The Kierkegaard Indices. Volume IV, Computational Analysis of Kierkegaard's Samlede Vaerker (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 131 theosophical and mystical influences (mentioned on pp. 192f.) in modifying Schelling's views of God, freedom, creation, knowledge, and evil. Specifically, he professes taking no position on Holz's controversial (and 1 think mistaken) view that Boehme had no influence on Schelling (p. 103, n.5). Yet, in fact, he uncritically reinforces Holz because, in seeking only an "immanent development of problems" in Schelling's thought, he resolutely ignores the many passages that might bespeak an influence of Boehme, thereby producing an interpretation of the 1809-1815 period much too heavily skewed toward the philosophy of identity. Also, in summarizing Die We#alter (pp. 249f., 283) he telescopes together the distinct stages of God's eternally realized being and God's vision of a possible creation, yielding the wrongheaded thesis (more grossly stated than Bracken's version) that in this essay creation is necessary for God's own self-realization and thus that only the subsequent philosophy of revelation attains a conception of God as one who preserves his free being over against the creation (p. 344). Despite my predominantly critical remarks, both books contain much valuable reflection on Schelling's thought. Of the two, Bracken has come closer to spelling out definitively the difficulties concerning freedom and necessity that vex the later Schelling's philosophy of religion . However, the last word on these thorny issues has not yet been spoken. ROBERT F. BROWN University of Delaware The Kierkegaard Indices. Volume IV, Computational Analysis of Kierkegaard's Samlede Vaerker. Compiled by Alastair McKinnon. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1975. Pp. vi + 1050. Gld. 390) This is the fourth, and presumably the last, of a series of computer generated indices to the writings Kierkegaard published during his lifetime. The first volume (1970), a midget compared to the rest, gives cross references based on the pagination of the third Danish edition of the Samlede Vaerker to page and line of the second Danish edition (the one most frequently cited in the literature) and to the standard English, French, and German translations . This is the most useful of the four. The second volume of McKinnon's massive project is a Fundamental Polyglot Konkordans til Kierkegaards Samlede Vaerker (1971). In this volume McKinnon lists alphabetically 586 (plus 210 variants of) significant Danish terms and for each of them prints the line in the original text where that word occurs and also indicates where these will be found in the two Danish editions of the Samlede Vaerker and in the standard English, French, and German translations. The third volume, Index Verborum Ill Kierkegards Samlede Vaerker (1973) is intended as a supplement to the second. Here, only key terms are given, together with an indication of where they will be found in the various volumes of the third edition of the Samlede Vaerker. The final volume of McKinnon's monumental project completes a very impressive demonstration of the application of contemporary linguistics and computer technology to humanistic scholarship. Something similar has also recently been done with the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. One wonders what Kierkegaard and Aquinas would say were they to return and see what IBM hath wrought. Aquinas would be polite and probably interested, no doubt, but I suspect that McKinnon would have to add some of the more vivid and saltier Danish terms to his Index Verborum if Kierkegaard were to comment on this project. Even so, what can we say of this massive effort that will be of interest to philosophers, even to those who have a particular interest in the thought of Kierkegaard? Unfortunately, this project will have value--and slight value, at that--to only a very small number of scholars. First of all, one must have a pretty fair knowledge of Danish even to use any of these volumes (except the first), since the terms are given only in that language. Appropriately, since he is dealing with a nineteenth-century writer, McKinnon alphabetizes according to the conventions 132 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY followed prior to the reform of Danish orthography brought about in 1948; thus, aa is found at the beginningof the alphabet, whereas in contemporary Danish, the equivalent, a, is found at the end of the...