A Kierkegaard Anthology

by Søren Kierkegaard, Robert W. Bretall (Editor)

This anthology covers the whole of Kierkegaard's literary career. The selections range from the terse epigrams of the Journal through the famous -Diary of the Seducer- and the -Banquet- scene, in which Soren Kierkegaard reveals his great lyric and dramatic gifts, on to the philosophical and psychological works of his maturity. These are climaxed by the beautiful and moving religious discourses which accompany them; finally, there is the biting satire of his Attack upon -Christendom.-

This is emphatically not a collection of -snippets, - but the cream of Kierkegaard, each selection interesting and intelligible in itself, and all ranking among his most important work. They are so arranged as to convey an idea of his remarkable intellectual development.

Contents: A comprehensive anthology from the following works: Either/Or Fear and Trembling Stages on Life's Way Works of Love Concluding Unscientific Postscript Attack upon -Christendom- The Sickness Unto Death Philosophical Fragments and others

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theology, Religion, Spirituality, Classics, History

494 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1936

About the author

Søren 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.

Reviews

[Erik Graff · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Kierkegaard Anthology was assigned for Howard Burkle's course The Philosophy of Existentialism at Grinnell College. Only some was assigned, but I read it all, the partial reading of texts always bothering me more than the time required to finish them.

Although I had a strong prejudice against Christian theology except as historical documents, Kierkegaard had to be taken seriously. Reading him, I could understand why he was often classified as a proto-existentialist. His theology was not based on an ignorant, childlike acceptance of some assemblage of biblical texts, but quite self-awarely flew in the face of mere facts and common sense. This was intriguing, representing a current of Christian thinking which just might be relevant, a current I later found in Rudolf Bultmann.

[Tim McIntosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent selections from a (the?) great 19th century mind. Who else can do these two things at once?: 1) Peel back your skin for your persistent hypocrisy. 2) Comfort you in your plight down this weary path. SK is like the best of friends -- loving you tight but telling you the tough truth.

[Ted Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I encountered this book when I was an engineering student and supposedly busy studying engineering. Kierkegaard was entirely new to me, I think. This was a helpful introduction not only to Kierkegaard but to theology. I browsed it but closely. Later I bought another edition of the work from Princeton University Press. I did not know Bretall but later I learned more about him and his work.

This was a foundational work for me. It utterly fascinated me and set my reading even until today when I am an old man. I was a late teenager when I began. Other reviewers here have outlined the book and summarized Kierkegaard quite well. The anthology was perfect for the busy time I had doing engineering work-well symbolic logic as a background for algebraic mathematics. This work delayed by passing my initial math course until my second quarter but I don't care. I wanted to read it.

The biographical details helped immensely. The quotations from the Journals were vital. I am not seeking a way to obtain the entire translation of the Journals. Kierkegaard helped me with the mendacity and banality of my church experiences and deepened my interest that I changed my major to religion.

[D · Rating 1 out of 5]

Surprisingly misogynistic, this was my introduction to Kierkegaard. Not appreciated.

[William Schram · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a collection of the works of Kierkegaard organized chronologically. It is meant to show his development as an author and as a writer in general. I don't know if they included all of the works, but some of them are abridged and have to have footnotes explaining some parts. The book starts each work with a short biographical bit telling us where Kierkegaard was at this point in his life. So initially it shows the journals from 1834-1842, then comes Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, and so on. This guy's life is rather sad. I suppose he might feel vindicated that he is now considered a founder of the Existentialist school of thought, but I am sure it would be nicer to be recognized when he was alive.

Søren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher and the first existentialist. Robert Bretall anthologizes Kierkegaard's works in this book. Most of Kierkegaard's writings are under a pseudonym. He had a relationship with a woman named Regina Olsen. It ended poorly, and he was vilified and brutally mocked for it. Was this why he undertook a pseudonym? I don't know, I can't ask him.

Kierkegaard was a profoundly religious man. He felt that a divine command from God superseded morality and ethics. Kierkegaard demonstrates this with the Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham made a leap of faith, trusting God's words and plan. It led to Abraham almost sacrificing his son, but that was all part of God's plan.

I enjoyed the book. Thanks for reading my review, and see you next time.

[James Violand · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very difficult read. This Danish philosopher established his own response to Hegel, drawing from a spiritual predisposition that the true self determines reality. As you read him, you become drawn into a vortex of existentialism. The subjective becomes the truth. There exists no objectivity. Those who hold that there exist objective truths are foolishly following tradition. Very few have ever discovered this perspective. Even fewer have asserted it. Those claiming to be religious (he has a definite frustration with Christendom) are really not so, because they risk nothing to prove it. It has become a habitual, comfortable mantle. Sadly, they unwittingly pursue empty lives. True faith, true belief in God, requires acknowledging the true self and abandoning that self to God. This is the antithesis of the world’s reality.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a good desk reference for the works of Soren Kierkegaard. It contains a lot of his principle works, however, they have unfortunately been edited significantly in order to fit in an anthology format. Read this perhaps to get an idea of Kierkegaard's thought, but read the original works if you want a true sample of his writing talent.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great survey of the master philosopher's best works.

[Cristian]

Dejando de lado que la traducción no es precisa y se toma libertades (cosa que de la que me percaté leyendo la traducción al inglés "Either/Or" de Howard y Edna Hong, y comparando con el Danés original), comete el grandisimo error de tomar textos de "O lo uno o lo otro" y presentarlos por si solos. Estos fueron escritos bajo pseudónimo (algo muy importante cuando respecta a Kierkegaard), como parte de un todo, y leerlos de forma aislada puede llevar a un completo malentendimiento del filósofo.
Desconosco otras traducciones al español como para recomendar, pero el que entienda inglés, las traducciones de los Hongs son muy recomendadas.

[David A-S · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read Kierkegaard alongside Abelard. Abelard is in scholasticism's origins and Kierkegaard basically undermines Hegelian thought (which seems to have deep scholastic origins). He was so heady and yet vulnerable in his writings. I think he is essentially both an academia nut and a mystic. His words against a soft Christendom are prophetic and thus hard to hear for someone in the system, but he speaks truth. There are many critiques one can make about him, but one can never question his veracity and commitment to spiritual growth.

[Gregory Eidson · Rating 5 out of 5]

this life saved my life more than once . . .

i put it into a little free library . . .

maybe i'll get another copy for another day but i didn't want to hog it . . .

it might save someone elses life now!

such a breath of fresh air are the words of this guy!

i'm glad that there's a planet wherein Kierkegaard is one of the voices.

[George]

I read sections of this a long time ago for a college class; I really liked SK then and wanted to reacquaint myself with his writings. Thus far, reading it straight through instead of in sections, I'm getting a lot out of it.

[Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm sure I would have liked it more but I'm a little slow and about half of it went over my head. It did bring some issues into focus for me though and I'm sure if I read it again I would understand even more of it. The problem was it's a very deep book and I'm a very shallow person.

[Klgg · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite philosophers in my teens - I think because he was so inquisitive.

[Kafkasfriend · Rating 5 out of 5]

As an introduction to Kierkegaard this is by far the best produced.

[Ellie Benson]

I have been reading this slowly over the past two years.

[James Koppen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first existentialist and devout Christian. Fascinating guy.

[David Goetz · Rating 5 out of 5]

SK is the man!

[nick riso · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow....Kierkegaard and Bretall (editor) both receive 5 stars

[Renxiang Liu · Rating 5 out of 5]

This anthology covers almost all of Kierkegaard's key writings, both philosophical and religious, with the probable exception of The Concept of Dread . Excerpts are made carefully so that, put together, they enable a rich picture of Kierkegaard's thought. The introductory passages by the editor are also usually helpful.

A significant aspect of Kierkegaard's writings is that he uses lots of pseudonyms. To understand this, the first step is to know about his purpose. According to Kierkegaard himself, the task is to revive genuine Christianity ("of the New Testament") in an age of Christendom, where faith has become routine and no longer involves any risk or struggle. However, Kierkegaard does not consider himself a saint or a prophet, someone who conveys the absolute truth, but rather a "poet", namely someone who ridicules the status quo and hence elicits religiosity by aesthetic and philosophical means.

Consequently, there are two modes of writing in Kierkegaard: a discursive disclosure of the insufficiency and self-contradiction of mundane pursuits, and a more positive account about what true religion means. Pseudonyms are only used for the former, and usually it is the former type that interests readers, especially those who read him as a philosopher. There his talent of irony is exhibited in a full-fledged manner.

However, one should not forget Kierkegaard's own insistence that there is no "transition" in his career from an aesthetic stage to a religious one, as his terminology may sometimes suggest. Rather, the religious concern is always implied in aesthetic writings, and, conversely, even when he deals directly with religious themes, the aesthetic apparatus is never absent. Their relation is like that between Hegel's determination and absolute idea - the former has the latter as its ultimate aim, while the latter every time has to be exhibited, albeit imperfectly, through the former. The aesthetic has independent yet limited value.

As I have already commented on the philosophical writings elsewhere (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show..., https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), this time I want to focus on the less-noted religious writings as presented in this anthology, and especially to talk about Kierkegaard's peculiar conception of modes of temporality other than clock/cosmological/chronological time.

