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Mesnard, Pierre.
Kierkegaard
Paris, Presses universitaires de France 1970 1 in -8 Broché couverture Illustrée 102[p.p]
Reference : LCI-4204
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5 book(s) with the same title
Guds Uforanderlighed. En Tale. Af S. Kierkegaard. - [MAGNIFICENT COPY - PRESUMABLY KIERKEGAARD'S OWN]
Kjøbenhavn, Reitzel, 1855. 8vo. 22 pp., (1 blank f.). Original gift-binding of the black glitted paper with single gilt lines to spine. Spine worn, slightly restored, and with a bit of loss of paper. Boards with a little rubbing and wear along edges. A bit of brownspotting internally. With the exlibris of both Georg Nygaard and J.H. Groth-Andersen to inside of front board and with Georg Nygaard’s neat hand-written pencil-inscription to front fly leaf stating, in Danish, that “This book is one of / Søren Kierkegaard’s / complimentary copies. / Given to me by / editor Frejlif Olsen / October 1910 / Georg Nygaard”. Also a neat pencil-annotation from a later owner to inside of back board stating that this is Kierkegaard’s personal copy and the only known copy in a gift-binding, referencing the auction catalogue, no. 2186. There is also a laid-in note in the same hand explaining that at the auction, there was merely one copy of this title and that no presentation-copies of the present work are known to exist.
One of the extremely rare gift-copies, either a presentation-copy given by Kierkegaard to one of his dedicatees, or the copy he had in his possession, when he died. It seems likely as explained by the previous owner that this will have been Kierkegaard’s own copy, i.e. no. 2186 of the auction catalogue. If not, it is the only presentation-copy of this work known to exist. No matter what, this is arguably the best copy of the present title that one can find. “The Changelesness of God” constitutes Kierkegaard’s final separate publication and the final work of the separately published pamphlets of the Church Feud-triad. It was published on Sept. 1st, 1855, between the 7th and 8th installments of “The Moment”. “The Changelessness of God” is a discourse that Kierkegaard gave as a sermon on May 18, 1851, in the Citadel Church in Copenhagen, but it had not previously been published. It has the Epistle text of James 1, 17-21 as its basis, a text that Kierkegaard had also used in his Upbuilding Discourses of 1843. It contains one of his favourite passages from the Bible: “Every good thing bestowed and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation, or shifting shadow”. In his journal from May 1851, after having given the sermon, he refers to the text basis as “my first, dear Jacob” and says about his sermon that he felt he preached “passably”, but so weakly that he could barely be heard” (NB 24:74). As most of Kierkegaard’s religious writings, this too is called a discourse, and for this his final separate publication, Kierkegaard uses again the printed dedication that he first used in his upbuilding discourses from 1843, that for his father: “To the late Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard formerly a clothing merchant here in the city, my father, these discourses are dedicated.” Those who had been in doubt as to his mental health due to the publications in “The Moment”, had now finally been disproven or persuaded that there was absolutely nothing wrong with his sanity. This piece constitutes a lucid and calm sermon, a continuation of his upbuilding discourses, which had been of pivotal importance to him since 1843. “It also served the purpose, as H. Johnson notes, of demonstrating that Kierkegaard’s attack was from within the church, as a believer—a fact that many have failed to notice, especially since his anti-ecclesiastical tracts were translated later in places where readers had not been exposed to the rest of his writings. Kierkegaard, in fact, always considered his upbuilding discourses to be even more important than his philosophical writings.” (D. Anthony Storm). The year 1855 marks the definitive turn in Kierkegaard’s life and in his career. It is the year that he publishes his final four publications and the year that he dies. In his earlier works For Self Examination and Practice in Christianity, from 1850 and 1851 respectively, Kierkegaard had already addressed the topic of true Christianity as opposed to the official and institutionalized Christendom. Back then, he had done so, not subtly, but also not as a full-blown attack. After a publishing hiatus of more than three years, this was going to change. At the end of his life, Kierkegaard embarked on a controversial and fierce attack upon the Danish Church that would have immense consequences for the development and comprehension of the official Church, the priesthood, and Christianity itself. The Danish State Church epitomized all that he found wrong with Christendom as a whole, and he did not embark on his quest lightly. Throughout his writings, Kierkegaard had maintained that the belief in Christ required a leap of faith and all of one’s person. The Danish Lutheran church on the other hand claimed that all Danes were born Lutheran and were thus Christians, unless they actively chose not to be. The Danish Church had moved increasingly towards transforming Christianity into a profane state religion. It is still the case in Denmark today that when you are born a Dane, you are also born a member of the Church. This equivalence between Church and State was extremely far from what Kierkegaard believed Christianity to be. Kierkegaard felt that the Church had betrayed the Christianity of the New Testament and he was willing to fight till his death to defend what he understood true Christianity to be. We were well beyond thoughts of reformation. It needed to be torn down and completely rebuilt. The war was waged in newspaper articles in the paper The Fatherland and