Edifying discourses, a selection
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Selection or partial work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~130,000 words · 602 passages
Cite this work
- APASøren Kierkegaard. (n.d.). Edifying discourses, a selection. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/kierkegaard/edifying-discourses-a-selection
- MLASøren Kierkegaard. Edifying discourses, a selection. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/kierkegaard/edifying-discourses-a-selection.
- ChicagoSøren Kierkegaard. Edifying discourses, a selection. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/kierkegaard/edifying-discourses-a-selection.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
A selection from the edifying discourses: short texts on patience, expectancy, love and death, written to be read slowly.
Context and history
One detail changes how they should be seen: these he signed with his own name, whereas Either/Or, The Concept of Anxiety and the rest he published under pseudonyms. It was not a game. Kierkegaard issued the two series in parallel: the pseudonyms hold positions he sets out without owning, while in the discourses he speaks himself. Anyone wanting to know what Kierkegaard thought has here the voice he acknowledged as his.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
that speech, that I had gone my way through life undisturbed, with my sorrow— and with my wish." Then he called upon his soul and said: "Now you are being crafty; for you say that you wish, and pretend that the speech was about something external, which one can wish, while you know that it is something internal, which one can only will; you delude yourself, for you say: 'All other men can, only not I,' and yet you know that that whereby other men can do it, is that in which they are absolutely identical with you, so that if it really is the truth that you can not do it, then neither can the others do it. So you betray not only your own case, but, insofar as it depends on you, the case of all men; and when you humbly exclude yourself from their number, then you slyly destroy their power!" Then he went on. When he was then being slowly educated over a longer time under a schoolmaster, he was perhaps nearer to the faith. "Was being educated," as if it were another man who was doing it. Still this is not the case; it is only a misunderstanding, only an appearance. One man can do much for another man, but he cannot give him faith. We hear various stories in the world. One says: "My being what I am is my own work; I owe no man anything"; and he thinks it something to be proud of. Another says: "That distinguished man was my teacher, and I count it an honor to dare call myself his disciple"; and he believes it something to take pride in.…