Kierkegaard as Fire Chief in post-1848 Denmark: What says the chief in Judge for Yourselves!?

Abstract

Kierkegaard uses the metaphor of a fire chief in his attack literature of 1854-55. With that metaphor in mind, a word list for the Danish text Judge for Yourselves! is examined statistically to find the answers to two questions: (1) Is the text a transition piece between the Postscript and the attack literature of 1854-55? (2) Does the lexical evidence support the text's description of the dominant socio-historical realities in the post-1848 climate of Denmark, namely, the obliteration of the frontiers between the religious and political spheres? The results provide another perspective on the situation that precipitated Kierkegaard's scathing attack against Christendom and the clarification of his view of genuine Christianity.