For over a century, the Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard (1813–55)
has been at the center of a number of important discussions,
concerning not only philosophy and theology, but also, more recently,
fields such as social thought, psychology, and contemporary
aesthetics, especially literary theory. Despite his relatively short
life, Kierkegaard was an extraordinarily prolific writer, as attested
to by the 26-volume Princeton University Press edition of all of his
published writings. But Kierkegaard left behind nearly as much
unpublished writing, most of which consists of what are called his
"journals and notebooks." Kierkegaard has long been recognized as one
of history's great journal keepers, but only rather small portions of
his journals and notebooks are what we usually understand by the term
"diaries." By far the greater part of Kierkegaard’s journals and
notebooks consists of reflections on a myriad of
subjects—philosophical, religious, political, personal. Studying his
journals and notebooks takes us into his workshop, where we can see
his entire universe of thought. We can witness the genesis of his
published works, to be sure—but we can also see whole galaxies of
concepts, new insights, and fragments, large and small, of partially
(or almost entirely) completed but unpublished works. Kierkegaard’s
Journals and Notebooks enables us to see the thinker in dialogue with
his times and with himself. Kierkegaard wrote his journals in a
two-column format, one for his initial entries and the second for the
extensive marginal comments that he added later. This edition of the
journals reproduces this format, includes several photographs of
original manuscript pages, and contains extensive scholarly commentary
on the various entries and on the history of the manuscripts being
reproduced. Volume 8 of this 11-volume series includes five of
Kierkegaard’s important "NB" journals (Journals NB21 through NB25),
which cover the period from September 1850 to June 1852, and which
show Kierkegaard alternately in polemical and reflective postures. The
polemics emerge principally in Kierkegaard’s opposition to the
increasing infiltration of Christianity by worldly concerns, a
development that in his view had accelerated significantly in the
aftermath of the political and social changes wrought by the
Revolution of 1848. Kierkegaard understood the corrupting of
Christianity to be in the interest of the powers that be, and he
directed his criticism at politicians, the press, and especially the
Danish Church itself, particularly church officials who claimed to be
"reformers." On the reflective side, Kierkegaard delves into a number
of authors and religious figures, some of them for the first time,
including Montaigne, Pascal, Seneca, Savonarola, Wesley, and F. W.
Newman. These journals also contain Kierkegaard’s thoughts on the
decisions surrounding the publication of the "Anti-Climacus" writings:
The Sickness unto Death and especially Practice in Christianity.
Kierkegaard’s reader gets the sense both of a gathering storm—by
the close of the last journal in this volume, the famous "attack on
Christendom" is less than three years away—and a certain hesitancy:
What needs reforming, Kierkegaard insists, is not "the doctrine" or
"the Church," but "existences," i.e., lives.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781400866342
Publisert
2016
Utgiver
Vendor
Princeton University Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter