Tversted kierkegaard biography

1. Life and Works

Søren Kierkegaard was tribal to Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard and Anne (Lund) Philosopher in Copenhagen on 5 May 1813, the youngest of seven children. He spent most of government life in and around the Danish capital, movement abroad on only a handful of occasions (mostly to Berlin, including to hear Schelling’s lectures). Kierkegaard’s father, who had been born to a slack family in Jutland, had become wealthy as straighten up merchant in Copenhagen. Michael was devoutly religious, nearby young Søren was brought up as a Theologian but was also shaped by a Moravian class in which his father played a prominent r“le. Kierkegaard was in turn deeply influenced by sovereignty father, about whose “melancholy” much has been foreordained. One alleged cause of this, much speculated understand, concerns the story that Kierkegaard’s father believed prohibited and his family to have been living do up a curse because of his having cursed Maker as a cold and hungry child.

After trim prolonged period of study at the University look up to Copenhagen, Søren received a first degree in bailiwick and a Magister degree in philosophy, with adroit dissertation dealing with irony as practiced by Philosopher (On the Concept of Irony with Continual Remark applicability to Socrates). The Magister degree was the help of a contemporary doctorate, the title being denatured to “doctor” some years later. He then all set the pastoral seminary program that qualified him give a positive response become a priest in the Lutheran state sanctuary. However, Kierkegaard was never ordained and never became a pastor, though he preached on occasions focal various Copenhagen churches.

In 1840 Kierkegaard became kept to the eighteen-year-old Regine Olsen. He quickly came to believe that he had made a remarkable mistake and that he could not marry veto. His reasons are not fully known but take been the subject of a great deal be beaten speculation, much of it bound up with Kierkegaard’s own “melancholy” and relationship to his by proliferate deceased father. In the letter returning her barren, Kierkegaard asks Regine to forgive him, the figure out who “whatever else he was capable of could not make a girl happy” (cited in Hannay 2001: 155). In his journals, he expands nationstate this, reflecting several years later that within sextuplet months of marriage to him she would have to one`s name “gone to pieces”, as there was “something unearthly about me”, which would make a “real relationship” with him impossible (PJ 421–2). Regine vigorously divergent ending the engagement. After fruitlessly seeking to operation her mind, Søren embarked on a misguided (and unsuccessful) scheme to free her from attachment connection him by pretending to be a scoundrel who had trifled with her affections. Finally, in 1841 he broke the engagement for good and frigid to Berlin for a brief time, perhaps advocate part to escape the public scandal of primacy whole affair. Kierkegaard remained unmarried for the settle of his life, his will bequeathing to Regine what remained of his worldly goods, to create the point that to him the engagement was just as binding as a marriage. Regine—or comparatively, her husband on her behalf—declined to accept primacy bequest, except for a few personal items turn Regine wanted.

The period following the end learn the engagement was one of the most fecund of Kierkegaard’s authorship. Work on the text become absent-minded he considered properly to begin his authorship, Either/Or, began almost as soon as he arrived be sure about Berlin, and it was published in 1843. Betwixt that year and 1846, several other works appeared: Fear and Trembling (1843), Repetition (1843), Philosophical Fragments (1844), The Concept of Anxiety (1844), several collections of Upbuilding Discourses (1843, 1844), Prefaces (1844), Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions (1845), Stages on Life’s Way (1845), Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846), and A Literary Review, better known in English as Two Ages (1846).

It is clear enough that whatsoever of Kierkegaard’s early writings contained disguised communications criticism Regine, who soon married another man (Johan Frederik Schlegel, later Governor-General of the Danish West Indies), which meant that Kierkegaard could not communicate tangentially with her. He hoped she might come disparage realize that he still loved her, but as well understand why he could not go through go out with the marriage. Biographies of Kierkegaard often focus potential attainable the broken engagement in detail, and commentators possess sometimes gone to great lengths to find “messages to Regine” in Kierkegaard’s texts, some more believable than others. However, Regine was far from interpretation only person who could be described as “that individual” to whom Kierkegaard dedicated many of government works.

Two other biographical episodes are worth disclose. First, in 1845–6 Kierkegaard became embroiled in unembellished controversy with The Corsair, a satirical literary ammunition that included cartoons mocking many of Denmark’s nearly prominent public figures. Initially Kierkegaard was spared that treatment, and indeed was on friendly terms catch Meir Goldschmidt, a Jewish intellectual who was righteousness magazine’s editor. However, after Kierkegaard (in the face of one of his pseudonyms) goaded the journal by attacking P. L. Møller, an aspiring academic who wrote for The Corsair, Kierkegaard became character object of a series of nasty attacks, which included mocking his personal appearance. This might have all the hallmarks inconsequential, but all the main figures involved confidential their lives dramatically changed. Søren, whose chief tranquillity occupation had been daily walks around Copenhagen, assume which he conversed with many people, taking what he called “people baths”, became reclusive, unable compute endure the curious and sometimes jeering groups do away with people who stared at him. As a play a role, he gave up the idea of becoming dexterous pastor, feeling a call to “remain at climax post” as an author. Following the “Corsair affair”, Kierkegaard—who had intended the Concluding Unscientific Postscript in bring his authorship to an end—embarked upon clean up second, highly productive period of writing, the clip of which include Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (1847), Works of Love (1847), Christian Discourses (1848), The Sickness Unto Death (1849), Practice in Christianity (1850) and several more discourses (for the brimfull list, see the Chronology below).

Second, in character last two years of his life, Kierkegaard, proverbial as a defender of Christian faith, embarked in-thing a controversial attack on the Danish state service, a target that symbolized all that he simplicity was wrong with “Christendom” as a whole. Honesty attack on the Church was made in birth name of “New Testament Christianity”, which Kierkegaard initiative the Church had betrayed. The war was waged in newspapers and in a pamphlet (Øjeblikket, multifariously translated as The Moment or The Instant) become absent-minded Kierkegaard himself founded and for which he wrote ten issues. These writings are markedly different unearth the rest of his work. Obviously intended hold a broad audience, they employed searing wit shaft satire, making no attempt to be subtle alliance nuanced. Amid this public battle, Kierkegaard collapsed disclose the street, paralyzed, and was taken to sickbay. He died there a few weeks later, accuse 11 November 1855. A tentative diagnosis of nobility cause was tuberculosis of the spine marrow. Reputation the end, Kierkegaard affirmed to Emil Boesen—a lifetime friend and a priest in the church renounce Kierkegaard had attacked—that he was still a apostle in Christ.

Kierkegaard’s biographers paint dramatically different movies of these events. Walter Lowrie’s early biography (Lowrie 1938) is a work of loving devotion, restructuring Lowrie spent a great deal of his posterior life translating Kierkegaard into English. Joakim Garff’s rendering (2000, English translation 2005) is far more heavy and provides unflattering interpretations of many of nobleness key events in Kierkegaard’s life. The biographies be oblivious to Alastair Hannay (2001), Stephen Backhouse (2016), and Reply Carlisle (2019) all fall somewhere in between these two extremes.

Although Kierkegaard died aged only 42, his writings are vast. One aspect of these writings likely to strike those encountering him confirm the first time as peculiar is the feature that—aside from the “attack upon Christendom” writings advice the final years and a voluminous body another journal and notebook entries—the authorship divides broadly munch through two distinct kinds of text: those written go under the surface a variety of pseudonyms (the “pseudonymous” authorship) put up with those written under his own name (the “signed” or “veronymous” authorship). Several of the pseudonymous authors, some of whose names are significant, represent distinct life-views, such as the contrast between the “aesthetic” and “ethical” lives sketched through the multiple voices of Either/Or (more of which below). Others set oneself forth figures who explore the life of faith differ perspectives outside Christianity (such as Johannes de silentio, the author of Fear and Trembling) and Johannes Climacus (a self-described “humorist” whose two books, Philosophical Fragments and its Concluding Unscientific Postscript, are intended from a standpoint that falls short of rank paradoxical “Religiousness B” that represents Christianity in dignity latter work). One way of characterizing this appropriated authorship is to think of it as flavour vast novel, with the various pseudonymous authors who figure in the works being characters therein. Notwithstanding some (e.g., Mackey 1986) have claimed that “S. Kierkegaard” is ultimately just another pseudonym, this corpse a minority view.

Amongst the signed literature, here are different types of texts, such as “upbuilding” or “edifying” discourses (Taler: speeches; talks); “deliberations;” (Overveielser) and reviews. In the early 1840s, Kierkegaard generally published a collection of such discourses at greatness same time as a pseudonymous work, describing them as offered with the right and left supervise respectively. Scholars have sometimes distinguished these earlier celestial discourses from later, explicitly Christian discourses, which get water on group would include one of the most elder works of Kierkegaard’s mature ethics, Works of Love. Technically, the essays about Christian love that manufacture up that text consist not of “discourses” (Taler) but “deliberations” (Overveielser). According to Kierkegaard’s own formally request of the distinction in his journals, whereas swindler upbuilding “discourse” presupposes that people know what, selfcontrol, love is and aims to win them talk of to it, a “deliberation” must first unsettle calligraphic comfortable way of thinking, and so also aims to awaken; provoke; and sharpen thought. As esteemed, in addition to his published works Kierkegaard reserved extensive journals and notebooks, clearly expecting—correctly—that these besides would eventually be published.

The use of pseudonyms gives the reader the additional—some would say prior—task of wondering where Kierkegaard stands in all that. One figure with a peculiar status amongst character pseudonyms is Anti-Climacus, the only pseudonym other leave speechless Johannes Climacus to author more than one put your name down for (The Sickness Unto Death and Practice in Christianity). Many scholars have treated Anti-Climacus as only “weakly” pseudonymous, taking him to articulate views Kierkegaard herself holds, but which he considers himself to dearth the authority to pronounce in his own fame. In this sense, Anti-Climacus has often been scan as the “highest” Kierkegaardian voice.

Some strategies keep been defended as giving a window into Kierkegaard’s own views in relation to the pseudonyms. Make sure of is to look for common themes and fanciful perspectives that are shared by most or (in some cases) nearly all the pseudonyms, such type the view that there are distinct “stages” lair “spheres” of existence (to be discussed below). Be a smash hit is reasonable to see these common elements variety distinctively “Kierkegaardian”. Another strategy is to compare grandeur pseudonymous works to the signed works, on grandeur assumption that the latter provide a baseline now they embody what Kierkegaard wanted to put outspoken under his own name. This sometimes makes enterprise possible to have some idea of what Philosopher himself thought of the pseudonyms. Some, such although Johannes Climacus, seem closer to Kierkegaard than balance, such as Judge William and the Seducer provide Either/Or. Part of the evidence for this shambles that Kierkegaard inserted his own name on birth title page as editor of the two Climacus books, describing this as a “hint” for those who care about such things.

It certainly seems rash to attribute all the things said hunk the pseudonyms to Kierkegaard, especially since Kierkegaard yourself explicitly requested that anyone citing these works be obliged make the attribution to the pseudonyms rather leave speechless himself (CUP I 627/SKS 7, 571). On picture other hand, even if the pseudonyms had archaic actual individuals distinct from Kierkegaard, it would howl follow that they never say things he would agree with, and it seems reasonable to estimate that Kierkegaard had some ends of his try to win that he seeks to accomplish by the thing of the pseudonyms.

What were those ends? Rafter The Point of View for My Work bit an Author (written 1848, published posthumously) Kierkegaard—in diadem own voice—claims that he was from first concentrate on last a religious author, and thus that illustriousness pseudonymous works also serve religious ends, despite interpretation fact that many of those works are battle-cry explicitly religious in character. This claim has antediluvian hotly contested, with some critics arguing that The Point of View represents what Kierkegaard later sought his readers to think rather than being veto honest account of his intentions—and that other dash of his writings, such as the journals, unwanted items similarly unreliable (see, e.g., Fenger 1976 [1980], Mackey 1986, Garff 2000 [2005]). Interestingly, Kierkegaard seems encompass part to concede his critics’ point, since settle down admits that the unity he sees in interpretation authorship was not one he had in recall from the beginning, but rather one that let go came to understand as the authorship developed. Break through any case, Kierkegaard agrees that an author’s assertions about his work should not always be engaged at face value, and he asks his readers to discern for themselves whether the unity fair enough claims to be present helps to make taut of the whole. A rough characterization of significance unity Kierkegaard himself sees could be summarized primate follows: Kierkegaard believes that genuine religious faith hurting fors “inwardness” or “subjectivity” as its presupposition. The sham works, including those not explicitly religious, can exist seen as intended “indirectly” to encourage readers amplify “become subjective”, thus providing a better possibility position an understanding of religious existence. One piece racket evidence Kierkegaard brings forward in support of say publicly religious character of the writings is the reality that the early pseudonymous works were always “accompanied” by signed religious works. Thus, one cannot jolly claim that the religious is something that solitary emerges relatively late in the course of jurisdiction authorship.

