Multiple Persons in Kierkegaard’s Pseudonymous Authorship

Abstract

The well-known and not so rarely cited paragraph of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland could be a good starting point in the present reflections on Soren Kierkegaard’s strategies of pseudonyms. The concept of strategies instead of the strategy is used here, first, to designate the variability of interpretations, and, second and most importantly, it entails the many contradictory forms of Kierkegaard’s self-presentation or, rather of his self-reading. What at first glance may sound like the metaphorical interpretation of philosophical self-reflectivity, is in fact the technique frequently employed by Kierkegaard. He used to read his essays, sermons, and newspaper articles aloud, and that enabled him to vary the style and tempo-rythm of the verbal, and subsequently written, expression. But, still, apart from the literary technique, the whole enterprise of pseudonymous writings bears the burden of some hidden motives, the seminal reasons. This is the point where different scholars come to an agreement while holding their contradictory opinions about the character of the motives. Basically, all Kierkegaardian scholarship falls under three main approaches - biographical-psychological, historical-comparative, and descriptive-thematic. The first suggests that the unity of Kierkegaard’s writings, including the pseudonymous ones, lies in the circumstances and contingencies of his personal life rather than in the theological-philosophical ideas of the works themselves (an example is Kierkegaard’s engagement and break-up with Regina Olsen, a motif that echoes throughout his writings, especially The Work of Love). The second places his work within the context of a history of philosophy and theology; the third strives to interpret Kierkegaard’s writings on their own terms, that is, within the limits of their respective referentialities. But if we agreed that the path leading into Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous authorship would be his self-interpretation, then the point of departure, though possibly not the only one, could be the Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments. Why this book, written by one of Kierkegaard’s alter egos, namely, Johannes Climacus, among others? The reason lies at least partlyon the surface — the book was intended to be the last one written under a pseudonym listing Kierkegaard himself as the editor of the volume, and more noticeably the volume ends with “A First and Last Explanation,” Kierkegaard’s authorial confession: