which does not signify I expect to find myself in accordance with him, but rather to find him in accordance with himself.
Kierkegaard’s enduring relevance emanates from the ubiquitous nature of his linguistic framework., is that he dispenses with the universal meaning of language. Its actually quite a cool concept. Why invent Esperanto, Ebonics or even Klingon when you can redefine whats right under your nose. To the rest of humanity a table is a table, but when K sits at it , this tabula rasa it becomes, say, a tarantula. In the very next sentence it might mean turnip. So, let the fun begin.
Subjectivity is truth, Kierkegaard proclaims from the mountaintops. The frenzied pack of hungry intellectuals in 20 c Europe descends and the free for all begins in earnest. In France, the existentialists are having a wank fest. Never mind that the first full Kierkegaard translation doesn’t appear until 1933 to obscure reception: why fry your brain with undecipherable anachronisms when you can have when you can rely on Jean Wahl and Lev Sholev’s, interpretation or Heidegger’s provision of his own hermentical framework for interpreting Kierkegaarde.
Did Sartre read the full monty? Camus? De Bouvier?
Subjectivity is truth, right? Let existentialism begin.
Kierkegaard DID say it, but he didn’t mean it. Like the March Hare, he says what means but doesn’t mean what he says. Essential Kierkegaardian categories (the moment, paradox, truth, subjectivity) are used in a double, namely Christian sense, although there is a constant linguistic crossover between theology and philosophy. ‘Subjectivity is truth’ actually means the following (and I take a deep breath) Each individual is capable of faith, which faith God bestows. At ‘the moment’ faith is bestowed (which in itself is an objective category), concrete, individual existence begins, because otherwise the individual would not be aware that he had faith, as he would be living in untruth.
That this is so (and admittedly by implication) can be traced to Kierkegaard’s, not our own 21 c interpretation of truth and subjectivity. In Concluding Unscientific Postcript, Kierkegaard plainly states that truth is faith. Subjectivity is a looser concept, tied in to inwardness, but this under no circumstances presupposes a modern interpretation of subjective free will.
Kierkegaard’s starting point (in Thought Project) is Socrates ‘Doctrine of Recollection’, according to which all truth is within the individual, so that self knowledge implies a knowledge of god. Kierkegaardde accepts this only as an initial state of inwardness, so to speak, but his objection to its sustainability is that under these circumstances we can’t be aware of what we know because we lack self perception:
‘The temporal point of departure is nothing; for as soon as I discover that I have known the Truth from eternity without being aware of it, the same instant this moment of occasion is hidden in the Eternal, and so incorporated with it that I cannot even find it so to speak, even if I sought it; because in my eternal consciousness there is neither here nor there, but only an ubique et nusquam’.
To resolve this issue, Kierkegaard terms this state untruth or nonexistence. At this point, it would be fallacious to argue that untruth is subjective: I think we can safely presume that all who reside in untruth which is uniform and therefore objective. A shared collective experience. Then comes ‘the moment’ when truth is thrust upon us by God. This again is a uniform, non negotiable external truth (later identified as faith), which is transferred during the ‘moment’ (the integretation of the eternal into the temporal) upon each individual. At NO point here (or anywhere) does Kierkegaarde make a case that each individual now becomes free to personally (or what we would call subjectively in todays vocabulary) define ‘truth’ or faith: so, first, we did not subjectively come upon truth/faith, it is not anthropomorphic, it was given us, as an objective category, and further we are not allowed to reject faith, or misplace it:
‘Therefore if the object of faith is a human being, the whole thing is a prank by a foolish person who has not even grasped the esthetic and the intellectual. The object of faith is therefore the god’s actuality in the sense of existence.’
What then is one to make of his reference to subjectivity and individuality?. Kierkegaard’s application of subjectivity provides for the existential, but not as a blanket carte blanche for self expression in general (as Sartre say would have it). Existentialism in Kierkegaarde’s speak is nothing more than a restricted fund: you know the ones I mean: you have physical possession of the money. You can touch the money (if you want), but you CAN’t use the money except for a specific purpose. There might be infinite possibilities for realisation, but only one actuality. (And stealing is not possible either.) This is how subjectivity in Kierkegaard’s vision becomes almost a necessary evil, a prerequisite condition granted with the obligation to apply it objectively to, well, an objective God. (how free is that?!).
If god is an objective category according to Kierkegaarde, it becomes an interesting puzzle to decipher why he encumbers himself in such vigorous debate with Hegelian speculative thought in Concluding Unscientific Postcript. Lets be clear, on the issue of God (God’s existence as an objective category), the two men are in agreement. Why then, is it so important for Kierkegaarde to take the ‘other’ road to Rome? What does it matter for Christ sakes (pun intended) how we get there once we’re there?
For Hegel, of course, objective religion suffers itself to be arranged in one’s mind, organized into a system, Though he sees this aspect of religion as essential to a living faith, his interest lies in the tendency of objective religion to become divorced from the subjective life of believers When the objective aspects of religion are reified and repressively maintained by a coercive authority, living faith becomes spiritless; or “superstitious adherence to purely external formalities”, what Hegel calls “fetishism”.
As with Hegel, Kierkegaard saw the religious life of his culture as feeding the “disease of spiritlessness,” which is the dissipation of the individual, of concrete human existence. For Kierkegaard, the main problem is the objectification of the individual. He sees Hegelianism as relegating the individual to a Borg in the Hive and, with a complacent orthodoxy, hopelessly lost in abstractions. He saw both as abrogating concrete existence by retreat into otherworldly speculation, by absolutizing ethical ideality. Kierkegaard’s first target was Hegelianism—what he thought to be the fullest expression of the problem of spiritlessness.
This is not to say that Kierkegaard’s is championing free will, subjectivity and the Human Rights Convention 1998. He is not morally outraged on behalf of existentialists inc. Rather, the main problem here is one of (Kierkegaardian ) logic.
Kierkegaarde can not accept a human pool retreating into abstraction as the way to God: if this were the case, then that would lead right back into Socratean ‘gaia’ consciousness of untruth: a state of collective objectification where the knowledge of God is simply not possible. Kierkegaard therefore needs to assert the subjective nature (but only in the limited sense I described above) of truth/faith order to rescue his Pizza tower.
Ultimately Kierkegaard seeks to address the issue of and to what extent the Christian truth can be communicated, contradictions catered for fully, no corkage fees apply. And ironically, when one gets past all his torturous perambulations of language, his recontextualizing of qualifications, his theological labour pains, Kierkegaarde does little more than paraphrase Pascal
This can be easily done. Because Kierkegaard is a virtuoso of the verbose, spinning square (linguistic) pegs into circles. But ultimately, he has NO platform. Which is not to say he has no purpose. He does: the justification of God (to be fair, God not deity), and to that end he labours from every conceivable direction, almost as if though not to miss a single base, even if means building his house on paradox: his own.
For the longest time, I didn’t want to believe that it was as simple as that: as many after him, (I suppose), I searched for cohesion, consistency, universality (of thought), for a narrative: after all, this man speaks like a philosopher (admittedly he denied it), and so he managed my expectations accordingly. Which does not signify I expect to find myself in accordance with him, but rather to find him in accordance with himself.
Kierkegaard’s enduring relevance emanates from the ubiquitous nature of his linguistic framework., is that he dispenses with the universal meaning of language. Its actually quite a cool concept. Why invent Esperanto, Ebonics or even Klingon when you can redefine whats right under your nose. To the rest of humanity a table is a table, but when K sits at it , this tabula rasa it becomes, say, a tarantula. In the very next sentence it might mean turnip. So, let the fun begin.
Subjectivity is truth, Kierkegaard proclaims from the mountaintops. The frenzied pack of hungry intellectuals in 20 c Europe descends and the free for all begins in earnest. In France, the existentialists are having a wank fest. Never mind that the first full Kierkegaard translation doesn’t appear until 1933 to obscure reception: why fry your brain with undecipherable anachronisms when you can have when you can rely on Jean Wahl and Lev Sholev’s, interpretation or Heidegger’s provision of his own hermentical framework for interpreting Kierkegaarde.
Did Sartre read the full monty? Camus? De Bouvier?
Subjectivity is truth, right? Let existentialism begin.
Kierkegaard DID say it, but he didn’t mean it. Like the March Hare, he says what means but doesn’t mean what he says. Essential Kierkegaardian categories (the moment, paradox, truth, subjectivity) are used in a double, namely Christian sense, although there is a constant linguistic crossover between theology and philosophy. ‘Subjectivity is truth’ actually means the following (and I take a deep breath) Each individual is capable of faith, which faith God bestows. At ‘the moment’ faith is bestowed (which in itself is an objective category), concrete, individual existence begins, because otherwise the individual would not be aware that he had faith, as he would be living in untruth.
That this is so (and admittedly by implication) can be traced to Kierkegaard’s, not our own 21 c interpretation of truth and subjectivity. In Concluding Unscientific Postcript, Kierkegaard plainly states that truth is faith. Subjectivity is a looser concept, tied in to inwardness, but this under no circumstances presupposes a modern interpretation of subjective free will.
