The Essential Kierkegaard

The Essential Kierkegaard, edited by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. 524 pp., $29.95.

Kierkegaard is not light reading, nor is he easy to summarize or even paraphrase.  I am not a philosopher by training, and I fully admit to being out of my league here. There is a fair amount that I do not understand, despite having a fair grasp on Danish and after having taken a class on the author. But there are so many exquisite essays in this collection that I cannot fail to be impressed with this man's mind. Kierkegaard forces me to think and think hard. His writings force me to confront my assumptions and my religious beliefs. He forces me to dig a little deeper than is comfortable. And for all that I am grateful.

This abridged collection of Kierkegaard's work follows the author chronologically, with large selections from his most famous works, including Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Works of Love, and The Sickness Unto Death.  I fear I cannot begin to summarize these works but only cite of my favorite lines. From The Concept of Anxiety (p. 153):

This is an adventure that every human being must go through--to learn to be anxious in order that he may not perish either by never having been in anxiety or by succumbing in anxiety. Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate....Anxiety is freedom's possibility, and only such anxiety is through faith absolutely educative, because it consumes all finite ends and discovers all their deceptiveness. 

From Concluding Unscientific Postscript (p. 207):

Truth is precisely the daring venture of choosing the objective uncertainty with the passion of the infinite....But the definition of truth stated above is a paraphrasing of faith. Without risk, no faith. Faith is the contradiction between the infinite passion of inwardness and the objective uncertainty.

From The Sickness Unto Death (p. 361):

Sin is: before God, or with the conception of God, in despair not to will to be oneself or in despair to will to be oneself. Thus sin is intensified weakness or intensified defiance: sin is the intensification of despair.

I could go on, as this book is replete with underlined and starred passages along with my own thoughts in the margins. I think the passages above highlight, however, part of why I love Kierkegaard's writings so much: he deals with the ambiguities and complexities of a Christian life. Living a life of faith or striving for something better while recognizing one's faults is challenging and subject to each individual's experiences. Generally considered the father of existentialism, Kierkegaard is able to combine the importance of the individual experience with the Christian narrative, something subsequent existentialists were unable or unwilling to do.

The Hongs have dedicated their career to compiling, translating, and reinterpreting the works of Soren Kierkegaard. Their scholarly dedication is quite clear in this compilation. Footnotes are very helpful, the summaries at the beginning of each chapter provide valuable context, and references to the original books are clear but unobtrusive. I found the font a bit small, which became somewhat discouraging through some of the larger and more obscure works. But after nearly two years ago, three moves, a new job, a new son, and living in a new country, I was able to make it through the whole book. The journey was well worth it.