The Point of View

I certainly do ask Herr Magister’s pardon for venturing right under his nose, so to speak, poetically to construe him, or to poetize him. But nothing more than to make this apology to him. In other respects I have poetically emancipated myself from him completely. Yes, even if he were to pronounce my interpretation factually incorrect in some details, it does not follow that it is poetically untrue. The conclusion could indeed also be turned around: ergo, Magister K. has not corresponded to or realized what would be right poetically.

A-O

__________

This transformation or poetical communication is categorically entirely right and corresponds to everything that I have understood at the time and that is found written down most likely in journal NB11 or NB12 [Pap. X1 A 295–541; X1 A 542–682 and X2 A 1–68]: (1) that I am essentially a poet; (2) that my authorship has been my own upbringing; (3) that I am sheer reflection, therefore always facing backward; (4) that I am a [X2 A 171 138] penitent, and inasmuch as I am unable to speak altogether uninhibitedly about that I cannot speak about its correlative either, the inwardness of the God-relationship; (5) that I have reached my boundary, that the turning under the new pseudonym (Anti-Climacus) and now the new pseudonym—I am amazed at the ingenuity of this, although it is not my doing—is dialectically the completely consequent expression that I have reached my boundary, that I have been granted the indescribably good fortune of fully understanding my boundary, of taking my boundary into consideration. Oh, how can I ever thank Governance sufficiently!

Ordinarily poetizing is done in such a way that something more is deceptively ascribed [tillyve]; here the poetizing is done in such a way that something is deceptively taken away [bort-lyve]—so that the whole thing is in fact actual.

But I am no apostle or anything like that. And if I use direct communication here, it is of no use with all the restrictions etc.

No, but here again an amazing consistency—God knows it is not my invention; I had scarcely dreamed of it from the very beginning—again the inversion, which all my life is: to poetize here means falsely to take away a something more; by being poetized, it becomes one key lower than the actuality.

This is how pressure is to be applied to my contemporaries. It becomes a purely spiritual pressure.

For me there remains the simple thing to do: quite simply to accept an official appointment, and now I have the doctrine of sin and grace.

If anyone asks me directly about my work as an author, I must say: I cannot speak of it directly, since the difficulty is that it is my own upbringing and that I myself am nevertheless the author.

[X2 A 171 139] In this way I will step forth very simply as the simple one. But I will not take this step with the momentum of the whole authorship, whereby the whole thing would remain within the realm of the interesting. The authorship is separated from me by the chasmic abyss of indirect communication—it is not my own; it belongs to one higher.

Moreover, there is a fearful border skirmish involved here. It was a poet-existence * that by a hairsbreadth escaped making a wrong turn into actuality. But just to think of the dialectical difficulties of this collision—to me it seems that one could become an old man merely by contemplating that a head has been able to endure all this.—Pap. X2 A 171 n.d., 1849

Marginal addition to Pap. X2 A 171:

*Note. Mainly with regard to my having had independent means and consequently not having been tried in that kind of actuality, together with having lived prodigally, which yet in turn is related to my productivity and its poetical impetus; there certainly has been meaning and thought in this prodigality, but mostly poetical.—Pap. X2 A 172 n.d., 1849

[X2 A 174 139] The Significance of the Whole Authorship

is its calling attention to the essentially Christian.

Attention is not to be called to me, and yet it is to existence as [X2 A 174 140] a person that attention is to be called, or to the significance of existence as a person as crucial for the essentially Christian. Therefore, my existence as a person is also utilized, but always in order to point beyond me at the decisive moment: I am not that.104

To call attention this way is to place the essentially Christian in the relationship of possibility for people, to show them how far we all are from being Christians.—JP VI 6525 (Pap. X2 A 174) n.d., 1849

The New Pseudonym Anti-Climacus [X2 A 177 141]

Since all the writing under the title “Practice in Christianity” was poetic,105 it was understood from the very first that I had to take great pains not to become confused with an analogy to an apostle. Generally my hypochondria has also had a part in all the later works, for even though things undeniably have become more clear, they were not understood this way from the beginning.

When the book “Come Here, All You Who Labor etc.” was written, “A Poetic Attempt—Without Authority—For Inward Deepening in Christianity” was placed on the title page at the outset. And then came my name. And the same with the others.

But as time went on it became clear to me (in this connection see journal NB11 or NB12 [Pap. X1 A 295–541; X1 A 542–682 and X2 A 1–68], but more particularly NB11) that if possible there must be an even stronger declaration that it was poetic—and that it was best to have a new pseudonym. This became clear to me. Meanwhile I wanted to wait and see, during which time I suffered very much, constantly undertaking too much with the whole writing project and tormented by the fixed and desperate idea of publishing it all in one single swoop and then leaping aside and vanishing, something I basically understood could not be done but which nevertheless captivated my imagination so that I really did not want to give up the possibility, although it became more and more clear that if I were to get room to move, it would have to be split up.

Finally, I decided to lay the whole project aside and seek an appointment; and when that had been done, I would publish gradually, in small lots, what was completed.

I then went to Madvig and Mynster 106 and met neither of them, and since in another way I was strongly influenced in the opposite direction, I took it to be a hint from Governance that I [X2 A 177 142] was about to make a mistake, that I simply should venture everything. Now came the reaction. I wrote to the printer and engaged typesetters and said that they “should speed ahead.” I get word from the printer107 that all is clear and could they have the manuscript. At the very same time I learn that Councilor Olsen108 has died. That affected me strongly; if I had known about it before I wrote to the printer, it would have prompted a postponement. But now, after so frequently being on the verge of it, fearfully overtaxed as I was, I was afraid I would be incapacitated if I backed out after taking this step.

I was under great strain and slept badly, and, strangely enough, a phrase came to my mind, as if I myself wanted to hurl myself into disaster.

In the morning I pondered the matter again. It seemed to me that I had to act. Then I decided to submit the whole matter to God: to send the first manuscript (“The Sickness unto Death”) to the printer without saying anything about what else there was to be printed. My intention was to allow actuality to test me; it was possible that the sum total could be printed, and it was possible that there could be a turning aside.

Under that tension I began to see that it should be published under a pseudonym, something I understood earlier but postponed doing because it could be done at any time.

In the middle of the typesetting there was trouble with Reitzel, which made me extremely impatient. Once again I had the thought of withdrawing the whole manuscript, laying it aside, and waiting once again to see if I should have everything published at the same time, and without the pseudonymity, since the pseudonymity was not established as yet, inasmuch as the title page was not printed, because, contrary to my practice, I had originally ordered it to be printed last. I went to the printer. It was too late. The composition was as good as finished.

So the pseudonym was established. That is how one is helped and helps oneself when it is so difficult to act.—JP VI 6526 (Pap. X2 A 177) n.d., 1849

The New Pseudonym (Anti-Climacus) [X2 A 184 145]

The fact that there is a pseudonym is the qualitative expression that it is a poet-communication, that it is not I who speaks but another, that it is addressed to me just as much as to others; it is as if a spirit speaks, while I get the inconvenience of being the editor. What he has to say is something we human beings prefer to have cast into oblivion. But it must be heard nevertheless. Not [X2 A 184 146] that everyone should do it, nor that eternal happiness depends upon my doing it—oh, no. I realize, after all, that my life does not express it either, but I humble myself under it; I regard this as an indulgence, and my life has unrest.

With respect to ethical-religious communication (that is, along the lines of depicting the requirement of ideality—which is different from grace and what is involved in it, different in that rigorousness creates a tension to the point that one feels the need of grace, without, however, being permitted to take it in vain), I am not permitted to communicate more than what I, the speaker, am, that is, in my own factual first person, no more than what my life existentially but fairly well conforms to. If I place the requirement higher, I must express that this presentation is a poetic one. It is altogether appropriate for me to present it, since it may influence another to strive more, and I myself must define myself as one who is striving in relation to it, thereby distinguishing myself from the typical poet, to whom it never occurs to strive personally in relation to the ideality he presents.

Incidentally, what is so terrible here is that the requirements of ideality are presented by people who never give the remotest thought to whether their lives express it or that their lives do not express it at all. That I have been aware here is indicated by my calling this a poetic communication—even though I am striving.

That the communication is poetic may be expressed either by the speaker’s saying in his own person: This is poetic communication, that is, what I am saying is not poetic, because what I am saying is the very truth, but the fact that I am saying it constitutes the poetic aspect, or qua author he can do it with the help of pseudonyms, as I have done now for the first time 109 in order to make matters clear.

But the difference between such a speaker-author—and a typical poet—is that the speaker and author himself defines himself as striving in relation to what is being communicated.

And this whole distinction pertaining to poet-communication [X2 A 184 147] is related again to Christianity’s basic category, that Christianity is an existence-communication [Existents-Meddelelse] and not doctrine, as Christianity has unchristianly and meaninglessly been made to be, so that the question in relation to a doctrine is simply: Is my interpretation of the doctrine true, the true interpretation, or not, like, for example, an interpretation of Plato’s philosophy. No, the question is: Does or does not my personal life express what is communicated? As long as my life expresses what is communicated, I am a teacher; when this is not the case, I am obliged to add: What I say is certainly true, but my saying it is the poetic aspect; consequently it is a poet-communication, which, however, is meaningful both for keeping me awake and keeping me striving, and, if possible, for encouraging others.

In book No. 1 (“Come Here, All You Who Labor and Are Burdened”) the qualitative rigorousness is the in one sense Christianly untrue thesis (because it is almost solely metaphysical)—that Christ came to the world because he was the absolute, not out of human compassion or for any other reason, a thesis to which corresponds the absolute “You shall.” At the same time, however, on the other side it holds true Christianly that Christ came to the world out of love in order to save the world. The fact that he had to break up the world, as it were, the fact that, humanly speaking, enormous, humanly speaking, suffering came from accepting him, certainly is due to his being the absolute, but joy over the fact that he came in order to save must completely surmount all this suffering. These two theses (he came because he was the absolute, and he came out of love in order to save the world) make the difference between Christianity’s being proclaimed in law or in grace.

In book No. 2 (“Blessed Is He Who Is Not Offended”) the qualitative rigorousness is the necessity with which offense is joined together with all that is essentially Christian.

In book No. 3 (“From on High He Will Draw All to Himself) the qualitative rigorousness is the necessity with which abasement is added to being Christian, that unconditionally every true Christian is abased in this world —JP VI 6528 (Pap. X2 A 184) n.d., 1849

[In margin: See p. 10 (Pap. X2 A 171)]

Pseudonymous Publication of the Writings
on My Work as an Author

But it is not necessary to publish them pseudonymously; it is not even right to do so, inasmuch as the matter does not become sufficiently simple.

The category: that I myself am the one who has been brought up, that it all is my own upbringing, is decisive enough.

The first idea to publish all the books (including those which have become pseudonymous) in my name and in one volume 110 along with the writings about my work as an author was still vague and unclear (as it was impatient), because the writings about my work as an author go only to the Friday discourses in Christian Discourses, and therefore no impression is conveyed of all the new production contained in the same volume.

No, the new pseudonym, Anti-Climacus—which in the dialectical sphere contains a new dialectical contribution that must be completed by an upbuilding discourse on “grace”—provides “the stopping place.” And within the stopping place, then, comes the communication about my work as an author.—JP VI 6530 (Pap. X2 A 192) n.d., 1849

Ordinarily the religious ought to be kept just as lenient as rigorous. [X2 A 195 153] God wants to be the ruler, but in the form of grace, concession, etc.; he wants to attend to a person as carefully and as solicitously as possible. To suffer is to be as a joy, a matter of honor; one comes to God and asks permission—and God says: Yes, indeed, my little friend. But of course it does not follow from this that one may not suffer. On the contrary, in the profoundest sense one may suffer indescribably, also have one’s thorn in the flesh, but despite this, assuming that this suffering cannot be taken away, one can find joy in getting permission to be active in this way, to live for an idea.

It is different with the apostle: he is constrained.

Moreover, I again understand here why it is so important that I hold myself back and do all I can to prevent being confused with something à la an apostle: precisely because I am able to provide a point from which the qualifications of an apostle may in some measure be scrutinized. But what disarray if I myself were to cause the confusion.

It is not at all surprising, also to me, that Socrates has made such a deep impression upon me.

It may be said that there is something Socratic in me.

Indirect communication was my native element. By means of the very things I experienced, what I went through, and thought [X2 A 195 154] through last summer with respect to direct communication, I have set aside a direct communication (the one on my work as an author, with the category: it is all my upbringing) and have also acquired a deeper understanding of indirect communication, the new pseudonymity.

There is something inexplicably felicitous in the antithesis: Climacus—Anti-Climacus; I recognize so much of myself and my nature in it that if someone else had invented it I would believe that he had secretly observed my inner being. —The merit is not mine, since I did not originally think of it.—JP VI 6532 (Pap. X2 A 195) n.d., 1849

To me it was also remarkable that Councilor Olsen’s death 111 coincided with my intention to make a turn away from the authorship and to appear in the character of a religious author from the very beginning (see a slip112 in journal NB13 [Pap. X2 A 69–163]). And when I appear in the character of the whole authorship as religious, a dedication would essentially relate to her.113

—JP VI 6543 (Pap. X2 A 215) n.d., 1849

The words of John the Baptizer, “I am a voice,”114 could be applied to my work as an author. To prevent any mistaken identity, that I myself would be taken for the extraordinary, I always withdraw myself, and the voice, that is, what I say, remains. But I always withdraw myself only in such a way that I do own up to striving. Thus I am like a voice, but I always have one more auditor than speakers generally have: myself.—JP VI 6561 (Pap. X2 A 281) n.d., 1849

Concerning the publication of a couple of writings about myself. [X2 A 378 270]

I had again taken out the matter I had considered: The Accounting, the Three Notes, and the first part of The Point of View. I modified a couple of particular points.

