San Antonio College Library

This book does not intend to stand alone. In fact, it cannot. It is proposed only as a companion to reading Kierkegaard. It is only one point of reference, and the student can just as well turn to it after reading S.K. as before. That is, one might simply immerse himself in S.K.'s verbal flow, and then later resort to this book as a guide to help sort out the varied impressions.

In this book renowned philosopher Merold Westphal unpacks the writings of nineteenth-century thinker Søren Kierkegaard on biblical, Christian faith and its relation to reason. Across five books -- Fear and Trembling, Philosophical Fragments, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Sickness Unto Death, and Practice in Christianity -- and three pseudonyms, Kierkegaard sought to articulate a biblical concept of faith by approaching it from a variety of...

"After an initial chapter on Kierkegaard's intellectual milieu, the book expounds with reference to their philosophical and historical context in seven of his major texts, ranging over theological, ethical, social and political questions. A final chapter considers Kierkegaard as a person and concludes with an evaluation of the authorship. The book does not however simply depict Kierkegaard. In the 'Critique' with which each chapter concludes Hampson...

"Kierkegaard's pseudonymous authorship has baffled readers, his apparent capriciousness making it difficult to determine his position at a given point and to understand his work as an organic whole. Gregor Malantschuk's study, based on careful reading of Kierkegaard's journals, papers, and texts, cuts through the authorship problem to clarify the philosopher's key ideas, see the comprehensive plan of his work, and make intelligible the dialectical...

"Written by one of the world's preeminent authorities on Kierkegaard, this biography in the first to reveal the delicate imbrication of Kierkegaard's life and thought. To grasp the importance and influence of Kierkegaard's thought far beyond his native Denmark, it is necessary to trace the many factors that led this gifted but (according to his headmaster) "exceedingly childish youth" to grapple with traditional philosophical problems and religious...

Stages on Life's Way, the sequel to Either/Or, is an intensely poetic example of Kierkegaard's vision of the three stages, or spheres, of existence: the esthetic, the ethical, and the religious. With characteristic love for mystification, he presents the work as a bundle of documents fallen by chance into the hands of "Hilarius Bookbinder," who prepared them for printing. The book begins with a banquet scene patterned on Plato's Symposium. (George...

Soren Kierkegaard and William Faulkner are, to my mind, the most seminal religious thinker and the most brilliant novelist of our time. For a good many years I admired their works from a distance. Then in 1966 or so, my good friend and teacher William H. Poteat of Duke University suggested that I get to know them better by doing an essay on them. This book is the result, though I by no means want to hold Professor Poteat responsible for anything but...