Kierkegaard’s starting point (in Thought Project) is Socrates ‘Doctrine of Recollection’, according to which all truth is within the individual, so that self knowledge implies a knowledge of god. Kierkegaardde accepts this only as an initial state of inwardness, so to speak, but his objection to its sustainability is that under these circumstances we can’t be aware of what we know because we lack self perception:
‘The temporal point of departure is nothing; for as soon as I discover that I have known the Truth from eternity without being aware of it, the same instant this moment of occasion is hidden in the Eternal, and so incorporated with it that I cannot even find it so to speak, even if I sought it; because in my eternal consciousness there is neither here nor there, but only an ubique et nusquam’.
To resolve this issue, Kierkegaard terms this state untruth or nonexistence. At this point, it would be fallacious to argue that untruth is subjective: I think we can safely presume that all who reside in untruth which is uniform and therefore objective. A shared collective experience. Then comes ‘the moment’ when truth is thrust upon us by God. This again is a uniform, non negotiable external truth (later identified as faith), which is transferred during the ‘moment’ (the integretation of the eternal into the temporal) upon each individual. At NO point here (or anywhere) does Kierkegaarde make a case that each individual now becomes free to personally (or what we would call subjectively in todays vocabulary) define ‘truth’ or faith: so, first, we did not subjectively come upon truth/faith, it is not anthropomorphic, it was given us, as an objective category, and further we are not allowed to reject faith, or misplace it:
‘Therefore if the object of faith is a human being, the whole thing is a prank by a foolish person who has not even grasped the esthetic and the intellectual. The object of faith is therefore the god’s actuality in the sense of existence.’
What then is one to make of his reference to subjectivity and individuality?. Kierkegaard’s application of subjectivity provides for the existential, but not as a blanket carte blanche for self expression in general (as Sartre say would have it). Existentialism in Kierkegaarde’s speak is nothing more than a restricted fund: you know the ones I mean: you have physical possession of the money. You can touch the money (if you want), but you CAN’t use the money except for a specific purpose. There might be infinite possibilities for realisation, but only one actuality. (And stealing is not possible either.) This is how subjectivity in Kierkegaard’s vision becomes almost a necessary evil, a prerequisite condition granted with the obligation to apply it objectively to, well, an objective God. (how free is that?!).
If god is an objective category according to Kierkegaarde, it becomes an interesting puzzle to decipher why he encumbers himself in such vigorous debate with Hegelian speculative thought in Concluding Unscientific Postcript. Lets be clear, on the issue of God (God’s existence as an objective category), the two men are in agreement. Why then, is it so important for Kierkegaarde to take the ‘other’ road to Rome? What does it matter for Christ sakes (pun intended) how we get there once we’re there?
For Hegel, of course, objective religion suffers itself to be arranged in one’s mind, organized into a system, Though he sees this aspect of religion as essential to a living faith, his interest lies in the tendency of objective religion to become divorced from the subjective life of believers When the objective aspects of religion are reified and repressively maintained by a coercive authority, living faith becomes spiritless; or “superstitious adherence to purely external formalities”, what Hegel calls “fetishism”.
As with Hegel, Kierkegaard saw the religious life of his culture as feeding the “disease of spiritlessness,” which is the dissipation of the individual, of concrete human existence. For Kierkegaard, the main problem is the objectification of the individual. He sees Hegelianism as relegating the individual to a Borg in the Hive and, with a complacent orthodoxy, hopelessly lost in abstractions. He saw both as abrogating concrete existence by retreat into otherworldly speculation, by absolutizing ethical ideality. Kierkegaard’s first target was Hegelianism—what he thought to be the fullest expression of the problem of spiritlessness.
This is not to say that Kierkegaard’s is championing free will, subjectivity and the Human Rights Convention 1998. He is not morally outraged on behalf of existentialists inc. Rather, the main problem here is one of (Kierkegaardian ) logic.
Kierkegaarde can not accept a human pool retreating into abstraction as the way to God: if this were the case, then that would lead right back into Socratean ‘gaia’ consciousness of untruth: a state of collective objectification where the knowledge of God is simply not possible. Kierkegaard therefore needs to assert the subjective nature (but only in the limited sense I described above) of truth/faith order to rescue his Pizza tower.
Ultimately Kierkegaard seeks to address the issue of and to what extent the Christian truth can be communicated, contradictions catered for fully, no corkage fees apply. And ironically, when one gets past all his torturous perambulations of language, his recontextualizing of qualifications, his theological labour pains, Kierkegaarde does little more than paraphrase Pascal
March 18, 2010
In the high stakes game of life, bringing Kierkegaard to the table gives a player the equivalent of a flush - the essentials are all here to assemble the various suits of humanity with the requisite five cards: passion, sincerity, reflection, curiosity, and humour. Whether you are Christian or not, his spiritual tetherhooks provide vitally needed support in stabilizing the platform for a probing of oneself and one's placement in this infinitely vast material mystery. This expertly edited book contains judiciously assembled parts from nigh on the entirety of the prodigious output of the Danish seeker - and perhaps the greatest strength and benefit this compendium provides is enabling the reader to decide upon which of Kierkegaard's works to seek out in full.
I prefer the translations contained herein by Howard and Edna Hong to those of Alastair Hannay, who's efforts at bringing the Dane into English are appreciated, but seem to flatten out the prose to the point of occasionally becoming tedious and arid. The Essential Kierkegaard has now joined The Simone Weil Reader, Human, All Too Human, and The Gay Science as the principal sources for my current forays into the bracing wisdom and delineatory guidance of brilliant minds.
I prefer the translations contained herein by Howard and Edna Hong to those of Alastair Hannay, who's efforts at bringing the Dane into English are appreciated, but seem to flatten out the prose to the point of occasionally becoming tedious and arid. The Essential Kierkegaard has now joined The Simone Weil Reader, Human, All Too Human, and The Gay Science as the principal sources for my current forays into the bracing wisdom and delineatory guidance of brilliant minds.
August 21, 2018
After learning about Kierkegaard in philosophy class way back when, and reading about his thought and ideas in numerous books, I finally got around to reading his own words. I've long wanted to read Kierkegaard and I did read Fear and Trembling a while back. But like many greats of the past, his writing is so voluminous that the amateur reader such as myself has no idea where to start. If only there was some compilation of his "essential" work...
(haha, I crack myself up!)
This book includes entries from the entirety of Kierkegaard's career. It definitely gives you a feel for his thought and how he matured and developed his thought over the years. While I appreciate these sort of compilation works, this one suffers in the same way they all do. That is, for all the good in giving a taste of his work, it also feels fragmented and incomplete. Would it be better just to dive in and work through Kierkegaard's great works, from Either/Or to The Sickness Unto Death? Perhaps. But though this work is fragmented, it does what it is supposed to in giving the reader a good entry point into Kierkegaard's world.
I like to be reading one book at a time from someone i consider a spiritual master. This is part of my own devotional reading, where I read a few pages a day in the hopes of being challenged and enriched by someone who has made this life journey before me. Kierkegaard, though he is a philosopher, can also be considered a spiritual master. That said, I found the first half or so of this book very difficult as it seemed heavier on the philosophy. The latter half, where he consistently challenges Christendom and reflects on Christian life, was much more up my alley. I suspect there may be some readers more interested in the philosophy side. It makes me wonder if there is a sort of "Essential Kierkegaard - the Spiritual Writings" or something. Don't get me wrong, the spiritual themes run through Kierkegaard's entire work, it just seemed more practical or personally challenging in his later works.
Overall though, if you want an introduction to Kierkegaard, this is the book for you. It is not easy, but it is worth it. And there is so much, especially in the second half, that is challenging.
As a sort of postscript: While I was finishing this up, I read Jacques Ellul's The Presence of the Kingdom and these two books made me...I'm not sure if "despair" is the right word. Kierkegaard talks at length on how many admire Jesus but few imitate him. Ellul is very critical of Christendom too. Together, it makes me wonder - are there just things built into Western Culture that inoculate us against actually being Christians? I don't mean that we're not sincere in our faith or that we're in danger of hellfire or anything. I just mean, when it comes to imitating Jesus (or in more contemporary parlance, being "radical") is just the fact we live in the culture we live in make this more difficult, if not impossible? I could point to all the failures I see in others. But I write this from my relatively comfortable house while my kids watch Netflix. Self denial? Suffering? I like the idea, but I also like my life. Or to put it another way, I can compare myself to many people to make myself feel like I am doing okay on the self-denial front...but I still recognize I am rather selfish and lazy. I suppose this is where grace reminds us that we are loved just as we are, though we are encouraged to continue to improve.
Anyway, tangent over. Read Kierkegaard...and Ellul.
(haha, I crack myself up!)
This book includes entries from the entirety of Kierkegaard's career. It definitely gives you a feel for his thought and how he matured and developed his thought over the years. While I appreciate these sort of compilation works, this one suffers in the same way they all do. That is, for all the good in giving a taste of his work, it also feels fragmented and incomplete. Would it be better just to dive in and work through Kierkegaard's great works, from Either/Or to The Sickness Unto Death? Perhaps. But though this work is fragmented, it does what it is supposed to in giving the reader a good entry point into Kierkegaard's world.
