The Point of View for my Work as an Author
Søren Kierkegaard (1848)

170 pp. First reading.
Posted 28 January 2006.
 

I have set a number of ambitious goals for my personal reading program in 2006 - far more, indeed, than I can ever meet.  Included among them is an intention to place a particular focus on the works of the great Dane, Søren Kierkegaard.  I am a hapless admirer of the man, devoted to him despite what I consider to be sound misgivings, like a man who loves a woman against his better judgement.  To explain this devotion is perhaps not so easy, and today I will not attempt it. 

In some respects his authorship presents a bewildering spectacle. The proliferation of outlandish pseudonyms - Johannes de Silentio, Constantin Constantius, Hilarious Bookbinder, Anti-Climacus - is bound to leave a newcomer scratching his head. And there is this: Kierkegaard is commonly regarded as a philosopher, yet his works bear little resemblance to traditional philosophical texts. Indeed, he commonly avers that he himself has nothing to teach, no doctrine to expound, no syllogism to unfold. What then is he up to? A good friend, who went to the trouble of writing a doctoral dissertation on Kierkegaard, once remarked to me that he thought that, rather than calling him a philosopher, we ought to call him an evangelical psychologist.  This is exactly right.

Yet the reason for the insistance with which he obscured his authorship remains something of a mystery. His pseudonyms were pretty unconvincing, so why bother with them? I had assumed that, as he did not wish to teach an original doctrine, he did not wish to be regarded as an authority, and so refused to put his name to his work. This may be partly true, but it is weakened by the observation that in many cases he did put his name to his work, and not just in one period, but intermittently throughout the course of his life.

In The Point of View for my Work as an Author, which appeared rather late in his authorship, many of these questions are addressed and answered. Kierkegaard let the masks drop, not just to speak with his own voice, but also to explain why he was wearing the masks in the first place. In this way he illuminated his entire body of work in a particularly direct way, and the book serves as an excellent introduction to his writing, his methods, and his central concerns.  I find myself especially pleased that I had the good sense to read it before embarking on my projected Kierkegaardian odyssey.

Early in the book he gives a summary of his position:

By calling himself a religious author he intends, of course, to contrast himself with an aesthetic author. In his taxonomy, a person living in the aesthetic sphere of life - which by Kierkegaard's reckoning includes most people - is attuned to the sensual rather than the spiritual, to the temporal rather than the eternal, to a life oriented outward rather than inward, to pleasure rather than duty or love. The great task which he undertook was to seek out those who were capable of greater depth - that is, those who were capable 'of becoming a Christian' - and helping them toward greater inwardness. His task, he said, was to make people aware, to wake them up. He knew that people have a tendency to settle into a crowd, to take their bearings from those around them, to abdicate their own responsibility for working out their salvation in fear and trembling. He believed that his responsibility was to be concerned with the inwardness and spiritual awakening of 'the individual'.

He knew, however, that to simply berate people for their faults and failings was more likely to provoke them to anger than to repentance and new life. And so, he says, he undertook a program of indirect communication, in which he disguised himself as one living an aesthetic life in order to show, from the inside, the deficiencies of that life, and so to compel his readers to seek higher things. He calls this method one of "incognito and deceit" which "does not begin directly with the matter one wants to communicate, but begins by accepting the other man's illusion as good money", for "if you can find exactly the place where the other is and begin there, you may perhaps have the luck to lead him to the place where you are."

This clarifies a few things about his writing. The aesthetic writings, such as Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, Philosophical Fragments, and Stages on Life's Way, were pseudonymous precisely because in them he was not speaking with his true voice. He was presenting himself falsely in order to gain a greater victory. He seems troubled that it was necessary to adopt this method, but insists that it was only "truth's way of deceiving". He had to speak indirectly if his point was to be heard.


In contrast, the works in which he was speaking candidly, as a religious author, such as in his Edifying Discourses, were published from the beginning under his true name, for in them he writes with no covert design.

After this fascinating explanation of how his overall authorship should be understood, he goes to some trouble to relate how his personal life was a reflection of his writing at each stage. Kierkegaard believed that an author was more than his words; the integrity of his words was derived from his life. He relates how, when writing the aesthetic works, he took pains to live as though he were indeed a target for his own designs.  You might think this would occasion a little internal confusion (and might wonder why he would commit himself to this virtuosic, perilous, and not obviously necessary challenge) and you would be right to do so; he returns again and again to his need of intense interior focus so that in the thick of his artful deception his overall purpose should not be forgotten.

That he should not forget was critical, and a recurring theme in his writings is that he - and all of us with him - must struggle not to lose consciousness of ourselves and our responsibilities. He could not fall into forgetfulness or complacency because this task of awakening his readers was not something he had chosen to do, but a task that had been laid to his charge by Providence, and he was answerable for the results.  The final section of the book discusses this aspect of his work, relating the ways in which he perceived divine guidance in his life and his vocation as a writer.

To anyone who is beginning to read Kierkegaard, I cannot think of a better place to begin than with this little book.  

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