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17 1 Blunt reading there is likely to be minimal disagreement over the claim that Kierkegaard’s upbuilding discourses and other religious writings like Works of Love and For SelfExamination function to edify the reader. if there is opposition to this claim, the burden rests on those who see other intentions on behalf of the author, and it is not my objective to anticipate such arguments here. more difficult to defend, but much more interesting, is the thesis that the pseudonymous writings share this edifying function. This is not to say that all the pseudonymous authors themselves aim to edify or that taken alone, a particular pseudonymous book is intended this way, but rather that Kierkegaard, through the pseudonyms, works toward this end. in this chapter i will turn to the work of roger Poole, whose primary interest is Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous authorship. Poole’s interpretation of the pseudonymous literature and his correlative advice for reading it represent the view of a growing number of scholars who approach Kierkegaard’s writings primarily from a literary perspective . Central to Poole’s reading is the idea that the views found in the pseudonymous literature are ultimately “undecidable” and that one cannot justly discern a common theme or purpose on the part of Kierkegaard. as Pattison puts it, “roger Poole has asserted that Kierkegaard’s multiple pseudonyms are fundamentally distinct voices whose various points of view cannot be harmonised but, following Kierkegaard’s own stated ‘wish’ and ‘prayer,’ must be kept forever apart.”1 entailed by Poole’s position (and claimed explicitly, although in a more caustic way) is that readings that affirm edifying interests on the part of Kierkegaard are misguided. Poole seems closed to the possibility that one might address seriously the pseudonymous texts in ways that 18 | Jest and/or Earnestness credit the ethical, religious, edifying, and clarifying aims many commentators see in the authorship. in the end i do not believe Poole’s reading is successful. in fact, his reasoning rests largely on a false dilemma: either take seriously Kierkegaard’s use of indirect communication , commonly taken to include devices such as irony and pseudonymity, or read him “on religious grounds,” as edifying or as having a serious message to convey through the pseudonyms. Poole claims that those who look for edifying purpose in Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous literature read him bluntly, though in the end i contend that it is Poole’s reading that is blunt given its narrow understanding of what constitutes an indirect communication. i will present my own understanding of indirect communication in chapter 3, where i review Kierkegaard’s lectures on communication. Poole on Kierkegaard’s reasons for Writing in the introduction i claimed that an important way Kierkegaard seeks to edify his reader is through conceptual clarification. We saw how both Kierkegaard and his pseudonyms express frustration over the pervasive misunderstanding and misuse of moral and religious terminology—especially concepts central to Christianity. The pseudonym Johannes Climacus diagnoses his age as one where “it is very easy to confuse everything in a confusion of language, where estheticians use the most decisive Christian-religious categories in brilliant remarks, and pastors use them thoughtlessly as officialese that is indifferent to content” (CuP, 269). accordingly, Kierkegaard (and Climacus) seeks to make clear what such concepts mean—to draw important distinctions between, for instance, the Christianity of the new testament and that reflected in Christendom. despite such textual support for Kierkegaard’s and his pseudonyms’ interest in clarifying moral and religious terminology, Poole argues that Kierkegaard is doing no such thing. Poole insists that one cannot expect to find a “clear position,” a “definite result,” “‘his’ position,” or “final ‘closure’ on the matter of ‘his’ meaning.”2 according to Poole, “Kierkegaard writes text after text whose aim is not to state a truth, not to clarify an issue, not to propose a definite doctrine, not to offer some “meaning” that could be directly appropriated.”3 Speaking of the aesthetic (i.e., pseudonymous) works from Either/Or to Stages on Life’s Way Poole continues this line of thought: “the aesthetic stream has as its purpose not to deliver a univocal communicatum. The aim of the aesthetic texts is not to instruct, or to inform, or to clarify, but on the contrary to divert, to subvert, and to destroy clear biographical intelligibility.”4 These claims raise the following question: why would Kierkegaard go to the lengths he does if he did not have some serious interest in the concepts...

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