I like to be reading one book at a time from someone i consider a spiritual master. This is part of my own devotional reading, where I read a few pages a day in the hopes of being challenged and enriched by someone who has made this life journey before me. Kierkegaard, though he is a philosopher, can also be considered a spiritual master. That said, I found the first half or so of this book very difficult as it seemed heavier on the philosophy. The latter half, where he consistently challenges Christendom and reflects on Christian life, was much more up my alley. I suspect there may be some readers more interested in the philosophy side. It makes me wonder if there is a sort of "Essential Kierkegaard - the Spiritual Writings" or something. Don't get me wrong, the spiritual themes run through Kierkegaard's entire work, it just seemed more practical or personally challenging in his later works.
Overall though, if you want an introduction to Kierkegaard, this is the book for you. It is not easy, but it is worth it. And there is so much, especially in the second half, that is challenging.
As a sort of postscript: While I was finishing this up, I read Jacques Ellul's The Presence of the Kingdom and these two books made me...I'm not sure if "despair" is the right word. Kierkegaard talks at length on how many admire Jesus but few imitate him. Ellul is very critical of Christendom too. Together, it makes me wonder - are there just things built into Western Culture that inoculate us against actually being Christians? I don't mean that we're not sincere in our faith or that we're in danger of hellfire or anything. I just mean, when it comes to imitating Jesus (or in more contemporary parlance, being "radical") is just the fact we live in the culture we live in make this more difficult, if not impossible? I could point to all the failures I see in others. But I write this from my relatively comfortable house while my kids watch Netflix. Self denial? Suffering? I like the idea, but I also like my life. Or to put it another way, I can compare myself to many people to make myself feel like I am doing okay on the self-denial front...but I still recognize I am rather selfish and lazy. I suppose this is where grace reminds us that we are loved just as we are, though we are encouraged to continue to improve.
Anyway, tangent over. Read Kierkegaard...and Ellul.
March 3, 2021
Given that this is a collection of short essays excerpts by Kierkegaard, I will rank them independently from each other. Please don't trust my rating because I am a total Kierkegaard novice and 99% of time I had no idea what this guy is talking about:
- From the Papers of One Still Living: ⭐⭐ some critics on Hans Christian Andersen, a little bit confusing if you haven't read Andersen's works.
- Either/Or, A Fragment of Life : ⭐⭐⭐ pretty decent. I like the concept of the aesthete, ethical, and religious
- Fear and Trembling and Repetition : ⭐⭐ some concepts about Knight of Faith and Knight of Resignation - kind of confusing
- Philosophical Fragments ⭐⭐: This is even more confusing. I have no idea what he is talking about here, but some interesting concepts about the delivery of truth and the teacher of truth.
- Concept of Anxiety ⭐⭐: Anxiety is an antipathetic sympathy and sympathetic antipathy.... erm yeah.
- For Self-Examination ⭐⭐⭐⭐: Very readable.
- Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments ⭐⭐⭐⭐: He criticized the current thinking of Christianity - the absolute hemorrhaging about whether God exists or not and he commands people this and that. Kierkegaard is more concerned with the personal relationship of someone with God, and he claims that one cannot rely on external sources to tell you how to believe, not sermons, scriptures, or pastors. Faith is a constant process between uncertainty, constantly challenging yourself, and understand your shortcomings, and the focus about imposing religion on others is heavily misguided (Whatcha say to that - Jevovah's Witness?)
- Fædrelandet Articles, The Moment ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐: This section is HILARIOUS.
A Swedish pastor, shaken by the sight of the effect his discourse had on the listeners, who were swimming in tears, is reported to have said reassuringly: Do not weep, children, it may all be a lie.
---
Is this the same teaching, when Christ says to the rich young man: Sell all that you have and give it to the poor, and when the pastor says: Sell all that you have and give it to me?
---
One cannot live on nothing. One hears this so often, especially from pastors. And the pastors are the very ones who perform this feat: Christianity does not exist at all—yet they live on it.
- From the Papers of One Still Living: ⭐⭐ some critics on Hans Christian Andersen, a little bit confusing if you haven't read Andersen's works.
- Either/Or, A Fragment of Life : ⭐⭐⭐ pretty decent. I like the concept of the aesthete, ethical, and religious
- Fear and Trembling and Repetition : ⭐⭐ some concepts about Knight of Faith and Knight of Resignation - kind of confusing
- Philosophical Fragments ⭐⭐: This is even more confusing. I have no idea what he is talking about here, but some interesting concepts about the delivery of truth and the teacher of truth.
- Concept of Anxiety ⭐⭐: Anxiety is an antipathetic sympathy and sympathetic antipathy.... erm yeah.
- For Self-Examination ⭐⭐⭐⭐: Very readable.
- Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments ⭐⭐⭐⭐: He criticized the current thinking of Christianity - the absolute hemorrhaging about whether God exists or not and he commands people this and that. Kierkegaard is more concerned with the personal relationship of someone with God, and he claims that one cannot rely on external sources to tell you how to believe, not sermons, scriptures, or pastors. Faith is a constant process between uncertainty, constantly challenging yourself, and understand your shortcomings, and the focus about imposing religion on others is heavily misguided (Whatcha say to that - Jevovah's Witness?)
- Fædrelandet Articles, The Moment ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐: This section is HILARIOUS.
A Swedish pastor, shaken by the sight of the effect his discourse had on the listeners, who were swimming in tears, is reported to have said reassuringly: Do not weep, children, it may all be a lie.
---
Is this the same teaching, when Christ says to the rich young man: Sell all that you have and give it to the poor, and when the pastor says: Sell all that you have and give it to me?
---
One cannot live on nothing. One hears this so often, especially from pastors. And the pastors are the very ones who perform this feat: Christianity does not exist at all—yet they live on it.
July 14, 2015
Fantastic but depressing. I found this volume in a book shelf at my parents house and read it before bed while staying there. I was riveted but decidedly depressed about life after each reading. It was worth the sadness.
August 15, 2007
There is so much more to Kierkegaard than the text books give him credit for. He is often painted as a relativist, but I find that description too simplistic. He encourages people to actually think about what they are doing, so that when they act, it is with their entire being. He describes it as a "perfect leap of faith". He tells us to do things because we actually believe in them-not just out of duty, tradition or community pressure. This is the point of the essay on walking the dog at Deer Park on Sunday. He is fine with not walking the dog on Sunday if the person is abstaining out of reasoned belief. I found this and many of his other ideas empowering in college and still do today.
April 16, 2015
This book is a collection of excerpts from the works of Søren Kierkegaard. One minute he's talking about Ladies fashion and how that allows his character to be in control of women, and the next minute he is talking about theological implications of philosophical thought. Kierkegaard was an interesting person through his writings. He preferred to use pseudonyms and just say that he was editing the works rather than providing them. I really enjoyed the book, it was quite interesting and thought provoking. I would probably read it again given the chance, but I think I would rather have all of Kierkegaard's works instead of a shortened version. Though I could understand if he was really prolific and the book would be the size of a dictionary.
January 12, 2009
This is a great tool, put together by reputable people, for anyone looking to grasp the K man.
April 13, 2012
What can I say? I need another cat, because I would like to name something of note in my life Soren. I finished this yesterday, 09/10/09, and I immediately picked up Chekov's stories.
October 6, 2012
It took me some time to read this book but it was worth it.
Here are some of my favourite lines:
"But he who becomes guilty through anxiety is indeed innocent, for it was not he himself but anxiety, a foreign power, that laid hold of him, a power that he did not love but about which he was anxious."
"Anxiety is neither a category of necessity nor a category of freedom; it is entangled freedom, where freedom is not free in itself but entangled, not by necessity, but in itself."
"... only when it is a duty to love, only then is love eternally secured."
"Spontaneous love can be changed within itself; by spontaneous combustion it can become the sickness of jealousy; from the greatest happiness it can become the greatest torment."
"When the danger is so great that death becomes the hope, then despair is the hopelessness of not even being able to die. It is in this last sense that despair is the sickness unto death, this tormenting contradiction, this sickness of the self, perpetually to be dying, to die and yet not die, to die death."
Thank you Stefan Bolea! :)
Here are some of my favourite lines:
"But he who becomes guilty through anxiety is indeed innocent, for it was not he himself but anxiety, a foreign power, that laid hold of him, a power that he did not love but about which he was anxious."
"Anxiety is neither a category of necessity nor a category of freedom; it is entangled freedom, where freedom is not free in itself but entangled, not by necessity, but in itself."
"... only when it is a duty to love, only then is love eternally secured."
"Spontaneous love can be changed within itself; by spontaneous combustion it can become the sickness of jealousy; from the greatest happiness it can become the greatest torment."
"When the danger is so great that death becomes the hope, then despair is the hopelessness of not even being able to die. It is in this last sense that despair is the sickness unto death, this tormenting contradiction, this sickness of the self, perpetually to be dying, to die and yet not die, to die death."