in the “periodical” Kierkegaard himself founded with the sole purpose of attacking the Church, “Øieblikket” (i.e. The Moment. Kierkegaard’s assault on official Christendom and the Danish Church was based upon his notion that Christendom had departed too far from the Christianity of The New Testament. For the outraged Kierkegaard, Bishop Mynster typified the complacent and established “official” Christianity, but the relationship with Mynster was complicated. He and Kierkegaard had always been closely intertwined. Few people played as important a role in Kierkegaard’s life as Mynster, who Kierkegaard would constantly relate and refer to. Kierkegaard’s “mild” attack on the Church and the established Christianity in Denmark in Training in Christianity (1851) hit Mynster harder than anyone else, and the two theological giants never reconciled after the publication of that work. But Kierkegaard had saved something much worse for later. For his own enormous respect for Mynster, it also meant a great deal that Mynster was the last person to talk to Kierkegaard’s father before he died, and that his father had always held him in extremely high regard. In his Journal from 1853, he writes “...I have something upon my conscience as a writer. Let me indicate precisely how I feel about it. There is something quite definite I have to say, and I have so much upon my conscience that (as I feel) I dare not die without having uttered it. For the instant I die and so leave this world (so I understand it) I shall in the very same second (so frightfully fast it goes!), in the very same second I shall be infinitely far away, in a different place, where, still within the same second (frightful speed!), the question will be put to me: “Hast thou uttered the definite message quite definitely?” And if I have not done so, what then?... There is something quite definite I have to say. But verily I am not eager to say it. On the contrary, I would so infinitely prefer that another should say it— which, however, would not help me, since (as I understand it) it was and remains my task.... For it is not a cheerful message, this definitive thing, and I cannot but think that there are several persons dear to me to whom it would be unwelcome to hear it said. Above all there is a right reverend old man, a consideration which has constantly held me back, laid a restraint upon my tongue and upon my pen, a consideration for the highest dignitary of the Church, a man to whom by the memory of a deceased father I felt myself drawn with an almost melancholic affection—and I must think that to him especially it will be very unwelcome that this is said.” (Pap. X 6 B: 371). This excellently sums up, one the one hand, the necessity Kierkegaard felt in saying what needed to be said about the state of Christianity in Denmark, and, on the other hand, why he was reluctant to say it. He knew it would offend, but most of all hurt, especially Mynster, for whom he still had great affection. At the same time, it was also Bishop Mynster, who was responsible for the approach Kierkegaard considered so dangerous to true Christianity, the person who personified the weak and complacent established “official” Christianity that disregarded the true Christianity of The New Testament – the kind of tame Christianity in which the priests tell the congregation what they want to hear. What was he to do? Kierkegaard’s journals and papers are full of entries that reflect the conundrum. The defining moment occurred when Mynster had died, which happened on January 30th, 1854. The Sunday before the funeral, Professor (of Theology) H.L. Martensen, Court Preacher at Christiansborg Slotskirke, gave a commemorative sermon for Mynster, in which he included him in a series of holy men going back to the apostles and called him a “witness to the truth” and a “martyr” (in Danish “Blodvidne”). Kierkegaard could not take it. He finally broke his silence and protested with an article in The Fatherland, where he called Mynster a “frail pleasure-seeker, who was great only as an orator” and presented his own version of a “witness to the truth”, namely “A witness to the truth, a real witness to the truth, is a man who is skinned alive, abused, dragged from one prison to the next, and in the end (…) crucified, beheaded, burned at the stake, or fried on a grill, his soulless body left unburied and sprawling (…) in some remote place—that’s how a witness to the truth is buried!” (Var Biskop Myster et ”Sandhedsvidne”…, December 18, 1854). And thus, the crusade against the established Danish Church had begun. Kierkegaard continued his fight against Martensen, against the priests, against the official Christianity of Denmark, and against the Church, in articles in The Fatherland, in “The Moment”, and in his final separate publications. Although Kierkegaard’s illness and soon to follow death on November 11 ended Kierkegaard’s writing and continued attacks, it did not end the storm on the Church that the epigons continued. Kierkegaard’s authorship before 1851 had made him famous in both Denmark and abroad as one of the greatest living philosophers and theologians. His attack on official Christianity, however had a more direct effect upon his own kingdom, but also upon the neighbouring countries Norway, Sweden, and Germany. Kierkegaard’s Church Feud continued for years after his death and kept affecting the Church severely. One must remember that this fierce attack came from one of the most respected thinkers of the period – of all periods –, and it came from within, not from an atheist. It came from a believer, a more profound believer than most. Kierkegaard had a single copy of The Changelessness of God in his possession when he died (Auction Catalogue # 2186, where there is no description of appearance). Himmelstrup 200 The present copy is no. 94 in Girsel's ""Kierkegaard"" (The Catalogue) which can be found here.
Om Begrebet Ironi med stadigt hensyn til Socrates. Af S. A. Kierkegaard. - [A TRULY SPLENDID, COMPLETELY FRESH COPY IN THE DAINTIEST OF THE GIFT-BINDINGS]
Kjøbenhavn, P.G. Philipsens Forlag, 1841. 8vo. (8), 350 pp. Gift binding of elaborately blindpatterned full cloth with single gilt line-border to boards and single gilt lines to spine. All edges gilt and printed on fine paper. The slightest touch of wear to corners and capitals, but apart from that a complete fresh, clean, bright and tight copy. It looks like it has hardly been opened and seems like it just came from the binder. No markings of any kind.
A truly splendid copy of the first edition of Kierkegaard's dissertation, being a completely fresh copy in the daintiest of the gift-bindings, presumably one of the two daintily bound copies that Kierkegaard had in his own collection (nr. 2110-11 in the auction catalogue). The copy is with the Thesis, and both the day and the time has been filled in by hand. Kierkegaard's dissertationconstitutes the culmination of three years’ intensive studies of Socrates and “the true point of departure for Kierkegaard’s authorship” (Brandes). The work is of the utmost importance in Kierkegaard’s production, not only as his first academic treatise, but also because he here introduces several themes that will be addressed in his later works. Among these we find the question of defining the subject of cognition and self-knowledge of the subject. The maxim of “know thyself” will be a constant throughout his oeuvre, as is the theory of knowledge acquisition that he deals with here. The dissertation is also noteworthy in referencing many of Hegel’s theses in a not negative context, something that Kierkegaard himself would later note with disappointment and characterize as an early, uncritical use of Hegel. Another noteworthy feature is the fact that the thesis is written in Danish, which was unheard of at the time. Kierkegaard felt that Danish was a more suitable language for the thesis and hadto petition the King to be granted permission to submit it in Danish rather than Latin. This in itself poses as certain irony, as the young Kierkegaard was known to express himself poorly and very long-winded in written Danish. One of Kierkegaard’s only true friends, his school friend H.P. Holst recounts (in 1869) how the two had a special school friendship and working relationship, in which Kierkegaard wrote Latin compositions for Holst, while Holst wrote Danish compositions for Kierkegaard, who “expressed himself in a hopelessly Latin Danish crawling with participial phrases and extraordinarily complicatedsentences” (Garff, p. 139). When Kierkegaard, in 1838, was ready to publish his famous piece on Hans Christian Andersen (see nr. 1 & 2 above), which was to appear in Heiberg’s journal Perseus, Heiberg had agreed to publish the piece, although he had some severe critical comments about the way and the form in which it was written – if it were to appear in Perseus, Heiberg demanded, at the very least, the young Kierkegaard would have to submit it in a reasonably readable Danish. “Kierkegaard therefore turned to his old schoolmate H. P. Holst and asked him to do something with the language…” (Garff, p. 139). From their school days, Holst was well aware of the problem with Kierkegaard’s Danish, and he recounts that over the summer, he actually “translated” Kierkegaard’s article on Andersen into proper Danish. The oral defense was conducted in Latin, however. The judges all agreed that the work submitted was both intelligent and noteworthy. But they were concerned about its style, which was found to be both tasteless, long-winded, and idiosyncratic. We already here witness Kierkegaard’s idiosyncratic approach to content and style that is so characteristic for all of his greatest works. Both stylistically and thematically, Kierkegaard’s and especially a clear precursor for his magnum opus Either-Or that is to be his next publication. In many ways, Either-Or is born directly out of The Concept of Irony and is the work that brings the theory of Irony to life. Part One of the dissertation concentrates on Socrates as interpreted by Xenophon, Plato, and Aristophanes, with a word on Hegel and Hegelian categories. Part Two is a more synoptic discussion of the concept of irony in Kierkegaard’s categories, with examples from other philosophers. The work constitutes Kierkegaard’s attempt at understanding the role of irony in disrupting society, and with Socrates understood through Kierkegaard, we witness a whole new way of interpreting the world before us. Wisdom is not necessarily fixed, and we ought to use Socratic ignorance to approach the world without the inherited bias of our cultures. With irony, we will be able to embrace the not knowing. We need to question the world knowing we may not find an answer. The moment we stop questioning and just accept the easy answers, we succumb to ignorance. We must use irony to laugh at ourselves in order to improve ourselves and to laugh at society in order to improve the world. The work was submitted to the Philosophical Faculty at the University of Copenhagen on June 3rd 1841. Kierkegaard had asked for his dissertation to be ready from the printer’s in ample time for him to defend it before the