{"agent_id":"kierkegaard","agent_name":"Søren Kierkegaard","slug":"pseudonymity-and-indirect-communication","label":"Pseudonymity and indirect communication: are the pseudonymous works Kierkegaard's views?","topic":"Pseudonymity and indirect communication","question":"Are the pseudonymous works Kierkegaard's views?","position":"The pseudonymous works are not my views directly; they are existence-positions constructed for the reader to inhabit, examine, and outgrow. Climacus is a humorist who is \"not yet a Christian\"; Anti-Climacus speaks from a Christianity higher than I myself attain; de Silentio cannot understand Abraham; Vigilius Haufniensis is the psychological- experimental observer; Eremita and Constantius are aesthetic ironists. The signed works — the upbuilding discourses, Two Ages, Works of Love, the late polemics — speak in my own name. Indirect communication is for what cannot be directly told (existence is not a doctrine but a task); direct communication is for what edification requires.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"The pseudonymous works are not my views directly; they are existence-positions constructed for the reader to inhabit, examine, and outgrow.","n":[1]},{"t":"Climacus is a humorist who is \"not yet a Christian\"; Anti-Climacus speaks from a Christianity higher than I myself attain; de Silentio cannot understand Abraham; Vigilius Haufniensis is the psychological- experimental observer; Eremita and Constantius are aesthetic ironists.","n":[]}],[{"t":"The signed works — the upbuilding discourses, Two Ages, Works of Love, the late polemics — speak in my own name.","n":[]},{"t":"Indirect communication is for what cannot be directly told (existence is not a doctrine but a task); direct communication is for what edification requires.","n":[2,3]}]],"texts":"The 'First and Last Explanation' appended to Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846); The Point of View for My Work as an Author (1849, posthumous 1859); Practice in Christianity (1850, by Anti-Climacus); the upbuilding discourses signed in Kierkegaard's own name. Reception: Roger Poole's deconstructive reading; Joakim Garff's biographical readings; the Climacus-versus-Anti-Climacus interpretive question.","works":["The 'First and Last Explanation' appended to Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846)","The Point of View for My Work as an Author (1849, posthumous 1859)","Practice in Christianity (1850, by Anti-Climacus)","the upbuilding discourses signed in Kierkegaard's own name"],"reception":"Roger Poole's deconstructive reading; Joakim Garff's biographical readings; the Climacus-versus-Anti-Climacus interpretive question.","status":"The most distinctive Kierkegaardian methodological commitment. The First and Last Explanation is unambiguous; the contemporary debate is over how seriously to take the indirection. Garff stresses the personal stakes; Poole pushes the indirection to its limit; Evans and Westphal hold a middle.","era":"1813-1855","discipline":"Philosophy, Theology","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses","page":"pp. 12–14","canonical":"","quote":"The most obvious difference is that whereas the pseudonymous works from Either/Or through Concluding Unscientific Postscript are indirect communication, the signed discourses from first to last are direct. But the two modes of communication have ultimately the same aim: \"to make aware of the religious, the essentially Christian.\"® To accomplish this, Kierkegaard used two procedural modes in the Total-Anleg.","label":"Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, pp. 12–14"},{"n":2,"work":"For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourself","page":"pp. 253–262","canonical":"","quote":"X B 4:15 n.d., 1851 *From first page proofs; see 87:35:* *Changed from: again show what a person is capable of when he is well driven!* *—Pap. X B 6:26 n.d., 1851* [X B 145 202] Occasioned by and concerning a recently published little book.... As is well known, my authorship has two parts: one pseudonymous and the other signed.","label":"For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourself, pp. 253–262"},{"n":3,"work":"Concluding Unscientific Postscript","page":"pp. 551–552","canonical":"","quote":"For my relation is even more external than that of a poet, who poetizes characters, and yet in the preface is himself the author. For I am impersonal, or am personal in the second person, a *souffleur* who has poetically produced the *authors,* whose preface in turn is their own production, as are even their own names.","label":"Concluding Unscientific Postscript, pp. 551–552"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"kierkegaard-contra-hegel-and-the-system","label":"Kierkegaard contra Hegel and the system: does the system have any place for the existing individual?"},{"slug":"truth-as-subjectivity-cup","label":"Truth as subjectivity (CUP): is this relativism?"},{"slug":"the-teleological-suspension-of-the-ethical-fear-and-tremblin","label":"The teleological suspension of the ethical (Fear and Trembling): is Abraham's case moral monstrosity?"}]}