Kierkegaard's Journals and Notebooks, Volume 4: Journals NB-NB5

Description

For over a century, the Danish thinker Soren Kierkegaard (1813-55) has been at the center of a number of important discussions, concerning not only philosophy and theology, but also, more recently, fields such as social thought, psychology, and contemporary aesthetics, especially literary theory. Despite his relatively short life, Kierkegaard was an extraordinarily prolific writer, as attested to by the 26-volume Princeton University Press edition of all of his published writings. But Kierkegaard left behind nearly as much unpublished writing, most of which consists of what are called his "journals and notebooks." Kierkegaard has long been recognized as one of history's great journal keepers, but only rather small portions of his journals and notebooks are what we usually understand by the term "diaries." By far the greater part of Kierkegaard's journals and notebooks consists of reflections on a myriad of subjects--philosophical, religious, political, personal. Studying his journals and notebooks takes us into his workshop, where we can see his entire universe of thought. We can witness the genesis of his published works, to be sure--but we can also see whole galaxies of concepts, new insights, and fragments, large and small, of partially (or almost entirely) completed but unpublished works. Kierkegaard's Journals and Notebooks enables us to see the thinker in dialogue with his times and with himself. Volume 4 of this 11-volume series includes the first five of Kierkegaard's well-known "NB" journals, which contain, in addition to a great many reflections on his own life, a wealth of thoughts on theological matters, as well as on Kierkegaard's times, including political developments and the daily press. Kierkegaard wrote his journals in a two-column format, one for his initial entries and the second for the extensive marginal comments that he added later. This edition of the journals reproduces this format, includes several photographs of original manuscript pages, and contains extensive scholarly commentary on the various entries and on the history of the manuscripts being reproduced.

Bruce H. Kirmmse of Connecticut College (emeritus) and the University of Copenhagen and K. Brian Soderquist of the University of Copenhagen are the general editors of Kierkegaard's "Journals and Notebooks", heading up a distinguished editorial board that includes Niels Jorgen Cappelorn, director emeritus of the Soren Kierkegaard Research Centre in Copenhagen; Alastair Hannay of the University of Oslo (emeritus); David Kangas of Santa Clara University; George Pattison and Joel D. S. Rasmussen of Oxford University; and Vanessa Rumble of Boston College.

"For all of his lyricism, many of Kierkegaard's works project themselves as an impenetrable fortress of abstractions. These magnificently translated journals are a tunnel beneath the moat of that fortress. They capture the unpackaged and unbuttoned Kierkegaard and thus provide a stimulus to anyone intent on understanding a religious author who could well be reckoned a Luther of Lutheranism."--Gordon Marino, Christian Century "These new critical editions do an excellent job of making Kierkegaard's journals and notebooks available in all their richness."--Brian Gregor, Elizabeth C. Shaw and Staff