Thank you Stefan Bolea! :)
February 27, 2025
The popular perception of Kierkegaard’s work has been somewhat distorted, it seems to me, by the label “grandfather of existentialism” that has become affixed to him. Kierkegaard was a religious writer and a Christian thinker. If he proceeded in being those things “ironically” it was not in the sense that he was deploying Christianity ironically. Indeed, the ironic was deployed to make the religious nature of his work all the more powerfully felt as such.
Kierkegaard was decidedly not a “philosopher of the absurd” like Sartre. One can perhaps see how Kierkegaard’s work directly influenced someone like Heidegger. But that German thinker was more spiritual and concerned with pre-supposed essence than he wanted to admit.
I think it possible that contemporary perspectives on Kierkegaard as a groundbreaking maverick actually owe more to him as a literary stylist than as a philosopher. Many writers of early 19th century northern Europe wrote under pseudonyms but Kierkegaard made pseudonymous writing a genre into itself.
Not only did he deploy one, but armies of not just invented names but personas which critiqued, encouraged, mocked and argued with one another. Such meta-fictional discourses foresee twentieth century experimenters such as Pessoa and Nabakov. Kierkegaard’s sense of absurdity, in the literary, not the philosophical sense, the pseudonyms he deployed- (Johannes Climacus, Anti-Climacus, Hilarious Bookbinder) - display not just a worthy inheritor to the witty traditions of Swift but also predict later absurdists such as Pynchon.
Kierkegaard’s doctoral thesis, “On the Concept of Irony”, published in 1841, strikes me as being the launching pad for the primary lines of thought that would characterize his earlier period. The subject of the dissertation is ostensibly Socrates, the only figure to which Kierkegaard would ever acknowledge a direct intellectual debt. (The only figure who he felt was truly worthy of being called his spiritual mentor was Jesus Christ, which gives one a sense of Kierkegaard’s degree of humility.) Socrates, for Kierkegaard, was the first true ironist.
The ironist, according to Kierkegaard, is the person who puts into dialog before the existing social order the dialectic between the subject’s empirical self (as it exists in relation to that order) and their ideal form- that which applies only (or as yet) to the subject’s inner life. The ironist is utterly earnest about one thing- nothing- that which is in no way yet established. Existence/ experience, that which is, is acknowledged as such but only as that which is fully alien and alienating for the ironist.
The ironist, then, feels impelled to attack the existing order, for they see its utter inadequacy, but they cannot foresee that which will usurp the present. They can only point to what is to replace that which is as that which they themselves have not yet known. The ironist attacks, but only with that which they themselves declare inadequate- that which is. Thus, the ironist must always ultimately present themselves as a figure of impotence, but one whose defeat points to an (as yet) invisible transcendence.
Irony is thus characterized by Kierkegaard as an “infinite, absolute negativity”. It is perhaps the use of the term “negativity” that makes me draw connections between Kierkegaard’s “irony” and the work of Theodore Adorno, who devoted some of his earliest writings to the work of Kierkegaard. This line of negational/ critical thinking would become at most a subtext for much of Kierkegaard’s later writings. It would assert itself in the forefront of only one future work- the only (ostensible) “Literary Review” he would ever write, on the novel “Two Ages,” by Thomasine Gyllembourg-Ehrensvard, written many years after the dissertation and indeed after the “completion” of Kierkegaard’s first “cycle” of writings, in 1846.
In his review, entitled “The Age of Revolution and the Present Age”, Kierkegaard writes very little about the novel that is the supposed subject of the article other than to say how he believes the work reflects his own feelings about the social world around him. The present age, writes Kierkegaard, is not characterized by action towards creating a better, or even merely different, society but rather of anticipation for the bestowal of meaning from above. However, this kind of anticipation is not imagined by Kierkegaard as “faith” but as its opposite. Kierkegaard’s age neither destroys nor creates but leaves in place institutions, such as the church, that it no longer believes in, thinking they will deliver “administration”. Thus, no new meaning can come into being, but old meanings decay into mere apathetic dependency.
Since there is no longer a meaningful religious life that the self can turn to, humanity’s inner essence is also drained. It looks to the other not with a desire to understand either other or self but merely to surveil and make sure everyone is “fitting in” to the administered order. This fear and envy (or “resentment”, I dare propose) levels humanity into a self-hating one-mass, which Kierkegaard degradingly labels “the public”. The only hope Kierkegaard can imagine for his age is a return to an ever-more unlikely inner dialog on the nature of subjective faith.
In “On the Concept of Irony” and “Present Age” Kierkegaard, it seems to me, lays the ground for the work of Adorno and the Frankfurt School (as well, to a lesser extent, to that of Nietzsche) more directly than he ever did for what has come to be known as existentialism. But this line of thinking would never be the one that took up the majority of Kierkegaard’s literary existence.
The ironic stance, however, would remain central to Kierkegaard’s early work. At its broadest level, the ironic stance is simply that which maintains an intellectual distance from the world and is prepared for life-in-the-world to end. Indeed, the ironic stance enthusiastically awaits the parting of death- both the self from the world and the world from the self. One of the enduring questions of Kierkegaard’s oeuvre is how seriously, and in what form of seriousness, to acknowledge the self. His response to this question would change radically at different times in his life.
The famous “Either/Or”, published in 1843, is one of the principle works that earned Kierkegaard that “god-father of existentialism” label. It is divided into two parts, “authored” by two different personas known simply as “A” and “B”. The “two” works represent the outlooks of the esthetic and the ethical world-views, and are brought together by an entirely fictitious editor named Victor Eremita. “A”, the esthetic/ poetical writer, proposes that all life decisions result in regret (a precursor to Heidegger’s “guilt”) and “Either/Or” will propose that the ultimate choice a person must make and endure is that between the esthetic and the ethical.
For the esthete, recollection is more satisfying than the lived present since recollection represents experience divorced from the demands of temporality. Poetic language is that of recollection. It is sensuous and insists on a beauty and joy that Kierkegaard consistently suggests actual lived experience lacks. Indeed, forgetfulness of the actual truth of the lived present is what makes remembrance and creation possible. According to “A”, one can only live a truly artistic life when one becomes hopelessly forgetful.
“B”, the ethical “author” of “Either/Or” sees to implicitly agree with his predecessor that life will always come down to the painful choice between the esthetic and the ethical, but the similarities stop there. According to “B” the esthetic life represents the choice not to choose. The poetic/ esthetic life devotes itself to describing and representing life rather than actually partaking in it and taking a stance, an existence that the ethicist sees as pointless and empty.
“B” looks to the choices they make in order to become (in the future) an authentic self. For “B”, this living-in-the-world means acknowledging the world’s joyless ugliness. But in choosing the despair of choice the ethicist posits an absolute self that is characterized by freedom.
If Kierkegaard’s concept of “regret” correlates to Heidegger’s “guilt” than in “The Concept of Anxiety” (1844) Kierkegaard introduces a concept even more closely related to one of Heidegger’s. Indeed, the terms used by both writers translate into English as “anxiety”. In “Anxiety” Kierkegaard defines humanity as a combination of two synthesis. The first is that of the psychic and the physical. Importantly, that which synthesizes these two is “spirit”, a metaphysical concept implying a pre-supposed essence.
The second synthesis is of the eternal and the temporal. One generally associates terms like “spirit” with eternity. However, for Kierkegaard, the spiritual is that which exists, which knows itself, temporally. Its essence is the temporal even though it lives in a natural world the essence of which is, according to Kierkegaard, timeless. (Again, it is important to note that for Kierkegaard the world has an absolute, eternal essence.)
The inertia experienced by a temporal consciousness existing in a timeless world is anxiety. Anxiety is “freedom’s actuality”, or “freedom entangled in itself”. It is the desire for what one fears and the fear of what one desires. To put it another way, it is the dread that accompanies choice. Humanity’s essence, then, is that of an anxious subjectivity. One cannot help but be anxious before choice, but one must learn to be anxious in the right way. (Perhaps this “right way” is the ethical life outlined in “Either/Or”?)
In “Philosophical Fragments” (also 1844) Kierkegaard returns to the figure of Socrates so as to look to the question of how an eternal truth can reveal itself in a historical/ temporal being. For Socrates truth and virtue were interchangeable concepts, one which he felt was on some level known by everyone. Learning was, for Socrates, not an introduction of the truth to a human subject but rather a reconciliation of the subject with truth/ virtue.
Kierkegaard contrasts his view with that of Socrates. For Kierkegaard, one can come to a Truth that was previously fully outside of/ unknown to oneself. Indeed, with humanity, eternal truths come into being temporally. Every time an individual subjectivity discovers a truth for themselves, even if this truth is already known and recognized by everyone else, then this is as much an enactment of the truth as if it was the first time this truth had been recognized by anyone. Subjectivity is the site of truth-enactment, rather than, a la Socrates, the truth being the foundation of subjectivity. When any subjectivity recognizes an eternal truth (such as Jesus being the savior) they are, yes, reborn.
The theme of the transformational nature of revelation is further explored in “Stages on Life’s Way” (1845). Kierkegaard distinguishes between the concepts of remembering, which is what Socrates’s subject must do to be reunited with Truth/ Virtue, and recollection. One can remember events that one was in no way a part of- indeed one can remember a fact about an event that took place before one was born. Recollection, on the other hand, is purely subjective. It is a creative interpretation of past, personal experience.
