Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments Read Online

Reitzel.38 The eighteen discourses from 1843 to 1844 had already been sold to Philip G. Philipsen in 1845.39

The Corsair, one day before the official publication date of Postscript, carried a brief, moderate announcement in which Postscript was attributed to Victor Eremita (editor of Either/ Or, “whom we have previously recommended to our readers.”40 In the same issue, an announcement, part of the ongoing attack by The Corsair on Kierkegaard, was made of a prize (from the association of clothing manufacturers) allegedly given to Victor Eremita for a treatise on the thesis: “Trouser legs41 of cloth trousers in Denmark are equal in length or one is longer than the other. ‘Tertium non datur’ [There is no third]!”42

In the next number,43 a week later, came a scathing piece with the title “The Great Philosopher” plus other small pieces of personal ridicule, including the initial associating of Kierkegaard with Mr. Crazy Nathanson, the beginning of the character assassination carried on intermittently in The Corsair the next few months. The starting point of the piece is “A First and Last Explanation,” but Postscript itself is not considered. The most memorable part of the piece is a sketch of Kierkegaard conceitedly posing in the center of the universe.

A poster using the drawing was prepared by Gyldendal For-lag on the occasion of the publication of the third edition of Kierkegaard’s Samlede Værker (1962-64). To the original caption, “The whole world revolves around Søren Kierkegaard,” is added: “The caricature is from the satirical weekly The Corsair. What at the time was malice is today literally the truth. People the world over are occupied with Søren Kierkegaard.”

On the heels of The Corsair’s opening campaign of ridicule and abuse of Kierkegaard as a person came a review by Prosper naturalis de molinasky (Peder Ludvig Møller).44 In the style and tone of The Corsair, Moller makes light of concepts such as “the absurd” and “the single individual.” Before stating “some aphoristic observations that occurred to me during the reading,”45 Møller makes the general observation that the French require a book to be “worked through organically, and there an author like our great Climacus, despite all his writings, would perhaps find a place under the rubric: chaotic literature—or not be recorded among the writers at all.”46 In a journal entry,47 Kierkegaard makes a passing reference to Møller’s piece but offers no reply. He did, however, write a response48 (not sent) to an article in Nyt Aftenblad49 on Møller’s review, which is described as “flippant, brazen, and crude,”50 “the most miserable scribbling in the most improper tone”51

A few days after Møller’s pseudonymous review. Den Fri-sindede appeared with a rhymed review52 that playfully recommends reading Postscript a few pages at a time but in two columns says very little about the book.

Of special interest are the review53 and (six months later) the refutation of Postscript54 by Peter Vilhelm Christensen, who for a time had been Kierkegaard’s secretary55 After disclaiming philosophical insight and proficiency and saying that he had not read Fragments and only part of Postscript, Christensen proceeds in the review to criticize the discussion of Grundtvig and Lindberg in Postscript.56 The subsequent refutation of Postscript begins with a reference to the earlier review as a hastily written “unscientific dismissal”57 of Postscript. After another defense of Grundtvig and Lindberg, Christensen criticizes the concept of truth and inwardness and the indirect method. In closing, he states that he would solemnly “give this ‘humorist’ over to Satan … simply and solely in order that I could really learn to love Mag. Kierkegaard, whom I cannot stop loving and yet can never really love from the heart, because I am too weak really to love the brother I do not see, and I never do see him, because it is either Victor Eremita or Johannes Climacus or Frater Taciturnus, now a dumb devil and now a jaunty demon who stands between him and me. “58 Kierkegaard’s draft of a response to Christensen, “An Unhappy Lover in Dansk Kirketidende,”59 was not published.

More numerous and copious among Kierkegaard’s responses to the first contemporary writing about Postscript were his unpublished pieces concerning admirers, Magnus Eiriksson60 and Professor Rasmus Nielsen61 “And now finally there is the raging Roland, the cantankerous Magnus Eirikson [sic], who in an appalling manner caresses me [Kierkegaard] in the most affable and appreciative terms,” who “rages like a person possessed in order to get Prof Martensen62 dismissed “63 Kierkegaard’s objection to Nielsen’s Mag Kierkegaards “Johannes Climacus” og Dr. H. Martensens “Christelige Dogmatik” (1849) was that Nielsen had become didactic and had tried to make Concluding Unscientific Postscript into a science, into a piece of scholarship.64

Although Postscript received short shrift in Kierkegaard’s lifetime, and both Fragments and Postscript, like David Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature, “fell dead-born from the press,”65 Kierkegaard’s confident prophecy about Postscript did come true in the next century “This book has an extraordinary future.”66

1 On the origin of the name of the pseudonymous author, see Historical Introduction, Philosophical Fragments, or A Fragment of Philosophy, pp. ix-x, KW VII.

2 Fragments, p. 109, KW VII (SV IV 270-71).

3 See, for example, The Point of View for My Work as an Author in The Point of View, KW XXII (SV XIII 547); JP V 5614; VI 6332 (Pap. IV A 45; X5 A 153). See also Andrew Hamilton, Sixteen Months in the Danish Isles, I-II (London: 1852), II, P. 269: “The fact is he walks about town all day, and generally in some person’s company .... When walking, he is very communicative.”

4 Postscript was the last of the works of “indirect communication” by pseudonymous editors and authors. First came Either/Or (1843, Victor Eremita), followed by Fear and Trembling (1843, Johannes de Silentio), Repetition (1843, Constantin Constantius), Philosophical Fragments (1844, Johannes Climacus), The Concept of Anxiety (1844, Vigilius Haufmensis), Prefaces (1844, Nicolaus Notabene), and Stages on Life’s Way (1845, Hilarius Bookbinder).

5 JP V 5871 (Pap. VII1 A 2). See also Supplement, pp. 2.116-18 (Pap. VII1 B 69, 71).

6 See JP V 5871 (Pap. VII1 A 2); Supplement, pp. 2.68-70 (Pap.