Abstract

History provides us with at least four ways of describing the writings of Søren Kierkegaard (1813–55). In the 1840s, along with the writings of feuerbach (see Article 7) and marx (see Article 8), they belonged to the rebellion of the sons against the Hegelian father to whom they all were so deeply indebted. In the first half of the twentieth century, especially between the two World Wars, they played such a formative role in the emergence of existentialism in philosophy and theology that Kierkegaard came to be seen as the father of existentialism. Now, at the turning of the century and the millennium, his critique of modern society is increasingly becoming a dialogue partner for a variety of discourses that can be called critical social theory; and his critique of reason is increasingly becoming a dialogue partner for the postmodern assault on logocentrism (the belief that our concepts can be totally lucid in themselves and totally adequate to the realities they intend). In his massive corpus there is plenty of support for all of these overlapping readings: Kierkegaard the anti‐Hegelian, Kierkegaard the existentialist, Kierkegaard the critical social theorist, and Kierkegaard the postmodernist. As we turn to the texts, we do well to pay special attention to two requests he makes of his readers, both related to his understanding of authorship.