Kierkegaard's Concept of Faith (Kierkegaard as a Christian Thinker) Paperback – August 11, 2014

Very insightful as to cultural context of the writings and to the intentions of them.

Excellent!

There are many good things to say about this book. Written by well-known Kierkegaard scholar Merold Westphal, it presents Kierkegaard's concept of faith from various perspectives (one by chapter) that are all different but interrelated. In so doing, it approaches and comments three different pseudonyms of Kierkegaard (Johannes de Silentio, Johannes Climacus and Anti-Climacus) and five books written by him ("Fear and Trembling", "Philosophical crumbs", "Concluding unscientific postscript", "Sickness unto death" and "Practice in christianity").

This book contains various deep insights about Kierkegaard's thought; I myself found it very clarifying in many ways and quite helpful for my own research. I also appreciated how it was very up to date concerning some less known facts related to Kierkegaard's work (such as Kierkegaard's affirmation that his discourses for friday communion were the telos of his entire authorship) and that it touched in an intelligent way questions related to contemporary debates on Kierkegaard (like, for example, the question about whether we should listen or not to "deconstructive" or "postmodern" readings of Kierkegaard that rule out the edifying character of his books).

However, despite these many positive aspects, this book is not perfect. One of the reasons of this is that some "perspectives" developed in this book are not as masterfully developed as others. An example is the chapter devoted to Johannes de Silentio's claim that faith is humanity's "highest passion": in it Westphal, instead of carefully analyzing Kierkegaard's concept of "passion" by resorting to the latter's own claims, goes on and on discussing theories of emotion developed by contemporary philosophers - only to draw a few short parallels with Kierkegaard in the last 3 pages of the chapter.

Also, there are moments during which Westphal starts discussing in length other readings of Kierkegaard than his own as well as other philosophical theories than Kierkegaards'. These discussions often seemed to me either too long or not very relevant to his argumentation - or both. They brought me sometimes to many pages of rather dull reading. You even get the impression at some points that Westphal utilizes these passages of discussion of other people's theories to compensate for the lack of deeper or more precise analyses of what he should be talking about. I ended more than once a chapter begging for more, Westphal having touched for a moment a very important issue before starting a relatively meaningless discussion that lasted till the chapter was over.

Finally, there is the fact that we sometimes have the impression that Westphal seems to try to make Kierkegaard fit into his own philosophical agenda, an agenda centered, it seems, on the ideas that truth is linked to perspective, that the traditional ideal of reason should be critiqued as "ideology" and that contemporary Christian faith should incorporate resolutely postmodern elements unto itself.

Now, while it is true that we can find elements in Kierkegaard useful to defend these ideas (and even that Westphal may have originally found some of these ideas in Kierkegaard), there is also the risk that we may lose through such a reading the original meaning Kierkegaard *himself* wanted to give to his authorship, as well as the meaning it originally had for his contemporaries. According to me, to try to discover this original meaning (even though such a quest may be endless) could in a way be more philosophically relevant than trying to show how Kierkegaard is a nice tool for contemporary philosophical debates. In my honest opinion, it is by meeting something radically different in it's very otherness that you reach new insight, not just by seeking new ways to develop and deepen your own insights. I do not want to judge Westphal's intentions or deny his qualifications as a Kierkegaard scholar that way; it just seems to me that at some points, I had the feeling that the "perspective" Westphal gives us of Kierkegaard indeed isn't the whole picture.

Nevertheless, despite all the negative comments I have written, I re-affirm nevertheless that this is a very good book, worthy without a doubt of being studied by whoever wants to understand better Kierkegaard's concept of faith. I doubt that it may be, as some have implied, a very good introduction to Kierkegaard (it is quite technical at times and does not touch Kierkegaard's whole authorship). But it is very rich, and it can give a lot of food for thought to whoever is interested in Kierkegaard studies.

As clear and informative an orientation to Kierkegaard's thought as can be found. Westphal is a past master of this material.