Kierkegaard Studies. Monograph Series

Kierkegaard and Bonhoeffer reflect on the topic of the "incognito Christ." This describes the hiddenness that characterizes Christ incarnated and therefore Christian revelation as a whole. This incognito becomes a source of bother but also that which makes faith possible. The examinations carried out by the authors and a dogmatic outline make this topic fruitful for the present.

For Kierkegaard the most important thing in life is to become a single individual or a true self. We are all born as human beings, but this makes us only members of a crowd, not true selves. To become a true self, we must transcend what we are at any given time and orient ourselves to the possible and to the actuality of the possible, to which all that is possible owes itself. True selves exist only in becoming, they are fragile, and that is their strength. They are not grounded by their own activities, but in a reality extra se, the flip side of which is a deep passivity that underlies all their activity and allows them to continually leave themselves and move beyond their respective actualities toward the new and the possible. Therefore, without the passion of possibility, there is no truly single individual. This study of Kierkegaard's post-metaphysical theology outlines his existential phenomenology of the self by exploring in three parts what Kierkegaard has to say about the sense of self (finitude, uniqueness, self-interpretation, and alienation), about selfless passion (anxiety, trust, hope, and true love), and about how to become a true self (a Christian in Christendom and a neighbor of God's neighbors).

Kierkegaard's thought is without question in continuity with the era of classical German philosophy. However, the fact that it was not only Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel who played a role for Kierkegaard, but rather that he explicitly places himself in the intellectual succession of Jacobi, has so far gone almost unnoticed. The aim of this study is to investigate Jacobi's decisive influence on Kierkegaard in detail for the first time.

The Abased Christ is the first monograph to be devoted exclusively to Søren Kierkegaard’s Christological masterpiece, Practice in Christianity. Alongside an argument for a new translation of the work’s title, it offers detailed textual commentary on a series of themes in Practice in Christianity, such as the person of Christ, contemporaneity, imitation, and Kierkegaard’s philosophy of history.

Anti-Climacus, the pseudonymous author of Practice in Christianity, presents to his readers a uniquely challenging understanding of who Christ is and what it means to follow him. The Christ of Anti-Climacus is not the glorious Christ who abides with the Father in heaven, but the abased Christ who is poor, marginal, offensive, and persecuted. Throughout Practice in Christianity, we are called not only to perceive the abased Christ, but to follow after him.

The Abased Christ aims to enrich historical theologians’ appreciation of Kierkegaard’s Christology. However, it concludes by grappling with questions of power, agency, and sacrifice which have been at the forefront of contemporary theology in the 20^th and 21^st centuries, thereby suggesting how we might make sense of Kierkegaard’s Christology today.

This study intends to show that the answer to the question whether faith can be justified without proofs can be resolved by importing ideas from Søren Kierkegaard’s and Alvin Plantinga’s affirmative take on the matter.

There is a deep similarity between the way they understand belief in God and belief in Christianity. The authors share the modern idea that there is an objective truth, combining it with the postmodern stance that no method exists which would guarantee access to it. One can see at both authors not only a deep commonality of ideas, but also a remarkable way in which their understandings augment each other. Whereas Kierkegaard comes to the provocative conclusion that, if a person wants to live authentically, she will meet Christ on her life’s journey without needing any proof, Plantinga’s inquiry contributes to the rational plausibility of this „Justified Faith without Reasons" project.

Arne Grøn’s reading of Søren Kierkegaard’s authorship revolves around existential challenges of human identity. The 35 essays that constitute this book are written over three decades and are characterized by combining careful attention to the augmentative detail of Kierkegaard’s text with a constant focus on issues in contemporary philosophy. Contrary to many approaches to Kierkegaard’s authorship, Grøn does not read Kierkegaard in opposition to Hegel. The work of the Danish thinker is read as a critical development of Hegelian phenomenology with particular attention to existential aspects of human experience. Anxiety and despair are the primary existential phenomena that Kierkegaard examines throughout his authorship, and Grøn uses these negative phenomena to argue for the basically ethical aim of Kierkegaard’s work. In Grøn’s reading, Kierkegaard conceives human selfhood not merely as relational, but also a process of becoming the self that one is through the otherness of self-experience, that is, the body, the world, other people, and God. This book should be of interest to philosophers, theologians, literary studies scholars, and anyone with an interest not only in Kierkegaard, but also in human identity.

