Is Either/Or a Religious Work or Not?

Abstract

AbstractIn this article I raise the question of whether or not Kierkegaard’s earliest pseudonymous work, Either/Or, is a “religious” work, as he later claims in The Point of View for My Work as an Author. Contra Henning Fenger, Joakim Garff, and Alastair Hannay, I argue with Charles Bellinger, David Law, Robert Perkins and Joel Rasmussen that Either/Or is in fact a religious work. After giving a definition of the term “religious,” I carry this out primarily by paying close attention to the text and secondarily by an examination of what kind of vocational approach to writing Either/Or evinces, a question which Law notes has not yet been adequately addressed in Kierkegaard studies