Customer Reviews

Papers and Journals: A Selection

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Along with an older and somewhat smaller one-volume edition by Alexander Dru (worth seeking out, but very difficult to find), this provides readers of Kierkegaard's works a usable collection of highlights from his massive and exceedingly important JOURNALS AND PAPERS. Although this volume runs to over 700 pages, it does not represent a tenth of the complete edition in Danish.

There are many reasons for someone to read in Kierkegaard's journals. He used his journals for dry runs for many ideas that later cropped up in his various books and discourses. He often presents these ideas in a more straightforward manner than he would in his books. But he also often writes things that he did not intend to be seen by the public in his lifetime. Make no mistake about it: Kierkegaard definitely wrote these journals with the assumption that they would later be read by others in published form. But the knowledge that this would only come after his death freed him from any form of constraint, not that even here he is terribly forthcoming.

Reading the journals is also essential because it is the only way to get a truly balanced picture of his literary career and life. For instance, the caricature of Kierkegaard is of a soul who unhappily engaged in a Quixotic battle with the Danish Lutheran church in the final years of his life. The image is of an unhappy, isolated, tormented soul who never finds his rest. In fact, from the journals we find a person who has achieved a great deal of personal peace and a quiet contentment. This cannot be drawn from the books he published in his lifetime, but only from the journals. For all these reasons, anyone interested in Kierkegaard will profit enormously from these pages.

My lone complaint is that Alastair Hannay is not the most gifted prose stylist in the world. I have read just about all his words in English (all dealing with Kierkegaard or translations of Kierkegaard), and while I have no doubt about his accuracy as a translator, I have no confidence in his literary abilities. As a result, the volume--like the other volumes he has translated for Penguin--is highly serviceable, but not something that will thrill and inspire.

I should mention that Amazon shows a Princeton University Press edition of the JOURNALS scheduled to appear in the fall of 2004. I do not know very much about this edition. I am assuming that it is a single volume edition, but I have no idea how extensive of an edition this will be. Princeton's publications of Kierkegaard's works tend to be somewhat schizophrenic. While their edition of Kierkegaard's works are likely to be the standard edition for a very long time to come, they also produce some odd collections that seem to be targeted at a more popular audience. Perhaps their edition will be scholarly (my hope). Either way, this excellent volume by Penguin will either serve if the Princeton is unhelpful, or a useful alternative if it is successful.

The 'Journals' of Kierkegaard are not simply the testing - ground for many of his ideas and projects, they are the life- record which indicates his mood and feeling. He began them in 1833 when he was twenty, and wrote them to the end of his life. They served in a way as his most important and trusted friend. In them he contemplated important life- decisions. They are an important supplement to his most important works, and contain many of his most original thoughts and aphorisms.

To give a real feeling of the Journals I will quote one of the most famous passages at some length. It was written in 1843.

" . What I really need is to be clear about what I am to do, not what I must know, except in the way knowledge must precede all action. It is a question of understanding my destiny, of seeing what the Deity really wants me to do; the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die. And what use here would it be if I were to discover a so-called objective truth, or if I worked my way through the philosophers' systems and were able to call them all to account on request, point out inconsistencies in every single circle? And what use here would it be to be able to work out a theory of the state, and put all the pieces from so many places into one whole, construct a world which, again, I myself did not inhabit but merely held up for others to see? What use would it be to be able to propound the meaning of Christianity, to explain many separate facts, if it had no deeper meaning for myself and for my life? "

In this passage Kierkegaard contemplates and fleshes out his own life- mission. Note how rich the passage is in the figurative 'as if 'language which so enriched his writing. Note too how the writing despite its somewhat awkward mode of motion makes definite progress towards a wise and turning- point life decision."

Søren Kierkegaard

Papers and Journals: A Selection

selected and translated by Alastair Hannay

(Hamondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1996) 683 pages

(ISBN: 0-14-044589-7; paperback)

(Library of Congress call number: )

Several different selections from SK's journals and papers

are available in English,

even a few (like this one) that attempt to condense

the many volumes Kierkegaard left at his death into just one volume.

Alastair Hannay has chosen to focus on the events of SK's life

in preparing this volume.

(Other selections focus on his philosophy.)

Because of this biographical focus,

these selections are organized chronologically

into 7 phases of Søren Kierkegaard's life.

I recommend reading this selection alongside a biography of SK's life,

such as the one by Hannay himself.

James Leonard Park, existential philosopher.

If you know Kierkegaard, then you know you must buy this. You feel like you are in the same room as this most thoughtful man. A wonderful, wonderful read.