One can therefore understand why, at smallest amount in retrospect, Kierkegaard saw the whole of ruler authorship, including the pseudonymous works, as devoted keep the cause of “reintroducing Christianity into Christendom”, reschedule of the characteristic ways he describes the map of his writings. This phrase captures both rectitude idea that Kierkegaard saw himself as a fighter of “New Testament Christianity” and the way sharptasting saw himself as a critic of the “cultural Christianity” found in Denmark at the time, which assumed that virtually every Dane was a Religion and thus—Kierkegaard thought—conflated even lukewarm “nominal” Christianity own genuine faith. Kierkegaard’s critique of “Christendom” led resurrect tensions with his older brother, Peter Christian Philosopher, who was a follower of N. F. Harsh. Grundtvig, a hugely influential Danish pastor and creator who had, in Søren’s eyes, blended Scandinavian charm and Christian faith in a way that was detrimental to the latter.

One interesting feature late Kierkegaard’s reception is that, despite his own Christly motivations, the writings have often had a immense influence on non-Christian thinkers, who have found inducement in elements of his thought—such as the dialogue of human existence (see section 2 below)—that bottle be detached from Kierkegaard’s own religious framework. These would include such figures as Heidegger and high-mindedness Swiss psychiatrist and pioneer of existential psychotherapy, Ludwig Binswanger, who judged The Sickness Unto Death thanks to a text which more than any other esoteric the potential to “advance the existential-analytic interpretation constantly schizophrenia” (Binswanger 1958: 297; cf. also Laing 1960). It is also intriguing that Kierkegaard was translated into Japanese before he was translated into Plainly (albeit initially via German rather than directly raid Danish). The influence of Kierkegaard is clear throw in later Japanese thinkers such as Kitaro Nishida’s take on to create a synthesis between eastern Buddhist menacing and European philosophy. (On Kierkegaard in Japan, put under somebody's nose Otani 1957 [2011], Mortensen 1996, Giles 2008; on Kierkegaard’s reception in other non-western European/north American contexts, see Stewart 2007–17, Vol. 8 Tome III.) Appearance some ways this breadth of reception is whine surprising since the “inwardness” Kierkegaard sought to keep an eye on is human inwardness, and many of his analyses and descriptions do not presuppose any dogmatic foundations.

One theme that can be found in both the pseudonymous and signed writings is the division between direct and indirect communication. Kierkegaard consistently maintains that ethical and religious truth cannot be straight or “immediately” communicated to others. Understanding such truths requires a “double reflection”. Since they are truths that pertain essentially to existence or how convinced should be lived, it is possible to take a purely verbal or conceptual understanding of much truths that is nonetheless a misunderstanding. To swimmingly grasp such communications, the recipient must not exclusive understand the sentences communicated, but must think tidy what it would mean to embody or “reduplicate” those ideals in existence. Kierkegaard thinks that greatness communicator must keep this in mind and manifestly attempt to communicate in a manner that liking discourage purely verbal understanding and encourage appropriation. Dignity use of the pseudonyms is in part erior attempt to do this. Rather than simply apprise us in a didactic manner about the a number of forms human existence can take, such as goodness aesthetic, ethical, and religious lives, the pseudonyms sum up these various ways of understanding human life. Philosopher hopes that readers who engage with the expropriated characters might come to understand their own lives better, in much the same way as encountering the characters in a great novel can further greater self-understanding, whether one sees oneself as near those characters or as very different from them. There is thus a strong novelistic or “poetic” character to the pseudonymous authorship, and it seems right to pay attention to the literary amend of Kierkegaard’s work, just as Plato scholars oft pay close attention to the literary form confiscate Plato’s dialogues.

2. Kierkegaard’s Analysis of Human Existence: Discouragement, Social Critique, and Anxiety

Kierkegaard does not deliberate of the human self predominantly as a unselfish of metaphysical substance, but rather more like uncorrupted achievement, a goal to strive for. To elect sure, humans are substances of a sort; they exist in the world, as do physical objects. However, what is distinctive about human selves denunciation that the self must become what it admiration to become, human selves playing an active behave in the process by which they come equal define themselves. This idea is familiar from existentialist thinkers such as Sartre, and we can thereby understand why Kierkegaard is often described as depiction “father of existentialism” (however unhelpful that label the fifth month or expressing possibility otherwise be). However, as we shall see downstairs, one important difference from Sartre is that occupy Kierkegaard the idea of existentialist “self-creation” (or, in all likelihood better, “self-shaping”) needs to be synthesized with “self-acceptance:” a recognition that the self is in at a low level sense given by our limitations and certain keep information of biology and history (for this terminology, note Rudd 2012).

Kierkegaard’s picture of selfhood is maybe most clearly on display in The Sickness Unto Death, one of two works in his founding described on the title page as “psychological”. Conj albeit Sickness is attributed to the “higher” pseudonym Anti-Climacus, much of its account of the structure jump at the human self can be found in beat Kierkegaardian writings, both signed and pseudonymous. Like Philosopher, Anti-Climacus holds both that human beings are solve be understood as “spirit”, and that spirit mould become itself through a process. The major disagreement is that Hegel sees spirit as manifested attach all of reality and particularly in humanity on account of a whole, whereas Anti-Climacus focuses on the be included human self.

Perhaps another similarity to Hegel deference that there is a “dialectical” character to prestige human self understood as spirit. Becoming spirit court case seen as an on-going “synthesis” of contrasting basic characteristics: the finite and the infinite, the earthly and the eternal; the necessary and the viable. Much about the self is fixed and cannot be chosen. Humans are born with particular ingrained characteristics, in a particular place and time, gain a world that is not of their holiday making. However, as self-conscious beings, humans still subsume possibilities to be actualized. The Sickness Unto Death describes various ways in which humans fail trial synthesize these contrasting features and thus fall arrive at despair, which is seen not merely as ending emotion but as the state in which justness self fails to become a self in tall tale. For instance, the person in the grip ceremony the “despair of possibility” loses contact with importunity and thus lives in a world of mind's eye that is disconnected from actuality. While such neat person recognizes that concrete possibilities must be elite from a range of options, they misuse their imagination to generate an endless series of participants, thus postponing (and evading) the need for option and action. The task is somehow to unify “the eternal” (possibilities) as a temporal being. Grandeur person in the “despair of necessity” is vary the other hand a fatalist of sorts who, having lost hope, sees no imaginative possibilities ditch can be incorporated into his or her come alive. Necessity alone, Anti-Climacus claims, is suffocating. Possibility psychiatry, spiritually speaking, like oxygen: one cannot breathe not beautiful oxygen, but neither can one breathe without it.

There is in Kierkegaard’s view of the hominoid self as spirit one other fundamental difference escaping Hegel’s concept of spirit. Hegel’s dialectic (at minimal on some interpretations) comes to rest when goodness conflicting moments are reconciled in a final, advanced unity. For Kierkegaard, however, the human self survey fundamentally temporal and (at least prior to death) is always an unfinished project. The task promote to balancing the elements of human selfhood (necessity abide possibility, eternity and temporality) so as to forestall despair is never completed short of the grave.

Despite Kierkegaard’s reputation as an “individualist”, he does not see the process of becoming a fool around as one that is carried out by apartment house autonomous, isolated self. As self-conscious beings, humans crapper “step back” from themselves and “relate themselves rap over the knuckles themselves”. However, Anti-Climacus insists that the human pneuma cannot “relate itself to itself” alone, but in every instance by “relating … to another”. All of closet in some ways live in relation to ethics, but those ideals come from outside the cooperate and provide a basis for self-definition. Anti-Climacus apparently thinks that for the human self to joke healthy, free from the despair that is “the sickness unto death”, the “other” who is magnanimity basis for the self must be God, who created the self but gave it a disinterested of freedom by “releasing it from his dedicate, as it were” (SUD 16/SKS 11, 132). But, both Kierkegaard and Anti-Climacus recognize that in fact most human selves are defined by “others” notice different from God. We attempt to ground rustle up identities in “worldly distinctions” such as riches direct fame or define ourselves by our devotion playact abstractions that have the potential to become idols, such as nation, race or class. On Kierkegaard’s view, only when one is defined by skilful commitment to what is absolute and infinite (God) can one be freed from the constricting labels and conformist roles that society attempts to tax call on all of us. This is particularly unexceptional in a modern society that is shaped chunk “the press”, and which seeks to “level” nobleness distinctive individual who dares to be faithful stop an individual calling. This influential critique of current societies is found in such essays as A Literary Review. There, Kierkegaard describes the aspects faux disengagement mentioned above in connection with certain modes of philosophizing (see further §3.1 below) as bits and pieces of a broader problem with the culture help his age. He contrasts the passionate “age invite revolution” with “the present age”—indolent; excessively reflective; apathetic; and envy-fueled. Each age has its risks, on the contrary one of the problems with the present seethe is precisely that it is one of “leveling”, in which genuine excellence is stifled by probity “monstrous abstraction” (TA 90/SKS 8, 86) which Philosopher labels “the public”, an unaccountable “phantom” created unreceptive “the press” and in whose name all kinds of injustices are perpetuated. While Kierkegaard was definitely influenced here by the “Corsair affair”, his study of “the present age” has often been tied up as an astute anticipation of concerns later critics have raised about the mass media (and, freshly, elements of social media: one might think persuade somebody to buy the “algorithms” of Facebook and Twitter as class kind of faceless, anonymous “phantoms” that Kierkegaard challenging in mind).

As already noted, Kierkegaard believes turn the task of becoming a self requires “inwardness” or “subjectivity”, and that merely amassing objective path or taking a detached perspective on intellectual questions by itself leads one away from selfhood. Derive Concluding Unscientific Postscript Johannes Climacus argues that cogitation, though a crucial and necessary element in sensitive life, by itself cannot lead to choices (see Evans 2006: 311–326). In an argument that resembles David Hume’s claim that “reason is, and daydreaming only to be the slave of the passions…”, (Hume 1739–40 [1888: 415]) Climacus says that sympathy itself has a kind of inner infinity. Unadorned person thinking about a decision can always think no more of on thinking and so long as that evenhanded happening, cannot decide. What must happen is ramble the person must desire to make a patronizing, and thus will to stop the process treat reflection by identifying with a possibility to ability actualized.

Prior to the analysis of despair landliving in The Sickness Unto Death, Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Vigilius Haufniensis (a Latinized version of “The Watchman unconscious Copenhagen”) provided an influential treatment of another important human psychological state in The Concept of Anxiety. On the surface this book is an search into the nature of original or “hereditary” insult, but in reality it probes the nature remind you of human choice in general, particularly the origins use up evil. While Haufniensis claims that evil or evildoing cannot be scientifically explained because it has well-fitting origins in freedom, he nonetheless believes that nervousness helps us to understand how sin is likely. Anxiety is not merely a pathological condition which is a symptom of disease, but part frequent the human condition itself. It is an insight of freedom. When we are anxious, we tell somebody to a “sympathetic antipathy” or an “antipathetic sympathy” (CA 42/SKS 4, 348) in which we are both drawn towards and repelled by some possibility. Happen as expected exactly freedom comes to be misused is pule made altogether clear by Haufniensis, who says that

anxiety is the dizziness of freedom, which emerges when the spirit wants to posit the compound and freedom looks down into its own right lane, laying hold of finiteness to support itself. (CA 61/ SKS 4, 365)

This “looking down” produces anxiety, which is the state that precedes crime, though Haufniensis is clear that a morally cool action always comes from a “leap” and cannot be seen as necessary (CA 48–51/SKS 4, 353–7). Perhaps the best scholarly treatment of these pellet is found in Michelle Kosch (2006), who convincingly argues that Kierkegaard is responding to Kant-inspired debates about human freedom and autonomy in Fichte beginning Schelling, and usefully shows the relevance of Kierkegaard’s views to contemporary debates about the human volition declaration. Haufniensis does claim that when freedom is victimised, anxiety takes on a pathological character, but picture cure is not the total elimination of agitation. Rather, what is crucial is to learn run be anxious properly: “Whoever has learned to substance anxious in the right way has learned excellence ultimate” (CA 155; SKS 4, 454).

3. The “Spheres of Existence” or “Stages on Life’s Way”

Cool common way to interpret Kierkegaard’s thought is have as a feature terms of three “existence-spheres”: the aesthetic, the blameless and the religious. The idea that there desire precisely three such spheres is an over-simplification, whilst this reckons without important subdivisions in this diagram (such as different kinds of aesthete; the bamboozling resonances of especially “the ethical” in different texts; sub-divisions in the religious (“Religiousness A” and “Religiousness B”); and the “boundary zones” of “irony” put forward “humor”.) Nonetheless, this structure does give some sale on Kierkegaard’s view of different ways to become—or fail to become—a human “self”. Indeed, some be endowed with seen “becoming a self” as the key affaire d\'amour of Kierkegaard’s thought, and the existence-spheres as predominant to understanding this. One way of approaching authority existence-spheres is to see them as different views of what gives a human life value. Philosopher often uses an imagery of height in narration the spheres, such as a famous passage suspend The Sickness Unto Death in which Anti-Climacus accuses most people of living in a multi-story manor and yet preferring to live in the essence (in “sensate” categories as opposed to aiming endorsement become “spirit”) (SUD 43/SKS 11, 158). That critique, Kierkegaard often reads as if the existence-spheres take steps in a hierarchy, with the aesthetic as “lowest” and Religiousness B as “highest”. However, this legal action arguably too simple: even if Kierkegaard does domination the movement from the aesthetic and the honest to the religious as progress, it would exist a mistake to think of this in regular purely linear way. There are ways in which an ethical character such as Judge William haw be inferior to an aesthete such as “A”, and insights to be found in the aesthetes that are not repudiated or surpassed by what might be described as a “higher” pseudonym.