Meanwhile all my old doubts rose up again, essentially centering in this: it is inconsistent and impatient to bring myself in during my lifetime, and especially right now when I wish to stop, and then thereby rather to risk getting new momentum even though by an earlier editing from a time in 1849 I had done everything to introduce the two determinants: that the whole work as an author is for myself my own upbringing and that it is [X2 A 378 271] intended to make aware.—Pap. X2 A 378 n.d., 1850

From draft of On My Work; see 12:1–30:

For
“The Accounting” [X5 B 211 393]

Postscript

[Deleted: Dear Reader! I have wished to say and have thought I ought to say this, and precisely at this time, prompted chiefly by the fact that the first has come again, the second edition of Either/Or, which previously I had not wanted to have published (same [X5 B 211 394] as 12:3–5).]

[Essentially the same as Pap. X5 B 168, pp. 290–94]

March 1849 [X5 B 211 397]

Note. But this I know, that both originally and continually without change it has been my thought to be an author for not many years and then to take a position as a country pastor.

—Pap. X5 B 211 March 1849

Deleted addition to Pap. X5 B 211:

N.B. Perhaps a passage is still to be added with a dash before the date; it is in fair copy in the little packet with loose pages for “The Accounting.”—Pap. X5 B 212 n.d., 1849

From draft of “The Accounting” in On My Work as an Author:

[X5 B 217 404] Yet I owe it to the truth to admit that in the beginning it was by no means my thought to become a religious author in the sense I have become that; on the contrary, it was truly my intention in the beginning to become a rural pastor the moment I laid down my pen. I profoundly understood that I belonged to the religious, that it was a deception on my part, albeit a pious deception, to pass myself off as an esthetic author, and I sought an energetic expression for my belonging in the strictest sense to the religious and thought to find this in leaping away from being an esthetic author—and at once becoming a rural pastor. My first thought was to stop with Either/Or—and then at once a rural pastor. It did not happen; but since it did not happen, there was [X5 B 217 405] promptly a religious signaling (Two Upbuilding Discourses). Then for a time my thought was to break off with Concluding Postscript—and then rural pastor. That did not happen, but then, too, the authorship became decidedly religious. Now these seven years have passed. It is again, unchanged, my thought to become a rural pastor, but a point has also been reached from which I can survey the totality of the authorship.… My thought was to deceive by becoming an esthetic author and then promptly to become a rural pastor, accentuating the religious doubly strongly by the contrast. Something else happened: the religious found its expression in my becoming a religious author, but consequently a religious author who began with an esthetic productivity as a deception. The point was that the religious found its expression unconditionally at the same time the esthetic deception was initiated—otherwise there would have been a show of justification in saying that originally I was not conscious that the esthetic productivity was a deception and that the explanation would be that in the beginning I wanted to be an esthetic author and then later changed. But the presence of the religious [X5 B 217 406] at exactly the same time found its expression not as I had thought by my becoming a rural pastor but by the publication of Two Upbuilding Discourses.115—Pap. X5 B 217 n.d., 1849

From draft of On My Work:

[Deleted: This is approximately the same postscript as originally N.B. written for the “Three Notes” and thus cannot be used both places.]

Postscript.

Dear Reader. I have wished to say and have thought I ought to say this, and precisely at this time. This is scarcely the place [same as 12:3–12:6] the many books.

Yet in one sense [essentially the same as Pap. X5 B 168, 291:23–294:29].

March 1849

—Pap. X5 B 222 March 1849

On folder for mss. of Point of View and On My Work as An Author:

On My Work as an Author [X5 B 141 343]

Contents

1. The Point of View for My Work as an Author.

2. 3 Notes on ------

3. (1 Note) ------ The Accounting

4. an Appendix to (this one Note) The Accounting

5. The Whole in One Word.

6. a few slips of paper with regard to the publishing of all the manuscripts at one time in one volume.

Which must in no way be published now.

NB [X5 B 141 344]

The common main title will be:

On My Work as an Author
written in 1848 (or the fruit of 1848)

The contents will be
the 5 numbers

1. The Point of View

2. 3 Notes

3. The Accounting

4. Appendix

5. The Whole in One Word.

Epigraph: If for the lily, when the time has come when it is to blossom, it really seems as unfortunate as possible, the obedient lily simply understands only one thing: that it is now the moment. See 3 Devotional Discourses 116 by S. K.—Pap. X5 B 141 n.d., 1849

From draft of The Collected Works of Completion:


[X5 B 143 344]	The (Collected) Works of Completion.117
	The fruit of the year 1848.
	[Deleted: or the end.]
Vol. I	“The Sickness unto Death.”
[X5 B 143 345] Vol. II	[In margin: and here as appendix:
	Armed Neutrality]
	Practice in Christianity
	An Attempt
	Part One
	Come Here, All You.
	Part Two
	Blessed Is He Who Is Not Offended.
	Part Three
	From on High He Will Draw All to Himself.
Vol. III
	On My Work as an Author.
No. 1.	The Point of View. N.B. perhaps not yet. But the first part could possibly be used, yet so that it would not then remain no. 1, but the three Notes and the one Note would precede.
No. 2.	3 Notes.
No. 3.	1 Note. but best to leave out note p. 9. [Pap. X5 B 145]; the postscript, however, could possibly be used.
No. 4.	The Whole in One Word118

—Pap. X5 B 143 n.d., 1849

From draft of “The Collected Works of Completion”:

To come at the very end, with a title page of its own, after “One Note”: [X5 B 144 345]

The Whole in One Word

What I have written is, from first to last, a religious, a Christian religious development, or a development to religiousness, Christian religiousness.

Just as in one sense what I have written could be attributed to me as my design, in another sense it is my own development and upbringing. If the matter is posed to me as a dilemma, that I must say either that the whole is my design or the whole is Governance’s, then I unconditionally say the latter.

In relation to my contemporaries, I, the author, do not call [X5 B 144 346] myself a teacher, an educator, but a learner; I myself am the one who is being brought up.

No one, unconditionally not a single contemporary, has been attacked by me with regard to whether it is indeed true that he is a Christian or not. This has happened not because I disapprove of such attacks but because they lie outside my rights, I who—existentially—have essentially been a poet* and, as I have said from the very beginning: have been without authority.

As for the established order, with regard to change in externals, I have had nothing, unconditionally nothing, to propose, not one single word, unconditionally not one single word to say but have observed the silence of one who is dead. All that I have said, the many works, are a modest contribution to renewal in the religiousness that is: the inwardness in the single individual.

In margin: *(although just this is my difference from “the poet”—that I have been aware of the dubiousness of that kind of existing.)

—Pap. X5 B 144 n.d., 1849

For
Vol. III,119 at the outset on a sheet by itself, a note.

Note. It is observed here at the outset that all that follows about my authorship is something later, a little by little subsequently acquired understanding or an additional understanding and interpretation. I dare not say that I had from the beginning such an overview of the whole authorship, which, even though it is my production, is also my religious upbringing and development. Neither would I dare to want, by crossing my boundary, to falsify my nature, which essentially is reflection and therefore never proclaims, prophesies, but essentially understands itself first in what has gone before, in what has been carried out.—Pap. X5 B 145 n.d., 1849

What is presented here is all done in the names of the pseudonymous authors; yet it must be remembered that I, the author, now understand it far better than when I did it—it is also my own development.—Pap. X5 B 146 n.d., 1849

See 1–3:

[X5 B 147 347] See journal NB14 p. 10 and p. 41 [Pap. X2 A 171, 192 (pp. 222–24, 229)]

If the writings on my work as an author are published [deleted:
during my lifetime, it could be done in this way] by a
pseudonym, it could be done in this way.
Mag. Kierkegaard’s Work as an Author
Viewed by the Author
A Poetical Attempt
by
A-O

Preface

Just as [essentially the same as Pap. X2 A 171 (pp. 222:16–223:25)] Governance sufficiently!

See p. 41 in the same journal [Pap. X2 A 192 (p. 229)] [X5 B 147 348]

[The same as Pap. X2 A 192, 229]

—Pap. X5 B 147 n.d., 1849

On folder for ms. of Point of View:

The Point of View for My
Work as an Author [X5 B 154 355]

Fair copy

N.B. All tenses, provided they are not that (which is the case in only a single passage at the beginning and at the very end), must be made into the past or present tense, not one single future.

See Journal NB9 p. 115 [Pap. X1 A 56] and others.


N.B.	[Deleted: Pp. 24–50 removed, which are, together with what is to be published, “The Accounting” and “Three Notes.”]

written after the middle of the year 1848; the several small [X5 B 154 356] changes * (which are found by comparing this with the draft**), occasioned by thinking more carefully about publishing, are from Feb. 1849.

*which, however, are of no importance.

**which lies in my desk.

—Pap. X5 B 154 n.d., 1849

On folder for ms. of Point of View:

What was not [deleted: used] to be used from

“The Point of View for My Work as an Author”
if it had been published in the spring of’49.

1. The whole section about my vita ante acta [earlier life]

2. The conclusion of the epilogue.

3. A conclusion after “Supplements,” which does not exist even in rough draft.

—Pap. X5 B 155 n.d., 1849

For “The Point of View”

See to it that all the tenses become past. For example, immediately in the introduction: “but make me weary of defending the truth no one can do” to be changed to “no one has been able to do,” because I—not am myself but was myself a penitent.120—Pap. X5 B 156 n.d., 1849

If The Point of View for My Work as an Author is to be published now, the whole preface or introduction goes out, together with the words on the title page “Report to History.”

But perhaps the words “Report to History”

could remain.
—Pap. X5 B 157 n.d., 1849

The part of “The Point of View” I once considered publishing with “The Accounting” and “Three Notes” was:

the [deleted: first section] first chapter* of Part Two of a book “The Point of View for My Work as an Author.” 1848.

from p. 24—to near the end of p. 51 [SV XIII 521–43] [Deleted: *Yet in such a way that the last passage, which begins with “And what does all this mean etc.,”121 is not used.]

1848.

Why the authorship begins with
the esthetic works, or what this authorship,
understood as a whole, means.

—Pap. X5 B 158 n.d., 1849

On folder for mss. of Point of View and On My Work:

“The Accounting” and “Three Notes”
also the final version of “The Accounting”

“Three Notes” could perhaps be changed quite simply to theses; thus there would not be a word about myself, but merely: theses about “the crowd” and “the single individual.” Most of the passages are already revised as theses; so only the passages that treat of me need to be deleted.—Pap. X5 B 159 n.d., 1849

Pages from “The Accounting” and “Three Notes” or loose [X5 B 160 357] slips with regard to publication that were removed.

Also the draft of a few additions to “The Accounting” and the [Xs B 160 358] draft and fair copy of one that has not yet been used, together with a preface to “Three Notes.”—Pap. X5 B 160 n.d., 1849

Information about where the drafts of particular small pieces or particular inserted passages are to be found—Pap. X5 B 161 n.d., 1849

Addition to Pap. X5 B 161:

Dec. 2, ’49

1. The draft of the Appendix to “The Accounting” is in one of the journals from last year or the year before, older than NB13. (It is NB10, pp. 236 ff. [Pap. X1 A 272 (pp. 190–93)] under the heading: Poetical about myself, a somewhat longer passage.

2. The draft of the conclusion of the piece “About the Relation of My Authorship to That Single Individual” is in one of the older journals [Pap. VIII1 A 482 (pp. 154–56)] from last year or the year before.

3. The draft of several small passages in “Three Notes” is in the Bible case that is in the desk.

4. The drafts of other small things are either in this Bible case or in the red box that is in the desk.

5. The draft of the dedication to that single individual (belonging to Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits and used for the first note of “Three Notes” is in the journal [Pap. VII1 A 176 (pp. 151–53)] from that period.

In margin: The draft of some other minor things is perhaps in the packet that lies in the mahogany box, on which packet is written: Loose papers from 1848 that were in the Bible case that is still in the desk.—Pap. X5 B 162 December 2, 1849

Addition to Pap. X5 B 161:

N.B. What was in the Bible case Dec. 2, 1849, is now in an envelope labeled: What was in the Bible case; the envelope lies in the second of the three large drawers in the desk.

—Pap. X5 B 163 n.d., 1849

On folder for mss. of Point of View, Supplement, “The Single Individual,” two “Notes”:

[Deleted: 3 notes]
2 notes

The preface mentioned on the title page of the Two Notes is in a separate little packet labeled “Loose pages for the Accounting and Three Notes,” which packet in turn is in the larger packet labeled “On My Work as an Author,” which is in this (mahogany) box

[Deleted: The third Note [Pap. IX B 63:14] is used as the preface to the Friday Discourses;122 hence the title becomes: Two Notes.

The two pages lying here and numbered 15–18123 are the postscript to “The Accounting.”]—Pap. X5 B 164 n.d., 1849

“Three Notes on My Work as an Author”
Draft


The third Note is used as the preface to Friday Discourses.124

—Pap. X5 B 165 n.d., 1849–50

For

The Three Notes

If “The Point of View” is to be published and also these 3 Notes, some of the later additions should of course be taken out since everything is said in “The Point of View.”

Of course, the postscript to Note 3

or to the whole little book should be removed,

so that it ends right after Note 3.

—Pap. X5 B 169 n.d., 1849

From draft of Point of View:

For 3 Notes. N.B.

the addition (pp. 1–5) [Pap. IX B 63:13 (pp. 280–83)] to p. 298 [Pap. IX B 63:6] can be omitted if they are published now.

—Pap. X5 B 178 n.d., 1849

From draft of Point of View:

If “Three Notes” and “The Accounting” are to be published together, in the third Note delete the sentence:

giving thanks for whatever favor and good will have been shown me, willingly forgetting whatever of the opposite has been my lot.

—Pap. X5 B 183 n.d., 1849

From draft of “The Accounting”:

N.B. If “The Accounting” should accompany the three Friday discourses (The High Priest etc.)125 or be published separately, the printing should be: (1) the part that should be printed in columns should have its own special type; (2) “The Accounting” itself should be printed like the three discourses; (3) the Notes in the smallest possible brevier; (4) the “Postscript” with a slightly larger brevier.—Pap. X5 B 227 n.d., 1849–50

Note. Recently a new pseudonym appeared: Anti-Climacus. But this implies precisely a halt; this is how one goes about dialectically effecting a halt: one points to something higher that examines a person critically and forces him back within his boundaries.

October 1849

The note that accompanies the final draft in the mahogany box reads something like this.

—JP VI 6518 (Pap. X5 B 206) October 1849

[X2 A 427 303] The Sagacious and Sensible—the Good and True

Take a certain fraction of the good or of the true—this is the sagacious and sensible way to be a success in the world. Take the good or true whole, and the exact opposite occurs and you run completely counter to the world.

I have an example of that.

I have considered inserting “her”126 [in margin: see enclosure127] in an enigmatic dedication to the writings about my work as an author. It cannot be done now, for other reasons, since no matter how enigmatic it is, it nevertheless will be easily [X2 A 427 304] understood, and therefore I not only have no guarantee at all that it will be respected, but there is the strongest probability that a newspaper will pick it up and mention her name, and then everything is stirred up and I perhaps would have done incalculable harm. But I would like very much to do it, because I would also like to have it all in order, if possible, before my death.

Yet there is another matter I want to explain now. Assuming that I did do it, what then? Well, it would not have been sagacious and sensible. Why? Because it aims too high. The story is now forgotten; I was a scoundrel, but now that is forgotten and everything is all right again in that respect; it should not be stirred up now. Yes, but I was not an utter scoundrel; the whole affair has a far deeper meaning. It would be futile, that is precisely the trouble, and that is also what would make such a step unwise. That is, it would aim so high that it would seem to be an attempt to rip people out of their cozy routines for a moment by being able to explain everything and having explained everything; then they would be annoyed, and thus one would run counter to them.—JP VI 6583 (Pap. X2 A 427) n.d., 1850

Concerning the Publishing of “The Accounting” and the “Three Notes” at This Time

“The Accounting” perhaps can be published and in its latest version.

As for “Three Notes,” I have come back to the original understanding: since I cannot present myself in my misery, no attempt should be made to present myself in my possible extraordinariness; for me personally both factors are accurate correlatives; if the one is taken away, the other becomes false. “Three Notes” therefore can either be left lying, or the important thought-categories in them can be used simply as theses without mentioning me in a single word: the thesis “the crowd” is untruth and the thesis about “the single individual.”

In its present version, “The Accounting” has essentially nothing about me; if any objection is to be raised to it, it must, if anything, be that I am made too insignificant. But after all my significance cannot be truly represented without counterbalancing it with my being a penitent, and I cannot as long as I live go that far in presenting my personality, not even out of respect for “her,”128 who suddenly would be hurled into the reinterpretation of the past, which perhaps would thoroughly disturb her.—Pap. X2 A 450 n.d., 1850

About Myself [X2 A 586 417]

When I think back on it now, it is wonderful to think of that stroke of a pen with which I hurled myself against rabble-barbarism!

And this was my mood when I took that step. I thought of stopping writing with Concluding Postscript, and to that end the manuscript in its entirety was delivered to Luno. Grateful, unspeakably grateful for what had been granted to me, I decided—on the occasion of that article in Gæa129—to take a magnanimous step for “the others.” I was the only one who had the qualifications to do it emphatically, the qualifications along these lines: (1) Goldschmidt had immortalized me130 and saw in me an object of admiration, (2) I am a witty author, (3) I have not sided [X2 A 586 418] with the elite or with any party at all, (4) I have a personal virtuosity for associating with everybody, (5) a shining reputation that literally did not have one single speck of criticism or the like, (6) I altruistically used my own money to be an author, (7) I was unmarried, independent, etc.

So, religiously motivated, I did it. And look, this step was determinative for my continuing to write! And what significance it has had, how I have learned to know myself, learned to know “the world,” and learned to understand Christianity—yes, a whole side of Christianity, and a crucial side, which very likely would not have occurred to me at all otherwise, and except for that the situation for coming into the proper relation to Christianity myself perhaps would not have been my fortune, either.

But what a range: an established consummate reputation as an author, and then suddenly almost beginning all over again!—JP VI 6594 (Pap. X2 A 586) n.d., 1850

[X2 A 621 445] The Misunderstanding of My Position as an Author

My contemporaries have only worldly categories; thus they expected and expect either that I would escape my mistreatment 131 by taking a journey, for example, or that I will defend myself.

I am, however, engrossed with the religious prototypes, whose identifying mark is suffering. I do not know if it is permissible for me to make my situation easier, since it is clear that the more I suffer the more deeply I will wound my contemporaries and the influence of my life will become all the greater.

[X2 A 621 446] This is how I myself (by not doing the expected) cooperate to make the situation more difficult.

But they do not really know me.—Pap. X2 A 621 n.d., 1850

My Concern with Regard
to the Publication of the Writings That Are Finished132

Although I realize that with almost exaggerated care I have made a movement in the direction of inwardness and never in the direction of a pietistic or ascetic awakening that wants to realize it externally, I nevertheless continually fear that communication of this sort somehow obligates me promptly to express it existentially, which is beyond my capability, nor is that what I mean, which is that it be used to intensify the need for grace; but, even if I were more spiritual than I am, I have an indescribable anxiety about venturing so far out or so high up.

But as long as I am leading the life I now lead, it easily could be misinterpreted, as if I thought I already realize such a thing.

That is why I have thought that first of all I ought to assure myself of a pastoral appointment or something like that, to show that I do not make myself out to be better than others.

But that again has its own special difficulties, and that is why the time has passed and I have suffered exceedingly.—JP VI 6646 (Pap. X3 A 190) n.d., 1850

Intensification in Being a Christian

What is called humanity today is not purely and simply humanity but a diffused form of the essentially Christian.

Originally the procedure was this: with “the universally human consciousness” as the point of departure, to accept the essentially Christian. Now the procedure is this: from a point of origin that already is a diffused form of the essentially Christian—to become a Christian.

Ergo, to become a Christian is intensified.

Here, as I have developed in “Armed Neutrality,”133 it is apparent that the procedure turns out to be one of instituting reflection on a full level deeper and more inward, something like the change from σοφοί [wise men] to φιλóσοφοι [lovers of wisdom], simply because the task has become enormously greater.

—JP VI 6649 (Pap. X3 A 204) n.d., 1850

Wilhelm Lund134

The similarity between his life and mine occurred to me today. Just as he lives over there in Brazil, lost to the world, absorbed in excavating antediluvian fossils, so I live as if outside the world, absorbed in excavating Christian concepts—alas, and yet I am living in Christendom, where Christianity flourishes, stands in luxuriant growth with 1,000 clergymen, and where we all are Christians.—JP VI 6652 (Pap. X3 A 239) n.d., 1850

Mynster135—Luther

Somewhere in his sermons Luther declares that three things belong to a Christian life: (1) faith, (2) works of love, (3) persecution for this faith and for these works of love.136

Take Mynster now. He has reduced faith oriented toward tension and inwardness. He has set legality in the place of works of love. And persecution he has completely abolished.—JP VI 6653 (Pap. X3 A 249) n.d., 1850

Regarding a statement in the postscript to “Concluding Postscript” with respect to publishing the books about my work as an author

The statement is: “Thus in the pseudonymous books there is not a single word by me. I have no opinion about them except as a third party, no knowledge of their meaning except as a reader, not the remotest private relation to them, since it is impossible to have that to a doubly reflected communication. A single word by me personally in my own name would be an arrogating self-forgetfulness that, regarded dialectically, would be guilty of essentially having annihilated the pseudonymous authors by this one word.”137

Now it could be said that in “The Accounting,”138 for example, there is indeed direct discussion of the pseudonymous authors, pointing out the principal idea that runs through the whole.

With regard to that, it must be observed both that what I wrote then can be altogether true and that what I wrote later just as true, simply because at that time I was not as advanced in my development, still had not come to an understanding of the definitive idea for all my writing, still did not even dare to declare definitely whether or not it would possibly end with my finding something that would push me back from Christianity, although I still continued with religious enthusiasm and to the best of my ability to work out the task of presenting what Christianity is. And it may also be noted that I do not discuss the pseudonyms directly in the books about my authorship or identify with them but merely show their significance as maieutic method. Finally, I must add: This is how I understand the totality now; by no means did I have this overview of the whole from the beginning, no more than I dare to say that I immediately perceived that the τέλος of the pseudonyms was maieutic, since this, too, was like a phase of poetic emptying in my own life-development.—JP VI 6654 (Pap. X3 A 258) n.d., 1850

When I had published Concluding Postscript, I intended [X3 A 318 231] to withdraw and devote myself more to my own relationship to Christianity.

But in the meantime external situations involved my public [X3 A 318 232] life in such a way that I existentially discovered the Christian collisions.

This is an essential element in my own upbringing.—JP VI 6660 (Pap. X3 A 318) n.d., 1850

Jottings

This year, August 9 (the date of Father’s death 139) happened to fall on a Friday. I went to Communion that day.

And, strangely enough, the sermon in Luther140 I read according to plan that day was on the verse “All good and perfect gifts etc.” from the Epistle of James.141

The day I sent the manuscript142 to the printer, the Luther sermon143 I read according to plan was on Paul’s verse on the tribulations of the day etc.144

This strikes me as very curious; I myself am also oddly moved, since I do not remember beforehand which sermon is to be read according to the schedule.

September 8 (which I really call my engagement day145) is on a Sunday this year, and the Gospel is: No one can serve two masters.146—JP VI 6666 (Pap. X3 A 391) n.d., 1850

The Judgment of My Contemporaries upon Me

Now there will again be an uproar claiming that I proclaim only the law, urge imitation too strongly, and the like (although in the preface to the new book, Practice in Christianity, I presented grace). And they will say: We cannot stop with this; we must go further—to grace, where there is peace and rest.

You babble nonsense. For the average person, Christianity has shriveled to sheer meaninglessness, a burlesque edition of the doctrine of grace, that if one is a Christian one lets things go their way and counts on God’s grace.

But because everything that is essentially Christian has shriveled to meaninglessness this way, they are unable to recognize it again when pathos-filled aspects are delineated. They have the whole thing in an infinitely empty, abstract summary—and thus think they have gone further than the successive unfolding of the pathos-filled aspects.

Nothing can be taken in vain as easily as grace; as soon as imitation is completely omitted, grace is taken in vain. But that is the kind of preaching people like.—JP II 1878 (Pap. X3 A 411) n.d., 1850

[X3 A 413 284] Indirect Communication

It is not true that direct communication is superior to indirect communication. No, no. But the fact is that no human being has [X3 A 413 285] ever been born who could use the indirect method even fairly well, to say nothing of using it all his life. We human beings need each other, and in that there is already a directness.

Only the God-man is in every respect pure indirect communication from first to last. He did not need people, but they infinitely needed him; he loves people, but according to his conception of what love is; therefore he does not change in the slightest toward their conception, does not speak directly in such a way that he also surrenders the possibility of offense—which his existence [Existents] in the guise of servant is.

When a person uses the indirect method, there is in one way or another something daimonic—but not necessarily in the bad sense—about it, as, for example, with Socrates.

Direct communication indeed makes life far easier. On the other hand, the use of direct communication may be humiliating for a person who has used indirect communication perhaps selfishly (therefore daimonically in a bad sense).

I have frequently felt the need to use direct communication (although it must be remembered, of course, that even when I did use it, it was far from being carried through completely and indeed it was only for a short time), but it seemed to me as if I wanted to be lenient with myself, as if I could achieve more by holding out. Whether there is pride here as well, God knows best—before God I would dare neither to affirm nor to deny this, for who knows himself well enough for this?

When I look back on my life, I must say that it seems to me not impossible that something higher hid behind me. It was not impossible. I do not say more. What have I done, then? I have said: For the present I use no means that would disturb this possibility, for example, by premature direct communication. The situation is like that of a fisherman when he sees the float move—maybe it means a bite, maybe it is due to the motion of the water. But the fisherman says: I will not pull up the line; if I do, I indicate that I have surrendered this possibility; perhaps it will happen again and prove to be a bite.

For me indirect communication has been instinctive within [X3 A 413 286] me, because in being an author I no doubt have also developed myself, and consequently the whole movement is backward, which is why from the very first I could not state my plan directly, although I certainly was aware that a lot was fermenting within me. Furthermore, consideration for “her”147 required me to be careful. I could well have said right away: I am a religious author. But how could I risk that after having made the pretense that I was a scoundrel in order if possible to help her? Actually it was she—that is, my relationship to her—who taught me the indirect method. She could be helped only by an untruth about me; otherwise I believe she would have lost her mind. That the collision was a religious one would have completely deranged her, and therefore I have had to be so infinitely careful. And not until I had her engaged again and married did I regard myself as somewhat free in this regard.

Thus, through something purely personal, I have been assisted to something on a far greater scale, something I have gradually come to understand more and more deeply.—JP II 1959 (Pap. X3 A 413) n.d., 1850

The Established Church—My Position

From the highest Christian point of view, there is no established Church, only a Church militant.

This is the first point.

The second, then, is that factually there is such a one. We must in no way want to overthrow it, no, but above it the higher ideality must hover as a possibility of awakening—in the strictest sense there actually is no established Church.

This has now taken place through me, with the aid of a pseudonym, in order that it all might be a purely spiritual movement. There is not a shred of a proposal pertaining to the external.

And while the pseudonym lifts his hand for this big blow, I stand in between parrying; the whole thing recoils on me for being such a poor Christian, I who still remain in the established Church. In this way the whole thing is a spiritual movement.

O my God, I am almost tempted to admire myself for what I am managing to do—but, God be praised, you help me to trace everything back to you in adoration, I who never can thank you sufficiently for the good that has been done for me, far more than I ever expected, could have expected, dared to expect.—JP VI 6671 (Pap. X3 A 415) n.d., 1850

The eighth of September!148 The Gospel: No man can serve two masters (my favorite Gospel)!149 My favorite hymn:150 “Commit Thy Ways Confiding,” which Kofoed-Hansen151 selected today!

How festive, and how relevant to me, occupied as I have been these days with publishing “On My Work as an Author”152 and the dedication153 in it.—JP VI 6673 (Pap. X3 A 422) n.d., 1850

The Publication of the Book:
“On My Work as an Author”

“On My Work as an Author” still must be kept back. I feel that it would come disturbingly close to “Practice in Christianity,”154 so that they would mutually diminish each other, even if in another sense I feel it could be more impressive.

But the main point is that the spirit has not moved me to a firm and fixed conviction that now is the time, something I did feel about the timing of the publication of “Practice in Christianity.”

The difference between being moved by the spirit or not, between being completely at one with myself or not, I know at once, because in the latter case I cannot stop thinking about details, changing something, this detail or that. In the other case this never occurs to me, because the whole attention of my mind is solely and unanimously concentrated on the fact that the whole matter has now been commended into God’s hand, I have relinquished it.

God knows that I would in one sense gladly publish “On My Work as an Author” now, and then be completely free, but since I cannot find the unqualified sanction within me, I dare not do it. It may be a mistake on my part not to find this sanction; perhaps without quite detecting it I am seeking to spare myself. Or precisely this is the right thing, and I do right in not giving in to an impatience that in another sense nags me to publish it now. This I do not know, but I commend myself to God; surely he will see to it that when the time has come I will find in myself complete unanimity about publishing it.—JP VI 6674 (Pap. X3 A 423) n.d., 1850

[In margin: Anti-Climacus.]

Concerning the Impression Anti-Climacus’s Latest Book (Practice in Christianity) Will Make

Today I talked with Tryde.155 He told me that it was too strong to say that Christianity had been abolished through “observation.”156 He himself had stressed the subjective, and that was true also of all the more competent preachers.

O my God, how I have had to put up with this, that I was purely subjective, not objective, etc.—and now the same people claim that they also emphasize the subjective.

Moreover, the point is that in defining the concept “preaching,” the sermon, one never gets further than a speech, talking about something; consequently one does not pay attention to existence at all. An officeholder—shackled in seventeen ways to finitude and objectivity—achieves nothing, no matter how subjective he makes his talk. A nobody who preaches gratis on the street—even if he makes observations that are ever so objective—remains a subjective and vivifying person; and one who is ever so subjective but is trapped by his position and the like in all possible secular considerations, his preaching remains essentially nothing but observation, for it is easy to see that he has made it impossible for himself to actualize even moderately that which he preaches about.

But I have to say one thing about Tryde, something splendid about him: that he said, that he did not deny, that he had been predisposed to be objective.—JP VI 6687 (Pap. X3 A 530) n.d., 1850

[In margin: Johannes Climacus—Anti-Climacus]

Johannes Climacus—Anti-Climacus

Just as Johannes Climacus dialectically formulated the issue so sharply that no one could directly see whether it was an attack on Christianity or a defense, but it depended on the state of the reader and what he got out of the book, so also Anti-Climacus has carried the issue to such an extreme that no one can see directly whether it is primarily radical or primarily conservative, whether it is an attack on the established order or in fact a defense.—JP VI 6690 (Pap. X3 A 555) n.d., 1850

[X3 A 586 384] Regarding Practice in Christianity and Its Relation to an Established Order

It is altogether conservative, wants only or is able only to preserve the established order.

[X3 A 586 385] But the point is that its author is not an appointed official or a person who as a matter of course attaches himself to the established order so as to make a professional career.

My whole view, which I have always avowed, is that the evil is not the government but the crowd; therefore the true extraordinaries would have to aim against the crowd in favor of the government.

But on the other hand an extraordinary is something else and different from an appointed official. Thus he first of all has to take his position by means of a dialectical crossing so that he does not conceal the irregularities of the established order—and then he finds out whether the established order perhaps wants to reject him and if possible identify him with a movement in the sense of opinion.

In former days the extraordinaries aimed against the government and sought support from the people. This is no longer the case. The new way will be for the extraordinary to take the opposite position but not allow the confusion such as when an appointed official identifies serving the established order with getting ahead etc.

The question is whether an established order is true enough to recognize such an extraordinary.

For the person concerned, operating in this manner is extremely taxing, sheer fear and trembling. It is especially so for me—I who have so much of the poet in me and therefore am not an extraordinary in the strictest sense, something I have always emphasized, but yet I am so kindred to it and so full of presentiment about it that I can at least make aware.—Pap. X3 A 586 n.d., 1850

Faith

It is clear that in my writings I have supplied a more radical characterization of the concept faith than there has been up until this time.—JP VI 6698 (Pap. X3 A 591) n.d., 1850

The Christian Emphasis

Christianly the emphasis does not fall so much upon to what extent or how far a person succeeds in meeting or fulfilling the requirement, if he actually is striving, as upon his getting an impression of the requirement in all its infinitude so that he rightly learns to be humbled and to rely upon grace.

To scale down the requirement in order to be able to fulfill it better (as if this were earnestness, that now it can all the more easily appear that one is earnest about wanting to fulfill the requirement)—to this Christianity in its deepest essence is opposed.

No, infinite humiliation and grace, and then a striving born of gratitude—this is Christianity.—JP I 993 (Pap. X3 A 734) n.d., 1851

From draft of On My Work; see 1–3:

“The Accounting.”

Will have the main title: On My Work as an Author,
and then on the next page
The Accounting

On the overleaf of the first title page the epigraph is to be placed:

Wer etc. [same as p. 2]

—Pap. X5 B 259 n.d., 1849–50

From draft of On My Work; see 1:

[X5 B 207 388] On My Work as an Author
By
S. Kierkegaard

Format as in Philosophical Fragments, but
smaller type and set more closely;
525 copies; 30 copies on vellum.
Copenhagen, 1850.

To the typesetter: To be printed in columns.

Perhaps someone is amazed when he has read these books, but no one more than I when I turn around now (after having been an author for approximately seven years and just as if in one breath) and look at what has been accomplished and with almost a shiver of amazement see that the whole thing is actually only one thought, something I quite clearly understand now, although in the beginning I had not expected to go on being an author for so many years, nor did I have such a grand objective. Philosophically, this is a movement of reflection that is described backward and is first understood when it is accomplished. Religiously, this indicates to me personally in what an infinite debt of gratitude I am to Governance, who like a father has benevolently held his hand over me and supported me in so many ways. This also signifies to me personally my own development and upbringing, for however true it is that when I began I had basically understood that I essentially belonged to the religious, in various ways this relationship still needed development and upbringing, which I need now also.

Since, however, the interpretation of my work as an author that I shall communicate here is not something pasted on but is simply a demonstration and explanation of what has actually been done, and since from the beginning I have understood some of this in advance and gradually more and more of the whole, I have structured the production as if the whole from the beginning was a conscious thought. In one sense I am indeed myself the author [X5 B 207 389] who has done everything that has been done; humanly speaking, in a human judgment I must call the authorship predominantly my own production, even though helped and supported in numerous ways by a higher being; divinely understood, before God I call it my own development and upbringing, but not in the sense as if I were now complete or completely finished with regard to needing upbringing and development.

But lest I in any way—alas, ungratefully—cheat Governance, as it were, of the least little thing or falsely attribute anything to myself, I let what is set forth here come first. This is truly more important to me than the whole authorship, and it is closer to my heart to express this as honestly and as strongly as possible, something for which I can never give thanks sufficiently and something that I, when at some time I have forgotten the entire authorship, will eternally and unalterably recollect: how infinitely more Governance has done for me than I ever had expected, could have expected, or dared to have expected. This feeling is indescribably blessed; at times it has overwhelmed me in such a way that it has taught me to understand to some degree the words of the apostle: “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man”157—that is, this very immensity makes me feel all the more deeply my own unworthiness.

Upbringing in Christianity is what is needed everywhere. In this regard I believe that my work as an author has importance. In no way do I, the author, call myself the teacher, I myself am the one who is being brought up. Authority I have never used; on the contrary, from the very first moment (the preface to Two Upbuilding Discourses [1843]) I have stereotypically repeated, pointed out “that I am without authority.” To make aware with respect to the religious, more specifically the Christian, is actually the category for my authorship; the three rubrics above are also categorically appropriate to this category.—Pap. X5 B 207 n.d., 1850

From draft of On My Work; see 3:

For


	“The Accounting.”
The dedication158 will read
		To One Unnamed159
	whose name will one day be named
			is dedicated
			etc.

Then the line “and will—be named” goes out.

—Pap. X5 B 261 n.d., 1849–50

From draft of On My Work; see 3:

[X5 B 262 429] For “The Accounting”

Other versions of the dedication,

but which could not be used.

A dedication for which I here merely reserve the place until the moment comes when it can be filled in with a name that will inseparably follow my authorship as long as it is remembered, be it for a long time or short.

or only: until the moment comes when it

can be filled in with a name.

2 [X5 B 262 430]

Dedicated to an unnamed person 160

whose name as yet must be withheld

but which history eventually will name,

and, be it a long time or short,

just as long as mine.

etc.

A Dedication*

*Note. By reason of circumstances this inscription cannot as yet be filled in with a name, but nevertheless it must already now have its place.

One unnamed

whose name will one day be named,
and will—be named

—Pap. X5 B 262 n.d., 1849–50

From draft of On My Work; see 3:

The Dedication to Regine Schlegel,161
if there can be such a thing during my lifetime, could very well be used in the front of a small collection of Friday discourses but properly belongs to the writings on my work as an author. Inasmuch as I appear so decisively in the character of the religious, which I have wanted from the very beginning, at this moment she is the only important one, since my relationship to her is a God-relationship.

The dedication could read:

To R. S.—with this little book is dedicated an authorship, which to some extent belongs to her, by one who belongs to her completely.

Or with a collection of Friday discourses:

To R. S. is dedicated this little book.

—JP VI 6675 (Pap. X5 B 263) n.d., 1849–50

From draft of On My Work; see 3:

To a contemporary,162

whose name must still be concealed,

but history will name

—be it for a short time or long—

as long as it names mine,

is dedicated

with this little book

the whole authorship, as it

was from the beginning.

—JP VI 6676 (Pap. X5 B 264) n.d., 1849–50

From draft of On My Work; see 5:3; 290–94:

For “The Accounting”

In the “Postscript” where there is mention of my personal life, omit:

its errors—and later: its repentance and regret

And at the very beginning where it reads

The Accounting


Copenhagen, March	S. Kierkegaard

omit my name.

—Pap. X5 B 252 n.d., 1849–50

From draft of On My Work; see 5:1–9:7:

Appendix
The Accounting

[X5 B 191 375] Copenhagen, the fifth of May [changed to: April, changed to: March] 1849

S. Kierkegaard

When a country [essentially the same as 5:4–27].

When I, religiously resolved, began as an author, it was my thought not to be that for many years, but in the few years devoted to it to be that with my life and soul, night and day, “willing only one thing,”163 and in relation to this one thing rejecting and renouncing all else. What determined me in this resolve is the following. In my view, to be an author was and is to be regarded as a kind of uncommon existence; therefore it was in character to keep as free as possible from any more commonplace determination of finitude. It ought to be, I thought, the flower of a person’s life. —I have now been an author for seven years, the seven years that also are ordinarily regarded as the richest: from age 28 to 35. This is one side; on the other side, it was my wish from the beginning eventually to step into the modest position of a rural pastor164—something I have also still considered as my life’s finite destination.

__________

These two thoughts are the law for the speed with which I have worked as an author. Regarded as a totality, the whole authorship could be said to be predicated upon the second of these two thoughts, as if the authorship and my personality had some finite [X5 B 191 376] relation to each other, rather than that my finite personality is infinitely indifferent to the authorship.…

When I began writing Either/Or, I was just as profoundly moved by the religious as I am now at the end, except that the work has been for me a second upbringing, and I have become more mature.…

__________

Consequently, the task of the entire authorship was: to arrive [X5 B 191 377] at the simple, to become simple, simplification. In this regard it would then be a consistency in my personal life if I, the author, [deleted: now] became a rural pastor.

__________

I do not, however, mean to say by what is stated here that I intend today or tomorrow to seek to become a rural pastor or that it is decided. Prompted by the second edition of Either/Or,165 which until now I have not allowed to be published, and also feeling obligated, I have only wanted to give the reader, [X5 B 191 378] “that single individual whom I with joy and gratitude call my reader,”166 this view of the thought of my work as an author. I have hereby actually not said a word about what will happen, about the future. I have only said hereby and say hereby that this has been my thought.—Pap. X5 B 191 n.d., 1849

From draft of On My Work; see 5:27:

[X5 B 228 412] For

“The Accounting”

To the first passage in what is in columns could perhaps be added the following, which then is also to be added to the earlier writing, a fair copy now reduced to a draft.

