Footnotes
* Søren Kierkegaards Papirer (20 vols.), Gyldendal, Copenhagen, 1909–48, X4, A 665, p. 476. The reference is to a short story by the Danish author S. S. Blicher (1782–1848).
* Papirer III, A 179, p. 72.
† Papirer III, B 179, 62, p. 207.
‡ Synspunktet for min Forfatter-Virksomhed: En Ligejrem Meddelelse, Rapport til Historien (‘The Point of View of My Activity as an Author: A Direct Communication, Report to History’), in Søren Kierkegaard: Samlede Vœrker, ed. A. B. Drachmann, J. L. Heiberg and H. O. Lange, Gyldendal, Copenhagen, vol. 18, 1964, p. 89.
* Papirer IV, B 24, p. 192.
* Hans-Georg Gadamer (Truth and Method, Sheed & Ward, 1975) claims that we approach contemporary works of art with ‘prejudices we are not in control of, presuppositions that have too great an influence over us for us to know about them’, and that these can give such works ‘a resonance that does not correspond to their true content and their true significance’ (p. 265).
* See Fear and Trembling, tr. Alastair Hannay, Penguin Classics, Harmondsworth, 1985, translator’s introduction, pp. 10ff.
† Synspunktet for min Forfatter-Virksomhed (‘The Point of View of My Activity as an Author’), Samlede Vœrker, vol. 18, 1964, p. 90.
* Josiah Thompson, Kierkegaard, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1973, p. 165.
† See Papirer IV, A 87, p. 33, where Kierkegaard writes that it seems to be his lot to teach the truth, as far as he can find it, but in a way that destroys all his authority. But for someone ready to learn, he says, it doesn’t matter whether he is spoken to by ‘a Balaam’s ass or a guffawing crosspatch or an apostle or an angel’ (cf. Numbers 22–24).
* Anatol (1893) is a fine example.
* Concluding Unscientific Postscript, tr. David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1941, pp. 223–4, quoted with alterations. (Samlede Vœrker, vol. 9, 1963, pp. 208–9.)
* See, for example, Alasdair Maclntyre’s After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, Duckworth, 1981.
* Papirer I, A 75, p. 53. The entry is dated I August 1835. The details of Kierkegaard’s life are largely gathered from Josiah Thompson’s excellently vivid biography, Kierkegaard, A. A. Knopf, New York, 1973. The account draws from my own Kierkegaard, The Arguments of the Philosophers, Routledge, 1982 (rev. edn 1991), Chapter 1.
* The Sickness unto Death, tr. Alastair Hannay, Penguin Classics, Harmondsworth, 1989, p. 36.
* Papirer IV, A 234, p. 92.
* Papirer XI1, A 164, p. 128.
† Papirer XI1, A 141, p. 97.