More people than I can count on one hand have been talking or writing about Soren (don’t know how to do the o) Kierkegaard lately. I just wrote in an email that I read in internet bios that he, along with Father Henri De Lubac, who was influential in Vatican II, seemed a bit anti-clergy, or in the latter’s case, anti Bishops? But that De Lubac was disappointed with the chaotic fall-out after Vatican II. And they both seemed to elevate the individual. De Lubac’s The Drama of Atheist Humanism was recommended in which he talks about Kierkegaard and Dostoyevsky favorably. It’s now on my wish list.

I find this explanation in the Wikipedia article on Kierkegaard encouraging in regard to my own blogging intentions,

Half of Kierkegaard’s authorship was written under pseudonyms which represented different ways of thinking. This was part of Kierkegaard’s theory of “indirect communication”. According to several passages in his works and journals, such as The Point of View of My Work as an Author, Kierkegaard wrote this way in order to prevent his works from being treated as a philosophical system with a systematic structure. In the Point of View, Kierkegaard wrote: “In the pseudonymous works, there is not a single word which is mine. I have no opinion about these works except as a third person, no knowledge of their meaning, except as a reader, not the remotest private relation to them.”[33]

He used indirect communication to make it difficult to ascertain whether he actually held any of the views presented in his works. He hoped readers would simply read the work at face value without attributing it to some aspect of his life. Kierkegaard also did not want his readers to treat his work as an authoritative system, but rather look to themselves for interpretation.

Early Kierkegaardian scholars, such as Theodor W. Adorno, have disregarded Kierkegaard’s intentions and argue the entire authorship should be treated as Kierkegaard’s own personal and religious views.[34] This view leads to many confusions and contradictions which make Kierkegaard appear incoherent.[35] However, many later scholars such as the post-structuralists, have respected Kierkegaard’s intentions and interpreted his work by attributing the pseudonymous texts to their respective authors.

I differ in that my posts represent my opinions and points of view, but I maintain that these are based on incomplete, fragmented, and largely uneducated understanding and are not meant to be dogmatic. I like the freedom that the above gives a writer/explorer.