Chapter 1: A Panegyric Upon Abraham in Fear and Trembling
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The beginnings of a reverie – sermon on the sacrifice of Isaac by his father Abraham.
Chapter 1: A Project of Thought in Philosophical Fragments
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If a human being is originally able to understand the Truth, he thinks that God exists in and with his own existence. But if he is in error he must comprehend this fact in his thinking, and recollection will not be able to help him further than to think that, whether he is to advance beyond this point, the Moment must decide.
Chapter 1: Despair is Sin in The Sickness Unto Death
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Sin means to be in despair at not willing to be oneself, or to be in despair at willing to be oneself. The lives of most men, being determined by a dialectic of indifference, are so remote from the good (that is, faith) that they are almost too spiritless to be called sinners, almost too spiritless to be called despairers.
Chapter 1: Introduction:<B> </B>Man and the Eternal in Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing
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In relation to the eternal, a man ages neither in the sense of time nor in the sense of an accumulation of past events. There is something eternal in a man, and the eternal must be able to exist and to be grasped within every change.
Chapter 1: That Despair is the Sickness Unto Death in The Sickness Unto Death
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The three forms of despair: not being conscious of having a self, not willing to be oneself, but also despair at willing to be oneself. Despair is “sickness unto death.”
Chapter 10: The Price of Willing One Thing: An Examination of the Extreme Case of an Incurable Sufferer in Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing
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The man who wills the Good in truth must be willing to suffer all for the Good.
Chapter 11: The Price of Willing One Thing: The Sufferer’s Use of Cleverness to Expose Evasion in Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing
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The sufferer who wills the Good sincerely, uses this cleverness to cut off evasions and hence to launch himself into the commitment and to escape the disillusionments of choosing the temporal way.
Chapter 12: What Then Must I Do? The Listener’s Role in a Devotional Address in Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing
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Kierkegaard asks the reader: “What kind of life do you live, do you will only one thing, and what is this one thing?
Chapter 13: What Then Must I Do? Live as an "Individual" in Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing
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The author asks the reader: Do you live in such a way that you are conscious of being an individual?
Chapter 14:<I> </I>What Then Must I Do? Occupation and Vocation: Mean: and End in Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing
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It is not whether your work is great or mean, whether you are a king or only a laborer, nor earning a great deal of money or gaining power, prestige or fame. What is important is whether your occupation is great or mean. Do you dare think of your occupation it as a responsibility for eternity?
Chapter 15: Conclusion: Man and the Eternal in Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing
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Only the individual can truthfully will the Good. For he is in touch with the demand that calls for purity of heart by willing only one thing.
Chapter 2: Continuation of Sin in The Sickness Unto Death
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A definition of faith: “By relating itself to its own self and by willing to be itself, the self is grounded transparently in the Power which constituted it.” This means we must not despair over despairing about our sins, nor must we abandon faith and instead substitute indifference.
Chapter 2: Preliminary Expectoration in Fear and Trembling
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The story of Abraham has the remarkable property that it is always glorious, however poorly one may understand it. The ethical expression for what Abraham did is that he would murder Isaac, and the religious expression is that he would sacrifice Isaac. Abraham had to live with this contradiction which could make a man sleepless. But Abraham is not what he is without this dread.
Chapter 2: Remorse, Repentance, Confession: Eternity’s Emissaries to Man in Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing
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Remorse is a guide that calls out to the wanderer that he should take care. In confession one becomes at one with himself.
Chapter 2: The God as Teacher and Saviour: An Essay of the Imagination in Philosophical Fragments
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The cause of all suffering is love, precisely because God is not jealous for himself, but desires in love to be the equal of the humblest. It is only in love that the unequal can be made equal, and it is only in equality or unity that an understanding of God can be achieved.
Chapter 2: The Universality of This Sickness (Despair) in The Sickness Unto Death
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A man’s life is wasted when he lives on, so deceived by the joys of life or by its sorrows, that he never becomes decisively conscious of himself as spirit, as self, that is, he never is aware in the deepest sense that there is a God.
Chapter 3 The Forms of This Sickness, i.e. of Despair in The Sickness Unto Death
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In every instant a self exists and is in the process of becoming. The self does not actually “exist,” but is only that which it is to become. In so far as the self does not become itself, it is not its own self, and not to be one’s own self is despair.
Chapter 3: Barriers to Willing One Thing: Variety and Great Moments Are Not One Thing in Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing
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To will one thing can only mean to will the good, because every other object is not a unity. The will that only wills that another object, therefore, must become double-minded.
Chapter 3: Problem One: Is There Such a Thing as a Teleological Suspension of the Ethical? in Fear and Trembling
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The dialectical consequences in the story of Abraham are expressed here in the form of problemata in order to see what a tremendous paradox faith is, for this story presents the paradox which gives Isaac back to Abraham, which no thought can master, because faith begins precisely there where thinking leaves off.
Chapter 3: The Absolute Paradox: A Metaphysical Crotchet in Philosophical Fragments
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One should not think slightingly of the paradoxical, for the paradox is the source of the thinker’s passion A thinker without paradox is like a lover without feeling — a paltry mediocrity.
Chapter 4: Barriers to Willing One Thing: The Reward-Disease in Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing
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If a man can will one thing, then he must will the Good, for the Good alone is one.
