A Literary Review (Penguin Classics) [Paperback]

Soren Kierkegaard (Author), Alastair Hannay (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 26, 2002 | Series: Penguin Classics

Ostensibly, A Literary Review is a straightforward commentary by Søren Kierkegaard on the work of a contemporary novelist. On deeper levels, however, it becomes the existential philosopher's far-reaching critique of his society and age, and its apocalyptic final sections inspired the central ideas in Martin Heiddeger's influential work Being and Time. Embraced by many readers as prophetic, A Literary Review and its concepts remain relevant to our current debates on identity, addiction, and social conformity.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) was born in Denmark and wrote on a wide variety of themes, including religion, psychology, and literature. He is remembered for his philosophy, which was influential in the development of twentieth-century existentialism. A Literary Review is one of the few works Kierkegaard wrote under his own name.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (March 26, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140448012
• ISBN-13: 978-0140448016
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 4.8 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,355,945 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #17 in Books > Education & Reference > Foreign Language Nonfiction > More Languages > Danish

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A view of literature, society, and personhood., November 28, 2004

By 

A.P. (Toronto, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Literary Review (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

I'm possibly not the most qualified person to review this, but since there are no other reviews, I'll just give a quick endorsement. This volume is the same that is published by Princeton as 'The Two Ages', and the final chapter has been published seperately as 'The Present Age'.

The first half gives some interesting views of literature and psychology. The second half is the most remarkable part, where SK declares 'the present age' and the future as a time when the age of heros and authority has passed, when no one can communicate truth to others directly, and each and every individual is faced with a choice of being a zero stuck in endless reflection, or passionately working out his own salvation, to only be obtained at first-hand from God.

Concise and worthwhile.

5 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What every one in Westen modernity should appropriate, July 24, 2009

By 

Edward Jolin "A High Federalist" (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Literary Review (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

If a man of western European descent wonders why he is moved by "The Lord of the Rings"; if the Caucasian male finds himself streaming with tears of inspiration when the Rohirrim charge against the over-whelming forces of Mordor(Socialism and the emasculating of the white male), then all he must do to clarify his unexplained passion is read this enormously powerful little book by the master of existential pathos. There are passages in this little heralded, yet nonetheless enormously important, book that describe the "levelling" or "equivocation" of the present age(certainly our age is exactly the present age he describes, maybe even more so)that could just have well been inserted to Tolkien's masterly vivid descriptions of the oppressive desolation that is Mordor.


If one were to read this book and substitute the word Socialism with the S.K.'s levelling, well then, one would not loose anything in translation. Socialism reduces the individual, for the individual is unimportant to Socialism, yet the Individual is precisely where passion and resolve reside. Socialism reduces man to a herd-animal, and thus man is left to his reflection or thought activities as his only sense of self-independence, for any action that strives or separates him from others immediately results in envious animosity by those who become different from him. The danger in dwelling too long in reflection, is well known to anyone who has ever realized the anxiety that plagues man while he resides there. As Kierkegaard relates, he flounders in exhaustion and no action at all is taken. With no action, there is no sense of self, and thus gives rise to the transformation from an Individual with his own unique talents and striving to an orcish-like existence with a mentality of decay, ugliness, brutishness, sameness, dependency, slavery etc...).The white male most of all feels this. His sense of self is attacked on all fronts, from the news media, advertisements, celluloidwood, television, art, literature, in a word "the public". One hour of watching American television will give the viewer the sense that the white male is impotent, slothful, grubby, idiotic, weak, timid, uncouth and so on. And is it any wonder? Remove the white males sense of self, make him a lesser type of human and then socialism overruns unimpeded the idea of the Individual. It was the white male who brought the notion or idea of Inalienable Rights, itself a concept derived from Natural Law, itself derived from Christianity. Inalienable Rights imply the Individual over the masses. Socialism stems from what is known as positive law or that at the bottom no one has any independent rights because the state is higher then the individual and the state can coerce whatever and whomever it wants. All of the West trembles in anxiety right now for, and though the Rohirrim and the Gondoreans were able to mount one last heroic stand to preserve itself, the the west, and in particularly the Caucasian male, it may already be too late. The Hun is at the gate.