A comprehensive anthology of Kierkegaard’s writings that offers an unmatched introduction to one of the most original and influential modern philosophers This is the most comprehensive anthology of Søren Kierkegaard’s works ever published in English. Drawn from the volumes of Princeton’s authoritative Kierkegaard’s Writings series by editors Howard and Edna Hong, these carefully chosen selections represent every major aspect of Kierkegaard’s extraordinary output, which changed the course of modern intellectual history with its mix of philosophy, psychology, theology, and literary criticism. The anthology reveals the most important themes of his work, especially what it means to exist and to be human, and captures the unique character of his writings, with their shifting pseudonyms, complex dialogues, and powerful combination of irony, satire, sermon, polemic, humor, and fiction. A superb introduction and guide to the Danish philosopher, The Essential Kierkegaard vividly demonstrates why his work continues to speak so directly to so many readers. Traces the full span of Kierkegaard’s writings, from his early journals to his final work Features generous selections from all of Kierkegaard’s most important works, including Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, Works of Love, and The Sickness unto Death Presents selections from lesser-known writings, including Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions and The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air Includes an introduction to Kierkegaard’s writings and explanatory notes for each selection

"In the vast literature of love, "The Seducer's Diary" is an intricate curiosity--a feverishly intellectual attempt to reconstruct an erotic failure as a pedagogic success, a wound masked as a boast," observes John Updike in his foreword to Soren Kierkegaard's narrative. This work, a chapter from Kierkegaard's first major volume, "Either/Or," springs from his relationship with his fiancee, Regine Olsen. Kierkegaard fell in love with the young woman, ten years his junior, proposed to her, but then broke off their engagement a year later. This event affected Kierkegaard profoundly. Olsen became a muse for him, and a flood of volumes resulted. His attempt to set right, in writing, what he feels was a mistake in his relationship with Olsen taught him the secret of "indirect communication." "The Seducer's Diary," then, becomes Kierkegaard's attempt to portray himself as a scoundrel and thus make their break easier for her.

Matters of marriage, the ethical versus the aesthetic, dread, and, increasingly, the severities of Christianity are pondered by Kierkegaard in this intense work."

"For Self-Examination" and its companion piece "Judge for Yourself " are the culmination of Soren Kierkegaard's "second authorship," which followed his "Concluding Unscientific Postscript." Among the simplest and most readily comprehended of Kierkegaard's books, the two works are part of the signed direct communications, as distinguished from his earlier pseudonymous writings. The lucidity and pithiness, and the earnestness and power, of "For Self-Examination" and "Judge for Yourself " are enhanced when, as Kierkegaard requested, they are read aloud. They contain the well-known passages on Socrates' defense speech, how to read, the lover's letter, the royal coachman and the carriage team, and the painter's relation to his painting. The aim of awakening and inward deepening is signaled by the opening section on Socrates in "For Self-Examination" and is pursued in the context of the relations of Christian ideality, grace, and response. The secondary aim, a critique of the established order, links the works to the final polemical writings that appear later after a four-year period of silence."

Soren Kierkegaard, the nineteenth-century Danish philosopher rediscovered in the twentieth century, is a major influence in contemporary philosophy, religion, and literature. He regarded "Either/Or" as the beginning of his authorship, although he had published two earlier works on Hans Christian Andersen and irony. The pseudonymous volumes of "Either/Or" are the writings of a young man (I) and of Judge William (II). The ironical young man's papers include a collection of sardonic aphorisms; essays on Mozart, modern drama, and boredom; and "The Seducer's Diary." The seeming miscellany is a reflective presentation of aspects of the "either," the esthetic view of life.

Part II is an older friend's "or," the ethical life of integrated, authentic personhood, elaborated in discussions of personal becoming and of marriage. The resolution of the "either/or" is left to the reader, for there is no Part III until the appearance of "Stages on Life's Way." The poetic-reflective creations of a master stylist and imaginative impersonator, the two men write in distinctive ways appropriate to their respective positions."