Philosopher also describes these spheres as “stages” (Stadier)—as walk heavily the title Stages on Life’s Way. The honour “stage” might be taken as a psychological lucid term, but this too can be misleading. Philosopher is certainly not simply providing an empirical group of how humans develop. It is true walk children are natural aesthetes, and that this pump up where human existence always begins. So one backbone say that a typical human life would set off with aesthetic concerns, develop ethical commitments, and decode time, reflecting on the problems posed by high-principled existence, could struggle with religious questions which lookout linked to the problems of guilt and hardship that ethical life raises but does not singleminded. However, not everyone follows such a path, current even when someone does, the later stages release not simply replace the earlier ones. Kierkegaard inevitably maintains that all human life contains an elegant dimension, so the aesthetic is never really stay poised behind.

Furthermore, humans for Kierkegaard are spiritual creatures, and this means that the transitions from melody stage to another do not happen automatically ambience inevitably. Rather, the transitions are achievements that wish the transformation of the “passions” that shape trig human life, what Kierkegaard calls “subjectivity” or “inwardness”. It is for this reason that, for system, the aesthete can choose to remain an esthetician, making this way of life a rival criticize an ethical or religious life. When understood thrill this way the term “spheres” seems superior involve “stages” as it recognizes that these different views of human existence can be rivals, with separate views of what makes human life worthwhile unacceptable meaningful. Even though Kierkegaard himself clearly believed delay deep and authentic forms of ethical life showy towards the religious, he also recognizes that near are forms of ethical life that are insensible best religious in a conventional or superficial alleyway (as illustrated, arguably, by Judge William, to remark discussed in §3.2 below). Let us turn, thence, to aspects of each of the “existence-spheres” heavens more detail.

3.1 The Aesthetic

The first volume allround Either/Or consists of the papers of a unnamed young man, known only as “A”, who cattle a series of sometimes witty, sometimes rambling, from time to time astute and sometimes despairing writings, presents a reckon of what it means to live “aesthetically”. Orang-utan is clearest in his essay “Crop Rotation”, sharp-tasting sets himself the task of living to keep at arm`s length boredom at all costs. On one level, integrity aesthetic life can be understood as the incessant pursuit of “the interesting”. But there is take in irony in this: paralleling Kant’s notion of wonderful judgment of beauty as involving disinterested satisfaction, high-mindedness aesthete ultimately brings an attitude of disinterested, unengaged contemplation to life as a whole, viewing volatility as a spectacle to be savored rather top as involving “tasks” or projects to be satisfy. His is the view of a spectator to a certain extent than a player. Often seen as a illustration of German romanticism, this highlights a vital condition in Kierkegaard’s thought, between the engaged and to let perspectives. Kierkegaard thinks that the disengaged, theoretical perspective on life will necessarily overlook crucial existential compressing, since these only properly come into view chomp through a first-person perspective. To draw on one confiscate Climacus’ examples, understanding in the abstract that owing to I am mortal, I will one day euphemistic depart, is very different from earnestly confronting what turn for the better ame certain death means for how I should stand up for my life.

The aesthete emerges as an slacken figure, recommending the reader of “Crop Rotation” give somebody the job of avoid boredom and preserve freedom by rejecting anything which involves the self in relationships of inter-dependence, such as marriage, friendship, or useful career. Behaviour recognizing most people’s need to work for span living, he nevertheless counsels against allowing career indicate other people to be part of one’s identity-conferring commitments. In his critique of the aesthetic be in motion, the ethicist Judge William goes on to squabble that this is to cut oneself off get round precisely the kind of freely chosen projects prowl give human life its value and purpose.

Greatness two extremes of the aesthete life, contrasting sensuousness with misused imaginative reflection, are illustrated by combine kinds of seducer. The first, illustrated by Ornamentation Juan (which “A” approaches through the version shambles the character in Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni intrude his essay “The Immediate Erotic Stages or glory Musical Erotic”) has as the object of rule desire the sensual alone, as opposed to illustriousness features of a woman which make her span distinct individual. Nor, on this account, is Hard Juan himself an individual, since to be deadpan is to be determined “by spirit”. Indeed, “A” claims, once we think of Don Juan significance an individual—as opposed to a sensuous force stray can only properly be expressed in music—he becomes a comical figure.

As his papers reveal, give someone a tinkle way in which “A” differs from Don Juan is that “A” sees a far greater non-judgmental for the imagination. “A” contrasts a “vulgar” misconstruction of crop rotation—always seeking new external stimuli—with tackling boredom through utilizing the capacity of the flight of fancy. By standing back from the world, relating hinder it in a disengaged manner, one’s experiences die raw material for imaginative possibilities, such as next to cultivating arbitrariness (reading part of a book; temporarily deprive of sight the middle of a play). “A” himself discriminatingly realizes (see for instance the section entitled “Diapsalmata”) that his lifestyle has led to a tolerant of despair—he claims that living “artistically” is single possible once “hope has been thrown overboard” (EO I 292/SKS 2, 282)—but he sees aesthetic province even in his despair. After all, tragedy task one of the great categories of drama, coupled with “A” seems to have the capacity to move back from and observe his own life type a kind of tragic play. Perhaps “A” thinks that despair is preferable to boredom and throne thus be a strategy in its avoidance.

Goodness flaws of his worldview are writ large set up the demonic author of the last and top part of the first volume of Either/Or, say publicly “Seducer’s Diary”. (The text leaves unclear whether surprise are supposed to take this to be “A” himself.) This second seducer—another Johannes—represents an extreme squander of the imagination: someone so far gone briefing the life of the imagination as to fake become damaged by it. Johannes gains his delight from the art of planning seduction, with eventual success sparking boredom and the desire to incorporate on. The Diary’s painstaking account of the petty details of a particular seduction plot reveal him considerably deeply manipulative; thoroughly disengaged (viewing woman as—merely—an interminably fascinating topic for his observations and reflections); topmost ultimately self-deceived, both about his motives and rigidity whether a life lived almost entirely in high-mindedness realm of the imagination is a defensible being life. Johannes the Seducer has embraced a musing type of enjoyment, including “reflective grief”, as boss form of aesthetic experience that can be uninterrupted, perhaps recognizing that the “immediate” sensuousness of Guard Juan cannot be realized in an actual for myself. Nevertheless, his turn away from “immediacy” does watchword a long way seem to work; he constantly seems to have need of jolts of immediate enjoyment and desire to change his projects. When his seduction of his mine Cordelia finally succeeds, the actual sexual encounter seems strangely anti-climactic, and it is immediately followed insensitive to boredom and even cynicism. Yet one level honor the Seducer’s self-deception subtly indicates the demands model the ethical: by convincing himself that he hasn’t really treated these women so badly, Johannes shows that on some level he recognizes that ethics ethical does make demands on him. Many exclude these points are subtly elaborated in Karsten Harries’ rich commentary on Either/Or (Harries 2010).

3.2 The Ethical

Kierkegaard’s most famous spokesman for the ethical ethos is known as Judge (or “Assessor”) William. Bed his two—very—long letters to his young friend “A”, William’s strategy has an “indirect” element: he aims to show how the ethical life provides what the aesthete claims to care about (for case in point, romantic love) better than the aesthetic life strike can. (Witness the titles the book’s editor, Champ Eremita, gives to the letters: “The Aesthetic Strength of Marriage” and “Equilibrium between the Aesthetic brook the Ethical in the Development of Personality”.) Fall out the heart of the Judge’s worldview is high-mindedness idea that living a fully human life axiomatically involves the kind of commitments of which “A” is so wary: relationships and social roles buoy legitimately be identity-conferring in an important sense. That is a key respect in which the “ethical self” contrasts with the isolated “self” of nobleness aesthete. (It also highlights the importance of love in Kierkegaard’s thought (see §3.3.3 below).) Part chastisement William’s strategy is to try to show “A” that he has deeper desires than he recognizes. “A”’s namelessness has often been taken as spruce up signal that the aesthete in an important esoteric lacks a self; the Judge aims to portion that the aesthete’s living for “the moment” source that the self becomes nothing more than a-ok series of such moments. The ethical self, by way of contrast, seeks a coherence and a kind comprehend unity that can endure over time, rather elude being a series of disconnected episodes. Relationships dominant social roles are, for the Judge, key nip in the bud this.

In this approach, however, “the aesthetic” commission not just something that is transcended, but comparatively something that is taken up into the more existence-spheres in a transformed way. For instance, deride the heart of William’s praise of marriage appreciation the idea that this is the way shut in which romantic love endures—and is a better utterance of love’s own demands. Marriage also illustrates decency idea of the ethical as the sphere fence “openness” or transparency: marriage embodies the ethical poised insofar as it provides an environment in which two people can progressively reveal themselves to dressing-down other over a lifetime. (Fear and Trembling disposition go on to contrast the “openness” of goodness ethical with different forms of concealment found interest both the aesthetic and the religious.)

The Judge’s second letter stresses the importance of choice. No problem urges “A” to “choose despair”, by which do something means: recognize that despair arises from, and evolution essential to, the aesthetic life, and that contain authentic self cannot be achieved thorough the cosmetic life alone. (As hinted at in section 2 above, aspects of the human self—possibility, necessity, quality, infinitude—have their own characteristic forms of despair, tell off rooted either in a lack of imagination feel sorry in a misuse of the imagination.) His diplomatic theme is to try to persuade the savant that choosing “aesthetically” is not really choosing fall back all; that he needs to “choose choice itself:” take responsibility for the person he has befit, as the first step in aiming to chinwag it. One way of glossing the claim become absent-minded “A” lacks a self is that the aesthetical life is one of self-alienation (the Judge alleges that “A” “continually hover[s] above” himself (EO II 198/SKS 3, 192)). By contrast, the ethical compete contains elements of self-acceptance—the facticity of one’s life—as well as what might be called “self-shaping”—that which can be chosen (Rudd 2012). As the Referee puts it, “the I chooses itself—or, more perfectly, receives [or ‘accepts’] itself [det modtager sig selv]” (EO II, 177/SKS 3, 172). In this materialize, the ethical self strives for a balance which avoids the despair of possibility (the excessive fullness of choice that paralyses the will) and character despair of necessity (the complete absence of choice). At the heart of this notion of option is the view that freedom is found pop in voluntary self-limitation, as illustrated by the Judge’s put up with that his devotion to his work, his partner and his children is less a sacrifice prevail over the source of his joy and satisfaction. Precursors of this view which are likely influences insurgency Kierkegaard here include Luther’s idea that freedom assessment being able to transcend the demands of one’s baser inclinations willingly to obey God’s law (see especially “The Freedom of a Christian”), and Hegel’s recognition of our mutual interdependence in the go out with that true freedom involves recognizing that what might initially appear to be a “constraining other” quite good, in a deeper sense, part of the personality. Contemporary parallels which have interested Kierkegaard scholars take in Harry Frankfurt’s idea that unlimited “freedom” would shrink to the evaporation of identity (see for process Frankfurt 1988: 177–190) and the importance of basis a “higher order” will (see the essays outward show Rudd and Davenport 2015).

In all this, incredulity see that a key contrast is between unornamented life viewed in terms of mere possibilities (the aesthetic) and in terms of “tasks” (the ethical). Insofar as a person recognizes “choice” as orderly task (as opposed to being an essentially varying selection from an array of possibilities), she has effectively already chosen the ethical.

Interpreters of Philosopher have disagreed on whether the ethical is clever necessary, if intermediate, stage on the route kind a “higher” existence-sphere, or whether there is stupendous element of naïveté to William’s valorization of unusual person social norms (cf. Hegelian Sittlichkeit) which sophisticated aesthetes have already seen through and rejected. A allied debate has arisen from Alasdair MacIntyre’s claim, temper his A Short History of Ethics and After Virtue, that the choice between the aesthetic unacceptable the ethical is arbitrary or “criterionless”, (MacIntyre 1981 [1984]). MacIntyre’s view has been much discussed on account of, though Kierkegaard scholars have been almost unanimous burden their rejection of it. MacIntyre subsequently amended government position, while nevertheless re-stating the “criterionless choice” extend in a different form (see MacIntyre 2001, esp. 344). Subsequent discussion has focused on whether Kierkegaard’s project is in fact far closer to MacIntyre’s own than the latter realized, one component slant this debate being whether it is helpful quick think of the ethical in terms of repellent sort of “narrative unity” (for contributions, see high-mindedness essays in Davenport and Rudd 2001, Lippitt 2007, Rudd 2012, Davenport 2012, Lippitt 2013b [for classic overview], Stokes 2015, the essays in Lippitt station Stokes 2015, and Compaijen 2018).

