Soren Kierkegaard

life more difficult than ever? And of course the lecture series he imagined
remained only a thought. But this did not mean that Kierkegaard had given
up plans of making a public statement about his work as an author, and
toward the end of August 1848 he wrote in his journal: “Now I can see
my way clear to writing a brief and as earnest a presentation as possible of
my previous writings, which is necessary before the transition to the next
phase. And why do I feel capable of this now? Precisely because I have now
come to clarity regarding the straightforward communication of what is
decisively Christian. ”No sooner said, than done: Parallel with finishingThe
Sickness unto Deathand writing the first sections ofPractice in Christianity,he
composedThe Point of View for My Work as an Author, which was “as good
as finished ”by the end of November 1848.
The work hovers between autobiography and literary testament, but
viewed properly it is neither one nor the other—its genre is rather that of
a chameleon. The work is thus, among many other things, a programmatic
declaration that presents the reader with thecorrectreading of Kierkegaard’s
works. He therefore tempts the reader: “Make the attempt, then; make the
attempt to explain all this authorial activity on the assumption that it is by
an aesthetic author. ”But as the reader soon learns, this is one of those
temptations better resisted. For Kierkegaard has not offered the reader one
among many possible readings but the most impossible of all. If, on the
other hand, you make “the attempt of supposing that it is by a religious
author, you will see that it matches up, point by point, every step of the
way. ”The author must therefore be either religious or aesthetic. Other
possibilities—for example, that the author (and his work) might beethical—
are not mentioned.
As a programmatic declaration,The Point of Viewinsists that it must not
be read in the same manner as the earlier texts from Kierkegaard’s hand; it
wishes to be the text of these texts, a meta-text. ThusThe Point of View
seeks to live up to its subtitle:A Direct Communication, Report to History. But
brevity is not exactlyThe Point of View’s strong suit. On the contrary, it has
fundamental difficulties in coming to the end. Its “Epilogue ”is not even
its last word, but serves as a prologue to a subsequent “Conclusion, ”which
turns out not to be a conclusion because it is succeeded by “Two Notes,”
which are themselves preceded by a new “Preface, ”after which follows
more writing, followed by an additional “Postscript, ”the true postscript of
which is yet another “Postscript, ”that urgently pleads for “just one word
more. ”Thus it was both symptomatic and parodic when somewhere about
halfway through theThe Point of ViewKierkegaard permitted himself to
write, “The whole thing can be stated in a single word. ”The whole thing
never can.