Customer Reviews

Concluding Unscientific Postscript 2 : Kierkegaard's Writings, Vol 12.2

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To begin with, the title is a joke. This is the in keeping with the putative author of the piece. Johannes Climacus (who is named for the Seventh Century Hermit and Monk, St. John Climacus) is a humorist. A humorist, as he will point out, is someone on edge of becoming religious, but is not yet religious and, in fact, may never become religious. That being said, back to the title. "Concluding," as is obvious, implies that SK intended this to be his last book (in a separate declaration published with the book he acknowledges all the previous pseudonyms with the proviso that no one should quote him directly unless it is from a book that bears his name as author and claims that he has no privileged access to the pseudonyms than any other reader). However, as the result of a religious conversion after it's publication, it became the middle child of his authorship, recapitulating all that had come before and pointing forward toward new things yet to be imagined. "Unscientific" is a dig at Hegel. If one wishes to over-simplify one may say that SK's position is Either/Or: Either there is a God and the world actually means something, Or there is no God and the world is absurd, meaningless and accidental. Hegel abolished God and attempted to find meaning in historical process. This is the "science" for which SK has such contempt. For this reason, SK refuses to call himself a philosopher, content to call himself a "poet." If a fraud like Hegel is a philosopher, then he wants no part of the designation. "Postscript" is where the joke comes in. This book is a "Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments." The "Philosophical Fragments" is, therefore, a 100 page book with a 600 page postscript attached (that's the joke ha ha) Of all of SK's books this is my favorite. It is his funniest and either you keep your eye carefully peeled or you will miss a joke (the first time you read it you will miss hundreds of them). And in typical SK fashion the more he jokes the more deadly serious he is (by the end he is claiming the book, in its entirety, is a joke). The central distinction is between our ideas about things and the things themselves. If you have any trouble, there is always Merold Westphal's "Becoming a Self," a good commentary. The only problem is that he probably takes SK more seriously than SK would be comfortable with. That's not necessarily a good thing. You lose too many good jokes in the process.

More of an endorsement than a review. No book has had as much impact on my life as has this one, unless it is Kierkegaard's THE SICKNESS UNTO DEATH. I have probably read this all the way through at least five times, and plan on reading it several times again. The greatest praise I can bestow on this volume is that it is supremely practical. Unlike most philosophy since Kierkegaard's day, this is a book that can actually effect the way one lives one's life.

Kierkegaard's text of Concluding Unscientific Postscript is vol. 1 of this edition. Volume 2 contains the translators' and editors' extensive notes, excerpts from Kierkegaard's journals relevant to the main text of CUP, and bibliographic and indexing material. If all you're interested in is the main text, purchase vol. 1 only. However, this is a difficult text and the notes are detailed and very useful. I highly recommend reading it.