The Hidden Authorship of Søren Kierkegaard. Jacob Sawyer
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venture in communicating the gospel through being hidden “in the truth.” It is a matter involving not only concepts, but also the embodied relation of such concepts to the reader and the author. In this work we will give primary consideration to Kierkegaard’s use of pseudonyms in order to come to understand this layering.50
We begin with a brief explication of my thesis statement by way of introducing Kierkegaard’s task, and will propose a christological understanding of “hiddenness” as the basis for the form of his authorship. This will then be the foundation for demonstrating such hiddenness being outworked in the authorship in a multilayered fashion. Three sections correspond to those layers mentioned above, each contributing to a progressively deeper demonstration of Kierkegaard’s hidden authorship:
Part I outlines some key concepts that are explicit throughout the authorship and are important in understanding Kierkegaard’s task. Chief of these are “the single individual” and essential truth, and the concept of hiddenness is discussed throughout.
Part II discusses how the very form of the writing was an attempt to awaken such concepts within the reader herself through indirect communication.51 Here we will particularly focus on how Kierkegaard’s works were designed to impact his reader, looking at how the concepts of “the single individual” and “indirect communication” were outworked in the form of his writing. It is here that we will come to see how understanding Kierkegaard’s authorial form as hidden becomes apparent and useful.
Part III considers Kierkegaard as an example of a Christian communicator and evaluates his authorship against his own critique of Hegel, the author who wrote himself out of existence. This section seeks to address how Kierkegaard overcame the problems inherent in the work of Hegel and his followers through hiding himself. We then discuss Kierkegaard’s concepts of existence-communication and reduplication, and how they can be understood to relate to Kierkegaard himself, as well as how his own explanation of his authorship impinges on his task.
This book will demonstrate the presence of hiddenness throughout Kierkegaard’s authorship as a whole, and how this was derived from his understanding of the gospel of Christianity.
My Use of Kierkegaard’s Pseudonymous and Signed Works
In this essay I regard Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous works as expressing views that he himself often agreed with and found useful as representative of his own words.52 I will give hermeneutical priority to Kierkegaard’s signed works, seeing these as the authoritative works through which to understand his pseudonymous works. I will do this in light of his warning that “in the pseudonymous books there is not a single word by me.”53 However, we must keep in mind that the goal is not merely to understand Kierkegaard’s view, since this would risk objectivizing his work and reducing it to “a paragraph in the system.”54 Instead we will attempt to engage with his works on their own terms.55
These pseudonymical voices are understood to be various points of view, each carrying an important function (particularly as demonstrations) in the overall task to which Kierkegaard employed them: That is, “to the issue: becoming a Christian, with direct and indirect polemical aim at that enormous illusion, Christendom, or the illusion that in such a country all are Christians of sorts.”56 This will become clearer as we explore these matters further.
Primary Works Consulted
Because of the limited amount of time rather than the limited scope of my work, it was necessary for me to limit the number of works written by Kierkegaard with which I engaged. In this work, I have found it crucial first to consult the collection of Kierkegaard’s direct works on his authorship compiled in Point of View.57 I will also assume this veronymous,58 posthumous work as the hermeneutical key for understanding the strategies employed in his authorship.59
From there I have sought to include a range of Kierkegaard’s books from his own analysis of what he understood to be his “authorship proper.”60 These include, from the first division (aesthetic writing): Fear and Trembling,61 Philosophical Fragments,62 and portions of Either/Or,63 additionally I examine a limited selection of the concurrent Upbuilding Discourses which accompanied such works.64 Concluding Unscientific Postscript65 was consulted as the bridge between the aesthetic and religious works, and from the third division (“only religious writing”), Works of Love,66 as well as a selection of other Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits and Christian Discourses.67 Furthermore I have also consulted both Practice in Christianity68 and The Sickness Unto Death,69 which were written after “The Point of View for My Work as an Author” and therefore not included in Kierkegaard’s divisions above, but can be understood to fit with the religious works. I have also engaged with portions of Concept of Irony70 and various entries from his Journals71 as other direct sources for understanding Kierkegaard’s authorship. References to other works by Kierkegaard are largely derived through secondary sources, and will be referenced accordingly.
My Use of Personal Pronouns in Relation to God
Regretfully, there is no unisex personal pronoun in the English language by which I can refer to God that retains the warmth and gravity of personhood. Thus, I will use masculine pronouns in referring to God where I feel that it would be too inappropriate to use the cold and detached “God” or “Godself,” instead opting for “him” or “himself.” I have simply chosen the masculine for the sake of my own preferred language in speaking of and to God without intending to offend. I hope that my reader will afford to me the goodwill of which Joakim Garff speaks.72
1. Berlin, “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” 436–98.
2. Kierkegaard, “The Point of View for My Work as an Author,” 23; Holmer’s emphasis of “subjectivity” over “objectivity” and the reworking of both is the central theme of the complex and varied authorship is complementary to my view, since they are effectually the same issue. See his On Kierkegaard and the Truth, 24–26, and ibid., 57: “Almost all of Kierkegaard’s writings are both an occasion for, as well as an illustration and kind of defense of the thesis that ‘truth is subjectivity.’”
3. Barrett, Kierkegaard, 8.
4. Rae, Kierkegaard