Kierkegaard's Remarks on Philosophy

Kierkegaard's Remarks on Philosophy ALASTAIR McKINNON THOUGH AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH for almost twenty-five years Kierkegaard has yet to exert any significant influence upon Anglo-Saxon philosophy. More seriously, his interesting and often perceptive philosophical remarks have usually passed almost unnoticed; 1 certainly they have not received the careful critical attention they rightly deserve. One reason is that most of these remarks occur within the context of a vast and wide ranging literature not itself primarily philosophical, at least in the narrow sense of that term. Indeed one can imagine that for many philosophers, searching for material in Kierkegaard must be rather like looking for needles in a literarypsychological -religious haystack. I know that he planned it thus and of course I should like to respect his intentions. On the other hand he has left much valuable philosophical material which should be explored and developed. With some hesitation I have therefore decided to produce this report indicating where and roughly to what extent he discusses various philosophical names and topics in his different works. I hope that this may encourage others to explore his remarks, at least in those areas in which they are particularly interested. I also hope that it may prove useful to graduate students and thesis directors who, overwhelmed by the complexity of the authorship, are puzzled where to begin or, indeed, whether to begin at all. The material in this report represents the tiniest fraction of the data generated in the course of producing the various volumes in The Kierkegaard Indices, two of which have already appeared. 2 More precisely, it represents a very few brief extracts from our frequency-by-title-and-year tape, the format of which corresponds roughly to that of the data in this report. Our data array is self-explanatory but three brief comments should remove any possible confusion. The title codes printed across the top of the page represent the different works in Kierkegaard's authorship arranged, with one exception,8 accord1 Of course I do not mean to deny that there have been significant philosophical studies of Kierkegaard in English and in fact would mention the following: James Collins, "Kierkegaard's Critique of Hegel," Thought, 22 (1943), 100ft.; John Durkan, "Kierkegaard and Aristotle: A Parallel," Dublin Review, 213 (1943), 136-148; Richard Kr6ner, "Kierkegaard or Hegel?," Rev. Int. Phil., 6 (1952), 79-96; W. R. Curtis Larson, "Kierkegaard and Sartre," Personalist, 35 (1954), 128-136; Richard H. Popkin, "Hume and KJerkegaard," Journ. Rel., 31 (1951), 274-28I; and John Wild, "Kierkegaard and Classic Philosophy," Phil. Rev., 49 (1940), 536-551. Kierkegaard in Translation/en Traduction/ in Obersetzung, compiled by &lastair McKinnon (Leiden: Brill, 1970) and Konkordans til Kierkegaards Samlede Vcerker, compiled by &last,air McKinnon (Leiden: Brill, 1971). The third volume, Index Verborum til Kierkegaards Samlede Vterker, should be available within a year. s The exception is Bladartikler, der staar i Forhold til ,,Forfatterskabet," a collection of short pieces extending over half of the authorship and which cannot therefore be assigned to any single point within it. [513] 514 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY ing to their date of publication. The words in the left hand column represent names or topics of particular philosophical interest. The figure in the intersection of any two columns indicates the number of times that word (plus, in certain cases, some variants) occurs in that particular work. Where variants are included their number is indicated in brackets following the root. The title codes mentioned above are detailed in the Appendix. As an elementary precaution, the title codes of the pseudonymous works are there printed in bold. Works not available in English translation in March 1969 are cited in Danish. As any simple translation of many of these terms would pose particular difficulties and be of only doubtful value, I have used the original Danish and provided a rough English equivalent only where the complete unfamiliarity of the original made this imperative. Lest the reader think our present frequency reports a poor substitute for the detailed location references to be provided in the Konkordans and the Index Verborum , I hasten to add that considerations of space alone would make the provision of such references quite impossible. But...