From childhood rigorously brought up in Christianity, by filial piety indissolubly bound to it, deeply inward a sufferer, in possession of unusual gifts, financially independent so that I could serve an idea, easily convinced by my first look at the world that what is being proclaimed in the world under the name of Christianity actually is not Christianity or in any case seems to be meaninglessly unrecognizable by the illusion—I understood it as my [X5 B 228 413] task to work in pious devotion every day of my life with all my soul and all my power to get Christianity presented. With regard to what pertains to me personally, there was something—in me or in Christianity for me—especially at the beginning, something, a difficulty, that pained me, under which I suffered, something that would hold me back from completely devoting myself to Christianity; but even if I were to become seventy years old and this difficulty continued unaltered, I would still understand this unalterably and unconditionally unalterably to be my life task to which I was committed; I dared to believe that I, humanly speaking, could do a good deed by presenting Christianity, partly because I was unusually well informed about what Christianity is, and partly because I had a more than ordinary gift to be able to present it, and finally because I saw so clearly that I had the solution to the customary doubts about Christianity. Moreover, understood in this way (bearing in mind that something and that difficulty for me personally), I call my work as an author my upbringing and development.—Pap. X5 B 228 n.d., 1849–50

From draft of On My Work; see 5:29:

… The whole authorship, regarded in its entirety, is planned [X5 B 201 382] with this wish in mind [to become a rural pastor]. The movement it describes is: from “the poet,” from the esthetic—from the philosopher, from the speculative—to the intimation of the most inward interpretation of the essentially Christian; from the pseudonymous Either/Or, which was immediately accompanied by Two Upbuilding Discourses with my name as author, through Concluding Postscript with my name as editor, to Discourses at the Communion on Fridays167 [here a double dagger in red crayon, in margin a double dagger and: see the attached], the latest work I have written, and “of which two have been delivered in Frue Church.”…

In a sense the whole authorship can be considered, if I may speak this way, as my program for becoming a rural pastor. If this should seem strange to anyone, this would not be due to the matter itself. Christianly, it is entirely in order. The movement is the right one. Not until now have I reached the higher level, because Christianly it is a matter of arriving at the simple, to become more and more simple.…—Pap. X5 B 201 n.d., 1849 [X5 B 201 383]

From draft of On My Work; see 6:34–35:

Authority is appropriate to the “ordained” pastor, and to the [X5 B 204 385] preaching of sin and grace in the decisive sense. But from the very beginning (preface to Two Upbuilding Discourses [1843]) I have stereotypically repeated that I was without authority and even at the end, in the preface to the discourses at Communion,168 pointed out that these were not sermons, because I have [X5 B 204 386] not yet decisively advanced the doctrine of sin and grace in the strictest sense and as the decisive element.—Pap. X5 B 204 n.d., 1849

From draft of On My Work; see 6:41:

For p. 9 in a “Note” on
[X5 B 249 421] my authorship.

Note.

Lest I, by continually speaking about my authorship only in this moderate, subdued tone and never in any other way, lest I [X5 B 249 422] thereby become guilty of what surely in God’s eyes is just as culpable as presumptuousness—a false and unseemly modesty—then in faithfulness to the truth the other side of the matter must also be touched upon. When at some time this authorship takes its place in history, it will then be said there. This authorship contains the movement of a turning point, and its author has experienced the turning point’s conflict between the two moments. When the author began, what the age had gone astray and bogged down in was “the interesting.” Religiously the task was to move from the interesting and to arrive at the simple. To that end the author must be eminently in possession of the interesting. That he was indeed; unconditionally no Danish author can claim the predicate “the interesting” as he can; as an esthetic author he is entitled to it as a distinctive feature, while other authors are in the same way entitled to other predicates. What “the moment” wanted was the interesting; what the author was capable of was the interesting—thus he would have had it in his power to become the hero and the idol of “the moment.” If “the moment” had become preponderant for him, if he had forgotten the “next thing” (to come to the simple), if he had wanted to adulterate his task within “the moment”—then he would have become the idol of “the moment.” If not—then, then he would have to become a martyr of “the moment,” because “the moment,” which wanted the interesting, was too decisively aware of him, who could be the very one whom the moment craved, to let him go without further ado. Faithful to his task, he became a martyr of the moment—the best or rather the only proof that can be adduced that he, eternally understood, was victorious. And his martyrdom, which he himself freely determined and chose, categorically corresponded exactly to the conflict between the two categories, the interesting—the simple; corresponded exactly to the conflict of the turning point that he experienced: the conflict between the interesting and the simple.

Yet the author cannot inwardly have any merit. He has by no means been entirely free: from the beginning he has had a thorn in the flesh *—the only feature of an apostle169 he has had—it has taught him obedience; and in an anguished consciousness** of his [X5 B 249 423] own personal guilt he has had a constraint that could even further constrain him in absolute obedience.

*—this is historical—

**—this is historical—

—Pap. X5 B 249 n.d., 1849–50

Deleted from final copy of On My Work; see 9:19–24:

Note. And since the public, to take an example, that was jabbed was a public corresponding to the press of literary con-temptibility, the tone became what it became. And since the speaker was a pseudonym, his words, accordingly also the poetical replies, became esthetic, in his character of an imaginatively constructing humorist.…—Pap. X5 B 289:11 n.d., 1850–51

From draft of On My Work; see 10:15:

In “The Accounting,” regardless of which version is used, to be added to the passage that the movement is from the public to the single individual

a note.

Note. This again (just like the circumstance of a religious author’s beginning with esthetic production) is the dialectical movement, or it is dialectical: in working also to work against oneself, which is the reduplication and the heterogeneity of all true godly effort to worldly effort. To strive or to work directly is to work or strive directly in the immediate context of an actual situation; the dialectical is the reverse: in working also to work against oneself, a redoubling that is* like the pressure on the plow that determines the depth of the furrow, while the direct striving is** a smoothing over that is both more speedily taken care of and is far, far more gratefully received—that is, it is worldliness, homogeneity.

*“Earnestness,”

**Superficiality,…

—Pap. X5 B 234 n.d., 1849–50

Deleted from margin of final copy of On My Work; see 10:16:

†Note. And especially in our time this had to be and must be ethically and existentially emphasized as decisively as possible, especially in our time, metaphysically or ethically dissipated, whose specific evil and particular demoralization are precisely to want to do away with the foundation of all morality, upbuilding, and religiousness—the single individual—and substitute the race, one or another abstraction, fantastical social categories, etc., something the world revolution in 1848170 has made even clearer and more obvious. Thus it is already fairly easy to see that the single individual is the point of view of the future pointing toward rescue, just as the single individual is also the passage through which “Christendom” must go—this enormous illusion, turning all the Christian concepts upside down, which, if it is to be thoroughly revised and raised up, must pose the task: to introduce Christianity into Christendom.—Pap. X5 B 289:13 n.d., 1850–51

From draft of On My Work; see 10:21:

To be added in “The Accounting” (if it is to be published now and separately) at the end of what it says in the text about the single individual, but not a new ending.

— —this about the single individual. Yes, it was this about the single individual, which in the past was considered a foolish exaggeration by systematicians, politicians, journalists, by the public, by every Tom, Dick, and Harry, by which I had even made myself a laughingstock—until the year 1848171 showed that it was the truth; truly, a poor solitary thinker cannot possibly ask for greater support from existence. Neither can an author, who in the year 1846 takes it upon himself to portray the future, and in the same way as I did it in A Literary Review,172 cannot possibly ask for more than 1848. Finally, for the sake of recollection, if a thinker can be engaged in concentrating and having concentrated all his intellectual activity in one single thought—this has been granted to me. My whole intellectual activity as an author has been concentrated on this one thought, the single individual, the category that eventually will become the point of view of the future, the category whose meaning (political, ethical, religious) the future will more and more make manifest.—Pap. X5 B 247 n.d., 1849–50

From draft of On My Work; see 10:37–40:

… Note. And insofar as there is the congregation in the religious [X5 B 208 392] sense, this is a concept that lies on the other side of the single individual; the single individual must with ethical decisiveness have gone in between as the middle term in order to make sure that the congregation is not taken in vain as synonymous with “the public,” “the crowd,” etc., although we still must remember what is well-known, that it is not the single individual’s relationship to the congregation that determines his relationship to God, but it is his relationship to God that determines his relationship to the congregation. Then finally (in order to include this) there is the supreme relationship, in which the single individual is absolutely higher than the congregation, the single individual κατ’ εξοχήν [in the eminent sense], the God-man; in the Old Testament, the judge; in the New Testament, the apostle, even if these god-fearingly admit that they have their divine authority in order to serve the congregation. But religiously (in contrast to “the public,” “the crowd,” etc., which politically can have validity), there is only the single individual. And Christianly-religiously, is anything but “the crowd,” “the public,” etc. (which had, have, and can have validity in paganism and worldliness), because the possibility of offense, which Christianly is the middle term in relation to becoming a Christian, first unconditionally makes human beings the single individual qualitatively, whereby this concept the Christian congregation is safeguarded as something qualitatively different from “the public,” “the crowd,” etc., whereas of course unconditionally every human being can be the single individual.

__________

[X5 B 208 393] I do not, however, mean to say by what is stated here that I intend today or tomorrow to seek to become a rural pastor or that it is decided. I have only wanted—also thinking myself obligated to it—to give the reader [deleted:, that single individual,] this view of the thought behind my work as an author. I have hereby actually not said a word about the future, about what is going to happen; I have only said hereby and say hereby that this has been my thought.—Pap. X5 B 208 March 1849

In margin of Pap. X5 B 208:

Note. I did not at the beginning think of expressing the contrast (between my beginning as an esthetic author although I belonged essentially to the religious) by becoming a religious author, which did happen, or for so long a time or on so great a scale, but rather by becoming a rural pastor immediately after being an esthetic author, by becoming as far as possible a rural pastor the moment I laid down my pen as an esthetic author, thereby expressing that I was conscious that my having been an esthetic author was a deception, but a pious deception.—Pap. X5 B 209 March 1849

See 12:21:


For
	the passage in
		“The Accounting,” without authority to make aware etc., could perhaps be added at the end:
			and I regard myself rather as a reader of the books, not as the author.

—Pap. X5 B 258 n.d., 1849–50

Deleted from final copy of On My Work; see 12:30:

No, in that regard I certainly have very much left, although I perhaps am now finished as author.—Pap. X5 B 289:21 n.d., 1850–51

From draft of On My Work; see 13:1:

To “On My Work as an Author”
could be added

Two Appendices. (This is a separate page)

To be used here the two essays: My Position as a Religious Author in “Christendom” and My Strategy and On Herr Professor Nielsen’s Relation to My Work as an Author.173

—Pap. X5 B 271 n.d., 1850

From draft of On My Work; see 15:1–2:

My Position as a Religious Author in “Christendom”
and My Strategy.

Draft.

November 1850.

—Pap. X5 B 272 n.d., 1850

From draft of On My Work; see 13:1; 15:1–2:

Appendix

[Deleted: by
The Editor]

My Position as a Religious Author in
“Christendom” and My Strategy…

—Pap. X5 B 273 November 1850

Deleted from final copy of On My Work; see 15:1–2:

My Position as a Religious Author in “Christendom” and My Strategy

An appendix to “Practice in Christianity” by the editor.
[Deleted: Draft and] final copy
November 1850

—Pap. X5 B 290 November 1850

Deleted from final draft of On My Work; see 16:37:

But I accuse no one, judge no one, no more than I establish parties or the like. I want only that the requirements of infinity be heard, regarding everything as if spoken to me, and otherwise leaving entirely up to each one what use he wants to make of these presentations (among which the most recent ones by Anti-Climacus 174 have in one place used a poetical presentation that ventures to say everything and a dialectical presentation that shies away from no consequences, in order, if possible, to disturb the illusions), otherwise leaving it entirely up to each one what use he wants to make of these presentations—but not in one case, if anyone should want to use them for judging others, that they are not true Christians etc., rather than for judging oneself, because in that case I intend, if the opportunity is given, to take the part of those attacked, and if I am prevented, if this does not happen, then this is nevertheless what I would do.

Deleted: Editor [changed from: S. Kierkegaard]

—Pap. X5 B 291:17 n.d., 1850–51

Deleted from first page proofs of On My Work; see 18:19:

I, a poor private person, have, strangely enough, more or less undertaken the very tasks that actually are up to government and public officials to undertake—Pap. X5 B 293:19 n.d., 1851

Deleted from final draft of On My Work; see 19:9:

What it means to govern, to rule, to be a teacher in obedience to God, in fear and trembling before the responsibility of eternity, is more or less forgotten, and instead governing is done more or less in the fear of people and with secular sagacity. If it is once again to amount to anything, the best thing to do is make an admission. “An admission,” do I hear someone say, “then even more admissions must be made to the opposition, governing must be cut down even more.” No, no, the admission will be made with regard to God and Christianity, that we have inadmissibly scaled down. It is more or less forgotten that all governing, especially in the ecclesiastical sphere, is from God, that to govern is to be obedient to God, and not a matter of summarily identifying with being a public official, and perhaps as such immediately tyrannizing if one sees one’s chance, or, if the wind turns, haggling and bargaining and pretending to be sagacious—this is more or less forgotten, and therefore we more and more miss out on what is still the greatest blessing for us human beings: a God-fearing government that by fearing God is sufficiently strong and powerful not to fear people. [In margin: because to have its strength essentially in secular sagacity is simply and essentially to lack strength.]—Pap. X5 B 291:41 n.d., 1850–51

Deleted from final draft of On My Work; see 19:1:

..... —so let it be forgotten, forgotten, forgotten—as if it [X5 B 291:44 448] had been rendered totally unusable—the art of governing (which in every case is still unconditionally preferable to the art of governing [X5 B 291:44 449] by means of balloting and tossing a coin), the art of governing whose strength was secular sagacity, which, of course, in a deeper sense was exactly its lack of strength, the art of governing that in its craving for power at times pettily tormented people and in its fear of people at times pettily bargained with them.