Chapter 4: Problem Two: Is There Such a Thing as an Absolute Duty Toward God? in Fear and Trembling
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The knight of faith is obliged to rely upon himself alone, he feels the pain of not being able to make himself intelligible to others, but he feels no vain desire to guide others.
Chapter 4: The Case of the Contemporary Disciple in Philosophical Fragments
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God’s presence is not accidental in relation to his teaching, but is essential to it. God’s presence in human form, in the humble form of a servant, is itself the teaching. Such a forerunner may then serve to arouse the learner’s attention, though nothing more.
Chapter 5: Barriers to willing One Thing: Willing Out of Fear of Punishment in Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing
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If a man wills only the Good out of fear of being punished he does not will one thing. Such a man is double-minded.
Chapter 5: Problem Three: Was Abraham Ethically Defensible in Keeping Silent About His Purpose? in Fear and Trembling
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Abraham’s conduct is indefensible for he paid no heed to the intermediate ethical determinants. But in the face of his concealment, we are in the presence of a paradox which cannot be mediated, for it rests on the fact that the individual is higher than the universal.
Chapter 5: The Disciple at Second Hand in Philosophical Fragments
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Consequences founded on a paradox are built over a yawning chasm, and their total content, which can be transmitted to the individual only with the express understanding that they rest upon a paradox, are not to be appropriated as a settled estate, for their entire value trembles in the balance.
Chapter 6:Barriers to Willing One Thing: Egocentric Service of the Good in Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing
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If a man wills the Good and wills its victory out of self-centered willfulness he does not will one thing. He is double-minded.
Chapter 7: Barriers to Willing One Thing: Commitment to a Certain Degree in Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing
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The person who only wills the Good up to a certain degree is double-minded.
Chapter 8: The Price of Willing Our Thing: Commitment, Loyalty, Readiness to Suffer All in Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing
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If a man wills the good in truth, then he must be willing to do all for the good or be willing to suffer all for the good.
Chapter 9: The Price of Willing One Thing: The Exposure of Evasions in Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing
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The one who wills the Good puts cleverness to an inward use in order to prevent all evasions, and thereby to help him enter into and persist in the commitment.
Epilogue in Fear and Trembling
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Faith is the highest passion in a man. There are perhaps many in every generation who do not even reach it, but no one gets further. But for the man also who does not so much as reach faith, life has tasks enough, and if one loves them sincerely, life will by no means be wasted.
Fear and Trembling
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(ENTIRE BOOK) The great mid-nineteenth century Danish poet-philosopher, in this classic philosophical text, explores, through the story of Abraham and his willing sacrifice of his son Issac, the nature of belief. It is in this text that Kierkegaard most clearly reveals his philosophical “leap of faith.”
Interlude in Philosophical Fragments
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Is the past more necessary than the future? Or, when the possible becomes actual, is it thereby made more necessary than it was?
Introduction in The Sickness Unto Death
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Only the Christian knows what is meant by the sickness unto death. As a Christian he acquires a courage which the natural man does not know. This courage he acquires by learning to fear the still more dreadful.
Philosophical Fragments
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(ENTIRE BOOK) One of Kierkegaard’s most important works (published in English in 1936) in which he is principally concerned with the problem of how the Christian revelation, appearing in history, may be appropriated. He uses the pseudonym “Johannes Climacus.”
Preface in The Sickness Unto Death
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Despair is the sickness, not the cure. In Christian terminology death is the expression for the greatest spiritual sickness, and the cure is simply to die, to “die from” despair.
Preface in Fear and Trembling
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Kierkegaard, writing under a pseudonym (Johannes De Silentio), aims ironic criticism his own work. He claims the “writer” is nothing of a philosopher, has not understood “the System,” and does not know whether it actually exists.
Preface in Philosophical Fragments
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Kierkegaard, writing under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus, explains his inadequacy in this task and the lack of his writing fitting the philosophical movements of his day.
Preface in Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing
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A woman doing needlework on an altar cloth does not want the work admired or criticized, but rather that the intent of the work is that it be seen for its higher purpose. Kierkegaard desires his writing receive the same attention.
Prelude in Fear and Trembling
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The story of Abraham is given a Kierkegaardian turn, full of paradoxes and inconsistencies. Abraham could not comprehend that it was a sin to be willing to offer to God the best thing he possessed — his own son Isaac.
Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing
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(ENTIRE BOOK) In this devotional classic, Kierkegaard seeks to rescue the individual from “massification” by compelling him to stand alone before God.. This calls for a costly abandonment of the old securities and the building of new foundations for faith — to will one thing.
The Crowd is Untruth: a Comparison of Kierkegaard and Girard
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The purpose of this essay is to provide an introductory comparison of the writings of Søren Kierkegaard and René Girard. To my knowledge, a substantial secondary article or book has not been written on this subject.[1] Girard’s writings themselves contain only a handful of references to Kierkegaard.[2] This deficiency is unfortunate, since, as I hope …
Continue reading “The Crowd is Untruth: a Comparison of Kierkegaard and Girard”
The Sickness Unto Death
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(ENTIRE BOOK) A classic written by one of the nineteenth century’s greatest theologians. Christian must think dauntlessly about everything both earthly and worldly, including death and its relation to living an authentic life.
Translator’s Introduction by Douglas V. Steere in Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing
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A helpful summary of Kierketaard’s basic positions, written by an outstanding scholar of his work. Douglass Steere was Professor of philosophy at Haverford College.