Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813–1855), of Copenhagen, who wrote under a dozen pseudonyms and his own name an authorship meant, he said, to answer one question: how to become a Christian in Christendom. He set the single individual before God against the crowd, the system and the established church, and his last year was a public attack on the Danish church. He was little read outside Denmark until the twentieth century, when he became the forerunner of both existentialism and Barth’s theology.
Works (3)
- Selections from the Writings of Kierkegaard — The first book of Kierkegaard in English: Hollander’s introduction, and passages from Either/Or (the Diapsalmata), Stages on Life’s Way (The Banquet), Fear and Trembling, Training in Christianity (as “Preparation for a Christian Life”) and The Instant. (6 notes)
- The Crowd is Untruth — Written in 1847 to go with the dedication of Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits to “that single individual”, and published after his death with The Point of View for My Work as an Author: “the crowd is untruth”. (1 notes)
- Works of Love — Kierkegaard’s greatest work of Christian ethics, published under his own name in 1847: eighteen discourses in two series on the commandment to love the neighbour — that love is a duty, that it is known by its fruits, that it is the fulfilment of the law, that it believes, hopes, seeks not its own, covers a multitude of sins and abides — against the preferential love of the poet and the lover. (23 notes)