The highest form of recollection, Kierkegaard writes, is repentance. This is the recollection of one’s own guilt. Here Kierkegaard introduces a third “sphere of existence” in addition to the esthetic and the ethical introduced in “Either/Or”. The ethical life creates the possibility for repentance and with it the religious sphere of existence, one in which internal fulfillment becomes, finally, possible.
The theological aspect of Kierkegaard’s early project most fully asserts itself in “Fear and Trembling” (1843), officially authored by the pseudonym Johannes de Silencio. Kierkegaard sought to evoke the religious by stripping from a Biblical tale- that of Abraham and Isaak- all that was comfortingly “familiar” about it. Kierkegaard strives to make his reader experience Abraham’s CHOICE.
Kierkegaard, nay Silencio, narrates the familiar tale with terrifying immediacy. A man of faith is commanded by God to murder his own son. The most disturbing part of the story as narrated in “Fear and Trembling” is referenced in the title. It is the moment when Isaac, being led up to Mount Mariah, looks up to his father and witnesses Abraham shutter with a horror that implies momentary doubt as to the “Godliness” of his murderous intention.
Abraham reveals himself as a Knight of Faith in exactly his expression of doubt. For Abraham fully understands, he feels, that he is acting outside of what anyone but him could imagine as ethical. He is completely alone in his belief. Ultimately, of course, the ethical is merely suspended, not violated, for Abraham spares Isaac upon God’s further command. This suspension of the conventionally ethical, a radical break with the universal community of humanity, results in the higher purpose of seeing the Knight rewarded for his faith and serving as a model for all humanity (as imagined in the Old Testament).
In “Stages On Life’s Way” Kierkegaard writes that a figure such as Abraham could only have existed in an age of “primitive thought” that did not rely on the crutches of philosophy or official theology. Abraham communicated with God from the depths of himself and related unconditionally to the unconditioned. This would be impossible in the modern age (as Kierkegaard will later write about in more detail in “The Present Age”) that has become thoroughly “unprimitive” and has lost all truly personal relation to the Divine.
The figure who represents the universal in “Fear and Trembling” is not the protagonist but his near-victim, Isaac. It is the son who remains in the category of the ethical throughout the tale and stares with terrified incomprehension at the Knight of Faith. The survival and prosperity of Isaac, as the universal, gives meaning to Abraham’s travails. The finite Knight of Faith is great in so far as he is ultimately a conduit for the infinite/ universal that is Isaac.
Kierkegaard, as Silencio, then asks if these tales of the Old Testament retain any meaning for the readers of nineteenth century Europe. The narrator places himself in the position of the universal. He can only wonder at the possibility of a Knight of Faith, which he proclaims that to his knowledge he has never met, but would like to. How, the author asks, would this figure manifest itself in the author’s Europe? This Knight could be anywhere. Indeed, the author muses that it could be anyone and EVERYone but himself.
Abraham’s contemporary equivalent would not mirror the Biblical figure in actions, the author muses, but in inwardly maintaining authentic religious faith in the face of a reality (that of 19th century Europe) utterly devoid of any sign of the divine. Indeed, the Knight of Faith might well be a tax collector going about their bureaucratic existence with an inner insistence on the Divine, and perhaps it is just this possibility of faith ON THE PART OF THE OTHER that makes life palatable and endurable for the author, the contemporary representative of the universal.
In a supreme example of Kierkegaard’s literary irony, the magnum opus of his “first stage” is not a work-within-itself at all but rather “Concluding Unscientific Post-Script to Philosophical Fragments” (1846). (I’m willing to venture that this changed Nabakov’s life.) In the earlier “Fragments” Kierkegaard asked how an eternal consciousness (such as that belonging to Christ, or the revelation of Christ in the Christian) can be historical/ temporal in origin. How do we transient/ temporal beings receive the Eternal Truth of Christianity and become Christians?
Kierkegaard starts by critiquing accepted notions of “objectivity”. Perhaps a bit too quickly and simplistically, he argues that conventional notions of objectivity will always be circular and self-referential. Ultimately, all the one who testifies to objectivity can do is repeat some version of “the true is the truth because it is true.” Ironically (again!), the only certain, objective truth is the subjective. Since the subjective is always true-as-such, the seeker of objective truth should immerse itself as deeply as possible in their own subjectivity.
If the seeker of truth is lucky, they will find themselves feeling passion towards their own subjectivity. With passion, the objectivity of temporal subjectivity achieves a kind of eternity. (This is, I think, a fair reading of Kierkegaard’s notion of “passion” in the “Postscript”. I must also say that to me it reads like an intellectualized notion of “religion will deliver you from death”.)
In a particularly famous paragraph, truth, it is argued, lies not in any truth-claim as such. Rather, truth exists as a RELATION between a subject and a claim. Indeed, if a subject authentically and passionately believes in a claim, even if the claim is objectively “proven” false, the subject is as much in relation to truth as they would be if everyone else in the world agreed the subject’s claim was true. Passion is faith, the subjective awareness of and insistence on an objective uncertainty.
With this, Kierkegaard clearly influenced later philosophers’ concepts of the “absurd”. Truth would seem to be whatever one chooses it to be. In terms of the content of a truth-claim, this might be a fair characterization of Kierkegaard’s thinking. However, I think it is important to remember that in many of Kierkegaard’s works he characterizes humanity’s NATURE as that of anxiety in relation to choosing its truth. Humanity is always conceived by Kierkegaard as having a fixed essence in relation to the Eternal (the Christian concept of God).
Existence does not presuppose essence in Kierkegaard’s work, decidedly differentiating his thinking from the likes of Sartre. One can, perhaps, recognize affinities between Kierkegaard’s sense of essence with another name associated with the “existential”- that of Heidegger, for whom the self’s relation to its cultural embeddedness provided, as least in his earlier writings, something akin to a pre-supposed essence.
Kierkegaard was decidedly not a “philosopher of the absurd” like Sartre. One can perhaps see how Kierkegaard’s work directly influenced someone like Heidegger. But that German thinker was more spiritual and concerned with pre-supposed essence than he wanted to admit.
I think it possible that contemporary perspectives on Kierkegaard as a groundbreaking maverick actually owe more to him as a literary stylist than as a philosopher. Many writers of early 19th century northern Europe wrote under pseudonyms but Kierkegaard made pseudonymous writing a genre into itself.
Not only did he deploy one, but armies of not just invented names but personas which critiqued, encouraged, mocked and argued with one another. Such meta-fictional discourses foresee twentieth century experimenters such as Pessoa and Nabakov. Kierkegaard’s sense of absurdity, in the literary, not the philosophical sense, the pseudonyms he deployed- (Johannes Climacus, Anti-Climacus, Hilarious Bookbinder) - display not just a worthy inheritor to the witty traditions of Swift but also predict later absurdists such as Pynchon.
Kierkegaard’s doctoral thesis, “On the Concept of Irony”, published in 1841, strikes me as being the launching pad for the primary lines of thought that would characterize his earlier period. The subject of the dissertation is ostensibly Socrates, the only figure to which Kierkegaard would ever acknowledge a direct intellectual debt. (The only figure who he felt was truly worthy of being called his spiritual mentor was Jesus Christ, which gives one a sense of Kierkegaard’s degree of humility.) Socrates, for Kierkegaard, was the first true ironist.
The ironist, according to Kierkegaard, is the person who puts into dialog before the existing social order the dialectic between the subject’s empirical self (as it exists in relation to that order) and their ideal form- that which applies only (or as yet) to the subject’s inner life. The ironist is utterly earnest about one thing- nothing- that which is in no way yet established. Existence/ experience, that which is, is acknowledged as such but only as that which is fully alien and alienating for the ironist.
The ironist, then, feels impelled to attack the existing order, for they see its utter inadequacy, but they cannot foresee that which will usurp the present. They can only point to what is to replace that which is as that which they themselves have not yet known. The ironist attacks, but only with that which they themselves declare inadequate- that which is. Thus, the ironist must always ultimately present themselves as a figure of impotence, but one whose defeat points to an (as yet) invisible transcendence.
Irony is thus characterized by Kierkegaard as an “infinite, absolute negativity”. It is perhaps the use of the term “negativity” that makes me draw connections between Kierkegaard’s “irony” and the work of Theodore Adorno, who devoted some of his earliest writings to the work of Kierkegaard. This line of negational/ critical thinking would become at most a subtext for much of Kierkegaard’s later writings. It would assert itself in the forefront of only one future work- the only (ostensible) “Literary Review” he would ever write, on the novel “Two Ages,” by Thomasine Gyllembourg-Ehrensvard, written many years after the dissertation and indeed after the “completion” of Kierkegaard’s first “cycle” of writings, in 1846.
In his review, entitled “The Age of Revolution and the Present Age”, Kierkegaard writes very little about the novel that is the supposed subject of the article other than to say how he believes the work reflects his own feelings about the social world around him. The present age, writes Kierkegaard, is not characterized by action towards creating a better, or even merely different, society but rather of anticipation for the bestowal of meaning from above. However, this kind of anticipation is not imagined by Kierkegaard as “faith” but as its opposite. Kierkegaard’s age neither destroys nor creates but leaves in place institutions, such as the church, that it no longer believes in, thinking they will deliver “administration”. Thus, no new meaning can come into being, but old meanings decay into mere apathetic dependency.
