University of Texas Bulletin
No. 2326: July 8, 1923
SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS OF KIERKEGAARD
Translated by L. M. HOLLANDER
Adjunct Professor of Germanic Languages
Comparative Literature Series No. 3
Published by The University of Texas, Austin
The benefits of education and of
useful knowledge, generally diffused
through a community, are essential
to the preservation of a free government.
Sam Houston
Cultivated mind is the guardian
genius of democracy.... It is the
only dictator that freemen acknowledge
and the only security that free-men
desire.
Mirabeau B. Lamar
To my Father-in-Law
The Reverend George Fisher,
A Christian
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION I
DIAPSALMATA
IN VINO VERITAS (THE BANQUET)
FEAR AND TREMBLING
PREPARATION FOR A CHRISTIAN LIFE
THE PRESENT MOMENT[1]
INTRODUCTION I
Creditable as have been the contributions of Scandinavia tothe cultural life of the race in well-nigh all fields of humanendeavor, it has produced but one thinker of the first magnitude,the Dane, Sören Å. Kierkegaard[1]. The fact that he is virtuallyunknown to us is ascribable, on the one hand to the inaccessibilityof his works, both as to language and form; on the other, to theregrettable insularity of English thought.
It is the purpose of this book to remedy the defect in a measure,and by a selection from his most representative works to provide astimulus for a more detailed study of his writings; for the presenttimes, ruled by material considerations, wholly led by socializing,and misled by national, ideals are precisely the most opportune tointroduce the bitter but wholesome antidote of individual responsibility,which is his message. In particular, students of Northern literaturecannot afford to know no more than the name of one who exerted apotent and energizing influence on an important epoch of Scandinavianthought. To mention only one instance, the greatest ethical poem of ourage, "Brand"—notwithstanding Ibsen's curt statement that he"had read little of Kierkegaard and understood less"—undeniablyowes its fundamental thought to him, whether directly or indirectly.
Of very few authors