Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Howard V. Hong (1912–2010) was general editor of Kierkegaard’s Writings (Princeton) and former director of the Howard and Edna Hong Kierkegaard Library at St. Olaf College. Edna H. Hong (1913–2007) was a poet, writer, and translator who coedited and cotranslated many volumes of Kierkegaard’s Writings.

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"The crowning achievement of [the Hongs'] monumental translation of all of Kierkegaard's published writings.... A rich and stimulating volume.... A book for everyone with an interest in Kierkegaard, from the first-time reader to the more experienced."--Bruce H. Kirmmse, editor of Encounters with Kierkegaard

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THE ESSENTIAL KIERKEGAARD

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

Introduction..................................................................................................ixEarly Journal Entries.........................................................................................3From the Papers of One Still Living...........................................................................13The Concept of Irony, with Continual Reference to Socrates....................................................20Either/Or, A Fragment of Life, I..............................................................................37Either/Or, A Fragment of Life, II.............................................................................66Four Upbuilding Discourses....................................................................................84Fear and Trembling............................................................................................93Repetition....................................................................................................102Philosophical Fragments, or a Fragment of Philosophy..........................................................116Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est...............................................................126The Concept of Anxiety........................................................................................138Prefaces......................................................................................................156Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions........................................................................164Stages on Life's Way..........................................................................................170Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments.................................................187"The Activity of a Traveling Esthetician and How He Still Happened to Pay for the Dinner".....................247Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and The Present Age. A Literary Review........................................252Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits......................................................................269Works of Love.................................................................................................277Christian Discourses..........................................................................................312The Lily in the Field and the Bird of the Air.................................................................333Two Ethical-Religious Essays..................................................................................339The Sickness unto Death.......................................................................................350Practice in Christianity......................................................................................373Two Discourses at the Communion on Fridays....................................................................385For Self-Examination [First series]...........................................................................393Judge for Yourself! For Self-Examination, Second series.......................................................404The Book on Adler.............................................................................................411Fædrelandet Articles and The Moment......................................................................424On My Work as an Author and The Point of View for My Work as an Author........................................449The Changelessness of God.....................................................................................482Acknowledgments...............................................................................................493Notes.........................................................................................................495Bibliography..................................................................................................505Index.........................................................................................................507

Chapter One

The first two entries are ostensibly addressed to Peter Wilhelm Lund (1801–1880), brother of Johan Christian Lund and Henrik Ferdinand Lund (married to Kierkegaard's sisters Nicoline Christine and Petrea Severine). In 1833 he returned to Brazil to continue his work as a paleontologist. Emanuel Hirsch has made a case for regarding the two letters and many other entries from the same period as parts of Kierkegaard's first, but not completed, writing plan, a series of letters by a Faustian doubter. The two entries were written at the end of Kierkegaard's fifth year as a student at the University of Copenhagen. The third entry (see p.12 and note 2) is the most frequently and variously quoted line by Kierkegaard, and it does crystalize many elements of his outlook.

Copenhagen, June 1, 1835

YOU KNOW how inspiring I once found it to listen to you and how enthusiastic I was about your description of your stay in Brazil, although not so much on account of the mass of detailed observations with which you have enriched yourself and your scholarly field as on account of the impression your first journey into that wondrous nature made upon you: your paradisiacal happiness and joy. Something like this is bound to find a sympathetic response in any person who has the least feeling and warmth, even though he seeks his satisfaction, his occupation, in an entirely different sphere, but especially so in a young person who as yet only dreams of his destiny. Our early youth is like a flower at dawn with a lovely dewdrop in its cup, harmoniously and pensively reflecting everything that surrounds it. But soon the sun rises over the horizon, and the dewdrop evaporates; with it vanish the fantasies of life, and now it becomes a question (to use a flower metaphor once more) whether or not a person is able to produce—by his own efforts as does the oleander—a drop that may represent the fruit of his life. This requires, above all, that one be allowed to grow in the soil where one really belongs, but that is not always so easy to find. In this respect there exist fortunate creatures who have such a decided inclination in a particular direction that they faithfully follow the path once it is laid out for them without ever falling prey to the thought that perhaps they ought to have followed an entirely different path. There are others who let themselves be influenced so completely by their surroundings that it never becomes clear to them in what direction they are really striving. Just as the former group has its own implicit categorical imperative, so the latter recognizes an explicit categorical imperative. But how few there are in the former group, and to the latter I do not wish to belong. Those who get to experience the real meaning of Hegelian dialectics in their lives are greater in number. Incidentally, it is altogether natural for wine to ferment before it becomes clear; nevertheless this process is often disagreeable in its several stages, although regarded in its totality it is of course agreeable, provided it does in the end yield its relative results in the context of the usual doubt. This is of major significance for anybody who has come to terms with his destiny by means of it, not only because of the calm that follows in contrast to the preceding storm, but because one then has life in a quite different sense than before. For many, it is this Faustian element...