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Chapter One. Placing Postscript in Kierkegaard's Life
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CHAPTERI O N E Placing Postscript in Kierkegaard's Life Just about the time that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels completed their collaboration on The German Ideology, S0ren Kierkegaard pseudonymously published a big book with a wickedly anti-Hegelian title, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to "Philosophical Fragments." It, too, was an assault on the German ideology ofHegel and his followers, and that is part ofits ongoing importance. It is a major player in the aftermath to Hegel, in which speculative idealism was subjected to devastating critique. But there are at least four more reasons why it is an important text. (1) It is a central text as regards Kierkegaard's role as a founding father of existentialism, and its influence can be traced through the existential philosophies and theologies of the early twentieth century. (2) It has deep affinities with, as well as deep divergences from, major postmodern philosophies of the late twentieth century. As such it deserves to be a dialogue partner with them. (3) It is a central text in the pseudonymous authorship of Kierkegaard, and thus in Kierkegaard's authorship as a whole. Any attempt to understand the Kierkegaardian corpus-a major treasure trove by any account-must come to grips with it. (4) Finally , all by itself it is a rich and challenging text. Quite apart from assisting us in the effort to understand something else, whether it be existentialism, postmodernism, the Kierkegaardian corpus, or whatever, it rewards the most careful reading. In many respects Kierkegaard is a biographer's dream. His personality was many-layered and complex, and his life was filled with dramatic conflicts. But, as we shall see, he felt it of utmost importance to distance himselffrom his writings so as not to distract the readers' attention from their. subject matter. Pseudonymity and indirect communication are important aspects I 3 41 CHAPTER ONE of this deliberate attempt to disappear. Accordingly, this biographical introduction can afford to be very brief.! S0ren was born the youngest of seven children on 5 May 1813. His father was the dominant influence in his childhood and subjected him to a very intense religious upbringing that was heavily colored by his own personal melancholy. This worldview was not, according to the adult Kierkegaard, any more appropriate for a child than the childish Christianity he found all around him was appropriate for adults. In 1830 he matriculated at the University of Copenhagen in the faculty oftheology, though it would be ten years before he took his final exams. Meanwhile he devoted himself largely to sowing wild oats and to reading literature and philosophy. It is not surprising that during this period he became alienated from his father and the Christianity in which his father had brought him up. What Walter Lowrie calls "the prodigal's return"2 occurred in 1838. Shortly after his twenty-fifth birthday, Kierkegaard had a profound religious experience, which he described as bringing him "an indescribable joy" (JP 5.5324). He wrote the following prayer in his journal a few weeks later: "How I thank you, Father in heaven, for having kept an earthly father present for a time here on earth, where I so greatly need him; with your help I hope that he will have greater joy in being my father the second time than he had the first time" (JP 5.5328). Lowrie writes, "The prayer of July 9 (the first inscribed in S. K.'s Journal) shows that he had returned to his 'earthly father,' with a devotion we cannot easily account for. But it appears no less evident that he had returned to the 'Father in heaven."'3 The next month, his father died. This conversion, against the background of the long, intense process (beginning with his childhood religious instruction) that led to it, is the precondition and presupposition for Kierkegaard's authorship as a whole.4 He always writes as a passionate believer . But the immediate occasion that triggered his career as a writer was his broken engagement to Regina Olsen. So far as the evidence available to us is concerned, he never told anyone, not even Regina, exactly why he became convinced that he could not go ahead with their marriage. He became engaged to her in 1840, shortly after taking his theology examination. A year later his formal education and his engagement came to an end together. His dissertation, The Concept ofIrony, was accepted in July 1841. In August he returned Regina's ring with a letter breaking offtheir...