In his praise for Part I of "Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits," the eminent Kierkegaard scholar Eduard Geismar said, "I am of the opinion that nothing of what he has written is to such a degree before the face of God. Anyone who really wants to understand Kierkegaard does well to begin with it." These discourses, composed after Kierkegaard had initially intended to end his public writing career, constitute the first work of his "second authorship."

Characterized by Kierkegaard as ethical-ironic, Part One, "Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing," offers a penetrating discussion of double-mindedness and ethical integrity. Part Two, "What We Learn from the Lilies in the Field and from the Birds of the Air," humorously exposes an inverted qualitative difference between the learner and the teacher. In Part Three, "The Gospel of Sufferings, Christian Discourses," the philosopher explores how joy can come out of suffering.

This is the most comprehensive anthology of Soren Kierkegaard's works ever assembled in English. Drawn from the volumes of Princeton's authoritative "Kierkegaard's Writings" series by editors Howard and Edna Hong, the selections represent every major aspect of Kierkegaard's extraordinary career. They reveal the powerful mix of philosophy, psychology, theology, and literary criticism that made Kierkegaard one of the most compelling writers of the nineteenth century and a shaping force in the twentieth. With an introduction to Kierkegaard's writings as a whole and explanatory notes for each selection, this is the essential one-volume guide to a thinker who changed the course of modern intellectual history.

The anthology begins with Kierkegaard's early journal entries and traces the development of his work chronologically to the final "The Changelessness of God." The book presents generous selections from all of Kierkegaard's landmark works, including "Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, Works of Love," and "The Sickness unto Death," and draws new attention to a host of such lesser-known writings as "Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions" and "The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air." The selections are carefully chosen to reflect the unique character of Kierkegaard's work, with its shifting pseudonyms, its complex dialogues, and its potent combination of irony, satire, sermon, polemic, humor, and fiction. We see the esthetic, ethical, and ethical-religious ways of life initially presented as dialogue in two parallel series of pseudonymous and signed works and later in the "second authorship" as direct address. And we see the themes that bind the whole together, in particular Kierkegaard's overarching concern with, in his own words, "What it means to exist; . . . what it means to be a human being."

Together, the selections provide the best available introduction to Kierkegaard's writings and show more completely than any other book why his work, in all its creativity, variety, and power, continues to speak so directly today to so many readers around the world."

A work that "not only treats of irony but is irony," wrote a contemporary reviewer of "The Concept of Irony, with Continual Reference to Socrates." Presented here with Kierkegaard's notes of the celebrated Berlin lectures on "positive philosophy" by F.W.J. Schelling, the book is a seedbed of Kierkegaard's subsequent work, both stylistically and thematically. Part One concentrates on Socrates, the master ironist, as interpreted by Xenophon, Plato, and Aristophanes, with a word on Hegel and Hegelian categories. Part Two is a more synoptic discussion of the concept of irony in Kierkegaard's categories, with examples from other philosophers and with particular attention given to A. W. Schlegel's novel "Lucinde" as an epitome of romantic irony.

"The Concept of Irony" and the "Notes of Schelling's Berlin Lectures" belong to the momentous year 1841, which included not only the completion of Kierkegaard's university work and his sojourn in Berlin, but also the end of his engagement to Regine Olsen and the initial writing of "Either/Or."

Soren Kierkegaard, the nineteenth-century Danish philosopher rediscovered in the twentieth century, is a major influence in contemporary philosophy, religion, and literature. He regarded "Either/Or" as the beginning of his authorship, although he had published two earlier works on Hans Christian Andersen and irony. The pseudonymous volumes of "Either/Or" are the writings of a young man (I) and of Judge William (II). The ironical young man's papers include a collection of sardonic aphorisms; essays on Mozart, modern drama, and boredom; and "The Seducer's Diary." The seeming miscellany is a reflective presentation of aspects of the "either," the esthetic view of life.

Part II is an older friend's "or," the ethical life of integrated, authentic personhood, elaborated in discussions of personal becoming and of marriage. The resolution of the "either/or" is left to the reader, for there is no Part III until the appearance of "Stages on Life's Way." The poetic-reflective creations of a master stylist and imaginative impersonator, the two men write in distinctive ways appropriate to their respective positions."

The "Corsair" affair has been called the "most renowned controversy in Danish literary history." At the center is Soren Kierkegaard, whose pseudonymous "Stages on Life's Way" occasioned a frivolous and dishonorable review by Peder Ludvig Moller. Moller was associated with "The Corsair," a publication notorious for gossip and caricature. The editor was Meir Goldschmidt, an acquaintance of Kierkegaard's and an admirer of his early work. Kierkegaard struck back at not only Moller and Goldschmidt but at the paper as a whole. The present volume contains all of the documents relevant to this dispute, plus a historical introduction that recapitulates the sequence of events surrounding the controversy.

Parts I (Article) and II (Addenda) contain articles both signed by and attributed to Kierkegaard in response to the affair. A supplement includes writings pertaining to the "Corsair" affair by Goldschmidt and Moller, as well as unpublished pieces by Kierkegaard from his journals and papers. Although the immediate occasion was literary, for Kierkegaard the issues as well as the consequences were ethical, social, philosophical, and religious. Howard Hong argues that the most important consequence was wholly unexpected and unintended: the second phase of Kierkegaard's authorship."

Of the many works he wrote during 1848, his "richest and most fruitful year," Kierkegaard specified "Practice in Christianity" as "the most perfect and truest thing." In his reflections on such topics as Christ's invitation to the burdened, the imitatio Christi, the possibility of offense, and the exalted Christ, he takes as his theme the requirement of Christian ideality in the context of divine grace. Addressing clergy and laity alike, Kierkegaard asserts the need for institutional and personal admission of the accommodation of Christianity to the culture and to the individual misuse of grace. As a corrective defense, the book is an attempt to find, ideally, a basis for the established order, which would involve the order's ability to acknowledge the Christian requirement, confess its own distance from it, and resort to grace for support in its continued existence. At the same time the book can be read as the beginning of Kierkegaard's attack on Christendom. Because of the high ideality of the contents and in order to prevent the misunderstanding that he himself represented that ideality, Kierkegaard writes under a new pseudonym, Anti-Climacus.

As a spiritual autobiography, Kierkegaard's "The Point of View for My Work as an Author" stands among such great works as Augustine's "Confessions" and Newman's "Apologia pro Vita Sua." Yet "Point of View" is neither a confession nor a defense; it is an author's story of a lifetime of writing, his understanding of the maze of greatly varied works that make up his oeuvre.

Upon the imminent publication of the second edition of "Either/Or," Kierkegaard again intended to cease writing. Now was the time for a direct "report to history" on the authorship as a whole. In addition to "Point of View," which was published posthumously, the present volume also contains "On My Work as an Author," a contemporary substitute, and the companion piece "Armed Neutrality."

Kierkegaard's pseudonymous authorship has baffled readers, his apparent capriciousness making it difficult to determine his position at a given point and to understand his work as an organic whole. Gregor Malantschuk's study, based on careful reading of Kierkegaard's journals, papers, and texts, cuts through the authorship problem to clarify the philosopher's key ideas, see the comprehensive plan of his work, and make intelligible the dialectical coherence of his thought. Discussing Kierkegaard's dialectical method and his use of it from Either/Or to the final Two Discourses, Professor Malantschuk shows how coherently Kierkegaard set the individual works in place, so that even the conflict between the principal pseudonyms, Climacus and Anti-Climacus, serves to elucidate his major philosophical ideas. Contents: 1. Anthropological Contemplation. II. Kierkegaard's Dialectical Method. III. The Dialectic Employed in the Authorship. Index. Originally published in 1971. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Kierkegaard's pseudonymous authorship has baffled readers, his apparent capriciousness making it difficult to determine his position at a given point and to understand his work as an organic whole. Gregor Malantschuk's study, based on careful reading of Kierkegaard's journals, papers, and texts, cuts through the authorship problem to clarify the philosopher's key ideas, see the comprehensive plan of his work, and make intelligible the dialectical coherence of his thought. Discussing Kierkegaard's dialectical method and his use of it from Either/Or to the final Two Discourses, Professor Malantschuk shows how coherently Kierkegaard set the individual works in place, so that even the conflict between the principal pseudonyms, Climacus and Anti-Climacus, serves to elucidate his major philosophical ideas. Contents: 1. Anthropological Contemplation. II. Kierkegaard's Dialectical Method. III. The Dialectic Employed in the Authorship. Index. Originally published in 1971. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

"Stages on Life's Way," the sequel to "Either/Or," is an intensely poetic example of Kierkegaard's vision of the three stages, or spheres, of existence: the esthetic, the ethical, and the religious. With characteristic love for mystification, he presents the work as a bundle of documents fallen by chance into the hands of "Hilarius Bookbinder," who prepared them for printing. The book begins with a banquet scene patterned on Plato's Symposium. (George Brandes maintained that "one must recognize with amazement that it holds its own in this comparison.") Next is a discourse by "Judge William" in praise of marriage "in answer to objections." The remainder of the volume, almost two-thirds of the whole, is the diary of a young man, discovered by "Frater Taciturnus," who was deeply in love but felt compelled to break his engagement. The work closes with a letter to the reader from Taciturnus on the three "existence-spheres" represented by the three parts of the book.

"Stages on Life's Way" not only repeats themes, characters, and pseudonymous authors of the earlier works but also goes beyond them and points to further development of central ideas in "Concluding Unscientific Postscript."

After deciding to terminate his authorship with the pseudonymous "Concluding Unscientific Postscript," Kierkegaard composed reviews as a means of writing without being an author. "Two Ages," here presented in a definitive English text, is simultaneously a review and a book in its own right. In it, Kierkegaard comments on the anonymously published Danish novel "Two Ages," which contrasts the mentality of the age of the French Revolution with that of the subsequent epoch of rationalism.

Kierkegaard commends the author's shrewdness, and his critique builds on the novel's view of the two generations. With keen prophetic insight, Kierkegaard foresees the birth of an impersonal cultural wasteland, in which the individual will either be depersonalized or obliged to find an existence rooted in "equality before God and equality with all men."

This edition, like all in the series, contains substantial supplementary material, including a historical introduction, entries from Kierkegaard's journals and papers, and the preface and conclusion of the original novel.

"Without authority," a phrase Kierkegaard repeatedly applied to himself and his writings, is an appropriate title for this volume of five short works that in various ways deal with the concept and practice of authority. "The Lily in the Field and the Bird of the Air" contemplates the teaching authority of these creatures based on three different passages in the Gospels. The first of "Two Ethical-Religious Essays" mediates on the ethics of Jesus' martyrdom; the second contrasts the authority of the genius with that of the apostle. The remaining works--"Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays" (1849), "An Upbuilding Discourse" (1850), and "Two Discourses at the Communion on Fridays" (1851)--are meditations on sin, forgiveness, and the power of love.

In Philosophical Fragments the pseudonymous author Johannes Climacus explored the question: What is required in order to go beyond Socratic recollection of eternal ideas already possessed by the learner? Written as an afterword to this work, Concluding Unscientific Postscript is on one level a philosophical jest, yet on another it is Climacus's characterization of the subjective thinker's relation to the truth of Christianity. At once ironic, humorous, and polemical, this work takes on the "unscientific" form of a mimical-pathetical-dialectical compilation of ideas. Whereas the movement in the earlier pseudonymous writings is away from the aesthetic, the movement in Postscript is away from speculative thought. Kierkegaard intended Postscript to be his concluding work as an author. The subsequent "second authorship" after The Corsair Affair made Postscript the turning point in the entire authorship. Part One of the text volume examines the truth of Christianity as an objective issue, Part Two the subjective issue of what is involved for the individual in becoming a Christian, and the volume ends with an addendum in which Kierkegaard acknowledges and explains his relation to the pseudonymous authors and their writings. The second volume contains the scholarly apparatus, including a key to references and selected entries from Kierkegaard's journals and papers.

