Kierkegaard's Acknowledged Works: Introduction to Four Essays

Abstract

In the academic study of Kierkegaard, if there is a kind of deception and even conspiracy, it is perhaps most evident in the way many scholars seem to carefully restrict their attention to the pseudonymous works. Consequently the acknowledged works — those Kierkegaard signed in his own name and which by his own account constitute the core of his large and complex corpus - seem to play an ancillary role in attempts to explore, interpret, and present the philosopher's thought. A different genre of literature, these works sustain or impart to Kierkegaard's authorship, spanning 1841—1855, a religious tenor. In the Danish third edition of the Samlede Vaerker, they include with the primarily religious discourses the attack literature.