For Self-Examination/Judge for Yourselves : Kierkegaard's Writings, Vol 21
by Søren Kierkegaard
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For Self-Examination and its companion piece Judge for Yourself! are the culmination of Søren Kierkegaard's "second authorship," which followed his Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Among the simplest and most readily comprehended of Kierkegaard's books, the two works are part of the signed direct communications, as distinguished from his earlier pseudonymous writings. The lucidity and pithiness, and the earnestness and power, of For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourself! are enhanced show more when, as Kierkegaard requested, they are read aloud. They contain the well-known passages on Socrates' defense speech, how to read, the lover's letter, the royal coachman and the carriage team, and the painter's relation to his painting. The aim of awakening and inward deepening is signaled by the opening section on Socrates in For Self-Examination and is pursued in the context of the relations of Christian ideality, grace, and response. The secondary aim, a critique of the established order, links the works to the final polemical writings that appear later after a four-year period of silence. show lessTags
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This was a hard book to rate so don't take those stars seriously. I decided I had to read Kierkegaard after Geritt W Gong used some of his thoughts in a speech. He is an interesting voice--sometimes seeming thoughtful and paced and other times seemingly rushing headlong into a thought without fully processing it. I loved the letter analogy, thought it was unique and full of meaning but skimmed through the last of "Be Sober" because it didn't seem to lead anywhere. Some of the translation seemed polished and some of it seemed to struggle. Perhaps that in itself is a metaphor for life.
A short, but condensed work by Kierkegaard. I often find him very hard to read, but this Christian classic is not that difficult to understand. It consists of three sermons - the main theme is how we examine ourselves when we come to the Bible as God's Word.
Reading this book was like listening to my soul and heart talk w my mind.
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Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, Søren Kierkegaard was the son of a wealthy middle-class merchant. He lived all his life on his inheritance, using it to finance his literary career. He studied theology at the University of Copenhagen, completing a master's thesis in 1841 on the topic of irony in Socrates. At about this time, he became engaged to a show more woman he loved, but he broke the engagement when he decided that God had destined him not to marry. The years 1841 to 1846 were a period of intense literary activity for Kierkegaard, in which he produced his "authorship," a series of writings of varying forms published under a series of fantastic pseudonyms. Parallel to these, he wrote a series of shorter Edifying Discourses, quasi-sermons published under his own name. As he later interpreted it in the posthumously published Point of View for My Work as an Author, the authorship was a systematic attempt to raise the question of what it means to be a Christian. Kierkegaard was persuaded that in his time people took the meaning of the Christian life for granted, allowing all kinds of worldly and pagan ways of thinking and living to pass for Christian. He applied this analysis especially to the speculative philosophy of German idealism. After 1846, Kierkegaard continued to write, publishing most works under his own name. Within Denmark he was isolated and often despised, a man whose writings had little impact in his own day or for a long time afterward. They were translated into German early in the twentieth century and have had an enormous influence since then, on both Christian theology and the existentialist tradition in philosophy. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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