Philosophical Fragments

This volume contains a new translation, with a historical introduction by the translators, of two works written under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus. Through Climacus, Kierkegaard contrasts the paradoxes of Christianity with Greek and modern philosophical thinking. In Philosophical Fragments he begins with Greek Platonic philosophy, exploring the implications of venturing beyond the Socratic understanding of truth acquired through recollection to the Christian experience of acquiring truth through grace. Published in 1844 and not originally planned to appear under the pseudonym Climacus, the book varies in tone and substance from the other works so attributed, but it is dialectically related to them, as well as to the other pseudonymous writings. The central issue of Johannes Climacus is doubt. Probably written between November 1842 and April 1843 but unfinished and published only posthumously, this book was described by Kierkegaard as an attack on modern speculative philosophy by "means of the melancholy irony, which did not consist in any single utterance on the part of Johannes Climacus but in his whole life. . . . Johannes does what we are told to do--he actually doubts everything--he suffers through all the pain of doing that, becomes cunning, almost acquires a bad conscience. When he has gone as far in that direction as he can go and wants to come back, he cannot do so. . . . Now he despairs, his life is wasted, his youth is spent in these deliberations. Life does not acquire any meaning for him, and all this is the fault of philosophy." A note by Kierkegaard suggests how he might have finished the work: "Doubt is conquered not by the system but by faith, just as it is faith that has brought doubt into the world!."

Philosophical Fragments is a Christian philosophical work written by Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in 1844. It was the first of three works written under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus, the other two were De omnibus dubitandum est, 1841 and Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, 1846.

For the first time in English the world community of scholars is systematically assembling and presenting the results of recent research in the vast literature of Soren Kierkegaard. Based on the definitive English edition of Kierkegaard's works by Princeton University Press, this series of commentaries addresses all the published texts of the influential Danish philosopher and theologian.

When Kierkegaard died at the age of forty-two, the papers found in his desk included Johannes Climacus, probably written in the winter of 1842-43. The book is a novel, as well as a work of philosophy, which tells the tale of what happens to the young Johannes Climacus as he decides to become a philosopher. At first in awe of the great thinkers, especially Hegel he sets out to follow their philosophical example by exploring the maxim 'Everything must be doubted'. The more he examines this idea, however, the more he realises how deluded his philosophical heroes are. No human life - not even a philosopher's - could ever fit into the orderly paragraphs and chapters of systematic philosophy and Hegel was, therefore, like a man who builds an enormous castle but lives in a shack nearby. Republished here in a revised translation, Johannes Climacus demonstrates that philosophy can be humorous and entertaining as well as conceptually rigorous. With its extraordinary combination of literary finesse and sharp philosophical wit, it serves as an excellent introduction to a thinker whose stylistic and philosophical talents make even Nietzsche seem tame.