Kierkegaard's conception of time is based on a widely-accepted distinction between the eternal and the temporal. God by default belongs to the former, man to the latter. However, Kierkegaard gives this distinction a new twist, for he does not conceive God and man as static within their respective orders, but as capable to transposing between the two.

Let us begin with a characterization of the temporal and the eternal. A thing in the temporal order is considered to be incapable of preserving its identity on its own. Rather, it can at most enjoy "continuance" (as opposed to "immutability"), which involves an urge to constantly become itself again and again. The reason for its "instability", quite contrary to how tradition metaphysics conceives it, is that "temporal existence is divisive in itself, and the present cannot be contemporaneous with the future, or the future with the past, or the past with the present." ( Works of Love , 295 (of this anthology - henceforth the same), my italics) A temporal thing essentially tends to become its other, and this constitutes the distance between the past, the present and the future. In this sense, there is history only because things are historical, there is time only because things are temporal - that is, prone to change and self-alienation.

By contrast, the eternal is absolutely contemporaneous, which is another way to express its atemporality. Not only is it contemporaneous with itself, so that its identity is not an identity against change, i.e. a contingent achievement, but something a priori; it also "is the only thing [which can be and become and continue contemporaneously with every age" (Ibid.). As an extreme pole, the eternal witnesses all temporal occurrences without the temporal differences that separates them. Kierkegaard's example is that a genuine Christian is contemporaneous with Christ's life: he lets Christ's example influence him immediately (as if Christ were present), rather than considering Christ a historical figure and assessing his greatness in terms of the influence he left behind. It is clear that the contemporaneousness implied in Kierkegaard's account of the eternal is far from a coincidence between two events on the chronological scale.

Now that we have understood what those two orders (the temporal and the eternal) refer to, we can try to answer the question as to how man (or God) transposes himself between the orders, or - objectively speaking - how one order "interrupts" the other.

The concept associated with the transposition of man into the eternal is "the moment" [det øjeblik]. Though the moment "is transient as all moments are" when considered in terms of chronological time, "it is decisive, and filled with the eternal" ( Philosophical Fragments , 161). The fullness of eternity is compressed into a moment infinitely brief, because the eternal does not belong within the temporal order; yet the moment is capable of completely transforming man's temporal existence; it extends this transformation not only into the future but also into the past, as exhibited in the experience of conversion ("I have sinned"). As Kierkegaard says in Either/Or , the moment "constantly drags itself back inwardly" and "constantly drags along in time" (89). Inwardly the moment is infinitely abundant, since it is the entrance of the eternal into the temporal. For this very reason, the moment cannot be represented temporally, i.e. abbreviated, without essential loss (Ibid.). The temporal seems undisturbed at all, not even capable of retaining the moment when it proceeds, i.e. becomes its other.

On the other hand, the eternal remains impotent unless it enters the temporal order. This indeed is paradoxical: Christianity is peculiar in that, in its doctrine of the Incarnation, the eternal (God) enters history. The difficulty involved in this doctrine never loses Kierkegaard's attention. On the title page of Philosophical Fragments he asks: "is an historical point of departure possible for an eternal consciousness" (153)? Interestingly, it was the same problem that troubled and motivated Hegel, Kierkegaard's imagined opponent.

Kierkegaard approaches the problem first by suggesting the need of the eternal to enter the temporal. When he argues against the charge that mistakes Christ's exceptionality for pride, Kierkegaard explains that exceptionality appears to be pride when leveled down to a lower order, i.e. the temporal. But the point is that, unlike a talented child who finds himself in a lower class, Christ cannot just switch to a higher class - for otherwise his effort of saving all would be in vain. In other words, the eternal has no entrance into the world, or into Being in the proper sense, except through the temporal order. ( The Point of View for My Work as an Author , 338)

Second, the eternal by itself is incapable of becoming. According to Kierkegaard, the temporal life is the only chance for man to become a Christian, for otherwise he would be "standing in eternity" as a pagan as soon as he dies, "where it is impossible to become a Christian" ( The Attack upon "Christendom" , 436). From this we can infer that the only change for what is eternal to really become something is to go through the temporal and to borrow from the self-alienation (i.e. the characteristic of becoming its other) that is peculiar to the temporal order. Now perfection is an activity that necessitates becoming. Consequently, a perfect God has to enter history (and he wills it), to become vulnerable as a worldly man (Jesus), so as to become even more perfect.