Since there is no longer a meaningful religious life that the self can turn to, humanity’s inner essence is also drained. It looks to the other not with a desire to understand either other or self but merely to surveil and make sure everyone is “fitting in” to the administered order. This fear and envy (or “resentment”, I dare propose) levels humanity into a self-hating one-mass, which Kierkegaard degradingly labels “the public”. The only hope Kierkegaard can imagine for his age is a return to an ever-more unlikely inner dialog on the nature of subjective faith.
In “On the Concept of Irony” and “Present Age” Kierkegaard, it seems to me, lays the ground for the work of Adorno and the Frankfurt School (as well, to a lesser extent, to that of Nietzsche) more directly than he ever did for what has come to be known as existentialism. But this line of thinking would never be the one that took up the majority of Kierkegaard’s literary existence.
The ironic stance, however, would remain central to Kierkegaard’s early work. At its broadest level, the ironic stance is simply that which maintains an intellectual distance from the world and is prepared for life-in-the-world to end. Indeed, the ironic stance enthusiastically awaits the parting of death- both the self from the world and the world from the self. One of the enduring questions of Kierkegaard’s oeuvre is how seriously, and in what form of seriousness, to acknowledge the self. His response to this question would change radically at different times in his life.
The famous “Either/Or”, published in 1843, is one of the principle works that earned Kierkegaard that “god-father of existentialism” label. It is divided into two parts, “authored” by two different personas known simply as “A” and “B”. The “two” works represent the outlooks of the esthetic and the ethical world-views, and are brought together by an entirely fictitious editor named Victor Eremita. “A”, the esthetic/ poetical writer, proposes that all life decisions result in regret (a precursor to Heidegger’s “guilt”) and “Either/Or” will propose that the ultimate choice a person must make and endure is that between the esthetic and the ethical.
For the esthete, recollection is more satisfying than the lived present since recollection represents experience divorced from the demands of temporality. Poetic language is that of recollection. It is sensuous and insists on a beauty and joy that Kierkegaard consistently suggests actual lived experience lacks. Indeed, forgetfulness of the actual truth of the lived present is what makes remembrance and creation possible. According to “A”, one can only live a truly artistic life when one becomes hopelessly forgetful.
“B”, the ethical “author” of “Either/Or” sees to implicitly agree with his predecessor that life will always come down to the painful choice between the esthetic and the ethical, but the similarities stop there. According to “B” the esthetic life represents the choice not to choose. The poetic/ esthetic life devotes itself to describing and representing life rather than actually partaking in it and taking a stance, an existence that the ethicist sees as pointless and empty.
“B” looks to the choices they make in order to become (in the future) an authentic self. For “B”, this living-in-the-world means acknowledging the world’s joyless ugliness. But in choosing the despair of choice the ethicist posits an absolute self that is characterized by freedom.
If Kierkegaard’s concept of “regret” correlates to Heidegger’s “guilt” than in “The Concept of Anxiety” (1844) Kierkegaard introduces a concept even more closely related to one of Heidegger’s. Indeed, the terms used by both writers translate into English as “anxiety”. In “Anxiety” Kierkegaard defines humanity as a combination of two synthesis. The first is that of the psychic and the physical. Importantly, that which synthesizes these two is “spirit”, a metaphysical concept implying a pre-supposed essence.
The second synthesis is of the eternal and the temporal. One generally associates terms like “spirit” with eternity. However, for Kierkegaard, the spiritual is that which exists, which knows itself, temporally. Its essence is the temporal even though it lives in a natural world the essence of which is, according to Kierkegaard, timeless. (Again, it is important to note that for Kierkegaard the world has an absolute, eternal essence.)
The inertia experienced by a temporal consciousness existing in a timeless world is anxiety. Anxiety is “freedom’s actuality”, or “freedom entangled in itself”. It is the desire for what one fears and the fear of what one desires. To put it another way, it is the dread that accompanies choice. Humanity’s essence, then, is that of an anxious subjectivity. One cannot help but be anxious before choice, but one must learn to be anxious in the right way. (Perhaps this “right way” is the ethical life outlined in “Either/Or”?)
In “Philosophical Fragments” (also 1844) Kierkegaard returns to the figure of Socrates so as to look to the question of how an eternal truth can reveal itself in a historical/ temporal being. For Socrates truth and virtue were interchangeable concepts, one which he felt was on some level known by everyone. Learning was, for Socrates, not an introduction of the truth to a human subject but rather a reconciliation of the subject with truth/ virtue.
Kierkegaard contrasts his view with that of Socrates. For Kierkegaard, one can come to a Truth that was previously fully outside of/ unknown to oneself. Indeed, with humanity, eternal truths come into being temporally. Every time an individual subjectivity discovers a truth for themselves, even if this truth is already known and recognized by everyone else, then this is as much an enactment of the truth as if it was the first time this truth had been recognized by anyone. Subjectivity is the site of truth-enactment, rather than, a la Socrates, the truth being the foundation of subjectivity. When any subjectivity recognizes an eternal truth (such as Jesus being the savior) they are, yes, reborn.
The theme of the transformational nature of revelation is further explored in “Stages on Life’s Way” (1845). Kierkegaard distinguishes between the concepts of remembering, which is what Socrates’s subject must do to be reunited with Truth/ Virtue, and recollection. One can remember events that one was in no way a part of- indeed one can remember a fact about an event that took place before one was born. Recollection, on the other hand, is purely subjective. It is a creative interpretation of past, personal experience.
The highest form of recollection, Kierkegaard writes, is repentance. This is the recollection of one’s own guilt. Here Kierkegaard introduces a third “sphere of existence” in addition to the esthetic and the ethical introduced in “Either/Or”. The ethical life creates the possibility for repentance and with it the religious sphere of existence, one in which internal fulfillment becomes, finally, possible.
The theological aspect of Kierkegaard’s early project most fully asserts itself in “Fear and Trembling” (1843), officially authored by the pseudonym Johannes de Silencio. Kierkegaard sought to evoke the religious by stripping from a Biblical tale- that of Abraham and Isaak- all that was comfortingly “familiar” about it. Kierkegaard strives to make his reader experience Abraham’s CHOICE.
Kierkegaard, nay Silencio, narrates the familiar tale with terrifying immediacy. A man of faith is commanded by God to murder his own son. The most disturbing part of the story as narrated in “Fear and Trembling” is referenced in the title. It is the moment when Isaac, being led up to Mount Mariah, looks up to his father and witnesses Abraham shutter with a horror that implies momentary doubt as to the “Godliness” of his murderous intention.
Abraham reveals himself as a Knight of Faith in exactly his expression of doubt. For Abraham fully understands, he feels, that he is acting outside of what anyone but him could imagine as ethical. He is completely alone in his belief. Ultimately, of course, the ethical is merely suspended, not violated, for Abraham spares Isaac upon God’s further command. This suspension of the conventionally ethical, a radical break with the universal community of humanity, results in the higher purpose of seeing the Knight rewarded for his faith and serving as a model for all humanity (as imagined in the Old Testament).
In “Stages On Life’s Way” Kierkegaard writes that a figure such as Abraham could only have existed in an age of “primitive thought” that did not rely on the crutches of philosophy or official theology. Abraham communicated with God from the depths of himself and related unconditionally to the unconditioned. This would be impossible in the modern age (as Kierkegaard will later write about in more detail in “The Present Age”) that has become thoroughly “unprimitive” and has lost all truly personal relation to the Divine.
The figure who represents the universal in “Fear and Trembling” is not the protagonist but his near-victim, Isaac. It is the son who remains in the category of the ethical throughout the tale and stares with terrified incomprehension at the Knight of Faith. The survival and prosperity of Isaac, as the universal, gives meaning to Abraham’s travails. The finite Knight of Faith is great in so far as he is ultimately a conduit for the infinite/ universal that is Isaac.
Kierkegaard, as Silencio, then asks if these tales of the Old Testament retain any meaning for the readers of nineteenth century Europe. The narrator places himself in the position of the universal. He can only wonder at the possibility of a Knight of Faith, which he proclaims that to his knowledge he has never met, but would like to. How, the author asks, would this figure manifest itself in the author’s Europe? This Knight could be anywhere. Indeed, the author muses that it could be anyone and EVERYone but himself.
Abraham’s contemporary equivalent would not mirror the Biblical figure in actions, the author muses, but in inwardly maintaining authentic religious faith in the face of a reality (that of 19th century Europe) utterly devoid of any sign of the divine. Indeed, the Knight of Faith might well be a tax collector going about their bureaucratic existence with an inner insistence on the Divine, and perhaps it is just this possibility of faith ON THE PART OF THE OTHER that makes life palatable and endurable for the author, the contemporary representative of the universal.