new semester commenced. This presumably because he had already planned his sojourn to Berlin to hear the master philosopher Schelling. On September 16th, the book was issued, and on September 29th, the defense would take place. The entire defense, including a two hour long lunch break, took seven hours, during which ”an unusually full auditorium” would listen to the official opponents F.C. Sibbern and P.O. Brøndsted as well as the seven “ex auditorio” opponents F.C. Petersen, J.L. Heiberg, P.C. Kierkegaard, Fr. Beck, F.P.J. Dahl, H .J.Thue og C.F. Christens, not to mention Kierkegaard himself. The work appeared in two states – one with the four pages of “Theses”, for academics of the university, whereas the copies without the theses were intended for ordinary sale. These sales copies also do not have “Udgivet for Magistergraden” and “theologisk Candidat” on the title-page. The first page of the theses always contains the day “XXIX” of September written in hand, and sometimes the time “hora X” is also written in hand, but not always. In all, 11 presentation-copies of the dissertation are known, and of these only one is signed (that for Holst), all the others merely state the title and name of the recipient. As is evident from the auction catalogue of his collection, Kierkegaard had a number of copies of his dissertation in his possession when he died. Five of them were bound, and two of them were “nit. M. Guldsnit” (i.e. daintily bound and with gilt edges). These two copies were obviously meant as presentation-copies that he then never gave away. The gift copies of the dissertation were given two types of bindings, both brownish cloth, one type patterned, the other one plain, and some of them have gilt edges, but most of the plain ones do not. There exist two copies on thick vellum paper – one being Kierkegaard’s own copy, the other being the copy for H.C. Ørsted, discoverer of electromagnetism and then principle of the University of Copenhagen. “As already implied, two works of the authorship stand out in the sense that Kierkegaard sent his presentation-copies to a special circle of people: The dissertation from 1841...” (Posselt, Textspejle, p. 91, translated from Danish). Most of the copies were given to former teachers and especially to people who, due to leading positions, personified the university. “For this circle of initiated we can now, due to registered copies, confirm that Kierkegaard gave copies with handwritten dedications to the headmaster of the University H.C. Ørsted (printed on thick paper), Kolderup-Rosenvinge and to J.L. Heiberg. It is granted that Sibbern, Madvig and F.C. Petersen were also given the dissertation as a gift,... but these copies are not known (yet).” (Posselt, Textspejle, pp. 93-94, translated fromDanish). (N.b. We have since handled the copy given to Petersen and can thus confirm that it exists). Only a few months after Kierkegaard died (11th of November 1855), at the beginning of April 1856, his books were put up for sale. The sale was an event which created stir among scholars all over Denmark, and the event drew large crowds. Everyone wanted a piece of the recently deceased legend, and bidding was lively. The average price for the single items was nearly a rix-dollar, a very high price for that time. As the old Herman Lynge wrote in a letter on the 22nd of May (The Royal Library, Recent Letters, D.), to the famous collector F.S. Bang, “At the sale of Dr. Søren Kierkegaard’s books everything went at very high prices, especially his own works, which brought 2 or 3 times the published prices”.” (Rohde Auction Catalogue, p. LVIJ). Many authors, philosophers, and scholars were present in the auction room, which was completely full, as was the Royal Library, who bought ca 80 lots. “Many of the books, not only his own, were paid for with much higher prices than in the book shops” (In Morgenposten no. 99, 30. April 1856, written by “P.”, translated from Danish). ""Some books were bought by libraries where they still are today, others were bought by private people, who sometimes wrote their names in the front of the books and thus, indirectly, stated that they came from Kierkegaard’s book collection… The edition (of the auction catalogue, 1967) registers all books from Kierkegaard’s book collection that it has hitherto been possible to identify – either in public or in private ownership… All in all, nearly a couple of hundred volumes – i.e. ca. 10 % – of the Kierkegaardian book collection is said to be rediscovered…"" (Rohde). Thus, today, books from Kierkegaard’s library are of the utmost scarcity. Only very few are still possible to acquire, and they hardly ever appear on the market. Himmelstrup 8
Om Begrebet Ironi med stadigt hensyn til Socrates. Af S. A. Kierkegaard. - [KIERKEGAARD’S DISSERTATION IN THE ORIGINAL BINDING, WHICH IS OF THE UTMOST SCARCITY.]
Kjøbenhavn, P.G. Philipsens Forlag, 1841. 8vo. (4), 350 pp., 1 f. (blank), 2 pp. (advertisements). Completely uncut and partly unopened in the original brown cardboard binding. Rebacked with paper perfectly matching that of the boards. Corners restored. Title-page evenly browned and a few leaves with a bit of brownspotting, but overall in unusually nice condition, clean, fresh, and bright. Completely unmarked.