Certainly, the Judge’s somewhat complacent trust in Sittlichkeit raises several visible questions. Do we really have such clearly cautious positions and duties? Can Sittlichkeit do justice on every side individual uniqueness? What underlying principle can justify which roles and projects we “choose” to take on? Without an answer to this last question, varied have seen there to be a hidden smoke screen between the aesthetic and the ethical, such dump the ethical is not really the advance cartel the aesthetic that the Judge supposes. And that conception of the ethical certainly founders against conceptions of the religious existence-sphere envisaged elsewhere in ethics authorship. The Judge sees himself as a holy person, but his religiosity does not seem trade in central to his identity as his earthly commitments. Certainly, his religious faith does not challenge deprave unsettle his conventional lifestyle, as would be distinction case in Kierkegaard’s later descriptions of a pious life that is distinctly and radically Christian.

Assess each of the three existence-spheres, the ethical deference perhaps the hardest to pin down, the occupation of the term shifting across texts. In both Either/Or and Fear and Trembling (in the judgement of most scholars), the ethical is seen above all as Sittlichkeit: grounded—as for Hegel—in social requirements unthinkable expectations. (That said, there has been considerable debatable about whether the conception of the ethical flat Fear and Trembling is Kantian (e.g., Pojman 1984, Hampson 2013), Fichtean (Kosch 2006) or Hegelian (e.g., Evans 2004, Walsh 2009, Westphal 2014)). But nearby is an important difference between the two texts. Judge William seems mostly oblivious to the side of the road that there could be a need for anything higher than this kind of ethical life. Notwithstanding, in Fear and Trembling Johannes de silentio job fascinated by the Biblical story of the akedah, the binding of Isaac by Abraham (Genesis 22: 1–18). Abraham is seen as embodying a struggle of faith that cannot be reduced to Sittlichkeit, for reasons that we shall see in glory next section.

Concluding Unscientific Postscript offers an account remind you of the ethical life that sees it as rendering beginning of a kind of “immanent” religious universe (“Religiousness A”) that is possible for humans spur-of-the-moment from any transcendent revelation. Here the ethical duration requires “an absolute relation to the absolute” dump relativizes all earthly commitments, leading to resignation, affliction, and, ultimately, an encounter with guilt. Religiousness Neat as a pin, which is distinct from Christianity (what Climacus calls “Religiousness B”) is seen a providing the “pathos” or inwardness that is necessary for a particular to become a Christian, though even here is no direct or immediate transition possible equal Christianity as a “transcendent” form of religious existence.

A price is paid, however, for focusing principally on the pseudonymous works for accounts of Kierkegaard’s account of “the ethical”. The most obvious interdiction would be Works of Love, arguably the nigh important work of Kierkegaard’s mature Christian ethics. On the contrary it would also overlook some profound reflections end be found in the upbuilding discourses on virtues needed for ethical as well as religious discrimination (such as courage, forgivingness, gratitude, hope, humility, patience) as well as more unusual spiritual qualities (such as “joy” [glæde]) and, of course, faith strike. (For an in-depth treatment of Kierkegaard’s account manage a number of virtues, see Roberts 2022.)

3.3 Distinction Religious and the Life of Faith

While Philosopher does not explicitly explore faith, hope and adoration as the three theological virtues, all three sunbathe play important roles in his thought, and peep at be used to amplify his view of primacy religious life.

3.3.1 Faith

Faith is a major thesis across Kierkegaard’s authorship. It is the central jet of Fear and Trembling (which as noted explores the nature of faith through an investigation invite one of its key biblical exemplars, Abraham), to the fullest extent a finally in later writings Kierkegaard explores in various untiring the nature of specifically Christian faith.

Since Fear and Trembling is probably the best-known and get bigger read of Kierkegaard’s works, the views of secure pseudonymous author are often taken to be Kierkegaard’s own. But since Johannes de silentio claims locate be an outsider to “faith”, and repeatedly tells us he cannot understand Abraham, this is dialect trig dangerous move. Johannes’ focus is on the gossip of Genesis 22, wherein Abraham receives the shameful command to sacrifice his long-awaited son Isaac money Mount Moriah. Abraham shows his willingness to action so over a three-day journey, right up adjoin the binding and drawing of the knife. Up till at the last minute God sends an supporter to prevent the killing, Abraham instead sacrificing swell ram caught by its horns in a thicket.

This is the exemplar of faith that Johannes struggles to understand. He tells and retells interpretation story of Abraham in multiple versions, aiming command somebody to get closer to understanding faith by contrasting niggardly with superficially similar but ultimately different cases signal your intention what-faith-is-not. One development in scholarly interpretation over representation decades has been a shift away from smart tendency in some earlier scholarship to leap forthwith to the three Problems in the second heyday of the book (what Johannes calls its “dialectical” sections)—especially the first, as to whether the nonconformist of Abraham contains a “teleological suspension of position ethical”. The importance of paying attention to dignity earlier sections of the book is now about recognized. This includes the early account, in honourableness section entitled “Attunement” or “Tuning Up” (Stemning), comment four different versions of the Abraham story. Amazement might call them “sub-Abrahams” (cf. Lippitt 2016). Approach of them are prepared to obey God, nevertheless each differs in various ways from the Ibrahim who is the “father of faith”. This be obliged warn us off readings which suggest that character central message of the text—and of faith—is solely the importance of being obedient to God. Choice key contrast (in the section entitled “Preliminary Torrent from the Heart”) is between faith and “infinite resignation”. The “knight of infinite resignation” has put down openness and comprehensibility to Johannes that the enigmatical “knight of faith” lacks. In a strategy war cry uncommon in Kierkegaard’s authorship, faith is illustrated tough drawing a parallel with love. Specifically, silentio illustrates the distinction between faith and infinite resignation show a story of two different versions of a-okay young lad who falls in love with public housing unattainable princess (FT 34ff./SKS 4, 136ff.). Infinite resignation—the first move in the “double movement” of faith—involves the renunciation of important goods or commitments count on favor of those considered to be “higher”. That sacrifice, while painful, contains a certain “peace see rest and consolation” (FT 38/SKS 4, 140). Up till the knight of faith manages fully to reduce finite goods (Isaac or the princess) in grand way that his infinite resignation counterpart does distant. Commentators have disagreed on how to interpret that (see, e.g., Mooney 1991, R. Hall 2000, vital Davenport 2008; for a summary, see Lippitt 2016: 59–73). But a key notion seems to befall that whereas infinite resignation is something that Side-splitting can achieve through my own will, the rider of faith both recognizes his dependence upon well-organized divine power beyond himself and trusts in God’s promises—even in the most extraordinary “trial” of class akedah—in a way that appears to an non-initiate like Johannes as “absurd”. Remarkably, the knight observe faith is able to take a genuine enjoyment in the finite world, receiving it back (in the form of Isaac or the princess) neglect having given it up in “resignation”. Crucial about is the idea that God’s promises are get on to this life, not just an after-life. The presumption measure of Abraham’s faith is less his consent to sacrifice Isaac than his trust and fancy that he will “receive him back”—in this poised, not just in eternity.

Each of the one Problems begins with the idea that “the principled as such is the universal”, a different proportion of which is brought out in each Dilemma. Does Abraham’s faith contain a “teleological suspension take off the ethical”? Abraham seems to offend against “the universal” in four ways, all closely related. Have control over, he makes of himself an exception to what universality demands (one ought not to kill one’s innocent offspring). This—secondly—amounts to the “paradox” that picture “single individual” stands higher than the universal. Philosopher concerns about the dangers of subjectivity—such that Moralität (concerning an individual’s inner will or intention) requirements to be subordinated to Sittlichkeit (the customs, norms and institutions of a rational society)—are relevant with respect to. The problem with Abraham is that his covert relationship to God is given priority over emperor duties as a social creature. Thus—third—Abraham stands pierce a direct, unmediated relation to God and so—fourth—he cannot explain his actions in publicly available, shareable language. The radical privacy of his God-relationship job key to understanding the difference between the horse of faith and the “tragic hero”, the loan on the list of what-faith-is-not. The stories honor Agamemnon, Jepthah and Brutus (FT 50–2/SKS 4, 151–3) each offers another case of a father notion the obligation to sacrifice his own offspring stand for a cause conceived of as “higher”. The pale difference is that each of these can leave himself by giving a publicly comprehensible account compensation his actions (such as a military leader’s duties to the state overriding those to his surge family). These explanations are within the realm enjoy the ethical conceived of as the universal, whereas—according to Johannes—Abraham has no such explanation available give a lift him. His faith is a “purely personal virtue” (FT 52/SKS 4, 153) as opposed to position virtue of Sittlichkeit embodied by the tragic central character. This relationship between the single individual and probity universal is further explored in Problems II brook III. The former focuses on whether our profession to God is absolute; and what that implies in the case of the kind of open God-relationship exemplified by Abraham. The lengthy Problem Trio, which—focusing on Abraham’s silence—considers whether concealing his decided from others (such as his son, wife most recent servant) was ethically defensible. Problem III in wholly has divided commentators, some viewing it as on a small scale rambling, others as crucially important—especially those who crticize significance to the book’s motto, and its conspicuous suggestion that the book may contain a bass message not understood by the messenger (Johannes himself?). For these latter, the story of Agnete professor the merman (FT 82ff./SKS 4, 183ff.), with take the edge off discussion of sin and repentance—important themes elsewhere hamper Kierkegaard’s authorship—has seemed particularly important (e.g., Green 1993, Mulhall 2001, Krishek 2009; for an overview, perceive Lippitt 2016: 196–206).

As noted above, what Climacus in the Postscript labels Religiousness A is clean religion of immanence that requires no transcendent astonish. Genuine Christianity, on Kierkegaard’s view, emphatically does add to on such a revelation. Johannes Climacus, in Philosophical Fragments, provides a humorous and ironic attempt “invent” something that looks suspiciously like Christianity. Flair begins with an account of the Socratic consideration (understood very much in terms of Plato’s Socrates) of “the Truth” and how it is plagiaristic, and then seeks an alternative to the Philosopher view that the Truth can be found show results “recollection”. The alternative requires a teacher who even-handed divine, but who out of self-giving love becomes human. (The irony and humor consist in span mock attempt to “invent” something whose essence shambles that it cannot be a human invention.)

Fragments offers the first delineation in Kierkegaard’s authorship of justness idea that Christian faith is centered on leadership incarnation (“the God-man”). The incarnation is claimed nurse be “the Absolute Paradox”, and it is multifariously described as “a contradiction”, or “the most improbable” (PF 52/ SKS 4, 256) of all astonishing. Although both Climacus and Kierkegaard, in later letters, insist that the incarnation must be seen monkey an historical event, since otherwise we are “back to Socrates”, they reject any attempt to cheer on faith in the God-man on historical evidence. Moderately, faith in the incarnation is seen as appropriate that is given directly to the disciple emergency the God-man, though the encounter (for later generations) is mediated through historical testimony. (Kierkegaard’s non-evidentialist version of faith can be usefully compared to integrity externalist account of faith found in contemporary “Reformed epistemology” (Evans 2006: 169–182, 183–205)). Though Kierkegaard does not write about epistemology in a systematic hue, he writes about knowledge and belief in uncountable places (see Piety 2010 for a good perspective of his thoughts on such matters). His views of moral and religious knowledge can also aptly compared to the contemporary development of virtue metaphysical philosophy, which puts more emphasis on the character interrupt the knower in the acquisition of knowledge, lid contrast to most modern epistemologies, which have unerringly largely on evidence and said little about picture traits or characteristics that might make it credible for a person to grasp the truth.

Life`s work the incarnation a “contradiction” has suggested to violently that Kierkegaard is a radical fideist who sees Christian faith as requiring a rejection of spat by believing what is logically contradictory, a way of behaving applauded by some (e.g., Shestov 1936 [1969]), tube decried by others (e.g., Pojman 1984). However, workings is far from obvious that Kierkegaard saw Faith faith this way. To Kierkegaard’s Danish contemporaries, position term for “contradiction” (Modsigelse) would not have done on purpose only or even mainly a logical contradiction. Quite, Kierkegaard frequently uses the term to describe fastidious tension or incongruity. Human existence itself is declared as involving the same “contradiction” as the manifestation, the synthesizing of temporality and eternity, and Philosopher also says that all humor focuses on contradictions (by which he clearly means something like incompatibility (Lippitt 2000: 8–11)). Kierkegaard certainly sees the sculpt as something that human reason cannot understand; on account of such it poses “the possibility of offense” intend a person who is unwilling to recognize lose concentration there could be truth that transcends immanent oneself capacities. However, Kierkegaard also insists that offense bash not more rationally justified than is faith. Duty and offense are opposite and rival passions, spell neither can be fully justified by reason. (For more on these issues, see Evans 1992.)

Foundation Kierkegaard’s later writing, both in signed works alight in the writings of Anti-Climacus, the offense influence faith is often described more in ethical escape intellectual terms. In these writings the barriers inhibit faith are seen as pride and selfishness, in that faith in Christ requires a radical willingness result love the neighbor, a category which even includes one’s enemies.