Alongside an edition of his manuscript "Elements of the Systems of Aesthetics" (1824), written in German, this volume brings together a number of first translations of the most important aesthetic writings by the Danish philosopher Johan Ludvig Heiberg (1791–1860). An introduction presents Heiberg’s philosophy. His texts played a key role in the history of Danish Hegelianism and had great significance for Søren Kierkegaard.

This study retraces the historical philosophical premises of existential philosophy. Starting from Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, it analyzes the radical, substantive transformations of nineteenth-century thinking about metaphysics, anthropology, ethics, and forms of presentation of philosophy. The work culminates in a draft catalogue of the historical and systemic characteristics of existential philosophy.

While Kierkegaard’s philosophy focuses on concrete human existence, his thought has rarely been challenged regarding concrete and contemporary moral issues. This volume offers an overview of contemporary ethical issues from a Kierkegaardian perspective, deliberately taking him out of the sphere of Theology and Christian Ethics, and examining the ways in which his works can provide fruitful insight into questions which Kierkegaard certainly never himself envisaged, such as accepting refugees into our communities, understanding how we relate to social media, issues of identity with regard to bioengineering or transgender identity, or problems of interreligious dialogue.

The contributions in this volume, by international scholars, seek to address both the challenges and insights of Kierkegaard’s existential ethics for our contemporary societies, and its relation to topics of current interest in the field of moral philosophy. The volume is organized into three major sections: the first focusing on the relation between ethics and religion, a topic of primary importance with regard to the development of religious foundationalism and the challenges of dealing with diverse belief systems within our communities; the second on our understandings of ourselves and our relations to others with regard to issues of media and community; and the third targeting more specifically questions of identity, and the ways in which the developments of modern science impact identity construction. This work offers new paths for critically engaging with the moral issues of our times from an existential perspective.

A salto mortale is far more than just a leap, as Kierkegaard well understood, along with Jacobi his mentor in matters of metaphor. This metaphor is used as an image of faith. However, researchers often speak only of a “leap of faith,” thereby interchanging the two motions/metaphors. Compared to a leap of faith, the salto mortale suggest a far more complex notion of God, man, and religious commitment.

What is suspense, and why do we feel it? These questions are at the heart of the first part of this study. It develops and defends the ‘imminence theory of suspense’ – the view that suspense arises in situations that are structurally defined by something essential being imminent.

Next, the study utilizes this theory as an interpretative key to Søren Kierkegaard’s seminal work ‘Frygt og Bæven’ (‘FB’). FB is an exploration of what it means to take the story of Abraham and Isaac as a paradigmatic example of faith. The study argues that a core aspect of how Kierkegaard conceptualizes faith through the figure of Abraham is suspense. The argument is built upon the observation that to have faith is to be a hero. To be hero means to belong to a story. Stories manifests different conceptualizations of time. Abraham’s story, as FB frames it, is radically geared towards something imminent – it is characterized by an essential relation of suspense.

The study then explores how suspense not only forms part of the conceptualization of faith, but is also part of how this conceptualization is communicated. Thus, the study argues that there exists a symmetry of suspense between the rhetorical and the conceptual levels of the text.

The concept of sin permeates Søren Kierkegaard’s writing. This study looks at the entirety of his works in order to systematize his doctrine of sin. It demonstrates four key aspects: sin as misrelation, sin as untruth, sin as an existence state, and sin as redoubling in the crowd. Upon categorizing Kierkegaard’s doctrine of sin, his writings are examined to determine if his hamartiology is consistent across his numerous pseudonyms. To conclude, the study places Kierkegaard’s doctrine of sin within the broader theological discussion.

This work seeks to fully unpack the phenomenon of anxiety contained in Kierkegaard’s work “The Concept of Anxiety,” which presents the phenomenon as a major element of human emotional life. Kierkegaard’s arguments for a hamartiological view of anthropology that is grounded in a person’s experience of anxiety are reformulated in the larger framework of an existential dialectic.

The study examines Søren Kierkegaard’s notion of inwardness in terms of its conceptual structure and implications for practical existence. It focuses on texts Kierkegaard published under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus and his lectures from 1843 to 1845. The anthropological issue of how self-understanding is constituted remains linked to the question of which characteristics inwardness possesses as a concrete form of life for identity formation.

Recently there has been a growing interest not only in existentialism, but also in existential questions, as well as key figures in existential thinking. Yet despite this renewed interest, a systematic reconsideration of Kierkegaard’s existential approach is missing. This anthology is the first in a series of three that will attempt to fill this lacuna.

The 13 chapters of the first anthology deal with various aspects of Kierkegaard's existential approach. Its reception will be examined in the works of influential philsophers such as Heidegger, Gadamer, and Habermas, as well as in lesser known philosophers from the interwar period, such as Jean Wahl, Lev Shestov, and Benjamin Fondane. Other chapters reconsider central notions, such as "anxiety", "existence", "imagination", and "despair". Finally, some chapters deal with Kierkegaard's relevance for central issues in contemporary philosophy, including "naturalism", "self-constitution", and "bioethics".

This book is of relevance not only to researchers working in Kierkegaard Studies, but to anyone with an interest in existentialism and existential thinking.

A close analysis of the writings of Søren Kierkegaard reveals new relationships between the aesthetic and the religious. In this volume, detailed studies disclose a reciprocal conditionality that refers back to anthropological, theological, and art-theoretical premises. Thus, Kierkegaard’s "aesthetic" texts propagate core religious themes, while these themes in his religious writings are established by means of aesthetic considerations.

This book offers the first exhaustive presentation of Heidegger’s reception of Søren Kierkegaard that is grounded in historical philology and, at the same time, systematically oriented to philosophy. By placing their relationship in the context of Kierkegaard’s German-language transmission history and Heidegger’s thought processes, it reveals the singular features of Heidegger’s reception of Kierkegaard across various phases of his thinking.

Kierkegaard understood his thinking as philosophy confronting its own end. In campaigning against the existential amnesia of the 19th century, he revived the intellectual figure of a kind of philosophizing with roots in both the Socratic method and the apophatic reflections of Meister Eckhart. The Young Hegelians’ philosophy of action thereby became action of the text. The aim: existentially to move the reader.

Søren Kierkegaard argued that the most essential truths come to light by asking "How…?" This innovative collection of essays by leading scholars focuses on this questioning "How?", asking how we should relate to ourselves, to others, and to God; how we should be in the world; how we can become human. The result is a searching, original colloquium on what it means to be Kierkegaardian in the 21st century.
The adjective "Kierkegaardian" names many possibilities: ways of philosophizing, choosing, loving, looking, listening, reading, writing, teaching, making art, praying, going to church – or not going to church. "How" gestures to subjectivity, one of Kierkegaard’s most fundamental philosophical categories, while "What" signals an objectifying line of thought. The authors of these essays suggest that the crucial Kierkegaardian question is not what we are and ought to do, but how we can remain true to the finitude, passivity, and ambiguity of human existence.
While this Kierkegaardian "how" is often acknowledged by scholars, it is rarely thematized directly. Attending to it elicits new kinds of argument and reflection. Kierkegaardian Essays proposes a fresh approach to Kierkegaard, and is essential reading for experts and students alike.

This work is the first detailed study of the concept of faith in the early Kierkegaard. It not only examines his writings and relevant notes from his student days, but also the philosophical-theological sources and presuppositions that formed the basis for his thinking. The study clearly shows that many important aspects and elements of the philosopher’s later theories of faith had already taken form during the time of Kierkegaard's studies as a theology student.

Although Kierkegaard’s conception of himself as being a “religious writer” is generally known, the dogmatic aspect of his thought has rarely been the subject of thorough research. The basic intent of this work is to reconstruct several of Kierkegaard’s key problem complexes at the intersection of dogma and religious philosophy, with particular attention to the discursive context of the post-Hegelian epoch.

This volume presents a collection of published and unpublished writings on the philosophy and theology of Søren Kierkegaard. The broad range of texts and topics included in the volume extends from systematic introductory articles about fundamental theoretical and epistemological questions to specialized examinations of terminological, ontological, and theological issues. The contributions are directed in part toward resolving the hermeneutical problems raised by Kierkegaard’s writings. In addition, they take up and expand upon the essential possibilities offered by Kierkegaard’s writings for elucidating issues in the philosophy of religion and theology.

This study examines various facets of the relationship between Kierkegaard and Adorno from the perspective of subjectivity theory. It explores similarities and differences between the two philosophers and interprets Adorno’s conception of subjectivity as a critical further evolution of the Kierkegaardian approach, thereby casting a new light on the philosophical relationship between subjectivity, negativity, and critical analysis.

This book undertakes an extensive study of the constellation of two eminent thinkers of post-idealism for the first time. The contributions in this volume analyze the relationship between Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard systematically and historically from a number of thematic perspectives: metaphysics and ethics, freedom and original sin, existential philosophy and the theory of suffering, art and aesthetics, religion and science. The book also goes into Kierkegaard’s explicit disagreement with Schopenhauer and – last but not least – discusses the conflicting poles of idealism and modernity. The volume is rounded off by a first complete and annotated German translation of the notes on Schopenhauer, which Kierkegaard wrote in his late journals.

This study is the first comprehensive presentation of Kierkegaard’s method of an indirect communication from a philosophical perspective. The indirect communication is described as Kierkegaard’s method of thinking. Indirect communication not only represents a form of broken communication but also a theory on the limits of language and concept and a counterconcept to the systematically hermetic form. Here Kierkegaard’s place in history becomes evident in the constellation of change of post-idealism. In total, he emancipates himself from Schelling’s and Hegel’s systematic form and already points the way to Nietzsche and Derrida.

The volume contains a collection of German and English essays dealing with the reception of Søren Kierkegaard which take a closer look at the terms ”appropriation“ and ”reflection“. The double meaning in the subtitle is intended: The book not only discusses the (explicit) appropriation of and (implicit) reflection on the ideas of Kierkegaard within the context of their history of reception and influence. It also provides insight into the precursors of Kierkegaard and important sources of his thinking. In the reconstruction of the history of Kierkegaard’s reception the focus is on the so-called pseudonymous works and their impact on philosophy and theology mainly within Germany in the nineteenth and twentieth century. In the study’s treatment of the sources, the emphasis is primarily on Kierkegaard’s dispute with some of the main representatives of (post) Hegelian thinking.

A detailed reconstruction of Kierkegaard's concept of recognition has been lacking until now in Kierkegaard research. This book attempts to derive Kierkegaard's implicit concept of recognition in Either/Or and in Works of Love from the concepts of choice and love. It seeks to show that self-choice and self-love are to be understood as elementary forms of recognition. This means that the capacity to choose for oneself and to love oneself is the prerequisite for mutual recognition.

This collection of essays analyzes a systematic question: To what extent does Kierkegaard fall back upon positions of Fichte in his dispute with Hegel? The contributions explore this question, beginning with Kierkegaard's dissertation On the Concept of Irony to The Sickness unto Death. The thematic spectrum ranges from the theory of self-consciousness and the basis of ethical reflection to the anthropological basis of religion. The elucidation of the systematic relationships between Kierkegaard and Fichte has led to a revision of the prevalent views on the philosophy between Hegel and Kierkegaard.

If the Enlightenment turned to reason to reoccupy the place left vacant by the death of God, the history of the last two centuries has undermined the confidence that reason will bind freedom and keep it responsible. We cannot escape this history, which has issued in a pervasive nihilism and has rendered all appeals to the ethical questionable. Nor could Kierkegaard. The specter of nihilism haunts all of his writings, as it haunts already German romanticism, to which he is so indebted. To exorcize it is his most fundamental concern. And it is the same fundamentally religious concern that makes Kierkegaard so relevant to our situation: What today is to make life meaningful? If not reason, does the turn to the aesthetic promise an answer? To really choose is to bind freedom. Either-Or calls us to make such a choice, i.e. to be authentic. But what does it mean to be authentic? How are we today to think of such an authentic choice? As autonomous action? As a blind leap? As a leap of faith? Either/Or circles around these questions.

Kierkegaard’s edifying discourses are an often neglected part of his work. The author of the present study successfully demonstrates that they can be used as a significant source for understanding Kierkegaard’s Christianity. A series of interpretations of the best-known edifying discourses develop his deictic theology, which among other things make love of one’s neighbour a central theme and sees it rooted in the notion of a Trinitarian God.

The Passion of Infinity generates a historical narrative surrounding the concept of the irrational as a threat which rational culture has made a series of attempts to understand and relieve. It begins with a reading of Sophocles' Oedipus as the paradigmatic figure of a reason that, having transgressed its mortal limit, becomes catastrophically reversed. It then moves through Aristotle's ethics, psychology and theory of tragedy, which redefine reason's collapses in moral-psychological rather than religious terms. By changing the way in which the irrational is conceived, and the nature of its relation to reason, Aristotle eliminates the concept of an irrationality which reason cannot in principle dissolve. The book culminates in an extensive reading of Kierkegaard's pseudonyms, who, in a critical retrieval of both Greek tragedy and Aristotle, prescribe their apparently pathological age a paradoxical task: develop a finite form of subjectivity willing to undergo an unthinkable thought ‑ allow the transcendence of a god to enter into the mind as well as the marrow, to make a tragic appearance in which a limit to the immanence of human reason can again be established.

