This article presents an annotated German translation of Magnús Eiríksson’s “My Work as an Author” (1875), which can be regarded as his literary testament. In the secondary literature, Eiríksson is primarily known as a critical contemporary of Kierkegaard in Copenhagen. Despite writing over 20 monographs and around 50 articles in Danish, Swedish, and Icelandic, Eiríksson’s work as a whole has received little scholarly attention. In this final article, written in Danish, Eiríksson summarizes the key ideas of his life’s work, which this translation makes accessible to a wider audience.
A central thesis in Kierkegaard’s work is that the ethical life is subject to the duty of becoming manifest (“ det er ethvert Menneskes Pligt at blive aabenbar ”). The text first examines what this means for the relevant pseudonyms, revealing the duty to be multifaceted. Yet there is something that unites these facets: they appear as aspects of the “consciousness” (or self-relation) ultimately demanded of the individual, assuming the acknowledgment of a personal final judgment. The duty to become manifest in actuality thus signifies the subjective urgency to work on this ultimate consciousness, which accompanies the appropriation of “judgment.”
Kierkegaard as a thinker is hard to characterize, and it is debatable whether he can be classified as a theologian. Although his education was in theology, he did not pursue the path of an academic theologian, nor was he involved in ecclesial structures, and at the end of his life he even provoked an intense conflict with the leadership of the Church of Denmark. Nonetheless, his authorship experienced an extensive reception in theology and inspired numerous influential theologians from the Germanophone, Anglophone and Francophone world. In the present article, I first trace the early controversies about Kierkegaard’s theological legacy and subsequently map the complex reception in both Protestant and Catholic theology. I identify a variety of motifs and emphases that later theologians adopted from Kierkegaard highlighting the convergences and divergencies of their respective receptions. In my discussions I take into account the newest research provided by the project Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources.
In this article I offer a historical introduction to (I.) and an English translation of (II.) the fragment “On the Concept of Irony,” written by Poul Martin Møller. In the 1830s, several intellectuals of the Danish Golden Age were involved in an intense debate on the notion of irony, an idea that was typically regarded as harmful from a social and cultural point of view. Møller participated in the debate with this essay, which would remain unfinished, but which arguably influenced the analysis that Kierkegaard would present years later in his dissertation. The translation is based on the first printed version of “On the Concept of Irony,” published in the Efterladte Skrifter af Poul M. Møller , vols. 1 – 6, 2nd ed., ed. by Chr. Winther, F.C. Olsen, Chr. Thaarup, and L.V. Petersen, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 1848 – 50, vol. 3, 1848, pp. 152 – 158. The page numbers of this version appear in square brackets in my translation. The point is to facilitate referencing for readers.
In this paper, I develop an account of "maieutic understanding" as the proximate goal of Kierkegaardian maieutics (midwifery). Maieutic understanding entails grasping one's failure to know essential truths and the inability to know those truths through objective understanding. I argue that the concept of maieutic understanding, which is a purely negative, preliminary form of subjective understanding, best explains how Kierkegaard aimed to get his readership to transition from a mode of objective understanding to subjective understanding proper (e. g., faith), serving as a bridge between the two and being taken up into the latter.
