A religious diatribe written from within the Church against the established order of things in a presumably "Christian" land.

This anthology covers the whole of Kierkegaard's literary career. The selections range from the terse epigrams of the Journal through the famous "Diary of the Seducer" and the "Banquet" scene, in which Soren Kierkegaard reveals his great lyric and dramatic gifts, on to the philosophical and psychological works of his maturity. These are climaxed by the beautiful and moving religious discourses which accompany them; finally, there is the biting satire of his Attack upon "Christendom."

This is emphatically not a collection of "snippets," but the cream of Kierkegaard,...

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...

A companion piece to The Concept of Anxiety, this work continues Soren Kierkegaard's radical and comprehensive analysis of human nature in a spectrum of possibilities of existence. Present here is a remarkable combination of the insight of the poet and the contemplation of the philosopher.

In The Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard moves beyond anxiety on the mental-emotional level to the spiritual level, where--in contact with the eternal--anxiety becomes despair. Both anxiety and despair reflect the misrelation that arises in the self when the elements of the...

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...

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...

The description for this book, Parables of Kierkegaard, will be forthcoming.

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...

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...