—Pap. X5 B 291:44 n.d., 1850–51

From final draft of On My Work; see 19:14:

[Deleted: no, insofar as the single individual needs it, it is only necessary that a change in his inner being take place]—but perhaps an internal transformation in the direction of becoming steadfast by fearing God. [Deleted: Then the forward step will be made, and there will be (bestaa) an established order (bestaaende) whose maxim will be: to govern is to obey God; and this maxim will denote that it lies on the other side of the year 1848. The mistake from above was simply that governing in the high sense was not being done; the fault from below was to want to do away with all government.] Certainly the mistake from above was that on the whole the strength throughout the government from top to bottom was essentially secular sagacity, which essentially is precisely the lack of strength. The fault from below was to want to do away with all government. The punishment, since the mode of the sin is always the mode of the punishment, the punishment is: that which comes to be most bitterly missed is precisely—government. [Deleted: What most of us all surely needed to learn by its absence was: how necessary it is for us human beings that there be government; and what the government surely had to learn was what it actually means to govern, that it is, in the fear of God, the responsibility to be strong and powerful enough not to fear people and “number,” that it is in self-denial not to love governing but to love the neighbor, the true humanity and the true human equality.]—Pap. X5 B 291:47 n.d., 1850–51

Deleted from draft of On My Work; see 20:25:

…, to speak Lutheranly, despite Satan, the public, and the newspapers,…

—Pap. X5 B 287 n.d., 1850

From draft of On My Work; see 20:26:

“My Position as a Religious Author in Christendom and My Strategy”

is published separately, the following conclusion could perhaps be added

__________

Since I have noticed, not without pain nor without indignation, all too frequently how a “gracious address to the reading public” is at times used by Stüverfängere [catchpennies], at times by partisans, at times by bootlickers and slaves of the people, in short, in various ways but in the service of shabby interests; since I on the whole believe that a communication like this in these times can easily be misunderstood, exactly as dedications in former times to kings and royal personages—I have never made use of anything like this but have always addressed myself to “the single individual.”

People have used this against me, interpreted it as pride, arrogance, and pro virili [with all their might] have tried to cast odium upon me. No doubt there is a misunderstanding here; what I am convinced of, indeed know, what the more honest, sober-minded, and insightful have understood and, exactly the reverse, have given me credit for, is that I have been too proud to want to be confused with Stüverfängere etc.—something, incidentally, that not only I but everyone should be and ought to be—whereas both my life and my writings certainly bear the unmistakable mark of altruistic kindness and affection for, if possible, every single human being, which is why I also as a religious author have always addressed myself to “the single individual,” religiously understood of course, consequently understood in such a way that everyone, unconditionally everyone, and everyone unconditionally can be that.—Pap. X5 B 288 n.d., 1850

From final copy of Point of View; see 95:13–97:32:

Conclusion [IX B 57 347]


	[In margin: N.B.
	It would perhaps be better to use this in the introduction itself at the end, in which case the first two endings175 drop out.]

The present work is an interpretation of something past, something traversed, something historical. Thus in a way it itself belongs to the past; therefore various things have to be said that I should prefer not to have said but that historically must not and cannot be forgotten or suppressed.

This is now completed; the historical truth gets its due by way of a direct communication, but—and this of course does not belong [IX B 57 348] to the past—for this very reason my whole relationship as an author is altered. The accounting has been made; on the other hand, with the direct communication contained in this work, I have abandoned the character of polemical subtlety—it would be a contradiction to want to be subtle and direct at the same time.

Consequently, in order to call the introduction to mind at the conclusion, to speak as definitely, as directly, as openly, as reconcilingly, as amicably as possible. Now, since I religiously regard it as my duty to speak, with God’s help I shall speak in this spirit, honestly and also to the best of my ability. My heart expands—not as if it had ever been constricted in my breast, but the intensity that has been in my life and that I believed would be my death, has gotten a breathing spell, the dialectical bond has been broken, I dare to speak directly.

I ask everyone who has the cause of Christianity at heart (and I pray to God that the time might come when this would be the case with everyone) to give earnest attention to my whole endeavor as an author. I am convinced that there is present on my side a combination of conditions that are rarely found joined, conditions for elucidating and presenting Christianity exactly in the way now made necessary at this moment. I say this without any vain joy. After all, from the very first I have been and still am sacrificed for the cause I serve. Yet this does not trouble me if only the cause—and this occupies me indescribably [changed from: infinitely]—may serve to God’s honor. Yet also in this regard everything is present. My weakness, spineless fellow that I am; my feebleness and powerlessness, dying man that I am; my errors and sins, penitent that I am—yes, even if I were ungrateful and enough of a scoundrel to want to take the honor for the whole thing, it would be impossible. On the other hand, God be praised, it is impossible for anyone who with any reflection at all [IX B 57 349] attends to my work as an author not to have to become aware of God and to be somewhat constrained, if he does not do it with joy, to give God the honor—God be praised! What do I care about the world’s honor and glory, and what do I care about its ridicule and scorn, indeed, what do I care about myself if only God may be honored. Give me the whole world—and I will instantly give it back again if God will allow me to do the least thing to his honor.

“You are raving.” Oh, no, I certainly am not raving. Or is it then raving to add: If anyone can show that at this moment there is living in our country one other man, an author, who has as many qualifications for throwing light upon the cause of Christianity as I have, then I will at once subordinate all my work under him.—Pap. IX B 57 n.d., 1848

From final copy of “Three Notes Concerning My Work as an Author”; see 101:1–5:

Three [deleted: Friendly] “Notes” Concerning
My Work as an Author.
[Deleted: To the single individual.]
By
S. Kierkegaard.

—Pap. IX B 58 n.d., 1848

Addition to Pap. IX B 58:

To the typesetter

The title page is to be set as written. A blank page is to be placed between each number. [Deleted: The preface is to be set in the smallest possible brevier.] Each number should begin approximately in the middle of the page, not at the top. The footnotes are to be set in the smallest possible brevier.—Pap. IX B 59 n.d., 1848

Addition to Pap. IX B 58:

30 copies on thin vellum.

—Pap. IX B 60 n.d., 1848

Deleted addition to Pap. IX B 58:

A smaller format, for example, like Philosophical Fragments but in smaller type.

—Pap. IX B 61 n.d., 1848

Addition to Pap. IX B 58:

N.B. A preface to this is in the little pack of loose sheets for “The Accounting” and “Three Notes.”—Pap. IX B 62 n.d., 1848

Deleted from final draft of “Three Notes”; see 101:1–5:

Three “Notes” Concerning
My Work as an Author

Supplement

S. Kierkegaard.

—Pap. IX B 63:1 n.d., 1848

Deleted from final draft of “Three Notes”; see 101:1–5:

To the typesetter

The book is to be set in larger print, with a blank page between each number.—Pap. IX B 63:2 n.d., 1848

From final draft of “Three Notes”; see 101:5:

Contents


No. 1.	For the Dedication to “That Single Individual.”
No. 2.	A Word about the Relation of My Work as an Author to “That Single Individual.”
No. 3.	Preface to “Friday Discourses.”176

—Pap. IX B 63:3 n.d., 1848

From draft of Point of View; see 101:1–5:

Note no. 3 has been used;177 so it will be only

“Two Notes”

Perhaps the title of the book could be:

“The Single Individual.”

Two Notes Concerning My Work as an Author.

—Pap. X5 B 187 n.d., 1851

From draft of Point of View; see 100:

For

Three Notes.

If it is found used here as an epigraph:

Wer glaubet, der ist gross und reich178

etc.

it should be deleted here, since it will be used in “The Accounting.”179

—Pap. X5 B 170 n.d., 1849

Deleted from final draft of “Three Notes”; see 111:33:

... I for my part, with regard to every single human being [IX B 63:4 355] who lives in this country with me, unconditionally every single human being, if I could manage to do so, was [changed from: am] willing in God’s name to humble myself, both orally and in writing, as deeply before him as possible and like a suppliant plead that he think about his relationship to God. To honor every single human being is to fear God, whereas on the other hand every assemblage consciously or unconsciously has a propensity to want to make itself God for the individual, so that one should fear it more than God. Therefore if it were an assemblage of ten thousand with a claim to be the authority with regard to the truth, and if it were a public of hundreds of thousands with a claim to be the authority with regard to the truth—I would pray [changed from: pray] to God (and if I prayed rightly, he would do it) to [IX B 63:4 356] give me, the weakest of all, the vigor to express [deleted: all my disgust] that “the crowd” as an authority is untruth.…—Pap. IX B 63:4 n.d., 1848

From draft of “Three Notes”; See 113:1:


A Word on the Relation of My Work as an Author
	To That Single Individual
		used for Note no. 2 in Three Notes. The conclusion of the piece180 is no doubt also found in one of the journals [see Supplement, pp. 154–56 (Pap. VIII1 A 482); Pap. VIII2 B 195] from ’47, or one earlier, because it is not later.

—Pap. VIII2 B 190 n.d., 1848

From draft of Point of View; see 115:4–29:

This is how it is used. The subject of the single individual appears in every book by the pseudonymous writers, but the price put upon being a single individual, a single individual in the eminent sense, rises. The subject of the single individual appears in every one of my upbuilding books, but there the single individual is what every human being is. This is precisely the dialectic of “the single individual” [changed from: the particular]. The single individual can mean the most unique of all, and it can mean everyone. Now if one desires to stimulate attention, one will use this category in rapid succession but always in a double-stroke. The pride in the one thought incites a few, the humility in the other thought repels others, but the confusion in this doubleness provokes attention, and yet this is the idea of “the single individual.” The pride in the one thought eggs on a few who in that sense of the word could very well desire to be the single individual of the pseudonyms. But then they are repelled in turn by the thought of “the single individual” in the sense of the upbuilding.*

In margin: *That is, the point of departure of the pseudonymous writers is continually in the differences—the point of departure in the upbuilding discourses is in the universally human.

—Pap. VIII2 B 192 n.d., 1847–48

From draft of “Three Notes”; see 119:26–120:10:

[IX B 64 377] [Essentially the same as 119:15—25]: that it was an age of disintegration. That it was an age of disintegration, an esthetic, enervating disintegration, and therefore, before there could be any question even of merely introducing the religious, the ethically strengthening Either/Or had to precede. That it was an age of disintegration, that “the system” itself (according to which this author pushes forward in historical sequence), like overripe [IX B 64 378] fruit, was a sign of downfall and did not, as the systematicians self-complacently interpreted it, signify that completion was now attained. That it was an age of disintegration and therefore not, as the politicians thought, that “government” was the evil,* which would have been a curious self-contradiction for the viewpoint “the single individual,” but that the crowd, the public, was the evil, which coincides with the viewpoint, the single individual. That it was an age of disintegration, that it was not nationalities that should be advanced but Christianity, and a Christianity relating to the single individual, that no particular class could be the stake but “the crowd,” and that the task was to make it into individuals. That it was an age of disintegration, a critical time, that history was about to make a turn, that it was a matter of having heard right, of being in propitious rapport with the age and the turn that should be made—that it was the ethical that should be advanced, but above all that the ethical should not again be systematically muddled up or conglomerated with the old order, consequently that it was not simply a question of teaching the ethical objectively but of accentuating the ethical, of ethically putting into action the qualitative force of the ethical, “the single individual,” and of supporting it fairly well by personal existing (again in qualitative contrast to system, didacticizing instruction, and everything related to them), yet consistently to continue for the time being to hide in the careful incognito of a flâneur [idler]. This puts the writings over into another sphere, since “that single individual” will become a historical point of view.