In a supreme example of Kierkegaard’s literary irony, the magnum opus of his “first stage” is not a work-within-itself at all but rather “Concluding Unscientific Post-Script to Philosophical Fragments” (1846). (I’m willing to venture that this changed Nabakov’s life.) In the earlier “Fragments” Kierkegaard asked how an eternal consciousness (such as that belonging to Christ, or the revelation of Christ in the Christian) can be historical/ temporal in origin. How do we transient/ temporal beings receive the Eternal Truth of Christianity and become Christians?
Kierkegaard starts by critiquing accepted notions of “objectivity”. Perhaps a bit too quickly and simplistically, he argues that conventional notions of objectivity will always be circular and self-referential. Ultimately, all the one who testifies to objectivity can do is repeat some version of “the true is the truth because it is true.” Ironically (again!), the only certain, objective truth is the subjective. Since the subjective is always true-as-such, the seeker of objective truth should immerse itself as deeply as possible in their own subjectivity.
If the seeker of truth is lucky, they will find themselves feeling passion towards their own subjectivity. With passion, the objectivity of temporal subjectivity achieves a kind of eternity. (This is, I think, a fair reading of Kierkegaard’s notion of “passion” in the “Postscript”. I must also say that to me it reads like an intellectualized notion of “religion will deliver you from death”.)
In a particularly famous paragraph, truth, it is argued, lies not in any truth-claim as such. Rather, truth exists as a RELATION between a subject and a claim. Indeed, if a subject authentically and passionately believes in a claim, even if the claim is objectively “proven” false, the subject is as much in relation to truth as they would be if everyone else in the world agreed the subject’s claim was true. Passion is faith, the subjective awareness of and insistence on an objective uncertainty.
With this, Kierkegaard clearly influenced later philosophers’ concepts of the “absurd”. Truth would seem to be whatever one chooses it to be. In terms of the content of a truth-claim, this might be a fair characterization of Kierkegaard’s thinking. However, I think it is important to remember that in many of Kierkegaard’s works he characterizes humanity’s NATURE as that of anxiety in relation to choosing its truth. Humanity is always conceived by Kierkegaard as having a fixed essence in relation to the Eternal (the Christian concept of God).
Existence does not presuppose essence in Kierkegaard’s work, decidedly differentiating his thinking from the likes of Sartre. One can, perhaps, recognize affinities between Kierkegaard’s sense of essence with another name associated with the “existential”- that of Heidegger, for whom the self’s relation to its cultural embeddedness provided, as least in his earlier writings, something akin to a pre-supposed essence.
November 2, 2017
If time is correctly defined as an infinite succession, it most likely is also defined as the present, the past, and the future. This distinction, however, is incorrect if it is considered to be implicit in time itself, because the distinction appears only through the relation of time to eternity and through the reflection of eternity in time. If in the infinite succession of time a foothold could be found, i.e., a present, which was the dividing point, the division would be quite correct. However, precisely because every moment, as well as the sum of the moments, is a process (a passing by), no moment is a present, and accordingly there is in time neither present, nor past, nor future. If it is claimed that this division can be maintained, it is because the moment is spatialized, but thereby the infinite succession comes to a halt, it is because representation is introduced that allows time to be represented instead of being thought. Even so, this is not correct procedure, for even as representation, the infinite succession of time is an infinitely contentless present (this is the parody of the eternal).
The present, however, is not a concept of time, except precisely as something infinitely contentless, which again is the infinite vanishing. If this is not kept in mind, no matter how quickly it may disappear, the present is posited, and being posited it again appears in the categories: the past and the future.
The eternal, on the contrary, is the present. For thought, the eternal is the present in terms of an annulled succession (time is the succession that passes by). For representation, it is a going forth that nevertheless does not get off the spot, because the eternal is for representation the infinitely contentful present. So also in the eternal there is no division into the past and the future, because the present is posited as the annulled succession.
Time is, then, infinite succession; the life that is in time and is only of time has no present. In order to define the sensuous life, it is usually said that it is in the moment and only in the moment. By the moment, then, is understood that abstraction from the eternal that, if it is to be the present, is a parody of it. The present is the eternal, or rather, the eternal is the present, and the present is full.
The present, however, is not a concept of time, except precisely as something infinitely contentless, which again is the infinite vanishing. If this is not kept in mind, no matter how quickly it may disappear, the present is posited, and being posited it again appears in the categories: the past and the future.
The eternal, on the contrary, is the present. For thought, the eternal is the present in terms of an annulled succession (time is the succession that passes by). For representation, it is a going forth that nevertheless does not get off the spot, because the eternal is for representation the infinitely contentful present. So also in the eternal there is no division into the past and the future, because the present is posited as the annulled succession.
Time is, then, infinite succession; the life that is in time and is only of time has no present. In order to define the sensuous life, it is usually said that it is in the moment and only in the moment. By the moment, then, is understood that abstraction from the eternal that, if it is to be the present, is a parody of it. The present is the eternal, or rather, the eternal is the present, and the present is full.
February 13, 2012
Kierkegaard is certainly one of the most versatile spiritualist's I've ever read: philosophy, aesthetics, beautiful writing - what more can one ask for?
This edition is a very good start, but be warned that his circumlocutions can be an eye-full to the inexperienced young thinker. But, if you're really bold just slam through the tome, consuming as much spirit as possible, in utter awe... and it might all just come to you in a FLASH! That's how It happens!
Also: it seems as though Kierkegaard's writings could have retained a lot more recognition if he had not deluded a bit in the whole Christianity-thing. But, his aesthetic writing style is what seals his destiny. He gives such a solemn and arduous account of subjectivity that it'd seem absurd that anyone should ever critique his work properly.
Not to mention the translation is luminous. One day - and I shall say this in utmost certainty - I am going read all of Kierkegaard's work. Hong & Hong are some of the most tactful translators in the history of mankind.
Have fun, valiant readers & thinkers!
This edition is a very good start, but be warned that his circumlocutions can be an eye-full to the inexperienced young thinker. But, if you're really bold just slam through the tome, consuming as much spirit as possible, in utter awe... and it might all just come to you in a FLASH! That's how It happens!
Also: it seems as though Kierkegaard's writings could have retained a lot more recognition if he had not deluded a bit in the whole Christianity-thing. But, his aesthetic writing style is what seals his destiny. He gives such a solemn and arduous account of subjectivity that it'd seem absurd that anyone should ever critique his work properly.
Not to mention the translation is luminous. One day - and I shall say this in utmost certainty - I am going read all of Kierkegaard's work. Hong & Hong are some of the most tactful translators in the history of mankind.
Have fun, valiant readers & thinkers!
August 12, 2013
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.
December 14, 2010
I admit, Kierkegaard challenges me big time! Very difficult reading, but there is treasure to be found. "Compared with the person who is conscious of his despair, the despairing individual who is ignorant of his despair is simply a negativity further away from the truth and deliverance…Yet ignorance is so far from breaking the despair or changing despair to no despair that it can in fact be the most dangerous form of despair."
Read
December 5, 2008A wonderful collection of readings. A treasure for always, one of the best books I have ever owned.
It's been a joy this first month of owning it to engage with new and favourite writings. Very restorative, not just as K., but as a serious centre, delightfully funny as it usually is!
It's been a joy this first month of owning it to engage with new and favourite writings. Very restorative, not just as K., but as a serious centre, delightfully funny as it usually is!
January 19, 2017
This is BY FAR the best Kierkegaard collection I have ever read. Clear, concise, and faithful in its context, the Hongs proves why they are, and always will be, Soren's most qualified interpreters. MUST READ FOR ANYONE INTERESTED IN CHRISTIAN EXISTENTIALISM.
February 20, 2007
kierkegaard is one of my favorites...i haven't read everything in here, but recommend it wholeheartedly nonetheless.
Want to read
November 29, 2015(unless one of you could suggest a better place to start with Kierkegaard)
February 6, 2008
If you want to get to know the essential message of Kierkegaardian philosophy this reader is the way to go.
January 25, 2011
Haven't finished reading all the passages yet, but have read enough to know that Kierkegaard is one of my all time favorites
March 16, 2020
I should have read this more carefully.
April 30, 2024
4.2/5
My second Kierkegaard book (first was The Sickness Unto Death). This one certainly provided a well-rounded introduction to the breadth of his views. His writing is perceptive and honest, not always convincing, but sincere.
Quotes:
Philosophy is perfectly right in saying that life must be understood backward.
But then one forgets the other clause—that it must be lived forward. The more one thinks through this clause, the more one concludes that life in temporality never becomes properly understandable, simply because never at any time does one get perfect repose to take a stance— backward.
How unreasonable people are! They never use the freedoms they have but demand those they do not have; they have freedom of thought-they demand freedom of speech.
Marry, and you will regret it. Do not marry, and you will also regret it. Marry or do not marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the stupidities of the world, and you will regret it; weep over them, and you will also regret it.
Here at once is the principle of limitation, the sole saving principle in the world. The more a person limits himself, the more resourceful he becomes. A solitary prisoner for life is extremely resourceful; to him a spider can be a source of great amusement. Think of our school days.
agreement in likes and dislikes, this and this only is what constitutes true friendship
An ancient philosopher has said that if a person carefully chronicles all his experiences, he is, before he knows where he is, a philosopher.
the difference between the conquering and the possessing natures. The conquering nature is continually outside itself, the possessing nature is within itself; therefore the first gains an outer history, and the second an inner history.
