Kierkegaard: A fiction

by Barbara Anderson

Barbara Anderson develops the fundamental dilemma in the life and thought of the nineteenth-century Danish existentialist, Soren Kierkegaard, in an unorthodox style and with an original focus. While most works on Kierkegaard are concerned with the dilemma internal to the religious striving, this book centers upon Kierkegaard's radically human drive—the passion of creative genius—which continually twisted and thwarted his longing for the Divine.

This book is an effort through fiction to allow the human dimension of Kierkegaard's life to emerge as making a strong and essential claim upon him—a claim which he felt very deeply, one to which he could not help but respond, and one which, in the end, he failed to meet. Thus the book focuses mainly upon the women in Kierkegaard's life, for they are symbolic of that human otherness (as opposed to the Divine otherness of God) which determines human love.

Philosophers, theologians, and others familiar with the Danish existentialist will recognize the superiority of the scholarship which informs this remarkable book.

155 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974