This is why I do not call myself a truth-witness. By such a term I do not actually understand everyone who says something true. Thank you, no; then we would have truth-witnesses enough. No, in a truth-witness the personal existing must be seen in relation to what was said. The word “witness” refers to the personal life—a consideration that, it is entirely right to say, the systematizing and the didacticizing and the characterlessness of the age have abolished completely. My life has indeed accurately expressed the ethical, what was ethically accentuated: to be the single individual; I have associated with countless people, but I have always stood alone, unconditionally alone. For the sake of [IX B 64 379] this, my category, I have also ventured in various ways, made more than one sacrifice, exposed myself to one and another danger—and, note well, to precisely the kind of danger that categorically corresponds to the single individual—exposed myself to the “crowd,” “the public,” to blather and laughter. But even if there was no other hindrance, I have had independent means. That alone is enough; therefore I do not call myself a truth-witness; this is a preferential position that places me down in a lower class. But in addition I have also had too much imagination and much too much of a poet to dare to be called a truth-witness in the strict sense. I have been far from having an overview of everything from the beginning but have been aided both by a fortunate immediacy and by Governance, which on more than one point have helped me immediately to apprehend correctly. Thus the writings have also been my own development, and I have successively become aware of having apprehended correctly. I have had too much to do with the ethical to be a poet, but I am too much of a poet to be a truth-witness; I am a confinium [border territory] in between. I am, to allude to the highest, neither the one awaited nor the forerunner of the one awaited, but a prescient figure who with categorical exactitude has been related to the future of history, to the turn that should be made and that will become the future of history. It will go with me as with all such figures—the very thing for which my contemporaries rejected me and were angry with me, precisely that, literally the same, will become my eulogy in the future: he is eccentric, refractory, and proud; he will not reduce the price, will not yield. —This was the charge, and the eulogy will read literally the same: he would not scale down, he would not yield. Consistency of character always affronts the egotism of contemporaries, who, opposing such a person, do not think of becoming informed about him but only want to have power over him. The future, which is interested only in the idea and not in the personal, will find no affront in the fact that there lived a thinker who was consistent; on the contrary, the future will regard this as magnificent, although, of course, in its own capacity of the contemporary public it will behave like every contemporary public.—Pap. IX B 64 n.d., 1848

Addition to Pap. IX B 64:

That it is an age of disintegration—a dizziness occasioned by and in a mounting fever fomented by continually wanting, with finite sagacity and operating with the numerical, to aid the moment by means of the momentary, and with the impatience of the moment to demand to see the result in that very moment—a condition that only leads, if possible, to making it dreadfully manifest that what is needed is the very opposite: the eternal and the single individual.—Pap. IX B 65 n.d., 1848

From draft of “Three Notes”; see 119:26:

In Three Notes

Note no. 2, the passage: That it was an age of disintegration; an esthetic disintegration 181—the following lines are to be deleted and the passage will read:

an esthetic disintegration, that before the decisively religious is introduced a beginning must be made maieutically with esthetic works, yet ethically oriented: Either/Or.

—Pap. X5 B 173 n.d., 1849

Sharpened
A Double-Edged Weapon

In times of tranquillity, the category “the single individual” is the category of awakening; when everything is tranquillity, security, and indolence—and the ideal has vanished—then the single individual is the awakening. In times of commotion, when everything is tottering, the single individual is the category of composure. The person who knows how to use this category will appear quite different in times of tranquillity than in times of commotion, and yet he will be using the same weapon. The difference is the same as that between using a sharp and pointed instrument to wound and using it to clean out a wound. But never will this category, “the single individual,” rightly applied, cause damage to the established order. Used in a time of tranquillity, its purpose will be to awaken inwardness to heightened life in the established order without changing anything in externals. In times of commotion, its purpose will be to support the established order more directly by leading the single individual to be indifferent to external change and thus to support the established order. Earthly reward, power, honor, and the like can never be involved in the proper application, because what is rewarded in the world is, of course, only changes and working for changes in externals—inwardness does not interest the world.—JP II 2014 (Pap. IX B 66) n.d., 1848

Deleted from draft of “Three Notes”; see 123:7:

… Note. The most zealous defenders of Christianity betray it, of course without noticing it themselves, perhaps do more harm to it than all the attackers, because these defenders have missed the point, are not dialectically attentive, do not see that the only thing that is needed (neither a new religion nor the abolition of Christianity) is simply and solely what I would call a new theological science of arms …—Pap. VIII2 B 195 n.d., 1847–48

From draft of “Three Notes”; see 124:9:

[IX B 63:13 372] [In margin: for p. 298 (Pap. IX B 63:6 end).]

Only the martyr, this martyr of the future (the missionary), who uses the category the single individual educationally, will by all means have within himself what is appropriate to the age (“the age of reflection”)—a superior reflection and, in addition to the faith and the courage to risk, will need the work or the preliminary work of infinite reflection in becoming or in order to become a martyr. [Deleted: In this he will be different from any previous martyr (of immediacy), who required only the faith and courage to risk his life.] Differing from all previous martyrs, the martyr of the future will possess a superior reflection as a servant to determine freely (of course unconditionally obedient to God, yet freely) what kind of mistreatment and persecution he will suffer, whether he will fall or not, and if he will fall, the place where he will fall, so that he succeeds, dialectically, in falling at the right place so that his death wounds the survivors in the right spot. It will not be “the others,” as it was previously, who assault the martyr, who only has to suffer—no, the martyr will be the self-determiner of the suffering. Just as in a parade the provost marshal gives the orders and marches with his staff at the head of the procession, just as the forestry expert goes ahead when trees are to be cut and points: “Cut there, and there, so and so much”—so [IX B 63:13 373] this martyr of the future will himself be the one who goes ahead of his persecutors and—knowing the specific sickness of the particular age, knowing how it is to be healed, together with the kind of suffering to which he will have to expose himself—arranges everything himself with the cunning of a superior reflection. He will be just like that hero who himself gave the firing orders [deleted: to the soldiers] at his own execution. Actually, the persecutors only obey his orders, but the real truth of the matter is hidden from their eyes. Sick as they are, they do what they do according to their sickness. —Whole volumes could be written about this alone.

The first form of rulers in the world was the tyrants; the last will be the martyrs. In the development of the world this is the movement [deleted: from worldliness to religiosity] [in margin: toward a growing worldliness, since worldliness is greatest, must have achieved a frightful upper hand, when only the martyrs are able to be rulers. When one person is the tyrant, the mass is not completely secularized, but when “the mass” wants to be the tyrant, then worldliness is completely universal, and then only the martyr can be the ruler]. No doubt there is an infinite difference between a tyrant and a martyr; yet they have one thing in common: the power to constrain. The tyrant, with a craving for power, constrains by force; the martyr, personally unconditionally obedient to God, constrains by his own sufferings. Then the tyrant dies, and his rule is over; the martyr dies, and his rule begins. The tyrant was the egotistic individual who inhumanly ruled over the masses, made the others into a mass and ruled over the mass. The martyr is the suffering single individual who in his love of mankind educates others in Christianity, converting the mass into single individuals—and there is joy in heaven for every single individual he thus rescues from [deleted: what even the apostle calls the “animal-category”]: the mass. —Whole volumes could be written about this alone, even by me, a kind of poet and philosopher, to say nothing of the one who is coming, the philosopher-poet or the poet-philosopher, who, in addition, will have seen close at hand the object of my presentiments at a [IX B 63:13 374] distance, will have seen accomplished what I only dimly imagine will be carried out sometime in a distant future.

There are really only two sides to choose between—Either/Or. Well, of course, there are many parties in the busyness of the world [in margin: —but it is not really, it is only figuratively that there is any question of “choosing” here, since what is chosen makes no difference and is equally wrong]. [Deleted: In the busyness of the world there are many parties; there are the liberals and the conservatives etc.—and all the strangest combinations, such as the rational liberals and rational conservatives. Once there were four parties in England, a large country; this was supposedly also the case in smaller Odense. But] In the profoundest sense there really are only two parties to choose between—and here lies the category “the single individual”: either in obedience to God, fearing and loving him, to take the side of God against men so that one loves men in God—or to take the side of men against God, so that by distortion one humanizes God and does not “sense what is God’s and what is man’s” (Matthew 16:23). There is a struggle going on between man and God, a struggle unto life and death—was not the God-man put to death! —About these things alone: about what constitutes earnestness and about “the single individual,” about what constitutes the daimonic, whether the daimonic is the evil or the good, about silence as a factor contributing to evil and silence as a factor contributing to good, about “deceiving into the truth,” about indirect communication, to what extent this is treason against what it is to be human, an impertinence toward God, about what one learns concerning the daimonic by considering the God-man—about these things alone whole volumes could be written, even by me, a kind of philosopher, to say nothing of him who is coming, “the philosopher” who will have seen “the missionary to Christendom” and at first hand will know about all this of which I have only gradually learned to understand at least a little.—JP III 2649 (Pap. IX B 63:13) n.d., 1848

From final draft of For Self-Examination:

Preface.182 [X6 B 4:3 14]

My dear reader, read aloud if possible. If you do so, allow me to thank you for it; if you not only do it yourself, if you influence others to do it, allow me to thank each one of them, and you again and again!

August [changed from: June] 1851
[Deleted: Preface.

What I have understood as the task of the authorship has been done.

It is one idea, this continuity from Either/Or to Anti-Climacus, [X6 B 4:3 15] the idea of religiousness in reflection.

The task has occupied me totally, for it has occupied me religiously; I have understood the completion of this authorship as my duty, as a responsibility resting upon me. Whether anyone has wanted to buy or to read has concerned me very little.

At times I have considered laying down my pen and, if anything should be done, to use my voice.

Meanwhile, I came by way of further reflection to the realization that it perhaps is more appropriate for me to make at least an attempt once again to use my pen but in a different way, as I would use my voice, consequently in direct address to my contemporaries, winning people, if possible.

The first condition for winning people is that the communication reaches them. Therefore I must naturally want this little book to come to the knowledge of as many as possible.

If anyone out of interest for the cause—I repeat, out of interest for the cause—wants to work for its dissemination, this is fine with me. It would be still better if he would contribute to its well-comprehended dissemination.*

A request, an urgent request to the reader: I beg you to read aloud, if possible; I will thank everyone who does so; and I will thank again and again everyone who in addition to doing it himself influences others to do it.

Just one thing more. *I hardly need say that by wanting to win people it is not my intention to form a party, to create secular, sensate togetherness; no, my wish is only to win people, if possible all people (each individual), for Christianity.]

June 1851 S. K.

—JP VI 6770 (Pap. X6 B 4:3)

See 12:26–30:

[X4 A 85 52] For “The Accounting.” Something, however, that is not to be included.

[Deleted: Concerning Myself]

Inasmuch as before God I regard my entire work as an author as my own upbringing or education, I could say: But I have remained silent so long lest, in relation to what I understand before God to be my own education, by speaking prematurely I become guilty of talking out of school. This could then be added to the passage in the final draft of “The Accounting”: Before God I call this my upbringing or education etc.183

I would have liked very much to use this very expression; lyrically, it would have gratified me to use this expression. But there is something else that holds me back. As is frequently the case, the most humble expression seen from another angle is the very one that is apt to say too much, and so it is here. Precisely [X4 A 85 53] this humble expression would accentuate the fact that it is my upbringing, almost in the sense of my being an authority. It is simpler as it stands in “The Accounting,” with the addition that I need further upbringing, and the tone is such that it can be said of every human being.—JP VI 6737 (Pap. X4 A 85) n.d., 1851

[X4 A 351 203] About Myself

Now they are printed.184 Oh, I feel inexplicably, unspeakably happy and calm and confident and overwhelmed.

[X4 A 351 204] Infinite Love! I have suffered much during the past days, very much, but then it comes again. Once again an understanding of my task is clear to me but with greater vividness, and even though I have blundered seventeen times—nevertheless an infinite love in its grace has made it all completely right.

Infinite Love! It is blessed to give thanks, but a person perhaps never feels his wretchedness and sin more than when he is overwhelmed in this way, just as Peter said: Depart from me, for I am a sinful man 185—on the very occasion of the great catch of fish.—JP VI 6772 (Pap. X4 A 351) n.d., 1851

Conversation with Mynster186 [X4 A 373 220]

August 9, 1851

As I entered I said, “Welcome home from your visitation; I dare say Your Reverence has already visited me as well through the two little books187 I sent you.” He had read only the one (and, to be honest, for a moment I thought how strange if it had been the two discourses), but no, sure enough, he had read the book on my work as an author. “Yes, it is a clue to the whole,” he said, “but spun later, but, after all, you do not say more than that yourself.” I answered that the point to bear in mind was this, to have been so devoted, over many years and in much writing, to one thing, that my pen had not made one single deviation. To which he said he thought the little review of Two Ages188 was an exception. I did not say any more to this, for it is in fact discussed in the little book about my work as an author, but I did make the remark that this review is essentially part of the whole authorship and that I attributed it to another because there were certain things I wanted to have said and at the time felt unable to say [X4 A 373 221] them as well myself. —I got the impression from Mynster that basically he was impressed by the little book and therefore he was not saying much.

We went on talking. He was in agreement with me, and what I said about the government189 was fully his opinion. We spoke a little about that. I said it was not so pleasant to have to say such things and therefore no one was willing to do it, but they had to be said, and so I had done it.

He was pleased and gratified and agreed with me.

Then I told him that I really was happy to talk with him today because today was the anniversary of my father’s death 190 and I wanted everything to be as it should be on this day.

Then a few words were dropped about the pastoral seminary,191 but he avoided the subject and thought it was best for me to begin at once to establish a pastoral seminary myself.

The conversation was very friendly and not without emotion. Then I once again said a word disapproving of what he said about Goldschmidt192 in his latest book,193 something I felt I had to say, especially when I expressed such high regard for him.

Then we parted with his customary “Good-bye, my dear friend.”—JP VI 6777 (Pap. X 4 A 373) August 9, 1851

[X4 A 383 230] “On My Work as an Author”
The Significance of This Little Book

The state of “Christendom” is as follows: the point of view of Christianity and of what Christianity is has been completely shifted, has been cast in terms of the objective, the scholarly, and differences such as genius and talent have been made crucial.

This little book reverses the whole thing. It says (precisely because this enormous productivity preceded it): Forget genius, talent, scholarship, and all that—Christianity is the existential, a character-task. And now it is turned that way.

For that reason this little book is not a literary work, a new literary work, but an act, and therefore it was important that it be as short as possible, that it not mark a new productivity that people could then discuss. This little book is μετάβασις εἰς ἄλλο γένος [a shifting from one genus to another] and makes clear the extent to which it was already present in my total work as an author.

Even if I had fathomed or surveyed in advance my total work as an author down to the smallest detail, what I say in this book about my authorship never could have been said at the beginning, because it would have shifted the point of view, and the interest of the reading world would have shifted to curiosity as to whether I actually took the direction and fulfilled what I predicted.

