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behind nearly as much unpublished writing, most of which consists of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entirely) completed but unpublished works.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