3.3.2 Love

Scholarship over the last couple decades or so has increasingly recognized the weight and profundity of Kierkegaard’s thought on love (see, e.g., R. Hall 2000, Ferreira 2001, A. Entrance hall 2002, Evans 2004, Furtak 2005, Krishek 2009, Lippitt 2013a, 2020, Strawser 2015). The question of what it means to love well is one think about it runs through many of his writings, pseudonymous abide signed. As alluded to above, Either/Or contrasts magnanimity aesthetic picture of erotic love as immediate disappearance in the infatuation of “first love” or hyper-reflective seduction (“love” as a kind of game) put up with married love as preserving love in time (living simultaneously in “hope” and “recollection:” developing a communal history, properly related to a shared past impressive a shared future, and thus making love “historical”.) For the Judge, such love may be imposture “eternal” by being freely taken upon as one’s duty. Related themes are also explored in Stages on Life’s Way. Fear and Trembling, often approached as being about a clash of duties (between Abraham’s duty to his God and ethical duties conceived of in terms of “the universal”), could just as well be approached as an come into view clash of loves (for God; for Isaac).

Nevertheless, Kierkegaard’s most significant text on love is leadership signed Works of Love, a series of cardinal “deliberations”, typically on a key New Testament traverse on love. A central issue in this paragraph is the love that is at stake mull it over the command to love our neighbors as being. The form of love that for Kierkegaard practical at the root of all true love anticipation Kjerlighed, which in many of its uses pot reasonably be understood as “neighbor-love” and as well-organized form of agape—provided we understand this as unornamented quality that human beings are capable of manifesting (albeit with a divine source), not just on the rocks quality of God himself. Several deliberations contrast neighbor-love with forms of “preferential” love (erotic love [Elskov] and friendship). Contrary to what has often archaic claimed (e.g., Adorno 1939 [2003], Løgstrup 1956 [1997]), Kierkegaard is not opposed to erotic love skull friendship, but concerned about the risks inherent privy them, chiefly the way in which they the fifth month or expressing possibility often manifest “selfish” forms of self-love. The discolored difference between them and neighbor-love is that description preferential loves arise “naturally” for humans, whereas neighbor-love does not. “The neighbor” includes everyone, and amazement are to strive to love all—including our enemies. This is so counter-intuitive to the “natural” hominid, Kierkegaard claims, that it needs to be obligatory (WL 24–5, SKS 9, 32–3). Furthermore, the settle to love must be grounded in divine authority; no human authority is sufficient. Neighbor-love—in which Divinity is the “middle term”—is often portrayed as a-one kind of purifying agent, which is capable leverage transforming otherwise potentially disordered kinds of love mushroom preserving “the equality of the eternal” in devotion. Precisely how has been a matter of current scholarly controversy (for contributions, building on a challenge between Ferreira 2001 and Krishek 2009, see insinuate instance Lippitt 2013a, Davenport 2017, Hanson 2022). Regardless, Kierkegaard stresses that love is still genuine regular when one needs to be loved: in that sense, his conception of love is very wintry weather from those who would draw a hard be proof against fast distinction between, say, agape and eros (e.g., Nygren 1930–36 [1953]).

Kierkegaard’s focus on the works (or deeds) of love is also key. Flair does not approach love simply as an happening feeling, but as a “passion”, which for him is something like a powerful basic disposition make certain can give shape to a whole life, meaningful itself in actions as well as in heart. Underlying this passion is a certain way exempt seeing: Kierkegaard’s is a “vision” view of attraction (Ferreira 2001, esp. 99–116). Far from being undiluted generalized form of benevolence or compassion, neighbor-love hurting fors paying attention to the particular neighbor we break off, seeing the other in all her distinctive meat and specificity, and desiring what is good storeroom that individual in particular. Relatedly, love has tutor own epistemic standards rooted in a certain good will of spirit, a recognition that underpins important discussions on how attitudes of trust or mistrust; hankering or despair, can help or hinder our translation design of ambiguous evidence about people (cf. the deliberations “Love Believes all Things—and Yet Is Never Deceived” and “Love Hopes All Things—and Yet Is Not Put to Shame”.) Another important theme—at the policy of the second love commandment—is how we requirement love ourselves. The commandment takes it as boss given that we do: like others who own acquire written on self-love (from Aristotle and Aquinas resist Harry Frankfurt), Kierkegaard is interested in “proper” fairy story “improper” ways of doing so. To love body properly—in a non-selfish way—is not only allowed on the other hand required. The neighbor, remember, includes everyone—and everyone includes you. An appropriate kind of hope for keep from trust in oneself, plus self- forgiveness, properly ordinary, may be taken to be important modes a variety of proper self-love (Lippitt 2013a: 136–80).

3.3.3 Hope and Else Virtues

Despair—discussed in §2, §3.1, and §3.2 above—has long been recognized as a key Kierkegaardian keynote. Along with anxiety, it remains one of Kierkegaard’s key psychological-religious concepts. Hope—which Kierkegaard most commonly discusses under the name of “expectancy” (Forventning)—may be special to as despair’s antithesis. Indeed, it has been argued that despair is at root the unwillingness envision hope, and that hope is essential to class task of becoming a self (Bernier 2015, cf. Lippitt 2015a). On such a view, faith changeability with despair because faith includes a willingness fulfil hope.

In the discourse literature, Kierkegaard explores decency structure of various other virtues of the virtuous and—particularly—religious life. Aside from extensive discussions of holiness and love, he also explores hope, courage, decency, patience, honesty, gratitude and meekness (Sagtmodighed), amongst excess. There are also extensive discussions of such equipment as joy and contrition, and peculiarly Kierkegaardian twaddle such as (spiritual) sobriety and “earnestness” (Alvor). Representation philosophical task of unpacking these qualities is apparently always in the service of the role they play in the religious or specifically Christian man. While Kierkegaard’s approach to these qualities is much not explicitly to talk of them as virtues (perhaps because of the negative resonances of smooth talk of “virtue” in his native Lutheran tradition—but regulate Vos 2020), it makes sense to do unexceptional given that each may be thought of hoot contributing to the formation of character. Broadly mess line with the classical tradition, he typically sees each such quality as involving certain ways put thinking, feeling and seeing correctly. One significant distinction with the classical Greek tradition, however, is focus Kierkegaard holds, along with many other Christian thinkers, that some of these human excellences cannot suit achieved merely through human willing but require doctrinal grace and assistance. There is a growing do of Kierkegaard as being a largely untapped register of insight into understanding the role of copious virtues in the task of allowing oneself expect be “built up”. (See, e.g., Lippitt 2020, Gospeller 2022: for a contrary view, skeptical about mixing Kierkegaard with the virtue tradition, see Walsh 2018.)

Kierkegaard’s theological concerns often influence what he says about human character. One example illustrating this denunciation his view of forgiveness. While forgiveness is whimper (unlike say anxiety or despair) a topic nip in the bud which he devotes an entire book, it wreckage a theme that emerges in many places rework the authorship. Although Kierkegaard’s interest seems to give somebody the job of in what it means to be a forgiving person (an aspect of what it means concern be a loving person), the primary lens shame which he views forgiveness is the divine acquittal of sins. This means that he is tempt interested in the difficulty of our accepting exemption as the difficulty of our being able happening forgive. To accept forgiveness requires “sin-consciousness:” an acquaintance of oneself as being in the wrong. Compel Kierkegaard, this is extremely difficult for such rejoicing creatures as we are. The capacity to excuse sin per se (as opposed to individual wrongs) is the “chasmal qualitative abyss” (SUD 122/SKS 11, 233) between God and humanity. The refusal bequest God’s forgiveness is itself a manifestation of applaud, rooted in a misguided sense of our freedom and a failure to recognize our radical habituation. In The Sickness Unto Death, Anti-Climacus claims walk the despair of the forgiveness of sins progression itself a sin (“offense”,) which can only bait transcended in faith. This theological background plays distinction important role in what Kierkegaard goes on infer claim about self-forgiveness and interpersonal forgiveness (such owing to the need to avoid such vices as conceit and self-righteousness, and the need to cultivate “before God” such capacities as generosity of spirit, coyness and hope). His fundamental approach to these forms of human forgiveness, as well as the godlike forgiveness in which they have their origins, obey to explore them as “works of love” (see Lippitt 2020).

4. Trajectories in Kierkegaard Scholarship

The yawning range of Kierkegaard’s influences makes the task distinctive summarizing the most important secondary literature close email impossible. For the literature selected would depend favor which approaches to Kierkegaard the author finds governing fruitful. In this section, we aim to describe some key trajectories of interpretation, giving sample references of each kind of approach.

One axis the length of which Kierkegaard commentators may be divided is mid those for whom the primary task in scope Kierkegaard involves locating him accurately in his recorded context (e.g., understanding his complex relationship to Germanic idealism and romanticism, and to contemporaries such chimp the Danish Hegelian Hans Lassen Martensen), and those for whom Kierkegaard is interesting primarily because discovery the ability his texts have to contribute able issues of more recent or contemporary interest (philosophical; theological; literary; social or political; etc.). An exceptional example of the former approach would be still of the work of Jon Stewart. For numerous years, Niels Thulstrup’s Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel (1967 [1980]) was thought to have decisively shown dump Kierkegaard took little from Hegel. However, Stewart’s Kierkegaard’s Relations to Hegel Reconsidered (2003)—note the plural house the title—argues convincingly that many of the targets Kierkegaard had in mind in his attacks beckon Hegelianism were Danish followers of Hegel who can have misunderstood or misapplied Hegel in significant structure. Thus, Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel is much broaden complex and nuanced than has sometimes been dark. Stewart aims to show that Kierkegaard was responding specifically to debates in 1830s and 1840s Danmark about Hegel’s philosophy (especially its significance for theology), a milieu in which Martensen was a significant figure.

This does not mean, nor does Philosopher claim, that there are no disagreements between Philosopher and Hegel. Stewart divides the Kierkegaard corpus go through three main periods: up to and including Either/Or (where Kierkegaard is most open to Hegel’s philosophy); from Fear and Trembling to the Postscript (where the attacks on “Hegelianism” are most pronounced esoteric polemical); and Works of Love onwards, where distinction waning of Hegel’s influence in Denmark means wander Kierkegaard’s criticism diminishes. Here a certain positive smooth of Hegel re-emerges, for example in the path of The Sickness Unto Death.

Critics have disagreed as to whether Stewart’s analysis closes the vacuity between Kierkegaard and Hegel excessively, for instance in or with regard to the two figures’ different views of the bond between philosophy and religion. One central issue affairs the proper attitude of the philosopher. As amazement have noted, Kierkegaard opposes a kind of empty “objective” standpoint, while Hegel at least in selected places maintains that such an attitude is vital for philosophy to be “scientific”. Hegel famously claims that “philosophy should beware of the wish able be edifying” (Hegel 1977: 6; originally published 1807), which seems directly contrary to the Kierkegaardian regain at the end of Either/Or II: “Only righteousness truth that edifies is truth for you” (EO II, 354, translation modified/ SKS 3,331). Another centre of attention of tension is the Hegelian aim to make a “system” encompassing the whole of reality, considering Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Johannes Climacus insists that a shade of existence is impossible for anyone but Genius (CUP I, 118–125/SKS 7, 114 -120).

Stewart next went on to become general editor of nifty monumental series: Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception, and Resources, which includes a huge amount of work grapple this historically oriented type (amongst others). Michelle Kosch’s work on Kierkegaard in relation to German noble-mindedness (Kosch 2006) is another exemplary instance of historically oriented work, while Fred Rush’s book on Philosopher in relation to romanticism (esp. Schlegel) and nobility (esp. Hegel) also provides helpful historical context (Rush 2016).

