*Later, however, there appeared a new pseudonym: Anti-Climacus.4 But the very fact that it is a pseudonym signifies that he is, inversely, coming to a halt, as the name (Anti-Climacus) indeed suggests. All the previous pseudonymity is lower than “the upbuilding author”; the new pseudonym is a higher pseudonymity. But indeed “a halt is made” in this way: something higher is shown, which simply forces me back within my boundary, judging me, that my life does not meet so high a requirement and that consequently the communication is something poetical. —And a little earlier in that same year, there appeared a little book: Two Ethical-Religious Essays by H. H.5 The significance of this little book (which does not stand in the authorship as much as it relates totally to the authorship and for that reason also was anonymous, in order to be kept outside entirely) is not very easy to explain without going into the whole matter. It is like a navigation mark by which one steers but, note well, in such a way that the pilot understands precisely that he is to keep a certain distance from it. It defines the boundary of the authorship. “The Difference between a Genius and an Apostle” (essay no. 2) is: “The genius is without authority.”6 But precisely because genius as such is without authority, it does not have in itself the ultimate concentration that provides the power and justification for accentuating in the direction of “letting oneself be put to death for the truth”7 (essay no. 1). Genius as such remains in reflection. This in turn is the category of my whole authorship: to make aware of the religious, the essentially Christian—but “without authority.”8 —And finally, to include even the smallest, there came out later The Lily in the Field and the Bird of the Air, Three Devotional Discourses,9 which accompanied the second edition of Either/Or;10 and “The High Priest”—“The Tax Collector”—“The Woman Who Was a Sinner,” Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays,11 which accompanied Anti-Climacus’s The Sickness unto Death—two small books, both of which in the preface repeat that first preface, the preface to Two Upbuilding Discourses (1843).12

October 1849

*The maieutic lies in the relation between the esthetic writing as the beginning and the religious as the τέλος [goal]. It begins with the esthetic, in which possibly most people have their lives, and now the religious is introduced so quickly that those who, moved by the esthetic, decide to follow along are suddenly standing right in the middle of the decisive qualifications of the essentially Christian, are at least prompted to become aware.

*This also serves to prevent the illusion that the religious is something one turns to when one has become older. “One begins as an esthetic author and then when one has become older and no longer has the powers of youth, then one becomes a religious author.” But if an author concurrently begins as an esthetic and a religious author, the religious writing certainly cannot be explained by the incidental fact that the author has become older, inasmuch as one certainly cannot concurrently be older than oneself.

**The situation (becoming a Christian in Christendom, where consequently one is a Christian)—the situation, which, as every dialectician sees, casts everything into reflection, also makes an indirect method necessary, because the task here must be to take measures against the illusion: calling oneself a Christian, perhaps deluding oneself into thinking one is that without being that. Therefore, the one who introduced the issue did not directly define himself as being Christian and the others as not being that; no, just the reverse—he denies being that and concedes it to the others. This Johannes Climacus does.16 —In relation to pure receptivity, like the empty jar that is to be filled, direct communication is appropriate, but when illusion is involved, consequently something that must first be removed, direct communication is inappropriate.

*This again is the dialectical movement (like that in which a religious author begins with esthetic writing, and like that in which, instead of loving oneself and one’s advantage and supporting one’s endeavor by illusions, one instead, hating oneself, removes illusions), or it is the dialectical method: in working also to work against oneself, which is reduplication [Redupplikation] and the heterogeneity of all true godly endeavor to secular endeavor. To endeavor or to work directly is to work or to endeavor directly in immediate connection with a factually given state of things. The dialectical method is the reverse: in working also to work against oneself, a redoubling [Fordoblelse], which is “the earnestness,” like the pressure on the plow that determines the depth of the furrow, whereas the direct endeavor is a glossing-over, which is finished more rapidly and also is much, much more rewarding—that is, it is worldliness and homogeneity.

*Just one thing more, the press of literary contemptibility had achieved a frightfully disproportionate coverage. To be honest, I believed that what I did was a public benefaction; it was rewarded by several of those for whose sake I had exposed myself in that way—rewarded, yes, as an act of love is usually rewarded in the world—and by means of this reward it became a truly Christian work of love.23

**The little literary review of the novel Two Ages24 followed Concluding Postscript so closely that it is almost concurrent and is, after all, something written by me qua critic and not qua author; but it does contain in the last section a sketch of the future from the point of view of “the single individual,” a sketch of the future that the year 1848 did not falsify.

†And insofar as there is the congregation in the religious sense, this is a concept that lies on the other side of the single individual,27 and that above all must not be confused with what politically can have validity: the public, the crowd, the numerical, etc.28