Soren Kierkegaard

The actual point of view inThe Point of Viewis simple enough, in a way:
“The contents of this little book then are as follows: What I truly am as an
author, that I am and was a religious author, that the whole of my work as an
author pertains to Christianity, to the question of becoming a Christian....
What I write here is for orientation and for the record; it is not a defense
or an apologia. ”So Kierkegaard wanted to be objective and matter-of-fact
in his presentation of the rather foursquare structure of his canon, but it was
not long before the book began to move and pitch dramatically in the
direction of the “apologia ”he wanted to avoid. “It might seem that a simple
assurance by the author himself is more than sufficient in this respect; after
all, he is the person who knows best what is what. I do not much believe
in assurances of this sort with respect to literary work, however, and I am
accustomed to relating to my own [literary work] in a completely objective
manner, ”he writes with a gesture of authority and emphasis. And then—
only two pages later!—Kierkegaard gives assurances for all he is worth:
“This is how it was. In the strict sense,Either/Orwas written in a monastery,
and I can assure you,... I can assure you that for his own sake the author
ofEither/Orregularly, and with monastic punctiliousness, spent a specified
portion of every day reading edifying writings—that he reflected upon his
responsibility with fear and much trembling. In this connection he particu-
larly kept in mind—how strange!—‘The Seducer’s Diary.’ ”
A bit less than four years before Kierkegaard had the idea of writingThe
Point of View, Johannes Climacus had made the following assertion: “It is
well-known that the most honest and truthful people very quickly get en-
tangled in contradictions when they are subjected to inquisitorial treatment
and to the obsessive ideas of an inquisitor, while because of the fastidiousness
required by a bad conscience, the ability to avoid contradicting oneself in
one’s lies is the sole preserve of the depraved criminal. ”If Climacus had
had the opportunity to inspectThe Point of Viewwith his expert eye, to
examine its unfastidiousness and its self-contradictions, he would hardly
have characterized Kierkegaard as a depraved criminal, since that sort of
person can speak without self-contradiction, which cannot exactly be said
with respect to Kierkegaard. It is rather doubtful, however, that Climacus
would cling to his sharp antithesis and therefore categorize Kierkegaard as
the most honest and truthful of the men he had encountered in his practice.
As the work progressed, Kierkegaard was compelled to put aside his ob-
jective argumentation and finally to insist beseechingly that “the true inter-
pretation can be found by the person who seeks it honestly. ”With this
statement, the conditions for interpretation have now been put on a moral
basis, and the reader is intimidatingly called to account. Now it is the read-
er’s earnestness that is to guarantee the credibility of the presentation, which