in his rabid criticisms of the clergy’s “livings.” When he wrote that it is
precisely the “main thrust of the Gospel, that the Gospel is for the poor,”
he was of course not thinking in narrowly economic categories, but neither
was he thinkingonlyin symbolic or abstract categories: “Here we are to
understand by ‘the poor,’ not only poverty, but all those who suffer, the
unfortunate, the wretched, the aggrieved, the lame, the halt, the lepers,
those possessed by demons. The Gospel is preached for them—that is, the
Gospel is for them.”
S. A. versus A. S.
As individualism increased throughout the mid-nineteenth century, a num-
ber of pessimistic thinkers emerged who had minimal confidence in the
power of reason as the organ governing human life, emphasizing instead
the significance of irrational forces, the “night side” of the self, its passion,
the grasp of desire. One of these thinkers was Arthur Schopenhauer, whom
Kierkegaard first began reading in May 1854 and continued reading during
the entire summer of that year. It might seem surprising that he had not
become acquainted with the like-minded German thinker much earlier,
since Poul Martin Møller had discussed Schopenhauer in his essay on im-
mortality in 1837. Kierkegaard had studied Møller’s essay carefully, but per-
haps he felt frightened by Schopenhauer at that time, for Møller had spoken
of Schopenhauer’s efforts as an example of the “nihilistic side of modern
pantheism,” turning up his nose at the German thinker, who had character-
ized “his philosophy, in the frankest terms, as anti-Christian and nihilistic.”
Whether it was preciselyfor this very reasonthat Kierkegaard felt drawn
to Schopenhauer in 1854 must remain an open question, but there is the
indisputable fact that in a very short period of time, Kierkegaard—who had
almost entirely stopped purchasing books—acquired more or less all the
available literature by and about Schopenhauer:Letters on the Philosophy of
Schopenhauer, which had just been published;Parerga and Paralipomena, pub-
lished two years earlier;The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics, published
in 1841, the year Kierkegaard had defended his magister dissertation; and
finally,On the Will in Nature, published in 1836, when the young Kierke-
gaard was himself embattled with the will inhis owncombative nature.
Detailed expositions and critical remarks at various points throughout the
journals indicate that the work Kierkegaard read most (though, as always,
in his typically nonlinear, zigzag fashion) was Schopenhauer’s principal
achievement,The World as Will and as Representation, from 1844; this was
the work that really held Kierkegaard’s interest. Here Schopenhauer at-