The Hidden Authorship of Søren Kierkegaard. Jacob Sawyer

Ibid., 8–10; Barrett, Kierkegaard, 12.

6. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 5/5100, 1 A 75, August 1, 1835, emphasis author’s own.

7. This is most clearly the case in Kierkegaard, The Point of View; see also Malantschuk, Kierkegaard’s Thought, 113–14 etc.

8. “Few men have been motivated by such evangelical zeal as Kierkegaard” (Holmer, On Kierkegaard and the Truth, 16).

9. See Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 6/6271, IX A 390, n.d., 1848; cited in Evans, Kierkegaard, 2 n. 2; also Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 36.

10. Kierkegaard, Point of View, 123–24, emphasis author’s own.

11. Ibid., 24 and the translator’s footnote on 314–15.

12. Barrett, Kierkegaard, 9–10.

13. “Aesthetic” being that which pertains to the senses, so an “aesthetic author” is one who resembles a poet, and writes beautifully and popularly for the sake of moving readers.

14. “. . . Thus in a certain sense I began my activity as an author with a falsum [deception] or with a pia fraus [pious fraud]. The situation is that in so-called established Christendom people are so fixed in the fancy that they are Christians that if they are to be made aware at all many an art will have to be employed. If someone who otherwise does not have a reputation of being an author begins right off as a Christian author, he will not get a hearing from his contemporaries. They are immediately on their guard, saying, ‘That’s not for us’ etc.” (Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 6/6205, IX A 171, n.d., 1848; cited in Kierkegaard, Point of View, 161–62).

15. “. . . when the gospel speaks it speaks to the single individual” (Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 31).

16. Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, 111.

17. Kierkegaard, Attack.

18. Rae, Kierkegaard and Theology, esp. 166; see also Gouwens, Kierkegaard as Religious Thinker, 142–43.

19. E.g., the concept of “pure thinking” in relation to essential truth: Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 310–11, etc.

20. Ibid., 80.

21. Kierkegaard, Sickness.

22. “Kierkegaard’s overriding interest in what it means to be a Christian means that we do not find in him anything remotely resembling a systematic presentation of Christian doctrine” (Rae, Kierkegaard and Theology, 3).

23. Holmer comments on the theology of Kierkegaard’s day: that “the homogeneity becomes almost overpowering,” i.e., a crowd mentality (On Kierkegaard and the Truth, 38).

24. “[A] crowd . . . is untruth, since a crowd either makes for impenitence and irresponsibility altogether, or for the single individual it at least weakens responsibility by reducing the responsibility to a fraction. See, there was no individual soldier who dared to lay hands on Caius Marius . . . [but a] crowd is an abstraction, which does not have hands . . .” (Kierkegaard, Point of View, 107–8).

25. Crabtree and Gutenberg College, Kierkegaard.

26. See 1.2: “The Single Individual: A Dialectic of Being” below.

27. Crabtree and Gutenberg College, Kierkegaard.

28. In particular, see Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript.

29. Holmer, On Kierkegaard and the Truth, 32.

30. See especially Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 301–18. For instance: “But abstraction does not care about whether a particular existing human being is immortal, and just that is the difficulty. It is disinterested, but the difficulty of existence is the existing person’s interest, and the existing person is infinitely interested in existing. Thus abstract thinking helps me with my immortality by killing me as a particular existing individual and then making me immortal and therefore helps somewhat as in Holberg the doctor took the patient’s life with his medicine—but also drove out the fever” (ibid., 302); “pure thinking, in mystical suspension and with no relation to an existing person, explains everything within itself but not itself . . .” (ibid., 313); “But for an existing person pure thinking is a chimera when the truth is supposed to be the truth in which to exist” (ibid., 310); “To think existence sub specie aeterni and in abstraction is essentially to annul it, and the merit of it resembles the much-heralded merit of canceling the principle of contradiction” (ibid., 308).

31. Ibid., 304, 308.

32. For instance, see Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 205–7.

33. “Within the realm of pure thinking many, many objections can perhaps be made against Hegelianism, but that leaves everything essentially unchanged” (Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 309–10).

34. Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel is very complicated and my brief treatment here is no doubt incomplete. My particular interest here restricts me to Kierkegaard’s understanding of Hegel and his followers, and then how he counteracts or circumvents what he sees as the weaknesses of Hegel’s approach. I have attempted to refrain from making judgments as to the fairness of Kierkegaard’s critique of Hegel (or “Danish Hegelians”), and Hegel’s influence on Kierkegaard (not an exclusively negative one) is worth investigating. However, this is beyond the scope of this work. Those interested should consult the influential book: Stewart, Kierkegaard’s Relations; and also the following: Aumann, “Kierkegaard’s Case,” 221–48.

35. By Stanley Hauerwas, David J. Gouwens,