Authorship and Authority in Kierkegaard's Writings

Authorship is a complicated subject in Kierkegaard's work, which he surely recognized, given his late attempts to explain himself in On My Work as an Author. From the use of multiple pseudonyms and antonyms, to contributions across a spectrum of media and genres, issues of authorship abound. Why did Kierkegaard write in the ways he did? Before we assess Kierkegaard’s famous thoughts on faith or love, or the relationship between 'the aesthetic,' 'the ethical,' and 'the religious,' we must approach how he expressed them. Given the multi-authored nature of his works, can we find a view or voice that is definitively Kierkegaard’s own? Can entries in his unpublished journals and notebooks tell us what Kierkegaard himself thought? How should contemporary readers understand inconsistencies or contradictions between differently named authors? We cannot make definitive claims about Kierkegaard’s work as a thinker without understanding Kierkegaard’s work as an author. This collection, by leading contemporary Kierkegaard scholars, is the first to systematically examine the divisive question and practice of authorship in Kierkegaard from philosophical, literary and theological perspectives.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Joseph Westfall, University of Houston-Downtown, USA 1. Kierkegaard qua Author: “Like the Guadalquibir River” Sylvia Walsh, Stetson University, USA 2. Rhetoric and Understanding: Authorship as Christian Mission Robert C. Roberts, Baylor University, USA 3. Illegible Salvation: The Authority of Language in The Concept of Anxiety Sarah Horton, Boston College, USA 4. The Very Tang of Life: Lyrical Jesting in Kierkegaard’s Postscript Title Edward F. Mooney, Syracuse University, USA 5. Inside the Escritoire: On Kierkegaard’s Erotic Theory of Communication Michael Strawser, University of Central Florida, USA 6. A Desire to Be Understood: Authorship and Authority in Kierkegaard’s Work Daniel Berthold, Bard College, USA 7. Kierkegaard the Humorist Marilyn Piety, Drexel University, USA 8. Kierkegaard’s Scene Changes: Authorship as Dramaturgical Practice Sophie Wennerscheid, University of Ghent, Belgium 9. Kierkegaard on the Art of Storytelling Eleanor Helms, California Polytechnic State University, USA 10. “I Came to Carthage”; “So I Arrived in Berlin”: Fleeing and Escape in Augustine’s Confessions and Kierkegaard’s Repetition Eric Ziolkowski, Lafayette College, USA 11. On “S.K.”: Selfhood and Signature in Kierkegaard and Sarah Kofman Joseph Westfall,University of Houston-Downtown, USA 12. Kierkegaard—What “Kind” of Writer?: A Dialogue George Pattison, University of Glasgow, UK Index

About the Author :
Joseph Westfall is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Houston-Downtown, USA. He is the author of The Kierkegaardian Author (2007), editor of The Continental Philosophy of Film Reader (Bloomsbury, 2018), and co-editor of Foucault and Nietzsche: A Critical Encounter (Bloomsbury, 2018).

Review :
“Authorship and Authority” or “A Master of Disguises” – this collection by renowned and early career Kierkegaard scholars weaves a tapestry of different approaches and voices as diverse as Kierkegaard’s authorship itself. A must-read for anyone interested in the work of the elusive Dane and the ‘meta-philosophy’ of his pseudonymous and non-pseudonymous writings. A practitioner of "the method of indirect communication" Kierkegaard wrote the works that made him immortal under an array of pseudonyms. He also published many texts under his own name and then reflected about the difference between the signed and unsigned works in his Journals, which were intended for publication. Anyone making a serious approach to Kierkegaard must grapple with the hydra-headed question of Kierkegaard’s authorship. Boasting a distinguished roster of contributors, this book is balanced, comprehensive, rigorously argued and above all an indispensable guidewire for anyone entering the labyrinth of Kierkegaard's oeuvre. This excellent introduction to the most basic question in Kierkegaard scholarship—Is there an authoritative “Kierkegaard” in Kierkegaard’s authorship?—has been sorely needed for years! Westfall has given us a text that presents an exceptionally thorough and even-handed orientation to the question while also enabling a richly-contested discussion among some of the best scholars in the field.