Kierkegaard's religious discourses - his writings which have explicitly dealt with religion - have historically been given scant attention by philosophers. They have generally been considered to be of less philosophical interest than his 'proper' philosophy. Errant Affirmations radically questions this claim and considers Kierkegaard's religious writings as absolutely central to his philosophical vision. Through close and clear readings of Kierkegaard's work, David Kangas argues that contemporary philosophical themes - gift, temporality, language, death, nothingness, economy and selfhood- are not only evident in the 'religious' works but explored with real depth and fascination. Above all, the book argues that Kierkegaard's positive account of the human condition, his "ontology," fully emerges only in these discourses. It shows how these discourses are organized around an "errant" kind of affirmation-namely, an affirmation of existence that is without conditions. Such affirmation involves the intensification of life around "today" and coincides with a joy that has no particular cause. It is an affirmation capable of affirming life even amidst its finitude and suffering. Errant Affirmations is a fresh interpretation of Kierkegaard's understudied works that not only opens up a new reading of Kierkegaard but elucidates his 'religious' texts and places them organically within his philosophy as a whole.

Kierkegaard's religious discourses - his writings which have explicitly dealt with religion - have historically been given scant attention by philosophers. They have generally been considered to be of less philosophical interest than his 'proper' philosophy. Errant Affirmations radically questions this claim and considers Kierkegaard's religious writings as absolutely central to his philosophical vision. Through close and clear readings of Kierkegaard's work, David Kangas argues that contemporary philosophical themes - gift, temporality, language, death, nothingness, economy and selfhood- are not only evident in the 'religious' works but explored with real depth and fascination. Above all, the book argues that Kierkegaard's positive account of the human condition, his "ontology," fully emerges only in these discourses. It shows how these discourses are organized around an "errant" kind of affirmation-namely, an affirmation of existence that is without conditions. Such affirmation involves the intensification of life around "today" and coincides with a joy that has no particular cause. It is an affirmation capable of affirming life even amidst its finitude and suffering. Errant Affirmations is a fresh interpretation of Kierkegaard's understudied works that not only opens up a new reading of Kierkegaard but elucidates his 'religious' texts and places them organically within his philosophy as a whole.

In the late 1830s and early 1840s Hans. L. Martensen (1808-1884) helped to introduce the thought of G.W.F. Hegel to the intellectual world of Copenhagen. Between Hegel and Kierkegaard offers the first English translations of three important early writings of Martensen in the philosophy of religion. These treatises evidence an original and critical interpretation of Hegel's thought from a speculative theological point of view. The heart of Martensen's philosophy of religion is the idea of freedom or personality grounded in its relation to the divine. These writings exercised an important and formative influence on the young Kierkegaard, Martensen's student, even though Kierkegaard later became a formidable opponent and critic of Martensen.

In Kierkegaard s Instant, David J. Kangas reads Kierkegaard to reveal his radical thinking about temporality. For Kierkegaard, the instant of becoming, in which everything changes in the blink of an eye, eludes recollection and anticipation. It constitutes a beginning always already at work. As Kangas shows, Kierkegaard s retrieval of the sudden quality of temporality allows him to stage a deep critique of the idealist projects of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. By linking Kierkegaard s thought to the tradition of Meister Eckhart, Kangas formulates the central problem of these early texts and puts them into contemporary light can thinking hold itself open to the challenges of temporality?"