This study examines the relationship between Kierkegaard and Schleiermacher by first giving a detailed reading of Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks. Looking at Kierkegaard’s reception of Schleiermacher (often mediated by other writers) thus allows for new insights into the origin and development of Kierkegaard’s own theory of religion. At the same time, Kierkegaard’s critical assessment of Schleiermacher’s legacy in philosophy and theology leads to a substantial comparison of the epistemological, ontological, anthropological and theological presuppositions of their writings, which still resonate strongly in today’s philosophical and theological debates.

There are certain things that can be explained and certain things that cannot be explained. This book is about the latter. It is a book about death: how death interrupts and influences the reflection on the self. It is a book about God: a detailed and critical discussion on how Kierkegaard and Derrida apply the concept of God in their philosophical reflections.
The most ground-breaking analysis concerns the famous passage on the self (A.A) in The Sickness unto Death, where the author combines logical, rhetorical and dialectical means to establish a new perspective on Kierkegaard’s thinking in general. The Cartesian doubt then constitutes a common trait for his detailed and rigorous analysis of Derrida and Kierkegaard on death, madness, faith, and rationality – showing how they both seek to break up the Hegelian Aufhebung from within, but still remain dependent on Hegel.
After Kierkegaard and Derrida, the certainty and total uncertainty of death – and of God as infinite other – gives the self a basic, though non-foundational, responsibility. The significance of this responsibility, of this other, of this death, requires sustained and thorough consideration. Where others mark a conclusion, this book therefore marks a point of departure: reflecting on oneself at the graveside of a dead man – thus introducing an Autopsia.

Kierkegaard's criticism of Hegel is usually understood as a religiously-motivated refusal of speculative thought. This corresponds to Kierkegaard's own interpretation of his intentions in his autobiographical writings, but goes against the reception of Either/Or by Hegelians at the time. This book interprets the ethics developed in Either/Or as an independent contribution to the practical philosophy of German Idealism: as a restitution of morality on the basis of social ethics (Sittlichkeit). Kierkegaard criticizes Kantian ethics for its rigoristic tendencies, while his criticism of Hegel's political philosophy aims to show that it is hindered by Hegel's Logic .

This study engages in a detailed examination of Kierkegaard’s works of literary and dramatic criticism, including those works directed at interpreting Kierkegaard’s own authorship, with a specific concern for both what Kierkegaard and Kierkegaard’s anonyms and pseudonyms write about the nature and practice of authorship, as well as how the Kierkegaardian authors practice authorship themselves. Moving through five chapters, each devoted to one or more works of Kierkegaard’s criticism, the study develops a new approach to reading Kierkegaard – a new Kierkegaardian hermeneutic – that begins always with the character of the author. This new approach avoids the challenges of critics of biographical criticism, such as Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida, by positing the author always as a work of fiction him- or herself, the creation of an unknown and ever anonymous “author of the author”.

This study presents an interpretation of Kierkegaard’s writings “Either / Or,” “Repetition,” and “Fear and Trembling” against the backdrop of postmodern philosophy of religion.

An interpretation of Kierkegaard’s most provocative work, in which the Danish philosopher makes the biblical account of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac the epitome of faith.

The study focuses on the sceptical forms of thought and expression with which Hegel and Kierkegaard link the claim for absolute truth. With his 'self-completing scepticism' (Phenomenology of Mind) Hegel puts forward a process of purification which reveals truth through despair. In contrast, Kierkegaard's permanent mobilisation of doubt against knowledge and a directed faith appears as a 'self-consuming scepticism', the expression of which requires a literarisation of philosophy.

The volume presents the main proceedings from the International Congress on Schleiermacher and Kierkegaard at Copenhagen in October 2003. It reflects profoundly the modern interest in the relationship between those two figures representing the 19th century’s philosophy and theology. This title is being published at the same time as volume 11 of the series “Kierkegaard Studies. Monograph Series” and as volume 21 of the series “Schleiermacher-Archiv”.

