In addition, the writing of Two Ages was begun late in 1845. Despite the brevity of time and the amazingly prolific productivity during that period of twenty-one months, the writing of Postscript involved sketches, a provisional draft, a second draft, and a final copy.

“The entire manuscript, lock, stock, and barrel, was delivered to the printer medio December, or thereabouts, 1845”5 Within about two months (including the long Christmas and New Year holiday period), the type was hand set, first and second page proofs were printed and corrected, type corrections were made, and the volumes were printed, bound, and delivered to the bookstore—in its own way a feat comparable to the writing of the manuscript. In order not to interfere with the process, Kierkegaard withheld a desired addition.6 At the last moment, “A First and Last Explanation” was delivered for inclusion on unnumbered pages at the end of the volume. The “Explanation,” Kierkegaard’s public assumption of juridical and literary responsibility for the pseudonymous works from Either/Or to Postscript,7 had been “dashed off on a piece of paper in the original manuscript but was laid aside to be worked out in detail and was delivered as late as possible lest it lie around and get lost in a print shop. “8

The initial title in outlines of what became Postscript was “Logical Issues.”9 The first outline had eight headings, of which no. 4 was “On the leap,” no. 5 “On the difference between a dialectical and pathos-filled transition,” no. 6 “All historical knowledge is only approximation,” and no. 8 “What is existence.” Others were on the nature and historical significance of a category. A later outline10 under the same title included “by Johannes Climacus . . . a preface about Philosophical Fragments,” and “Something about the Art of Religious Address.” Other headings were “God’s Judgment / A Story of Suffering / Imaginary Psychological Construction” and “Writing Sampler / Apprentice Test Piece.” Some of the themes from each outline were developed in Postscript, others were omitted, and the title was changed to Concluding Unscientific Postscript.

The self-ironizing of calling Fragments a pamphlet is extended by calling its successor a “postscript,” an addendum that is over five times as long as its base, an afterthought that quintuples the original thought. Likewise, the self-minimizing of the title Fragments is repeated by calling Postscript a “compilation,” although its varied contents have a substantial internal coherence. Climacus calls himself a humorist,11 and the work in many ways both exemplifies and discusses humor, but he himself as author and his new book are the objects of self-irony, a close cousin of humor.

The term “unscientific” is an accurate translation of the Danish uvidenskabelig, but because of the narrowness peculiar to the Anglo-American word “science” it needs a wider definition that includes all kinds of scholarship. A clue to the use of “unscientific” in the title is a journal entry with the heading Concluding Simple Postscript—“simple” because “there can be no schoolmaster, strictly understood, in the art of existing. … With respect to existing, there is only the learner, for anyone who fancies that he is in this respect finished, that he can teach others and on top of that himself forgets to exist and to learn, is a fool. In relation to existing there is for all existing persons one schoolmaster—existence itself.”12 Therefore, didacticism is avoided, and barbs are aimed at the reductionist and quantifying natural sciences on the one hand, at the system builders on the other, and at the professor in both categories and in between.

Climacus’s objection is not to thinking, to reflection. He states that “would be especially foolish for one whose life in large part and at its humble best is devoted to its service, and especially foolish for me who admires the Greeks. After all, he must know that Aristotle, when discussing what happiness is, lodges the highest happiness in thinking.”13 His objection is rather to a confusion of categories, a failure to make a crucial distinction:

All essential knowing pertains to existence, or only the knowing whose relation to existence is essential is essential knowing. Essentially viewed, the knowing that does not inwardly in the reflection of inwardness pertain to existence is accidental knowing, and essentially viewed its degree and scope are a matter of indifference. . . . Therefore, only ethical and ethical-religious knowing is essential knowing. But all ethical and all ethical-religious knowing is essentially a relating to the existing of the knower.14

Therefore, just as the pseudonymous works from Either/Or through Stages are oriented away from the imaginative distance of a poet-existence,15 away from “having one’s life in what the poet recites”16 instead of existing, Postscript is oriented away from “speculative thought, away from the system.”17

“Concluding” in the title means first of all Kierkegaard’s intention to terminate his activity as an author. In two journal entries from February 1849, just before the last step in the printing and distribution of Postscript, Kierkegaard wrote:

Up until now I have made myself useful by helping the pseudonyms become authors. What if I decided from now on to do the little writing I can excuse in the form of criticism. Then I would put down what I had to say in reviews, developing my ideas from some book or other and in such a way that they could be included in the work itself. In this way I would still avoid becoming an author.18

It is now my intention to qualify as a pastor.19 For several months I have been praying to God to keep on helping me, for it has been clear to me for some time now that I ought not to be a writer any longer, something I can be only totally or not at all.