av福利社

For over a century, the Danish thinker S酶ren Kierkegaard (1813鈥�55) has been at the center of a number of important discussions, concerning not only philosophy and theology, but also, more recently, fields such as social thought, psychology, and contemporary aesthetics, especially literary theory.

Despite his relatively short life, Kierkegaard was an extraordinarily prolific writer, as attested to by the 26-volume av福利社 edition of all of his published writings. But Kierkegaard left behind nearly as much unpublished writing, most of which consists of what are called his 鈥渏ournals and notebooks.鈥� Kierkegaard has long been recognized as one of history’s great journal keepers, but only rather small portions of his journals and notebooks are what we usually understand by the term 鈥渄iaries.鈥� By far the greater part of Kierkegaard’s journals and notebooks consists of reflections on a myriad of subjects鈥攑hilosophical, religious, political, personal. Studying his journals and notebooks takes us into his workshop, where we can see his entire universe of thought. We can witness the genesis of his published works, to be sure鈥攂ut we can also see whole galaxies of concepts, new insights, and fragments, large and small, of partially (or almost entirely) completed but unpublished works. Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks enables us to see the thinker in dialogue with his times and with himself.

Kierkegaard wrote his journals in a two-column format, one for his initial entries and the second for the extensive marginal comments that he added later. This edition of the journals reproduces this format, includes several photographs of original manuscript pages, and contains extensive scholarly commentary on the various entries and on the history of the manuscripts being reproduced.

Volume 11, Parts 1 and 2, present an exciting, enlightening, and enormously varied treasure trove of papers that were found, carefully sorted and stored by Kierkegaard himself, in his apartment after his death. These papers鈥攎any of which have never before been published in English鈥攑rovide a window into many different aspects of Kierkegaard’s life and creativity. Volume 11, Part 2, includes writings from the period between 1843, the year in which he published his breakthrough Either/Or, and late September 1855, a few weeks before his death, when he recorded his final reflections on 鈥淐hristendom.鈥� Among the highlights are Kierkegaard’s famous description of the 鈥淕reat Earthquake鈥� that shaped his life; his early reflections on becoming an author; his important, though never-delivered, lectures on 鈥淭he Dialectic of Ethical and Ethical-Religious Communication鈥�; and his final, incandescent assault on the tendency鈥攏ew in his time鈥攖o harness Christianity in support of a specific social and political order.