A fabulous copy of the first edition of Kierkegaard’s dissertation, here in the original binding, which is of the utmost scarcity. We have only seen it in this state once before. And of all the copies we have handled of the Irony over the last decades, we have only once before come across a copy with the advertisement-leaf in the back. This is virtually never present. This completely uncut copy is approximately 1 cm taller and wider than regular copies. The spines of the original Kierkegaard cardboard bindings are always just thin paper directly glued on the block, making them extremely fragile, especially on the thicker volumes. If one finds these original bindings, the spines are almost always more or less disintegrated. Kierkegaard's dissertation constitutes the culmination of three years’ intensive studies of Socrates and “the true point of departure for Kierkegaard’s authorship” (Brandes). The work is of the utmost importance in Kierkegaard’s production, not only as his first academic treatise, but also because he here introduces several themes that will be addressed in his later works. Among these we find the question of defining the subject of cognition and self-knowledge of the subject. The maxim of “know thyself” will be a constant throughout his oeuvre, as is the theory of knowledge acquisition that he deals with here. The dissertation is also noteworthy in referencing many of Hegel’s theses in a not negative context, something that Kierkegaard himself would later note with disappointment and characterize as an early, uncritical use of Hegel. Another noteworthy feature is the fact that the thesis is written in Danish, which was unheard of at the time. Kierkegaard felt that Danish was a more suitable language for the thesis and hadto petition the King to be granted permission to submit it in Danish rather than Latin. This in itself poses as certain irony, as the young Kierkegaard was known to express himself poorly and very long-winded in written Danish. One of Kierkegaard’s only true friends, his school friend H.P. Holst recounts (in 1869) how the two had a special school friendship and working relationship, in which Kierkegaard wrote Latin compositions for Holst, while Holst wrote Danish compositions for Kierkegaard, who “expressed himself in a hopelessly Latin Danish crawling with participial phrases and extraordinarily complicatedsentences” (Garff, p. 139). When Kierkegaard, in 1838, was ready to publish his famous piece on Hans Christian Andersen (see nr. 1 & 2 above), which was to appear in Heiberg’s journal Perseus, Heiberg had agreed to publish the piece, although he had some severe critical comments about the way and the form in which it was written – if it were to appear in Perseus, Heiberg demanded, at the very least, the young Kierkegaard would have to submit it in a reasonably readable Danish. “Kierkegaard therefore turned to his old schoolmate H. P. Holst and asked him to do something with the language…” (Garff, p. 139). From their school days, Holst was well aware of the problem with Kierkegaard’s Danish, and he recounts that over the summer, he actually “translated” Kierkegaard’s article on Andersen into proper Danish. The oral defense was conducted in Latin, however. The judges all agreed that the work submitted was both intelligent and noteworthy. But they were concerned about its style, which was found to be both tasteless, long-winded, and idiosyncratic. We already here witness Kierkegaard’s idiosyncratic approach to content and style that is so characteristic for all of his greatest works. Both stylistically and thematically, Kierkegaard’s and especially a clear precursor for his magnum opus Either-Or that is to be his next publication. The year 1841 is a momentous one in Kierkegaard’s life. It is the year that he completes his dissertation and commences his sojourn in Berlin, but it is also the defining year in his personal life, namely the year that he breaks off his engagement with Regine Olsen. And finally, it is the year that he begins writing Either-Or. In many ways, Either-Or is born directly out of The Concept of Irony and is the work that brings the theory of Irony to life. Part One of the dissertation concentrates on Socrates as interpreted by Xenophon, Plato, and Aristophanes, with a word on Hegel and Hegelian categories. Part Two is a more synoptic discussion of the concept of irony in Kierkegaard’s categories, with examples from other philosophers. The work constitutes Kierkegaard’s attempt at understanding the role of irony in disrupting society, and with Socrates understood through Kierkegaard, we witness a whole new way of interpreting the world before us. Wisdom is not necessarily fixed, and we ought to use Socratic ignorance to approach the world without the inherited bias of our cultures. With irony, we will be able to embrace the not knowing. We need to question the world knowing we may not find an answer. The moment we stop questioning and just accept the easy answers, we succumb to ignorance. We must use irony to laugh at ourselves in order to improve ourselves and to laugh at society in order to improve the world. The work was submitted to the Philosophical Faculty at the University of Copenhagen on June 3rd 1841. Kierkegaard had asked for his dissertation to be ready from the printer’s in ample time for him to defend it before the new semester commenced. This presumably because he had already planned his sojourn to Berlin to hear the master philosopher Schelling. On September 16th, the book was issued, and on September 29th, the defense would take place. The entire defense, including a two hour long lunch break, took seven hours, during which ”an unusually full auditorium” would listen to the official opponents F.C. Sibbern and P.O. Brøndsted as well as the seven “ex auditorio” opponents F.C. Petersen, J.L. Heiberg, P.C. Kierkegaard, Fr. Beck, F.P.J. Dahl, H .J.Thue og C.F. Christens, not to mention Kierkegaard himself. Two weeks later, on October 12th, Kierkegaard broke off his engagement with Regine Olsen (for the implications of this event, see the section about Regine in vol. II). The work appeared in two states – one with the four pages of “Theses”, for academics of the university, whereas the copies without the theses were intended for ordinary sale. These sales copies also do not have “Udgivet for Magistergraden” and “theologisk Candidat” on the title-page. The present copy is one of the sales-copies without theses. Himmelstrup 8 The present copy is no. 11 in Girsel's ""Kierkegaard"" (The Catalogue) which can be found here.