No, it has to come at the conclusion, in order with one single stroke to do what the sailor calls tacking, the turn.

The little book is not a literary work but an act. It is an intensive act that will not readily be understood, no more than the action I took in the past against The Corsair.194 It may even be found that I have made too little of myself, I who could preen myself on being a genius, a man of talent—and instead I say it is “my own personal development and upbringing.” But precisely [X4 A 383 231] this is the turn in the direction of Christianity and in the direction of “personality.”

Consequently, here is a single individual who relates to Christianity and not in such a way that he is now going to proceed to be a genius and a man of talent and to achieve something—no, just the reverse.

Here the listed price of Christianity is so low, so lenient, that it is terrible—but nevertheless it is an authentic relationship to Christianity; here there is no trick, no illusion. The Mynsterian approach195 is in toto illusion and, from a Christian point of view, is tenable only by means of what I propose: admissions. I resort to grace; it is not Christianity in the more rigorous sense—something Mynster is silent about and wants to have suppressed. In my approach, however, Christianity truly is turned as the unconditional, and the whole viewpoint is utterly different: that we come to admit that in the most rigorous sense we are not Christians. In short, the cast of the whole thing is as different as possible from the official delineation, and yet it is even milder. But what is there is truth; it is not appearance and illusion.

Without this little book the whole authorship would be changed into a new doctrine.—JP VI 6780 (Pap. X4 A 383) n.d., 1851

4651. [X4 A 408 248]

In Flyve-Posten196 for September 16 or 17, someone using 4651 as his signature—no doubt to be striking—took it upon himself to orient (it is usually the passion of the disoriented whereby they are identified) my readers or even to warn them against being confused by my little book On My Work as an Author. The only [X4 A 408 249] thing I find meriting attention, and especially as the orientating factor, is the signature: 4651. It is striking, persuasive, and overpowering. If the dreadful thing happens (and how easy!) that someone now comes along who signs himself 789,691, I will be shattered.—JP VI 6785 (Pap. X4 A 408) n.d., 1851

From unpublished reply to [Ludvig Jacob Mendel Gude,]

Om Magister Kierkegaards Forfattervirksomhed. Iagttagelser af en Landsbypræst (Copenhagen: 1851):

[X6 B 145 202] ... As is well-known, my authorship has two parts: one pseudonymous and the other signed. The pseudonymous writers are poetized personalities, poetically maintained so that everything they say is in character with their poetized individualities; sometimes I have carefully explained in a signed preface my own interpretation of what the pseudonym said. Anyone with just a fragment of common sense will perceive that it would be ludicrously confusing to attribute to me everything the poetized personalities say. Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, I have expressly urged once and for all that anyone who wants to quote something from the pseudonyms will not attribute the quotation to me (see my postscript to Concluding Postscript197). It is easy to see that anyone wanting to have a literary lark merely needs to take some quotations higgledy-piggledy from “The Seducer,” then from Johannes Climacus, then from me, etc., print them together as if they were all my words, show how they contradict each other, and create a very chaotic impression, as if the author [X6 B 145 203] were a kind of lunatic. Hurrah! That can be done. In my opinion anyone who exploits the poetic in me by quoting the writings in a confusing way is more or less either a charlatan or a literary toper.

The little book On My Work as an Author declares: “It must end with direct communication,”198 that is, I began with pseudonymous writers representing the indirect communication I have not used over my signature. And somewhat earlier (in my preface to Practice in Christianity, whose author, the last pseudonymous writer, Anti-Climacus, again discourses on indirect communication) there is the statement: I understand the whole (whole book) as addressed to me so that I may learn to resort to grace.199 Consequently, it ends with direct communication.…

—JP VI 6786 (Pap. X6 B 145) n.d., 1851

Unrecognizability——Recognizability [X4 A 558 377]

Particularly toward the end of A Literary Review I said that none of the “unrecognizable ones” dares at any price to communicate directly or to become recognized 200—and yet in On My Work as an Author I made myself responsible for the esthetic foreground of my authorship and said: “The whole thing is my own upbringing.”201 How is this to be understood?

In this way: assume that the illusion “Christendom” is truth, that it must be left standing: then unrecognizability is the maximum. If, however, the illusion must go, then it gets down to this: you actually are not Christians—then there must be recognizability. [X4 A 558 378] And here I have suggested the lowest: that it is I who am being brought up in Christianity.

If the illusion “Christendom” is truth, if the preaching prevalent in Christendom is as it should be, then we are all Christians and we can only speak of becoming more inward: then the maieutic and unrecognizability are the maximum.

But suppose now (something I was not aware of at first) that the preaching prevalent in Christendom leaves out something essential to the proclamation of Christianity—“imitation, dying away to the world, being born again, etc.”—then we in Christendom are not Christians, and here the emphasis must be on recognizability. As stated, my place is on the lowest level of direct recognizability—namely, that the whole authorship is my own upbringing.

O my God, I am grateful—how clear you have made everything to me!—JP VI 6804 (Pap. X4 A 558) n.d., 1852

Yes, “Either/Or”—that is where the battle is, and therefore [X6 B 236 395] my first words are: Either/Or. And that which is in Either/Or I can say of myself: I am an enigmatical being on whose brow stands Either/Or.202

But how this is to be understood could not be seen at once; much had to be arranged first. For this an entire productivity uno tenore [without interruption], an entire productivity nevertheless related to a repetition [Gjentagelse]: all must be taken up [X6 B 236 396] again. Therefore the work was under so much pressure, was so hasty—which local sagacity regarded as very foolish—because all pointed to a repetition, as it therefore stands in the little book Repetition: Repetition is the category about which it will revolve.203

But not only did very much have to be arranged before Either/Or was really applied, but I also had to be brought up. This is why it says in the little book about my work as an author: The whole is my own upbringing.204 And this is why the first words the Judge says to the Young Man are: When I see you veer etc., I think of an unbroken horse, but I also see the hand that holds the reins; I see harsh fates’ lash raised over your head205—and this is why the last thing I have said is: There was a time when it pleased the Deity himself to be the coachman etc.206—Pap. X6 B 236 n.d., 1853

On folder with mss. of “Point of View” and “On My Work”:

“On My Work as an Author”

N.B. see journal NB14 p. 10 and p. 41 [Pap. X2 A 171–72, 192 (pp. 222–24, 229)].

N.B. The postscript [Pap. X5 B 211 (p. 231)] to “Three Notes Concerning My Work as an Author” is essentially the same as the postscript [Pap. X5 B 168 (pp. 290–94)] to “The Accounting”; thus if it is used in the one place, it cannot be used in the other.

—Pap. X5 B 140 n.d., 1849

From draft of Three Notes; see 231:18–233:15:

[X5 B 168 360] N.B. This postscript207 is partly or essentially used in the postscript to “The Accounting” and consequently cannot be used both places.

Postscript to the Reader
To the typesetter:

To be set in smallest possible brevier.

My dear reader, I have wanted to and believed that I ought to say this to you, and at this very time when I am about to meet my [X5 B 168 361] first work: the second edition of Either/Or, which I was unwilling to have published earlier. Direct communication, that is, by me personally concerning and about my authorship, its comprehensive plan, its objective, the placing of each individual work in the whole, and every individual part in each individual work, etc., is in a way, even where it is not a plain impossibility, against my nature, my personality—and against my work as an author, all of which is dialectics from first to last, and all of which until now at least from one side, has hitherto considered itself to be religiously committed to silence. Lest [changed from: God forbid, therefore, or if it should happen, may he then forgive me if] these few direct words about myself personally and about my authorship might in any way be a breach of, a weakness in relation to, what I myself have hitherto understood, namely, that I was committed to silence concerning myself personally and concerning direct communication about my authorship. If in this regard everything is in order and proper, even the little I have here communicated directly, and to you, I have not communicated, although from one side, without concern, without the concern that from this side unconditionally preoccupies me most—that I in some way might have said too much about myself and too little about Governance.

In one sense my explanation of my work as an author has a special coherence. My explaining is not like that of an author who says: This and this I have done—and then by inspecting the books is convinced that this is exactly what he has not done. No, what I explain is always something factual, is factual for the reader just as for me, is printed in the books, or if I consider the arrangement of the books, then this, too, is something factual, something anyone can verify whenever he wishes—in what order the books actually came out. Nor is my thought this, which [X5 B 168 362] is indeed only a simple and natural development, that in the process of working out something I gradually was better satisfied with my effort or what I want generally. This is the position taken by Johannes Climacus, who in a survey of the pseudonymous works together with my upbuilding discourses expressly states that he, who as reader kept abreast of the books, every time he had read such a published work, understood better what it was that he had wanted, he who from the beginning had himself wanted to carry out the very thing that was carried out in this authorship (see Concluding Postscript, p. 187 bot. [p. 251, KW XII. 1; SV VII 212]). No, in my case what I myself have planned, carried out, and said—I myself sometimes understand only afterward how correct it was, that there was something far deeper in it than I thought at first—and yet I am the one who is the author. Here in my thoughts is an inexplicable something suggesting that I was, as it were, helped by someone else, that I have come to work out and say something whose deeper meaning I myself sometimes understand only afterward. This, in my view, is quite simply and God-fearingly the cooperation of Governance in such a way as everyone ought and should be able to speak of this. In other words, if the discussion of it is to be only scholarly and philosophical, it should be titled: The Relation between Immediacy and Reflection within Reflection, or The Process of Development That within Reflection Is the Transposing of Immediacy into Reflection, Here Reflected in the Work of an Author and in the Author’s Corresponding Supporting Existence. The individuality in whom the same happens, if he has religiousness, and to the same degree as he has religiousness, must religiously, and to the same degree religiously attribute it to God, and all the more fervently and gratefully to the same degree as he perhaps otherwise feels unhappy and sad and, seen from another side, humble before God, feels not at all worthy or feels unworthy to have this happiness be granted to him in particular. But this can be truly said only in the silence of inwardness—that is, it cannot be communicated.

[X5 B 168 363] If I myself religiously understand that I have been helped by another, what wonder, then, that I am uneasy about speaking personally about my work as an author and that I, when I have said only the very least thing in the first person, immediately have a great concern about having said too much about myself and too little about Governance! And, my dear reader, the difficulty involved here in speaking returns in another way: that when I personally, in the first person, make myself if possible into nothing, which in one sense I would like to do—and really let the pathos-filled emphasis of humility fall so that everything is due to Governance—then of course I run into another danger, which makes me shudder even more, that in someone’s conception of me I would be raised so high up into the extraordinary, as if in some way I had an immediate relationship with God, which, if possible, would be even more untrue and for me more appalling than if I were categorically to attribute unconditionally everything to myself, I who indeed am like an epitome of reflection.

It is difficult to speak personally here, to say in the first person what is developed there, what is in the books in their actual sequence to each other etc. This is something any third person can do without the slightest trouble at all, and what I myself as a third person can so very easily do, indeed have shown that I can do [In margin: Note. For example, Johannes Climacus’s report on the pseudonymous writers (see Concluding Postscript, pp. 187–227 [pp. 251–300, KW XII. 1; SV VII 212–57]) by me as third person by a third person]—since my case differs from that of most authors in that it is easiest for them to speak in the first person about their endeavor. For me it is very easy to talk about it in the third person. So it is difficult to speak, but being silent also has its difficulty. By unconditionally attributing everything to myself I can defraud Governance of what I religiously and personally must call its share. [In margin: Note. To give just one example of what I mean. It would be untrue if I were unconditionally to claim the whole authorship as my intention from the beginning, because it is also the possibility of my author-nature that has come into existence but it has not been conscious (deleted: from the very [X5 B 168 364] beginning). It would be untrue to say unconditionally that I used the esthetic productivity as maieutic from the very beginning, but for the reader the whole authorship actually will still be maieutic in relation to the religious, which in me was most basic] But I can also defraud Governance by being silent, since in that case my reader would straightway be prompted to trace everything to me, as if I myself had envisioned everything this way from the beginning.

This is why I have chosen to say the little that I have said here. In my own innermost being on my own responsibility I understand everything easily—in my own innermost being, where before God I have my personal life, its cunning, its nevertheless God-fearing cunning in relation to my work as an author and its objective—in my own innermost being before God, where, as a beneficial tempering and correcting middle term in relation to whatever extraordinariness may possibly have been granted me, I have my personal life, its pain and sufferings, and above all its errors and sins and the consequences, its repentance and regret. But to speak about myself as someone who is dead, I cannot do or, rather, I cannot defend doing it as long as I am a living person.

Just one thing more: the little that is said in this little book about my work as an author is about the past, about what has been accomplished—something that obviously is implied in the subject itself, and something you yourself will surely become aware of during your reading, even just from the tenses that are used. With regard to the future—whether I will continue to be an author for a time, a longer or shorter time, and as before, or whether I will begin to be a different kind of author, or whether I will simply cease to be an author now—about that absolutely nothing is known, not even by me. I, who by nature am also a born dialectician and sheer reflection, have with much fear and trembling learned quite accurately, literally, and earnestly to understand that I cannot ever know whether the talents and qualifications I have possessed so far, the good fortune that has followed [X5 B 168 365] me so far, etc., whether all this may be taken from me in the next moment, perhaps before I have finished this sentence. Do not think that this is a depression of the kind that renders one unproductive. Under the weight of this mood—and perhaps it weighed upon me even more heavily then than it does now, since in the course of time I have become more practiced in it—I began as an author, and under the weight of this mood I have written—shall I now say the few pages I have written.

Copenhagen. Spring 1849.

S. K.

—Pap. X5 B 168 n.d., 1849