A God that is eternally and absolutely self-identical, by contrast, is empty. Interestingly, this attaches to what Kierkegaard says of romantic love: fearing the "metamorphosis" and hence sticking to the initial spot characterizes a bad eternity, which is contrary to creation. (Either/Or, 95)

Put together, the mutual interruption of the eternal and the temporal constitutes two aspects of the same event: from the perspective of man, it is the ascent from the temporal to the eternal in "the moment"; from the perspective of God, it is the descent from the eternal to the temporal via the Incarnation. Kierkegaard's purpose is to preserve the dynamicity in this dialogue, as opposed to reducing it either to the plane of the eternal (Spinozism) or to the plane of the temporal (historism). Jesus' life on earth is not just a chronological event ( Training in Christianity , 375); nor is it something totally alien to history. Being ever present in time, while affording to give men the time needed for becoming ( Unchangeableness of God , 476) - this is the full meaning of Christ's "contemporaneousness".

There are still other remarks that, though sporadic and not necessary for the picture above, nevertheless enriches our understanding of various elements within that framework. For example, in a passage in his Journals that interprets freedom, Kierkegaard writes: "Freedom really only exists because the same instant it ([as] freedom of choice) exists it rushes with infinite speed to bind itself unconditionally by choosing resignation, in the choice of which it is true that there is no question of choice. [...] But alas, man is not so purely spirit. It seems to him that since the choice is left to him he can take time and first of all think the matter over seriously. What a miserable anti-climax. [...] He does not notice that he has thus suffered the loss of his freedom." (428, Kierkegaard's italics)

Though his focus here is rather on the compatibility of freedom and destiny and the vanity of "taking time" to think of one's choices (which nullifies the gist of freedom in its immediate resignation and instead avoids genuine choice in a gesture of hesitation and withholding), we can nevertheless inter that, were man making authentic choices all the time, there would be no chronological time at all, since all is immediate. Conversely, one precondition of our having chronological time is that we hesitate, we direct ourselves away from genuine choices, and we suspend ourselves in a comfortable impasse.

Now it is easier to understand why someone occupied with writing does not "notice" (this is only phenomenal) the elapse of time until he is no longer able to endure the increasing tension of spirit writing entails and decides to take a rest, reflect upon the possibilities ahead of him, or let himself be distracted by something else.

[Avery C. M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kierkegaard is an influential figure upon existentialism, particularly Camus, who very apparently was building off of the concept of the absurd that the former discussed in Fear and Trembling. Maybe it relates back to Plato/Socrates' theory of Forms. An ultimately true abstraction which is later considered inaccessible by Hume then Kant, who will go on to explicate a moral structure besides the fact in the nebulous realm of Ethics. Nebulous being the key word as it exists in the transcendental part of experience which is not the thing in itself. Kierkegaard seems to be extending this skepticism, putting focus on the individual, a move that will be made by the Existentialists in bout a century. The absurd exists in between the shadows and the Sun, and it is as much awareness as some people think we can achieve.

I also read the Concept of Anxiety which was not included in this Anthology. There is an interesting quote that people often cite unfinished which starts, "Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. . ." This is all well and good, but Kierkegaard goes on to say that anxiety actually limits freedom, or "subsides." Simply being anxious does not tell you anything unless you have awareness over it; it could be too meek (innocence or ignorance) or too strong (paralysis or fear). The key is to master anxiety. To know how to use it effectively, to wield it, etcetera. This is interesting. Mediation? Seems like Aristotle. Kierkegaard was notably influenced, often citing the classical philosophers. Albeit making his own path.

I skipped the theological readings. I know they have some good stuff and they tell you about the guy , but I am simply not interested in the metaphysics of Christianity, so it gets really boring.

[Younes Mowafak · Rating 4 out of 5]

سورين كيركيغارد وكتابه الصادر حديثاً عن دار الرافدين بترجمة (قحطان جاسم) للعربية بعنوان(المقدمات).
كتاب يقدمه كيركيغارد اقرب لاسلوب السخرية من نقاده خلال مشواره في تأليف الكتب والمناقشات الفلسفية وعلاقة مع مجتمعه.
كتاب صغير الحجم ولكنه يعطي ملامح جديدة للقارئ باللغة العربية لما كان عليه عالم كيركيغارد.

[Laura Long · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good introduction and overview to Kierkegaard's work. From here, you can branch out and read his other works with some understanding of the context.

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mainly read his journals, reflections. One of the few Christian thinkers I can really stomach anymore.

[bimri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Soren is the best writer I've come across!

[Justin · Rating 5 out of 5]

What more to say? It's Kierkegaard. So...it's awesome

[Catholic Birder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kierkegaard is brilliant and reading him was a great experience.

[Guilherme Bertazi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant

[Pelei Calin · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't recomand the book if you are interested in what Kierkegaard wrote. Is just a description of what he wrote. Oversimplified and fragmented.

I don't recomand, If You really want to know what Kierkegaard wrote. Disappointed.