Indøvelse i Christendom. Af Anti-Climacus. Nr. I. II. III. Udgivet af S. Kierkegaard. - [SPLENDID COPY IN ORIGINAL CONDITION, BELONGING TO KIEKEGAARD'S COUSIN AND CONFIDENTE]
Kjøbenhavn, Reitzel, 1850. 8vo. (4), 277 pp. Completely uncut in the original blue cardboard binding. Magnificently preserved with the spine almost completely intact, including the original printed paper title-label. Tiny loss of paper to the capitals and a little loss to the lower front hinge. A small crack to lower back hinge, but binding remarkably firm and tight. Very neat re-enforcements to inner hinges, otherwise unrestored. Light occasional brownspotting. Pencil-annotation to inside of front board. A four-line annotation (about Dean Gude and a sermon he gave in April 1885) to foot of p. 98. With the ownership signature of H.P. Kierkegaard, also dated in his hand “d. 26de September 1850”. Housed in a beautiful black glitted box with elaborate gilding and Gothic gilt lettering to spine (Harry Larsen). A bit of wear to extremities. Himmelstrup 121.
A splendid copy of the first edition in original condition – in the original binding with the exceedingly rare original printed title-label preserved – which has belonged to Kierkegaard’s disabled cousin, who was a great source of inspiration to him. Kierkegaard’s confidante and close friend his cousin H.P. Kierkegaard received this copy the day after it was published (Sept. 25th). We have never seen a copy in this state before, with the original title-label preserved. By Kierkegaard himself described as his “most perfect and truest” work and by Mynster considered “a profane game with the holy”, Training in Christianity is one of the most important and most controversial of all of Kierkegaard’s works. As Kirmsse says, “[i]t marks the beginning of a relentless and single-minded campaign against “Christendom” “, heralding his feud with the established Church and the Danish priesthood. In many ways, Training in Christianity is considered one of the most quintessential Kierkegaardian works, having at the centre of attention the question of how to become a Christian in Christendom, leading ultimately to a fierce attack on the Danish church. It is in this work that Kierkegaard fully exposes his conception of the religious individual and fully describes the personal suffering that comes with being a Christian. Christ is considered the rolemodel, and true Christendom consists in following him. Thus, the Christian will also suffer for his faith, though no man shall become a martyr for the truth. Kierkegaard thus also distinguishes sharply between the established, triumphant church and the true, struggling one, which comes to constitute the essence of his attack on the established Danish Church. The work is published under the same pseudonym as Sickness Unto Death, Anti-Climacus, and also here, the pseudonym is not meant to deceive or to qualify the work aesthetically. On the contrary, this work evokes an idealized Christianity, and Kierkegaard did not wish to convey that he was himself such an ideal Christian. “Anti-Climacus is also the author of The Sickness Unto Death. He might be considered the author of Kierkegaard’s greatest religious works, just as Johannes Climacus is the author of the great pseudonymous (esthetic) works. H. Hong remarks, “The prefix (Anti-) does not mean ‘against.’ An old form of ‘ante’ (before), as in anticipate, the prefix denotes a relation of rank, as in ‘before me’ in the First Commandment”. In his journals Kierkegaard said, “Climacus is lower, denies he is a Christian. Anti-Climacus is higher, a Christian on an extra ordinarily high level”. Kierkegaard used Anti Climacus to write from the vantage point of a perfect Christian because he himself could not claim to be one. It should also be added that Kierkegaard decided to remove this pseudonym at the last moment, by hurrying to the printer, but was too late.” (Dr. Anthony Storm, Commentary on Kierkegaard). Along with being his “most perfect and truest” work, Kierkegaard also thought it to be, together with The Sickness Unto Death, his most important. Concluding that Christendom had departed so far from the Christianity of The New Testament, Kierkegaard, with Training in Christianity, seeks to reintroduce Christianity into Christendom. The work’s perfection lies in its combination of preaching and polemics. and truest thing.» In his reflections on such topics as Christ's invitation to the burdened, the imitatio Christi, the possibility of offense, and the exalted Bishop Mynster, who was then the face of the Danish Church, was outraged when he read the book and called it «a profane game with the holy». Mynster and Kierkegaard had always been closely intertwined. In many ways, Kierkegaard considered him almost family, but for the outraged Kierkegaard, Mynster also typified the complacent and established «official” Christianity. Few people were as important to Kierkegaard as Mynster, and no-one else suffered as severely from his attack on the established Christianity in Denmark. The two theological giants never reconciled. For Kierkegaard, the radical commandments of Christianity and what it demands from the individual are absolutely essential, and with Training in Christianity, he begins his crusade against the kind of tame Christianity in which the priests tell the congregation what they want to hear. ”Of the many works he wrote during 1848, his “richest and most fruitful year,” Kierkegaard specified Practice in Christianity as «the most perfect Christ, he takes as his theme the requirement of Christian ideality in the context of divine grace. Addressing clergy and laity alike, Kierkegaard asserts the need for institutional and personal admission of the accommodation of Christianity to the culture and to the individual misuse of grace. As a corrective defense, the book is an attempt to find, ideally, a basis for the established order, which would involve the order’s ability to acknowledge the Christian requirement, confess its own distance from it, and resort to grace for support in its continued existence. At the same time the book can be read as the beginning of Kierkegaard’s attack on Christendom. Because of the high ideality of the contents and in order to prevent the misunderstanding that he himself represented that ideality, Kierkegaard writes under a new pseudonym, Anti-Climacus.” (Hong edition). The present copy is no. 78 in Girsel's ""Kierkegaard"" (The Catalogue) which can be found here.