Interpreting Kierkegaard in the general context of Golden Age Denmark, this interdisciplinary anthology features articles which treat his various relations to his most famous Danish contemporaries. It aims to see them not as minor figures laboring in Kierkegaard's shadow but rather as significant thinkers and artists in their own right. The articles illuminate both Kierkegaard's influence on his contemporaries and their varied influences on him. By means of the analyses of these various relations, aspects of Kierkegaard's authorship are brought into new and insightful perspectives. The featured essays treat some of the most important figures from the time, representing the fields of philosophy, theology, literature, criticism and art.

This work investigates crucial aspects of Kant's epistemology and ethics in relation to Kierkegaard's thinking. The challenge is taken up of developing a systematic reconstruction of Kant's and Kierkegaard's position. Kant forms a matrix for the interpretation of Kierkegaard, and considerable space is devoted to the exposition of Kant at those various points at which contact with Kierkegaard's thought is to be demonstrated. The burden of the argument is that Kierkegaard in his account of the stages is much closer to Kant than the texts initially reveal. It is possible, then, to arrive at a proper grasp of Kierkegaard's final position by seeing just how radically the stage of Christian faith (Religiousness B) departs from Kant.

Die Beiträge dieses Sammelbands behandeln die spannungsreichen Bezüge zwischen Kierkegaards Existenzdenken und Schellings Philosophie des Absoluten. Die Autoren werfen nicht nur ein neues Licht auf das Verhältnis Kierkegaards zur (Spät-) Philosophie Schellings und zum Idealismus überhaupt. Vielmehr eröffnen sie systematische Perspektiven, die - für die Philosophie, die Theologie und die Geisteswissenschaften insgesamt - gerade auch für gegenwärtige Problemstellungen von großer Bedeutung sind.

Steadfastly resisting established practice in academic writing, Søren Kierkegaard emphasizes the indispensability of "indirect communication" where religious truth is concerned. He wants to encourage the interlocutor's independent, personal search for meaning without influencing the quest through his own discourse. The author Nientied studies which linguistic and textual methods owe to this tenet. Drawing on the thinking of Ludwig Wittgenstein, who largely refrains from treating theological matters, she shows that this problem is not confined to religious discourse and that the ideal of direct communication is dubious. The convergence between Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein extends to semiotic and epistemological implications and offers a new framework for the discussion of the difference between faith and knowledge.

In the history of Kierkegaard reception scholars have predominantly focused on the pseudonymous works. Thus, while there are long traditions of research on well known pseudonymous works, such as Either/Or and The Sickness unto Death, scholarship on the edifying discourses is still at the pioneering stage. In an effort to bring this other, neglected half of Kierkegaard's authorship into focus, this volume of the Yearbook is dedicated specifically to the edifying discourses from 1843 44 and to Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, from 1845. It features articles from leading international scholars on various aspects of these discourses, which are explored from literary, philosophical and theological perspectives. A series of articles has also been included on the history of reception of these edifying discourses in the various countries and language groups.

The Yearbook also includes individual sections containing papers from recent international seminars on Kierkegaard's thought. One section provides a glimpse into the most recent work from the rich tradition of French Kierkegaard research. Another section includes leading papers from recent Hungarian Kierkegaard scholarship. These contributions serve to make this number of the Yearbook the most international to date and are proof of the growing interest in international Kierkegaard research.

On the basis of an interpretation of The Deeds of Love (1847) which remains close to the text, the attempt is made here to work out the conceptual structure of Kierkegaard's understanding of human active behavior and at the same time to relate this to positions of contemporary theories of active behavior, both philosophical and theological. The category of the expressive is shown to be central in this concept of active behavior.

The book brings together the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard with that of another prominent proto-existentialist thinker, Fyodor Dostoevsky. Asking the question: "What constitutes an authentic Christian life?", the book explores the answer given by both authors, which is that one should rid oneself of selfish inclinations and strive for a life of faith that revolves around the virtues of humility and non-preferential love. However, as we learn from Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard, becoming an authentic individual is no easy task, and the book goes on to examine the obstacles that lie in the path of individual existential self-development.

The book then examines the ways in which the various characters and pseudonymous authors who populate Dostoevsky's and Kierkegaard's books struggle in their attempts to become authentic ethical and religious individuals. The examination of this struggle, termed existential entrapment and defined as the inability to progress on the path of one's existential self-development, forms the core of the book and helps to map out the ethical-religious landscape of Dostoevsky’s and Kierkegaard’s thought.