This volume contains a new translation, with a historical introduction by the translators, of two works written under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus. Through Climacus, Kierkegaard contrasts the paradoxes of Christianity with Greek and modern philosophical thinking. In "Philosophical Fragments" he begins with Greek Platonic philosophy, exploring the implications of venturing beyond the Socratic understanding of truth acquired through recollection to the Christian experience of acquiring truth through grace. Published in 1844 and not originally planned to appear under the pseudonym Climacus, the book varies in tone and substance from the other works so attributed, but it is dialectically related to them, as well as to the other pseudonymous writings.

The central issue of "Johannes Climacus" is doubt. Probably written between November 1842 and April 1843 but unfinished and published only posthumously, this book was described by Kierkegaard as an attack on modern speculative philosophy by "means of the melancholy irony, which did not consist in any single utterance on the part of Johannes Climacus but in his whole life. . . . Johannes does what we are told to do--he actually doubts everything--he suffers through all the pain of doing that, becomes cunning, almost acquires a bad conscience. When he has gone as far in that direction as he can go and wants to come back, he cannot do so. . . . Now he despairs, his life is wasted, his youth is spent in these deliberations. Life does not acquire any meaning for him, and all this is the fault of philosophy." A note by Kierkegaard suggests how he might have finished the work: "Doubt is conquered not by the system but by faith, just as it is faith that has brought doubt into the world ."

Presented here in a new translation, with a historical introduction by the translators, "Fear and Trembling and Repetition" are the most poetic and personal of Soren Kierkegaard's pseudonymous writings. Published in 1843 and written under the names Johannes de Silentio and Constantine Constantius, respectively, the books demonstrate Kierkegaard's transmutation of the personal into the lyrically religious.

Each work uses as a point of departure Kierkegaard's breaking of his engagement to Regine Olsen--his sacrifice of "that single individual." From this beginning "Fear and Trembling" becomes an exploration of the faith that transcends the ethical, as in Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac at God's command. This faith, which persists in the face of the absurd, is rewarded finally by the return of all that the faithful one is willing to sacrifice. "Repetition" discusses the most profound implications of unity of personhood and of identity within change, beginning with the ironic story of a young poet who cannot fulfill the ethical claims of his engagement because of the possible consequences of his marriage. The poet finally despairs of repetition (renewal) in the ethical sphere, as does his advisor and friend Constantius in the aesthetic sphere. The book ends with Constantius' intimation of a third kind of repetition--in the religious sphere."

In Philosophical Fragments the pseudonymous author Johannes Climacus explored the question: What is required in order to go beyond Socratic recollection of eternal ideas already possessed by the learner? Written as an afterword to this work, Concluding Unscientific Postscript is on one level a philosophical jest, yet on another it is Climacus's characterization of the subjective thinker's relation to the truth of Christianity. At once ironic, humorous, and polemical, this work takes on the "unscientific" form of a mimical-pathetical-dialectical compilation of ideas. Whereas the movement in the earlier pseudonymous writings is away from the aesthetic, the movement in Postscript is away from speculative thought. Kierkegaard intended Postscript to be his concluding work as an author. The subsequent "second authorship" after The Corsair Affair made Postscript the turning point in the entire authorship. Part One of the text volume examines the truth of Christianity as an objective issue, Part Two the subjective issue of what is involved for the individual in becoming a Christian, and the volume ends with an addendum in which Kierkegaard acknowledges and explains his relation to the pseudonymous authors and their writings. The second volume contains the scholarly apparatus, including a key to references and selected entries from Kierkegaard's journals and papers.