Atten opbyggelige Taler af S. Kierkegaard. - [EXCEEDINGLY SCARCE IN THE ORIGINAL BINDING, WITH THE ORIGINAL TITLE-LABEL]
Kjøbenhavn, Philipsen, 1843-45. 8vo. (4), 52 + 62 (+ 1 blank leaf) + 84 + 59 (including the blank leaf between the title-page and the preface!) + 70 (+ 1 blank leaf) + 111 pp. Completely uncut in the original brownish grey boards with original printed title-label to spine (fully intact). Boards a bit brownspotted and a larger damp stain to top of front board. A couple of smaller stains (lacquer or wax) to spine. A few horizontal creases to spine with paper almost invisibly glued back on to hold tight. Occasional brownspotting, mostly to the first and last leaves. But overall splendidly preserved.
A truly magnificent copy of the first edition of this very scarce Kierkegaard-title, in completely original condition with all of the original printed title-label preserved, and fully complete with the joint title-page, contents, all the half-titles, dedications, blanks, etc. This Kierkegaard-title is rare in itself, with much less than 278 copies printed in all, but it is utterly amazing to find this exceedingly rare book in original state like here. Only very few copies are left in the original binding, which we have only seen once before. The spines of the original Kierkegaard cardboard bindings are always just thin paper directly glued on the block, making them extremely fragile. If one finds these original bindings, the spines are almost always more or less disintegrated. The present copy is a rare exception that furthermore has the original title-label, which is of the utmost scarcity. To our knowledge, only one other copy in the original binding has been located. Apart from the other copy we have seen of this work in the original binding, the present copy is also the only original Kierkegaard-binding we have seen that is not in the usual blue “hollanderet” cardboard binding, but plain brown. No other such copy has been registered for sale, and no other such copy, to our knowledge, is registered in any institution. Furthermore, this seems to be the only copy to have surfaced so far, which has preserved the original printed title-label in its entirety. As far as we know, it has been recorded no-where, due to its extreme scarcity. Kierkegaard’s Upbuilding (or Edifying) Discourses were published over the course of two years, in 1843 and 1844. In all, 18 Upbuilding Discourses were published, divided over six publications, namely: Two Upbuilding Discourses from 1843 Three Upbuilding Discourses from 1843 Four Upbuilding Discourses from 1843 Two Upbuilding Discourses from 1844 Three Upbuilding Discourses from 1844 Four Upbuilding Discourses from 1844 Each of these publications accompanied one of the main pseudonymous works, beginning with Either-Or in 1843. As opposed to his major philosophical works, the religious upbuilding discourses actually bear the name of the author on the title-page. Of course, this was by no means incidental. While the pseudonymous works could raise the question of the religiousness of the author, the parallelly written religious discourses stress the fact that we are dealing with an author, who was religious from the very beginning – an essential fact that Kierkegaard wished to stress for those interested in his authorship. In his journals, Kierkegaard clearly states that the religious discourses are as significant in his oeuvre as a whole as are the larger pseudonymous works, “I began with “Either-Or” and two upbuilding discourses...” he says, and explains that he intended the upbuilding, the religious, to advance, and that he wanted to show “that the writer was not an aesthetic author who in the course of time grew older and for that reason became religious”. (Journals, IX A 227). He was religious all along, also during all of the major philosophical publications that were not written in his name. The fact that every major pseudonymous work – up until Concluding Unscientific Postscript appeared and revealed the identity of the real author – was accompanied by one of these small Upbuilding Discourses, bears testament to the pivotal role they play in Kierkegaard’s philosophical development. Furthermore, while Kierkegaard could not present anyone with copies of his pseudonymous works (as explained above), he could indeed give away presentation-copies of his accompanying Upbuilding Discourses, which he then did. The Upbuilding Discourses are particularly interesting in several regards, one being that it is in the course of the printing of these that Kierkegaard changes his publisher. Ever since Kierkegaard had chosen to publish his first book himself, he had had his books on commission with the leading Copenhagen publisher Reitzel (the sole exception being his thesis, the Irony). That was also the case with Two Upbuilding Discourses from 1843. But for some reason, the following five publications of