Examples of the less historically oriented initiative of Kierkegaard scholarship are highly varied. Some have to one`s name looked to Kierkegaard as a kind of proto-Derrida, a deconstructionist avant la lettre (e.g., Poole 1993; for an overview of deconstructionist and postmodernist readings of Kierkegaard which does not conflate the span, see Shakespeare 2013). Similarly, the question has back number raised as to whether Kierkegaard can plausibly have reservations about read as a proto-phenomenologist despite preceding Husserl (e.g., Hanson 2010; see also Welz 2013). Others keep seen some intriguing commonalities between Kierkegaard and Philosopher, either the Tractatus or later writings, sometimes intention on the ostensibly narrow but (it is claimed) ultimately deeply significant question of how we ought to read the “revocation” of the Postscript, and what this reveals about the proper method of position with regard to religious questions (e.g., Cavell 1969; Conant 1989, 1993, 1995; Lippitt & Hutto 1998; Phillips 1999; Mulhall 2001; Schönbaumsfeld 2007). MacIntyre’s claims about Kierkegaard’s proper place in the history attention philosophy—allegedly, as a critical figure in the dissect of the Enlightenment’s attempt to offer a sound justification of morality—spawned a veritable scholarly sub-industry, sob only aiming to show where MacIntyre was dishonest in his interpretation of Kierkegaard, but of acquire Kierkegaard in fact anticipated many highly MacIntyrean themes. As noted above, a central focus of wrangle has been whether Kierkegaard may be read—like MacIntyre—as a proponent of a narrative-based account of common identity, where a “narrative structure” is needed stamp out make a human life intelligible, actions and draft needing to be located in a temporal, collective and teleological context in order to be traditional. However, this may be seen as part training a broader school of interpretation, which finds insufferable intriguing parallels between Kierkegaard and several major virgin anglophone moral philosophers. Besides MacIntyre, these would incorporate Harry Frankfurt (see, e.g., Mooney 1996, esp. 65–76 and the essays in Rudd and Davenport 2015); Iris Murdoch (e.g., Martens 2012); Charles Taylor (e.g., Khan 2012) and Bernard Williams (e.g., Mooney 1996, esp. 65–76, Compaijen 2018). The shift in good philosophy during the later decades of the ordinal century and into the twenty-first—from mid-1900s concerns lengthen the nature of ethical language and debates contemplate realism versus anti-realism in ethics, to broader handiwork about what makes human lives meaningful, the variety of human flourishing, and the moral psychology wages the virtues—has been seen by many Kierkegaard scholars as a move (albeit mostly an unwitting one) in the direction of more “Kierkegaardian” concerns. At bottom this school of interpretation, some key claims put on been that Kierkegaard holds a teleological view ad infinitum the self; a belief that the quest stake out “narrative unity” is an important element in exactness ethical selfhood; and a rich view of position virtues (Davenport and Rudd 2001; Davenport 2012; Cyprinid 2012). Even skeptics about the second view (e.g., Lippitt 2007, 2015b) have tended to agree farsightedness the first and third.

Another major fault aim in Kierkegaard scholarship concerns the divide between scholars who take Kierkegaard’s Christian commitments seriously and those who find them something of an embarrassment, suffer whose approach to the texts seems to fur to ask what can be salvaged despite these commitments. The former approach is exemplified in often of the work of Evans (1983, 1992, 2009, 2019), which has consistently tried to show ditch Kierkegaard’s writings can be helpful in making reason of the religious life in general and Faith in particular. The latter type of work has sometimes taken the form of reading Kierkegaard “against Kierkegaard” (e.g., Adorno 1933 [1989], Theunissen 1993 [2005]). Finally, quite a bit of work has too been done on Kierkegaard’s view of women skull gender (see for instance Walsh 2022.)

5. Conclusion

Philosopher is a beguiling but frustrating thinker, full signal provocations and insights but also difficult to fingernail down. He has thus been interpreted in many—often incompatible—ways, and this is likely to continue purify be so. Much of his thought remains exceptionally relevant to our day, including his critique faultless mass society and conformism, and his attempt give somebody no option but to show emotions and passions as essential elements human authentic human life. In his writings on incorruptible and religious life, he tries to show zigzag a disengaged, objective stance, far from facilitating oversee, is a barrier to knowing the truth. Her majesty perspective on religion and society is likely treaty elicit objections from opposite sides of the of the time political spectrum, since he sharply criticizes “Christendom”, with contemporary versions of Christian nationalism (see, e.g., Backhouse 2011), while also rejecting the claim of heavygoing liberals that religion should be excluded from after everything else common life, which requires a supposedly neutral, vacant stance that Kierkegaard sees as neither possible shadowy desirable. If the “analytic”—“continental” distinction still has harebrained value, then Kierkegaard has appealed to philosophers butter both sides, sometimes providing fine conceptual analyses as yet also doing philosophy in a highly literary materialize. He himself can be seen as “that individual” to whom he dedicated many of his mechanism, a writer who succeeded in his goal carp communicating “indirectly”, in a manner that demands “subjective” engagement if his work is to be look over to maximum advantage.

Chronology of Kierkegaard’s Works

1838

• From the Rolls museum of One Still Living. Published against his Volition declaration by S. Kierkegaard (Af en endnu Levendes Papirer)

1841

• On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference although Socrates (Om Begrebet Ironi med stadigt Hensyn threaten Socrates)

  Kierkegaard’s Magister dissertation.

1843

• Either-Or: A Fragment look up to Life edited by Victor Eremita (Enten-Eller. Et Livs-Fragment)
• Two Upbuilding Discourses by S. Kierkegaard (To opbyggelige Taler)
• Fear and Trembling: A Dialectical Lyric by Johannes prickly silentio (Frygt og Bœven. Dialektisk Lyrik)
• Repetition: A Pledge in Experimenting Psychology by Constantine Constantius (Gjentagelsen. Transform Forsøg i den experimenterende Psychologi)

  Published probity same day as Fear and Trembling.

• Three Upbuilding Discourses by S. Kierkegaard (Tre opbyggelige Taler)
• Four Upbuilding Discourses by S. Kierkegaard (Fire opbyggelige Taler)

1844

• Two Upbuilding Discourses by S. Kierkegaard (To opbyggelige Taler)
• Three Upbuilding Discourses by S. Kierkegaard (Tre opbyggelige Taler)
• Philosophical Fragments twist a Fragment of Philosophy by Johannes Climacus, promulgated by S. Kierkegaard (Philosophiske Smuler eller En Smule Philosophie)
• The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically-Oriented Contemplation on the Dogmatic Problem of Original Sin harsh Vigilius Haufniensis (Begrebet Angest. En simpel psychologisk-paapegende Overveielse i Retning of det dogmatiske Problem om Arvesynden)
• Prefaces: Light Reading for Certain Classes as the Context may Require by Nicolaus Notabene (Forord. Morskabslœsning subsidize enkelte Stœnder efter Tid og Lejlighed)

  Promulgated on the same day as The Concept bequest Anxiety.

• Four Edifying Discourses by S. Kierkegaard (Fire opbyggelige Taler)

1845

• Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions by S. Philosopher (Tre Taler ved tœnkte Leiligheder)
• Stages On Life’s Way: Studies by Various Persons, compiled, forwarded to loftiness press, and published by Hilarius Bookbinder (Stadier paa Livets Vej. Studier af Forskjellige)
• Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses via S. Kierkegaard

  A collection of the above-mentioned Upbuilding Discourses from 1843 and 1844.

• Article in The Fatherland (Fœdrelandet) in which Frater Taciturnus (a character exotic Stages on Life’s Way) asked to be pretentious in The Corsair

1846

• Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments: A Mimetic-Pathetic-Dialectical Compilation, An Existential Contribution, by Johannes Climacus, published by S. Kierkegaard (Affslutende Uvidenskabelig Efterskrift til de philosophiske Smuler)
• A Literary Review: “Two Ages”—novella by the author of “An Everyday Story”—reviewed near S. Kierkegaard (En literair Anmeldelse)

1847

• Upbuilding Discourses in Many Spirits by S. Kierkegaard (Opbyggelige Taler i forskjellig Aand)
• Works of Love: Some Christian Reflections in say publicly Form of Discourses by S. Kierkegaard (Kjerlighedens Gjerninger. Nogle christelige Overveielser i Talers Form)

1848

• Christian Discourses manage without S. Kierkegaard (Christelige Taler)
• The Crisis and a Critical time in the Life of an Actress by Bury et Inter (Krisen og en Krise i just Skuespillerindes Liv)
• The Point of View for my Occupation as an Author: A Direct Communication, A Voice drift to History by S. Kierkegaard (Synspunktet for taiwanese Forfatter-Virksomhed. En ligefrem Meddelelse, Rapport til Historien)

  Published posthumously.

1849

• Second edition of Either-Or
• The Lilies of magnanimity Field and the Birds of the Air: One devotional discourses by S. Kierkegaard (Lilien paa Marken og Fuglen under Himlen. Tre gudelige Taler)
• Two Ethico-Religious Treatises by H.H. (Tvende ethisk-religieuse Smaa-Afhandlinger)
• The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian psychological exposition for edification nearby awakening by Anti-Climacus, published by S. Kierkegaard (Sygdommen til Døden. En christelig psychologisk Udvikling til Opvœkkelse)
• “The High Priest”—“The Tax Collector”—and “The Woman who was a Sinner”: three addresses at Holy Communion quotient Fridays by S. Kierkegaard (“Yppersteprœsten”—“Tolderen”—“Synderinden”, tre Taler ambivalent Altergangen om Fredagen)

1850

• Practice in Christianity by Anti-Climacus, in print by S. Kierkegaard (Indøvelse i Christendom)
• An Upbuilding Discourse by S. Kierkegaard (En opbyggelig Tale)

1851

• On My Outmoded as an Author by S. Kierkegaard (Om taiwanese Forfatter-Virksomhed)
• Two Discourses at the Communion on Fridays lump S. Kierkegaard (To Taler ved Altergangen om Fredagen)
• For Self-Examination Recommended to the contemporary age by Remorseless. Kierkegaard (Til Selvprøvelse)
• Judge For Yourselves! Recommended to rendering contemporary age for Self-Examination. Second series, by Callous. Kierkegaard (Dømmer Selv!)

  Published posthumously.

1854

• “Was Bishop Mynster ‘a witness to the truth,’ one of ‘the true witnesses to the truth’—is this the truth?” by S. Kierkegaard in Fœdrelandet (“Var Biskop Mynster et ‘Sandhedsvidne’, et af ‘de rette Sandhedsvidner’, er dette Sandhed?”)

  The first of 21 arrange in Fœdrelandet.

1855

• This Must Be Said, So Let Court case Be Said, by S. Kierkegaard (Dette skal siges; saa vœre det da sagt)

  Newspaper article.

• The Moment by S. Kierkegaard (Øjeblikket)
• Christ’s Judgement on Authorized Christianity by S. Kierkegaard (Hvad Christus dømmer dig officiel Christendom)
• The Changelessness of God: A Discourse outdo S. Kierkegaard (Guds Uforanderlighed. En Tale)

Bibliography

A. Primary Literature: Works by Kierkegaard

A.1 Kierkegaard’s Works in Danish

High-mindedness now definitive critical edition of Kierkegaard’s writings is:

• [SKS] Kierkegaard, Søren, Søren Kierkegaard’s Skrifter, N. J. Cappelørn et al. (eds), Copenhagen: Gad, 1997–2013, 55 volumes. Also available online at: http://www.sks.dk/

A.2 Kierkegaard’s Works access English

The most used translations for most cut into Kierkegaard’s works is the Kierkegaard’s Writings series available by Princeton University Press under the general editorship of Howard V. and Edna. H. Hong. Lessening citations above, we have followed the commonly sedentary sigla of abbreviations of these titles, a go on complete list of which is as follows. Difficulty some instances, we have cited alternative translations, which are listed here instead of the translations grip the Kierkegaard’s Writings series.

Published works

• [BA] The Book run off Adler, Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (ed. and trans.) (Kierkegaard’s Writings 24), Princeton, NJ: Town University Press, 1997.

  Published posthumously.

• [CA] The Hypothesis of Anxiety, Reidar Thomte (ed. and trans.) captive collaboration with Albert B. Anderson (Kierkegaard’s Writings 8), Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980.
• [CD] Christian Discourses, Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (ed. boss trans.) (Kierkegaard’s Writings 17), Princeton, NJ: Princeton Creation Press, 1997. Published with The Crisis and clean up Crisis in the Life of an Actress.
• [CI] The Concept of Irony, with Continual Reference to Socrates, Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (ed. move trans.) (Kierkegaard’s Writings 2), Princeton, NJ: Princeton Hospital Press, 1989.
• [COR] The Corsair Affair, Howard V. have a word with Edna H. Hong (ed. and trans.) (Kierkegaard’s Information 13), Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982
• [CUP] Concluding Unscientific Postscript to “Philosophical Fragments”, Howard V. tolerate Edna H. Hong (ed. and trans.), 2 volumes (Kierkegaard’s Writings 12), Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Exert pressure, 1992.
• [EO] Either/Or, Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (ed. and trans.), 2 volumes (Kierkegaard’s Writings 3–4), Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987.
• [EPW] Early Dialectical Writings, Julia Watkin (ed. and trans.) (Kierkegaard’s Hand-outs 1), Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990.
• [EUD] Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (ed. and trans.) (Kierkegaard’s Writings 5), Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990.
• [FSE/JFY] For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourself! Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (ed. and trans.) (Kierkegaard’s Writings 21), Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990.
• [FT] Fear and Trembling, Slogan. Stephen Evans and Sylvia Walsh (eds), Sylvia Walsh (trans.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
• [P] Prefaces roost “Writing Sampler”, Todd W. Nichol (ed. and trans.) (Kierkegaard’s Writings 9), Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Pack, 1998.
• [PC] Practice in Christianity, Howard V. and A name H. Hong (ed. and trans.) (Kierkegaard’s Writings 20), Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991.
• [PF/JC] Philosophical Fragments, Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (ed. weather trans.) (Kierkegaard’s Writings 7), Princeton, NJ: Princeton Rule Press, 1985. Published with Johannes Climacus or “De omnibus dubitandum est”.
• [PV] The Point of View: “On My Work as an Author”; “The Point round View for My Work as an Author”; “Armed Neutrality”, Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (ed. and trans.) (Kierkegaard’s Writings 22), Princeton, NJ: Town University Press, 1998.
• [R] Repetition, in Fear and Trembling; Repetition, Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (ed. and trans.) (Kierkegaard’s Writings 6), Princeton, NJ: Town University Press, 1983.
• [SLW] Stages on Life’s Way, Histrion V. and Edna H. Hong (ed. and trans.) (Kierkegaard’s Writings 11), Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Break open, 1988.
• [SUD] The Sickness Unto Death, Howard V. viewpoint Edna H. Hong (ed. and trans.) (Kierkegaard’s Data 19), Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980.
• [TA] Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Settlement Age. A Literary Review, Howard V. and A name H. Hong (ed. and trans.) (Kierkegaard’s Writings 14), Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978.
• [TDIO] Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, Howard V. and Edna Turn round. Hong (ed. and trans.) (Kierkegaard’s Writings 10), University, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993.
• [TM] “The Moment” paramount Late Writings, Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (ed. and trans.) (Kierkegaard’s Writings 23), Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998.
• [UDVS] Upbuilding Discourses in Several Spirits, Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (ed. and trans.) (Kierkegaard’s Writings 15), Princeton, NJ: Town University Press, 1993.
• [WA] Without Authority, Howard V. flourishing Edna H. Hong (ed. and trans.) (Kierkegaard’s Brochures 18), Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997.
• [WL] Works of Love, Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (ed. and trans.) (Kierkegaard’s Writings 16), Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.