Aristotle remarks in his Poetics that poetry is superior to history, because history presents only what has occurred, poetry what could and ought to have occurred, i.e., poetry has possibility at its disposal. Possibility, poetic and intellectual, is superior to actuality.
Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing
Or is not despair actually double-mindedness; or what else is it to despair but to have two wills!
Love builds up by presupposing that love is present. Have you not experienced this yourself, my listener?
A person's resiliency can actually be measured by his power to forget. He who cannot forget will never amount to much.
But what, then, is love? Love is to presuppose love; to have love is to presuppose love in others; to be loving is to presuppose that others are loving
To build up is to presuppose love; to be loving is to presuppose Love; only love builds up. To build up is to erect something from the ground up— but, spiritually, love is the ground of everything. No human being can place the ground of love in another person's heart; yet love is the ground, and we can build up only from the ground up; therefore we can build up only by presupposing love. Take love away —then there is no one who builds up and no one who is built up.
This is the secret in the entire art of helping. Anyone who cannot do this is himself under a delusion if he thinks he is able to help someone else. In order truly to help someone else, I must understand more than he—but certainly first and foremost understand what he understands. If I do not do that, then my greater understanding does not help him at all. If I nevertheless want to assert my greater understanding, then it is because I am vain or proud, then basically instead of benefiting him I really want to be admired by him. But all true helping begins with a humbling.
My second Kierkegaard book (first was The Sickness Unto Death). This one certainly provided a well-rounded introduction to the breadth of his views. His writing is perceptive and honest, not always convincing, but sincere.
Quotes:
Philosophy is perfectly right in saying that life must be understood backward.
But then one forgets the other clause—that it must be lived forward. The more one thinks through this clause, the more one concludes that life in temporality never becomes properly understandable, simply because never at any time does one get perfect repose to take a stance— backward.
How unreasonable people are! They never use the freedoms they have but demand those they do not have; they have freedom of thought-they demand freedom of speech.
Marry, and you will regret it. Do not marry, and you will also regret it. Marry or do not marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the stupidities of the world, and you will regret it; weep over them, and you will also regret it.
Here at once is the principle of limitation, the sole saving principle in the world. The more a person limits himself, the more resourceful he becomes. A solitary prisoner for life is extremely resourceful; to him a spider can be a source of great amusement. Think of our school days.
agreement in likes and dislikes, this and this only is what constitutes true friendship
An ancient philosopher has said that if a person carefully chronicles all his experiences, he is, before he knows where he is, a philosopher.
the difference between the conquering and the possessing natures. The conquering nature is continually outside itself, the possessing nature is within itself; therefore the first gains an outer history, and the second an inner history.
Aristotle remarks in his Poetics that poetry is superior to history, because history presents only what has occurred, poetry what could and ought to have occurred, i.e., poetry has possibility at its disposal. Possibility, poetic and intellectual, is superior to actuality.
Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing
Or is not despair actually double-mindedness; or what else is it to despair but to have two wills!
Love builds up by presupposing that love is present. Have you not experienced this yourself, my listener?
A person's resiliency can actually be measured by his power to forget. He who cannot forget will never amount to much.
But what, then, is love? Love is to presuppose love; to have love is to presuppose love in others; to be loving is to presuppose that others are loving
To build up is to presuppose love; to be loving is to presuppose Love; only love builds up. To build up is to erect something from the ground up— but, spiritually, love is the ground of everything. No human being can place the ground of love in another person's heart; yet love is the ground, and we can build up only from the ground up; therefore we can build up only by presupposing love. Take love away —then there is no one who builds up and no one who is built up.
This is the secret in the entire art of helping. Anyone who cannot do this is himself under a delusion if he thinks he is able to help someone else. In order truly to help someone else, I must understand more than he—but certainly first and foremost understand what he understands. If I do not do that, then my greater understanding does not help him at all. If I nevertheless want to assert my greater understanding, then it is because I am vain or proud, then basically instead of benefiting him I really want to be admired by him. But all true helping begins with a humbling.
July 25, 2023
I very much enjoyed reading this book! I think the Hongs did an especially good job at helping the reader move through the stages of existence (aesthetic-ethical-religious A-religious B). This is essential if one is to understand Kierkegaard's project as a "missionary to Christendom." However, I was mystified by some of their choice of his writings, especially earlier on in the book. I get that they are trying to display a variety of his writings, but I think for an "essentials" book, it is actually better to play it safe. For example, they decided to put in a couple of his unpublished writings which was totally fine and interesting, but I think that they missed out on some of his actual published works. Maybe this is just a preference thing for me, but I think more could have been included from his especially good works such as Works of Love, Philosophical Fragments, Upbuilding Discourses, etc. Not only are these works profound, they are just more accessible than some of his unpublished/less important works. All in all, I love Kierkegaard, and I am glad to have read this book, I just would have replaced some of what they put in there, especially if I would recommend this to someone trying to get into Kierkegaard.
Finally, I think that any editor of Kierkegaard needs to ensure their readers know that Kierkegaard speaks through many voices. I think that they did a good job at this because they included Kierkegaard's own essays that make it clear that he does not always think what his pseudonyms think. However, for some reason, people still fail to realize that Kierkegaard's thoughts are not A's thoughts, or Judge William's thoughts, or Johannes's Climacus's thoughts, or Bookbinder's thoughts. He is purposefully speaking through many different voices, in a way that reminds me of Dostoevsky wearing many masks in his novels to present problems from different perspectives. Anyways, if you're a Kierkegaard fan, give it a read, but if you are new to Kierkegaard, maybe wait on this one.
Finally, I think that any editor of Kierkegaard needs to ensure their readers know that Kierkegaard speaks through many voices. I think that they did a good job at this because they included Kierkegaard's own essays that make it clear that he does not always think what his pseudonyms think. However, for some reason, people still fail to realize that Kierkegaard's thoughts are not A's thoughts, or Judge William's thoughts, or Johannes's Climacus's thoughts, or Bookbinder's thoughts. He is purposefully speaking through many different voices, in a way that reminds me of Dostoevsky wearing many masks in his novels to present problems from different perspectives. Anyways, if you're a Kierkegaard fan, give it a read, but if you are new to Kierkegaard, maybe wait on this one.
March 31, 2022
I had heard about the philosopher Kierkegaard some time ago and had this book on my list of things to read for some time. Now that I have finally finished reading it, I can say that his works are very interesting, but also very difficult to grasp at times. Since this book is made with philosophy students in mind, this is not a book for the uninitiated to tread lightly into. Some of the excerpted works are excellent and I will definitely be looking to read them in their entirety in the future (Fear and Trembling, The Sickness Unto Death, and his more religious works written in his later years come to mind), but not all of his works are interesting. In fact, one of my biggest problems with this book is that the least interesting works of Kierkegaard seemed to get more pages than the more interesting works. It's frustrating to read 10 pages of something really good only to have to plod through 20-50 pages of something incredibly boring afterwards. The other problem I had with this book was the editors' notes at the beginning of each excerpted work. They are interesting for those who want a little biography and background information on Kierkegaard, but they do almost nothing to help the reader to understand what they are reading. Some more in-depth notes to explain the works' main ideas either at the beginning of the excerpts or interspersed as editors' footnotes throughout would have done much to aid my understanding and enjoyment of this book. I will definitely be looking for that in the next book of Kierkegaard I find the time to read.
February 5, 2017
This was a challenging read. Occasionally interesting, often tedious, sometimes bewildering. He attempts to understand and explain how Christianity can remain philosophically justifiable within a Hegelian framework. I admit I found many portions confusing. I'd like to think that I only found it difficult to follow his thinking because the book is a collection sampling from many of his books, thus interfering with the logical flow. Maybe I just wasn't patient enough to work through all his dialectical reasoning because it seemed so arcane. Perhaps I could better appreciate one of his complete books, but after reading this I'm not sure I could work up the interest. I'm going to try Backhouse's book about Kierkegaard instead.
February 18, 2021
I find much of Kierkegaard’s thought fascinating: his exploration of the “subjective thinker” and the tasks that go with being one; his analysis of anxiety and doubt; his fascination with the question of “becoming” vs the illusion of becoming. As with many philosophers, I sometimes got impatient with his inclination to reduce complex cultural and existential phenomena to sweeping claims about “Christendom” or “society.” But I think there’s a lot to Kierkegaard’s thought that makes his work feel relevant to the human experience, especially if you’re intrigued by existence like I am.
July 28, 2017
This book does a phenomenal job of compiling and contextualizing all of Kierkegaard's oeuvre, but I wish it had been significantly lengthened into volumes. As it stands, we get a page or more of the most important works - the entire texts in a complete edition would serve more than just a description of them
August 11, 2018
Collection of works of an enlightened and simple human being. Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher of the 19th century has an interesting interpretation of life, besides his subjective view on ethics, aesthetics, and truth. This book is intended to guide the reader on becoming a true Christian and to induce one to think by oneself.
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