The final volume (XXVI) of Princeton's Kierkegaard's Writings series, the "Cumulative Index" provides wide-ranging navigation to the preceding twenty-five volumes in the series. Composed of over 90,000 entries, the "Cumulative Index" offers access to Kierkegaard's complex authorship and the extraordinary range of subjects he addressed in his writing. Covering the series' historical introductions, primary works, supplementary material (journal entries), and footnotes, the "Cumulative Index" provides a comprehensive entryway to the series' more than 11,000 pages of text. Readers are able to survey via extended entries Kierkegaard's dual authorship(pseudonymous and signed), his frequent biblical references and allusions, his references to Christianity, God, and love, and his frequent use of analogies.

A cumulative collation of the extensive supplementary material (over 4,000 journal entries) is also included, giving researchers and avid readers the opportunity to correlate and examine items from the current series, "Soren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers," and the original Danish "Soren Kierkegaards Papirer,"

The various kinds and conditions of love are a common theme for Kierkegaard, beginning with his early "Either/Or," through "The Diary of the Seducer" and Judge William's eulogy on married love, to his last work, on the changelessness of God's love. "Works of Love," the midpoint in the series, is also the monumental high point, because of its penetrating, illuminating analysis of the forms and sources of love. Love as feeling and mood is distinguished from works of love, love of the lovable from love of the unlovely, preferential love from love as the royal law, love as mutual egotism from triangular love, and erotic love from self-giving love.

This work is marked by Kierkegaard's Socratic awareness of the reader, both as the center of awakened understanding and as the initiator of action. Written to be read aloud, the book conveys a keenness of thought and an insightful, poetic imagination that make such an attentive approach richly rewarding. "Works of Love "not only serves as an excellent place to begin exploring the writings of Kierkegaard, but also rewards many rereadings.

"Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions" was the last of seven works signed by Kierkegaard and published simultaneously with an anonymously authored companion piece. "Imagined Occasions" both complements and stands in contrast to Kierkegaard's pseudonymously published "Stages on Life's Way."

The two volumes not only have a chronological relation but treat some of the same distinct themes. The first of the three discourses, "On the Occasion of a Confession," centers on stillness, wonder, and one's search for God--in contrast to the speechmaking on erotic love in "In Vino Veritas," part one of "Stages." The second discourse, "On the Occasion of a Wedding," complements the second part of "Stages," in which Judge William delivers a panegyric on marriage. The third discourse, "At a Graveside," sharpens the ethical and religious earnestness implicit in Stages's "'Guilty'/'Not Guilty'" and completes this collection.

The final volume of Princeton's Kierkegaard's Writings series, the "Cumulative Index" provides wide-ranging navigation to the preceding twenty-five volumes. Composed of over 90,000 entries, the "Cumulative Index" offers access to Kierkegaard's complex authorship and the extraordinary range of subjects he addressed in his writing. Covering the series' historical introductions, primary works, supplementary material (journal entries), and footnotes, the "Cumulative Index" provides a comprehensive entryway to more than 11,000 pages of text. Readers are able to survey via extended entries Kierkegaard's dual authorship, pseudonymous and signed; his numerous biblical allusions; his references to Christianity, God, and love; and his frequent use of analogies.

A cumulative collation of the extensive supplementary material is also included, giving researchers and avid readers the opportunity to cross-reference Kierkegaard's Writings with his journals and papers published elsewhere in both English and Danish.

There is much to be learned philosophically from this volume, but philosophical instruction was not Kierkegaard's aim here, except in the broad sense of self-knowledge and deepened awareness. Indicating the intention of the discourses, the titles include "The Expectancy of Faith," "Love Will Hide a Multitude of Sins," "Strengthening in the Inner Being," "To Gain One's Soul in Patience," "Patience in Expectancy," and "Against Cowardliness."

In tone and substance these works are in accord with the concluding words of encouragement in "Either/Or," which was paired with the first volume of discourses: "Ask yourself and keep on asking until you find the answer, for one may have known something many times, acknowledged it; one may have willed something many times, attempted it--and yet, only the deep inner motion, only the heart's indescribable emotion, only that will convince you that what you have acknowledged belongs to you, that no power can take it from you--for only the truth that builds up is truth for you."