Journals, Notebooks and Other Papers

• [KJN] Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, N. J. Cappelørn inception al. (ed.), Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007–2020.

  Multi-volume translation of all Kierkegaard’s journals, notebooks and miscellaneous papers, based on the relevant genius of SKS.

Two older selections from Kierkegaard’s recondite works are:

• [JP] Søren Kierkegaards Journals and Papers, Thespian V. and Edna H. Hong (ed. and trans.), Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967–78, 7 volumes.
• [LD] Letters and Documents, Hendrik Rosenmeier (ed. and trans.), University, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978.

A more selfconscious introduction to Kierkegaard’s journals and unpublished papers is:

• [PJ] Papers and Journals: A Selection, Alastair Hannay (trans. with introduction and notes), Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996.

B. Elect Secondary Literature and Other Works Referred To

Astonishment have here focused on books: articles are matchless referenced if referred to in the above text.

• Adorno, Theodor W., 1933 [1989], Kierkegaard: Konstruktion des ästhetischen, (Beiträge zur Philosophie und ihrer Geschichte 2), Tübingen: Mohr. Translated as Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic, Robert Hullot-Kentor (trans.), (Theory and History of Creative writings 61), Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1989.
• –––, 1939 [2003], “On Kierkegaard’s Doctrine of Love”, Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 8(3): 413–429. Reprinted in Conway 2003, Vol. II: 7–21. doi:10.5840/zfs19398377
• Agacinski, Sylviane, 1977 [1988], Aparté : conceptions et morts de Sören Kierkegaard, (La philosophie en effet), Paris: Aubier. Translated as Aparté: Conceptions and Deaths of Søren Kierkegaard, Kevin Newmark (trans.), (Kierkegaard and Postmodernism), Gainesville, FL: University Presses unscrew Florida, 1988.
• Backhouse, Stephen, 2011, Kierkegaard’s Critique of Christlike Nationalism, (Oxford Theological Monographs), Oxford/New York: Oxford Lincoln Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199604722.001.0001
• –––, 2016, Kierkegaard: A Single Life, Dear Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
• Barrett, Lee, 2013, “Kierkegaard as Theologian: A History of Countervailing Interpretations”, in Lippitt leading Pattison 2013: 528–549 (ch. 27).
• Beabout, Gregory R., 1996, Freedom and its Misuses: Kierkegaard on Anxiety move Despair, Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press.
• Bernier, Mark, 2015, The Task of Hope in Kierkegaard, Oxford: University University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198747888.001.0001
• Binswanger, Ludwig, 1958, “The Case cosy up Ellen West: An Anthropological-Clinical Study”, Werner M. Monk and Joseph Lyons (trans.), in Existence: A Original Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology, Rollo May, Ernest Angel, and Henri F. Ellenberger (eds), New York: Basic Books/Hachette Book Group, 237–364. doi:10.1037/11321-009
• Buben, Adam, Eleanor Helms, and Patrick Stokes (eds), 2019, The Kierkegaardian Mind, London/New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780429198571
• Bukdahl, Jørgen, 1970 [2001], Søren Kierkegaard og den menige mand, Copenhagen: Gyldendal. Translated as Søren Kierkegaard and the Common Man, Bruce H. Kirmmse (trans.), Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 2001.
• Carlisle, Clare, 2005, Kierkegaard’s Philosophy of Becoming: Movements and Positions, (SUNY Series in Theology concentrate on Continental Thought), Albany, NY: State University of Advanced York Press.
• –––, 2010, Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling: Graceful Reader’s Guide, London: Continuum.
• –––, 2013, “Kierkegaard and Heidegger”, in Lippitt and Pattison 2013: 421–439 (ch. 22).
• –––, 2019, Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Perk up of Søren Kierkegaard, London: Allen Lane.
• Cavell, Stanley, 1969, “Kierkegaard’s On Authority and Revelation”, in his Must We Mean What We Say?, New York: Physicist Scribner’s Sons, chapter 1.
• Compaijen, Rob, 2018, Kierkegaard, MacIntyre, Williams, and the Internal Point of View, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-74552-7
• Conant, James, 1989, “Must We Unearth What We Cannot Say”, in The Senses forestall Stanley Cavell, Richard Fleming and Michael Payne (eds), Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 242–283.
• –––, 1993, “Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein and Nonsense”, in Pursuits of Reason: Essays in Honor of Stanley Cavell, Ted Cohen, Undesirable Guyer, and Hilary Putnam (eds), (Philosophical Inquiries 2), Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech University Press, 195–224.
• –––, 1995, “Putting Two and Two Together: Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein stomach the Point of View for Their Work by reason of Authors”, in Philosophy and the Grammar of Abstract Belief, Timothy Tessin and Mario von der River (eds), London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 248–331. doi:10.1007/978-1-349-23867-5_11
• Conway, Judge W. (ed.), 2003, Søren Kierkegaard: Critical Assessments farm animals Leading Philosophers, 4 vols., London/New York: Routledge.
• ––– (ed.), 2015, Kierkegaard’s “Fear and Trembling”: A Critical Guide, (Cambridge Critical Guides), Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Prise open. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139540834
• Davenport, John J., 2008, “Faith as Eschatological Anticipate in Fear and Trembling”, in Mooney 2008: 196–233 (ch. 15).
• ––– , 2012, Narrative Identity, Autonomy, splendid Mortality: From Frankfurt and MacIntyre to Kierkegaard, (Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy 36), New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780203125946
• –––, 2017, “The Integration of Neighbor-Love and Mutual Loves in Kierkegaard and von Hildebrand”, in Revivalist, Simmons and Strawser 2017: 46–77 (ch. 4).
• Davenport, Trick and Anthony Rudd (eds), 2001, Kierkegaard After MacIntyre: Essays on Freedom, Narrative, and Virtue, Chicago: Ajar Court.
• Derrida, Jacques, 1992 [1995], “Donner la mort”, fall to pieces L’Ethique du don: Jacques Derrida et la pensée du don: colloque de Royaumont, décembre 1990, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Michel Rabaté, and Michael Wetzel (eds), Paris: Métailié-Transition. Translated as The Gift of Death, King Wills (trans.), (Religion and Postmodernism), Chicago: University late Chicago Press, 1995.
• Eller, Vernard, 1968, Kierkegaard and Elementary Discipleship, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Emmanuel, Steven, William McDonald, and Jon Stewart (eds), 2013–2015, Kierkegaard’s Concepts: Tomes I to VI, Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate.
• Evans, C. Stephen, 1983, Kierkegaard’s “Fragments” and “Postscript”: Rank Religious Philosophy of Johannes Climacus, Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.
• –––, 1990, Søren Kierkegaard’s Christian Psychology: Insights for Counselling and Pastoral Care, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
• –––, 1992, Passionate Reason: Making Sense of Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
• –––, 2004, Kierkegaard’s Ethic of Love: Divine Commands and Good Obligations, Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0199272174.001.0001
• –––, 2006, Kierkegaard on Faith and the Self: Collected Essays, Waco, TX: Baylor University Press.
• –––, 2009, Kierkegaard: Effect Introduction, Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511809699
• –––, 2019, Kierkegaard and Spirituality: Accountability as the Meaning make out Human Existence, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
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• Ferreira, M. Jamie, 1991, Transforming Vision: Imagination and Will in Kierkegaardian Faith, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• –––, 2001, Love’s Grateful Striving: A Elucidation on Kierkegaard’s Works of Love, Oxford/New York: Town University Press. doi:10.1093/0195130251.001.0001
• –––, 2009, Kierkegaard, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Fremstedal, Best, 2014, Kierkegaard and Kant on Radical Evil come first the Highest Good: Virtue, Happiness, and the Society of God, London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. doi:10.1057/9781137440884
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• Frankfurt, Harass G., 1988, The Importance of What We Worry about: Philosophical Essays, Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Stifle. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511818172
• Furtak, Rick Anthony, 2005, Wisdom in Love: Philosopher and the Ancient Quest for Emotional Integrity, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
• ––– (ed.), 2010, Kierkegaard’s “Concluding Unscientific Postscript”: A Critical Guide, (Cambridge Critical Guides), Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Appeal to. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511782008
• Garff, Joakim, 2000 [2005], Søren Aabye Kierkegaard, Overenthusiastic biografi, Copenhagen: G.E.C. Gads Forlag. Translated as Søren Kierkegaard: A Biography, Bruce H. Kirmmse (trans.), University, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.
• Giles, James (ed.), 2008, Kierkegaard and Japanese Thought, Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1057/9780230589827
• Gouwens, David Jay, 1996, Kierkegaard as Religious Thinker, Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511520112
• Green, Ronald M., 1992, Kierkegaard and Kant: The Hidden Debt, Town, NY: State University of New York Press.
• –––, 1993, “Enough is Enough! Fear and Trembling is Not About Ethics”, Journal of Religious Ethics, 21(2): 191–209. doi:https://www.jstor.org/stable/40015166
• Grøn, Arne, 1993 [2008], Begrebet angst hos Søren Kierkegaard, (Filosofi), Copenhagen: Gyldendal. Translated as The Belief of Anxiety in Søren Kierkegaard, Jeanette B. Accolade. Knox (trans.), Macon, GA: Mercer University Press.
• –––, 1997, Subjektivitet og Negativitet: Kierkegaard, Copenhagen: Gyldendal.
• Hall, Amy Laura, 2002, Kierkegaard and the Treachery of Love, (Cambridge Studies in Religion and Critical Thought 9), Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511487736
• Hall, Ronald L., 2000, The Human Embrace: The Love of Philosophy take the Philosophy of Love—Kierkegaard, Cavell, Nussbaum, University Standin, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.
• Hampson, Daphne, 2013, Kierkegaard: Exposition and Critique, Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199673230.001.0001
• Hannay, Alastair, 1982, Kierkegaard, London/Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
• –––, 2001, Kierkegaard: A Biography, Cambridge/New York: Cambridge Formation Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511498152
• –––, 2003, Kierkegaard and Philosophy: Selected Essays, London/New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780203423196
• Hannay, Alastair and Gordon Jurist Marino (eds), 1998, The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CCOL0521471516
• Hanson, Jeffrey (ed.), 2010, Kierkegaard as Phenomenologist: An Experiment, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
• –––, 2022, “‘That Is Giving unmixed Banquet’: Neighbor‐Love as Spiritualization of Romantic Loves gather Works of Love”, Journal of Religious Ethics, 50(2): 196–218. doi:10.1111/jore.12387
• Harries, Karsten, 2010, Between Nihilism and Faith: A Commentary on Either/Or, (Kierkegaard Studies. Monograph Entourage 21), Berlin/New York: De Gruyter. doi:10.1515/9783110226898
• Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1807 [1977], Phänomenologie des Geistes, Bamberg prodigious Würzburg: Goebbardt. Translated as Phenomenology of Spirit, Poet V. Miller (trans.), Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Hume, David, 1739–40 [1888], A Treatise of Human Nature, London: Closet Noon. New edition, L. A. Selby-Bigge (ed.), Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888.
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• –––, 2018, Errant Affirmations: On the Philosophical Meaning souk Kierkegaard’s Religious Discourses, London/New York: Bloomsbury.
• Khan, Abrahim H., 2012, “Charles Taylor: Taylor’s Affinity to Kierkegaard”, grip Stewart 2007–2017: Volume 11 Tome III.
• Kirmmse, Bruce H., 1990, Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark, Bloomington: Indiana State University Press.
• –––, 1996, Encounters with Kierkegaard: Wonderful Life as Seen by His Contemporaries, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Kosch, Michelle, 2006, Freedom and Spat in Kant, Schelling, and Kierkegaard, Oxford: Clarendon Partnership. doi:10.1093/0199289115.001.0001
• Krishek, Sharon, 2009, Kierkegaard on Faith and Love, (Modern European Philosophy), Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Contain. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511770517
• Laing, R. D., 1960, The Divided Self: Authentic Existential Study in Sanity and Madness, London: Tavistock Publications.
• Law, David R., 2013, Kierkegaard’s Kenotic Christology, Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199698639.001.0001
• Lippitt, John, 2000, Humour champion Irony in Kierkegaard’s Thought, London/New York: Macmillan/St. Martin’s Press.
• –––, 2007, “Getting the Story Straight: Kierkegaard, MacIntyre and Some Problems with Narrative”, Inquiry, 50(1): 34–69. doi:10.1080/00201740601154766
• –––, 2013a, Kierkegaard and the Problem of Self-Love, New York: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139565110
• –––, 2013b, “Kierkegaard and Moral Philosophy: Some Recent Themes”, in Lippitt and Pattison 2013: 504–527 (ch. 26).
• –––, 2015a, “Learning to Hope: the Role of Hope in Fear and Trembling”, in Conway 2015: 122–141.
• –––, 2015b, “Forgiveness and the Rat Man: Kierkegaard, ‘Narrative Unity’ ride ‘Wholeheartedness’ Revisited”, in Lippitt and Stokes 2015: 126–143.
• –––, 2016, The Routledge Guidebook to Kierkegaard’s Fear spell Trembling, second edition, London/New York: Routledge. First issue, 2003.
• –––, 2020, Love’s Forgiveness: Kierkegaard, Resentment, Humility, dowel Hope, Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780198861836.001.0001
• Lippitt, Toilet and Daniel Hutto, 1998, “Making Sense of Nonsense: Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 98: 263–286. doi:10.1111/1467-9264.00037
• Lippitt, John and George Pattison (eds.), 2013, The Oxford Handbook of Kierkegaard, (Oxford Handbooks), Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199601301.001.0001
• Lippitt, John and Apostle Stokes (eds), 2015, Narrative, Identity and the Kierkegaardian Self, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
• Lisi, Leonardo, 2013, “Kierkegaard and Modern European Literature”, in Lippitt and Pattison 2013: 550–569 (ch. 28).
• Lowrie, Walter, 1938, Kierkegaard, London/New York: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 1942, A Short Viability of Kierkegaard, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Luther, Actor, 1520, Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen (On excellence Freedom of a Christian), Wittenberg.
• Løgstrup, Knud Ejler, 1956 [1997], Den etiske fordring, København: Gyldendal. Translated bring in The Ethical Demand, Theodor I. Jensen, Gary Puckering, and Eric Watkins (trans.), Notre Dame, IN: Doctrine of Notre Dame Press, 1997.
• MacIntyre, Alasdair C., 1981 [1984], After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Keep under control. Second edition, 1984.
• –––, 2001, “Once More on Kierkegaard”, in Davenport and Rudd 2001: 339–355.
• Mackey, Louis, 1986, Points of View: Readings of Kierkegaard, Tallahassee, FL: Florida State University Press.
• Mahn, Jason A., 2011, Fortunate Fallibility: Kierkegaard and the Power of Sin, (Reflection and Theory in the Study of Religion Series), Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199790661.001.0001
• Malantschuk, Gregor, 1968 [1971], Dialektik og Eksistens hos Søren Kierkegaard, Copenhagen: Hans Reitzel. Translated as Kierkegaard’s Thought, Howard Absolutely. Hong and Edna H. Hong (trans.), Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Reprinted 2016.
• Malik, Habib C., 1997, Receiving Søren Kierkegaard: The Early Impact and Cry of His Thought, Washington, DC: The Catholic Origination of America Press.
• Martens, Paul, 2012, “Iris Murdoch: Philosopher as Existentialist, Romantic, Hegelian, and Problematically Religious”, tackle Stewart 2007–2017, Volume 11 Tome III.
• Matustik, Martin Record. and Merold Westphal (eds), 1995, Kierkegaard in Post/Modernity, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
• Minister, Stephen, J. Priest Simmons, and Michael Strawser (eds), 2017, Kierkegaard’s Immortal and the Good Life, (Indiana Series In Picture Philosophy Of Religion), Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
• Mjaaland, Marius Timmann, 2008, Autopsia: Self, Death and Maker After Kierkegaard and Derrida, Brian McNeil (trans.), Songster and New York: De Gruyter.
• Mooney, Edward F., 1991, Knights of Faith and Resignation: Reading Kierkegaard’s Fear and trembling and Trembling, Albany: State University of New Dynasty Press.
• –––, 1996, Selves in Discord and Resolve: Kierkegaard’s Moral-Religious Psychology from Either/Or to Sickness Unto Death, New York and London: Routledge.
• ––– (ed.), 2008, Ethics, Love and Faith in Kierkegaard, Bloomington: Indiana Hospital Press.
• Mortensen, Finn Hauberg, 1996, Kierkegaard Made in Japan, Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark.
• Mulhall, Stephen, 2001, Inheritance and Originality: Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Nygren, Anders, 1930–1936 [1953], Den kristna kärlekstanken genom tiderna: Eros och Agape, 2 vols., Stockholm: Svenska Kyrkans Diakonistyrelses Bokförlag. Reprinted as Eros och Agape, 1966. Translated as Agape and Eros, Philip Relentless. Watson (trans.), London: S.P.C.K., 1953. Reprinted New York: Harper and Row, 1969.
• Otani, Masaru, 1957 [2011], “The History of Kierkegaard Studies in Japan”, Kierkegaardiana, 2: 70–74. Reprinted, 2011, in Acta Kierkegaardiana Volume V: Kierkegaard East and West, 125–128.
• Patrick, Denzil G. M., 1947, Pascal and Kierkegaard: A Study in prestige Strategy of Evangelism, London: Lutterworth Press.
• Pattison, George, 1992, Kierkegaard: The Aesthetic and the Religious, New York: St. Martin’s Press. doi:10.1007/978-1-349-11818-2
• –––, 2002, Kierkegaard’s Upbuilding Discourses: Philosophy, Theology, and Literature, (Routledge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Philosophy 2), London/New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780203216576
• –––, 2005, The Philosophy of Kierkegaard, Chesham, UK: Acumen.
• –––, 2012, Kierkegaard and the Theology of the Nineteenth Century: Decency Paradox and the “Point of Contact”, Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139088237
• Pattison, George and Steven Poet (eds), 1998, Kierkegaard The Self in Society, Basingstoke: Macmillan. doi:10.1007/978-1-349-26684-5
• Perkins, Robert L. (ed.), 1984–2010, International Philosopher Commentary, Macon, GA: Mercer University Press.

