A Life Directed by Governance: Kierkegaard's Confessional Autobiography

The account of his own authorship provided by Kierkegaard in The Point of View for My Work as an Author has often been greeted with skepticism. Inconsistencies within the work have led some commentators to regard the work as a fabrication, and many have challenged the plausibility of Kierkegaard's claim that his whole literary endeavour was a religious one. We are urged therefore to treat Kierkegaard's "report to history" with a good dose of skepticism. I propose, in response to such skeptical interpretations, that The Point of View for My Work as an Author should be regarded instead as an exercise in confessional autobiography in which the author genuinely seeks to discern the hand of God in the development of his authorship. The inconsistencies detected in Kierkegaard's several attempts to reflect on the nature and development of his literary output may be attributed, I contend, both to the gradual realization of the role played by "Governance" in his literary career and to Kierkegaard's reticence in claiming that God had been centrally involved in his authorship. Given the comparable claims made by others in the Christian tradition who have confessed their dependence on divine guidance, Kierkegaard's proposal that his whole authorship took shape under the hand of "Governance" deserves serious consideration.