Ferreira manages with fine–grained precision to chart a double strand through Kierkegaard′s life–works, 1843–55. Only a miniaturist of her especially sharp eye and steady hand could accomplish this in anything like the accuracy and detail everywhere so evident. (
Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, March 2009)
Preface.
List of Abbreviations.
1. Introduction: Reading Kierkegaard.
2. Either Or and the First Upbuilding Discourses.
3. Repetition, Fear and Trembling, and More Discourses.
4. Philosophical Fragments, The Concept Of Anxiety, and Discourses.
5. Concluding Unscientific Postscript and Two Ages.
6. Works of Love, Discourses, and Other Writings.
7. The Sickness unto Death and Discourses.
8. Practice in Christianity, Discourses, and the Attack .
9. Looking Back and Looking Ahead.
Index
M. Jamie Ferreira is the Carolyn M. Barbour Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. She holds a Ph.D. in the Philosophy of Religion from Princeton University, has taught Religious Studies and Philosophy for 30 years, was president of the Søren Kierkegaard Society and has been a Visiting Professor and Research Associate at the Søren Kierkegaard Research Center at the University of Copenhagen. She is the author of Doubt and Religious Commitment: The Role of the Will in Newman′s Thought (1980); Scepticism and Reasonable Doubt (1986); Transforming Vision: Imagination and Will in Kierkegaardian Faith (1991); and Love′s Grateful Striving: A Commentary on Kierkegaard′s Works of Love (2001).
This introduction to the writings of Søren Kierkegaard is for anyone who has felt daunted by the prospect of reading and understanding the work of one of the most important yet elusive 19th century thinkers. Kierkegaard scholar M. Jamie Ferreira sets out to make the Danish philosopher s work accessible with a unique and innovative how to approach, guiding readers through his works and showing how he thought, rather than simply what he thought.
Kierkegaard is the first detailed introduction to his entire body of work, illustrating how literary, philosophical, theological, and psychological influences coincide in both the religious and pseudonymous (philosophical) works. Ferreira highlights the literary strategies Kierkegaard employed to awaken and challenge the reader and observes that the two very different arcs of his writing are nevertheless inexorably intertwined, rather than merely parallel, exerting a dramatic and dynamic influence on one other.
The result is an extraordinary text, suitable for accompanying the new reader of the primary works but with many things to offer those returning to them.