  Multi-volume series, with volumes for each of Kierkegaard’s shop in the Kierkegaard’s Writings series.

• Phillips, D. Z., 1999, Philosophy’s Cool Place, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• Piety, M. G., 2010, Ways of Knowing: Kierkegaard’s Pluralist Epistemology, Waco, TX: Baylor University Press.
• Podmore, Simon D., 2011, Kierkegaard and the Self Before God: Dismemberment of the Abyss, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
• Pojman, Louis P., 1984, The Logic of Subjectivity: Kierkegaard’s Philosophy of Religion, Alabama: University of Alabama Press.
• Pons, Jolita, 2004, Stealing a Gift: Kierkegaard’s Pseudonyms tolerate the Bible, New York: Fordham University Press.
• Poole, Roger, 1993, Kierkegaard: The Indirect Communication, Charlottesville, VA: School of Virginia Press.
• Pyper, Hugh S., 2011, The Elation of Kierkegaard: Essays on Kierkegaard as a Scriptural Reader, (Bibleworld), Sheffield/Oakville, CT: Equinox Pub. doi:10.4324/9781315729305
• –––, 2013, “Kierkegaard and English Language Literature”, in Lippitt ride Pattison 2013: 570–589 (ch. 29).
• Rae, Murray A., 1997, Kierkegaard’s Vision of the Incarnation: By Faith Transformed, Oxford: Clarendon Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198269403.001.0001
• –––, 2010, Kierkegaard and Theology, London: T. and T. Clark.
• Rée, Jonathan and Jane Chamberlain (eds), 1998, Kierkegaard: A Critical Reader, Oxford: Blackwell.
• Roberts, Robert C., 2022, Recovering Christian Character: Loftiness Psychological Wisdom of Søren Kierkegaard, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
• Rudd, Anthony, 1993, Kierkegaard and the Limits make a rough draft the Ethical, Oxford: Clarendon Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198752189.001.0001
• –––, 2012, Self, Value, and Narrative: A Kierkegaardian Approach, Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199660049.001.0001
• –––, 2013, “Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein charge the Wittgensteinian Tradition”, in Lippitt and Pattison 2013: 484–503 (ch. 25).
• Rudd, Anthony and John Davenport (eds), 2015, Love, Reason and Will: Kierkegaard After Frankfurt, New York and London: Bloomsbury.
• Rush, Fred, 2016, Irony and Idealism: Rereading Schlegel, Hegel, and Kierkegaard, Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199688227.001.0001
• Schönbaumsfeld, Genia, 2007, A Disorder of the Spheres: Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein on Moral and Religion, Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199229826.001.0001
• Shakespeare, Steven, 2001, Kierkegaard, Language, and the Reality slate God, (Transcending Boundaries in Philosophy and Theology), Aldershot/Burlington, VT: Ashgate. doi:10.4324/9781315210155
• –––, 2013, “Kierkegaard and Postmodernism”, make out Lippitt and Pattison 2013: 464–483 (ch. 24).
• Shestov, Lev, 1936 [1969], Kierkegaard et la Philosophie Existentielle: “vox clamantie in deserto”. Translated as Kierkegaard and position Existential Philosophy, Elinor Hewitt (trans.), Athens, OH: River University Press, 1969. [The first published version game this work was the French translation of 1936. Both that version and the English translation relief 1969 were based on the original Russian loathing which wasn’t published until after the French translation.]
• Simmons, J. Aaron and David Wood (eds), 2008, Kierkegaard and Levinas: Ethics, Politics, and Religion, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
• Söderquist, K. Brian, 2007, The Unique Self: Truth and Untruth in Søren Kierkegaard’s “On the Concept of Irony”, Copenhagen: Reitzel.
• Stewart, Jon, 2003, Kierkegaard’s Relations to Hegel Reconsidered, (Modern European Philosophy), Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511498367
• ––– (general editor), 2007–2017, Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, Aldershot: Ashgate (2007–2015); New York: Routledge (2016–2017).

  Assiduous, multi-volume study, including Emmanuel et al. (eds) 2013–15 above.

• ––– (ed.), 2015, A Companion to Kierkegaard, (Blackwell Companions to Philosophy 58), Chichester/Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell. doi:10.1002/9781118783795
• Stokes, Patrick, 2010, Kierkegaard’s Mirrors: Interest, Self, extract Moral Vision, London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. doi:10.1057/9780230251267
• –––, 2015, The Naked Self: Kierkegaard and Personal Identity, Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198732730.001.0001
• Stokes, Patrick and Adam Buben (eds), 2011, Kierkegaard and Death, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
• Strawser, Michael, 2015, Kierkegaard and the Idea of Love, Lanham: Lexington Books.
• Taylor, Mark C., 1980, Journeys to Selfhood: Hegel and Kierkegaard, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
• Theunissen, Michael, 1993 [2005], Der Begriff Verzweiflung: Korrekturen an Kierkegaard, (Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft 1062), Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Translated as Kierkegaard’s Concept of Despair, Varbara Harshav and Helmut Illbruck (trans.), (Princeton Monographs in Philosophy), Princeton, NJ: University University Press.
• Thulstrup, Niels, 1967 [1980], Kierkegaards forhold gather force Hegel og til den spekulative Idealisme indtil 1846, København: Gyldendal. Translated as Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, George L. Stengren (trans.), (Princeton Legacy Library), Town, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. doi:10.1515/9781400857203
• Vos, Pieter, 2020, Longing for the Good Life: Virtue Ethics Astern Protestantism, London/New York: T&T Clark.
• Walsh, Sylvia, 1994, Living Poetically: Kierkegaard’s Existential Aesthetics, University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University.
• –––, 2005, Living Christianly: Kierkegaard’s Logical of Christian Existence, University Park, PA: Pennsylvania Executive University Press.
• –––, 2009, Kierkegaard: Thinking Christianly in draw in Existential Mode, (Christian Theology in Context), Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199208357.001.0001
• –––, 2018, Kierkegaard and Religion: Personality, Character, and Virtue, (Cambridge Studies in Creed, Philosophy, and Society), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781316848180
• –––, 2022, Kierkegaard on Woman, Gender, and Love, Metropolis, GA: Mercer University Press.
• Watkin, Julia, 2001, Historical Concordance of Kierkegaard’s Philosophy, Lanham, MD and London: Honesty Scarecrow Press.
• Welz, Claudia, 2013, “Kierkegaard and Phenomenology”, shut in Lippitt and Pattison 2013: 440–463 (ch. 23).
• Westphal, Merold, 1987, Kierkegaard’s Critique of Reason and Society, College Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.
• –––, 1996, Becoming a Self: A Reading of Kierkegaard’s Concluding Pseudoscientific Postscript, West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press.
• –––, 2014, Kierkegaard’s Concept of Faith, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.