Upbuilding Discourses did not appear with Reitzel, but with P.G. Philipsen instead. We do not know the exact reason for this change in publishers, as the commission was exactly the same for the two. Whereas Two Upbuilding Discourses from 1843 had sold relatively well, the Three and Four Upbuilding Discourses from 1843 did not sell well. A mere 102 and 104 copies respectively out of a commission issue of 300 were sold. In an attempt at making money on these discourses in spite of the poor sales numbers, Philipsen offers to buy the unsold copies of Two Upbuilding Discourses from 1843, buys a sales issue of 300 copies of the Two Upbuilding Discourses from 1844, and makes the same agreement with Kierkegaard for the following two Discourse-publications. Sales numbers are still poor, however, and in the spring of 1845, only ca 100 copies of each of the 1844 Discourse publications have been sold. The printing issue of each was about 500, and Philipsen’s sales issue 300 thus, both Philipsen and Kierkegaard had large numbers of each Discourse-publication left, and in May 1845, they make a new deal. Philipsen buys the remainder issues of all six Discourse-publications, including the 278 copies of Two Upbuilding Discourses from 1843 from Reitzel. Philipsen has a joint title-page printed, along with a contents-leaf, and now issues the seminal Kierkegaard-publication that is no. 85 in the bibliography (Himmelstrup), namely Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses – all six publications, constituting all eighteen Upbuilding Discourses collected in one book. Seeing that there were 278 copies left of the Two Upbuilding Discourses from 1843, a maximum of 278 copies of Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses can have been made, making it one of the scarcest Kierkegaard-books. The actual number is certainly lower than 278, though, probably quite a bit lower, seeing that Philipsen continued to sell the separate publications, all copies of which he then evidently did not include in the Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses. The individual pamphlets, of course, are even scarcer, with a maximum of 232 copies of Two Upbuilding Discourses from 1843 and somewhere between 100 and 150 copies of the others. We know from the Erindringsbog fra Bianco Luno 1844 that Kierkegaard had 506 copies of Four Upbuilding Discourses 1844 printed, six of them on fine paper for presentation. Seeing that we have already established the clear thread of identity throughout all six publications, we must assume that the other pamphlets were printed in the same numbers. And we have the record of the remainder issues that Philipsen buys in 1845, which lets us conclude of the Upbuilding Discourses, that, by that time, 222 copies of Two 1843 139 copies of Three 1843 130 copies of Four 1843 120 copies of Two 1844 92 copies of Three 1844 96 copies of Four 1844 were sold out of the total number of original issues. In other words, these are extremely scarce. Not least in the original wrappers or bindings. The scarcest Kierkegaard-title that exists, however, will be found in the continuation of the printing history of the Upbuilding Discourses. It is the mythically rare title of Sixteen Upbuilding Discourses, which Philipsen issued in 1852, when the Two Upbuilding Discourses had been sold out and it was no longer possible to collect Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses. Thus, Philipsen had yet another title-page printed, this time with Sixteen Upbuilding Discourses as the title and the year 1843-45 on it, along with a new index-leaf he issued this, the scarcest of all Kierkegaard-titles, in March 1852. “It is not known how large the issue was, but it cannot have been more than 83, seeing that that was what was left of Three Upbuilding Discourses from 1843.” (Tekstspejle p. 54, translated from Danish). The idea of the Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses (let alone the Sixteen) was not Kierkegaard’s. He had agreed to the Eighteen, but it was not his intended project with the Upbuilding Discourses. Therefore, he wished for the book not to be reviewed, and he naturally did not give away any copies of the Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, and of course not the Sixteen either, only the individual pamphlets. In all, seven presentation-copies of the different Upbuilding Discourses are registered, all being for either Heiberg or Nielsen. Curiously, neither Eighteen nor Sixteen Upbuilding Discourses were to be found in Kierkegaard’s book collection after his death. All the individual pamphlets were, however, along with a copy of the first nine Upbuilding Discourses – i.e. the three publications from 1843 – bound together. For more on the conundrum of the actual number of copies of the Upbuilding Discourses, see the Preface by Flemming Chr. Nielsen in Girsel’s Kierkegaard-catalogue, p. 19. Himmelstrup 85
