Introduction

Summary

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813–1855) was a prolific author who published his philosophical writings in various styles and often pseudonymously. In this diverse authorship, The Sickness unto Death stands as something of an exception. Although signed pseudonymously – a method that Kierkegaard often used to put distance between his own view and the one expressed in the text – Kierkegaard regarded this book as highly reflective of his own understanding of the religious life. Rapidly written in the spring of 1848 and published in 1849 after some agonizing, the motivation behind The Sickness unto Death, according to Kierkegaard’s journal, was in part a conscientious conviction that the whole of his authorship needed to be curated in the direction of the religious. The appearance of the second edition of Either/Or in particular provoked him to accompany the reissue with a new and more religiously inflected text. “The second edition of Either/Or really can’t be published without something accompanying it,” he fretted in his journal. “Somehow the emphasis must be on the fact that I’ve made up my mind about being a religious author … If this opportunity passes, virtually everything I’ve written, viewed as a totality, will be dragged down into the aesthetic” (KJN 5, NB10:69/SKS 21, 293–294).