Journals and Notebooks, Vol 1: Journals AA-DD

by Søren Kierkegaard, Niels Jørgen Cappelørn (Editor), Bruce H. Kirmmse (Editor)

I would like to write a novel in which the main character would be a man who got a pair of glasses, one lens of which reduced images as powerfully as an oxyhydrogen microscope, and the other of which magnified on the same scale, so that he perceived everything relatively.
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A flight of fancy by an aspiring science fiction writer? While it may sound as such, this wistful musing is one of the little-discussed personal reflections of nineteenth-century philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, whose remarkable journals and notebooks, unpublished during his lifetime, are presented here.


The first of an eleven-volume series produced by Copenhagen's Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre, this volume is the first English translation and commentary of Kierkegaard's journals based on up-to-date scholarship. It offers new insight into Kierkegaard's inner life. In addition to early drafts of his published works, the journals contain his thoughts on current events and philosophical and theological matters, notes on books he was reading, miscellaneous jottings, and ideas for future literary projects. Kierkegaard wrote his journals in a two-column format, one for his initial entries and the second for the marginal comments he added later. The new edition of the journals reproduces this format and contains photographs of original manuscript pages, as well as extensive scholarly commentary. Translated by leading experts on Kierkegaard, Journals and Notebooks will become the benchmark for all future Kierkegaard scholarship.

Genres: Philosophy, Westerns

616 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1839

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

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Apparently the first in a series of 11 Volumes, this book is more Notebooks than Journals. Here Kierkegaard is working through most of the themes he will deal with in The Concept of Irony and Either/Or I. There is very little personal or diaristic writing here -- the deaths of his brother and father maybe comprise 2 pages at most. I was surprised to find that some ideas that don't surface until much much later in his writings (e.g. the concept of Christian offense in Practice in Christianity) are already well developed in these early notes.

Journal CC, the shortest journal, contains those humorous "Kierkegaardian" nuggets that most readers would be interested in.

--It is really fortunate that language has a number of expressions for nonsense and chatter. If it didn't I would go mad, because what else would it prove other than that everything people say is nonsense? It is fortunate that language is so cultivated in this respect, so that one can still hope to hear some reasonable talk once in a while. (197)

I prefer to talk with old ladies who retail family nonsense; next with the insane -- and last of all with very reasonable people." (199)