M. Jamie Ferreira, Kierkegaard (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009)
    Reviewed by Jamie Turnbull, St. Olaf College
    
    There is no shortage of introductions to Kierkegaard’s thought and work on the market. To be noteworthy, any new addition to this genre is required to make a significant contribution. Introductions to Kierkegaard typically either treat his work thematically or by focusing on particular texts. In Kierkegaard (Blackwell Great Minds), M. Jamie Ferreira takes the reader unfamiliar with Kierkegaard upon a journey through his authorship. The reader is guided all the way from Either - Or to The Point of View, with: Repetition, Fear and Trembling, The Concept of Anxiety, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Works of Love, and The Sickness Unto Death all receiving substantial consideration along the way. Perhaps what is unique about Ferreira’s introduction is her treatment of the relationship between the two different strands of Kierkegaard’s authorship: pseudonymous and upbuilding, or religious, discourses (what she refers to as “a kind of double helix”). Ferreira outlines how a concern or theme developed and explored in a pseudonymous text is often revisited by Kierkegaard in an accompanying nonpseudonym piece. In doing this, Ferreira draws out novel and illuminating connections between the two helices of Kierkegaard’s work. To continue her metaphor, the connections she draws constitute a genetic map of the authorship: Ferreira’s being the first attempt to chart the DNA of Kierkegaard’s work in this way. Kierkegaard is specifically aimed at “people who have always wanted to read something of Kierkegaard’s but have felt daunted by the prospect, or people who have tried to read a particular work and given up”, although Ferreira hopes that “[p]erhaps even Kierkegaard scholars might find something of value in it” (vi). Ferreira charts a rich course through the authorship, drawing subtle and complex connections between the texts, as one would perhaps expect from a scholar with a reputation for logical acuity; and who has spent a career engaged in close and careful reading of Kierkegaard. Ferreira has indeed produced a guide that will not simply be of use to those with little or not familiarity with Kierkegaard’s work, but one that ought to be read by any Kierkegaard scholar worthy of the name. What is worthy of attention in Ferreira’s book is the methodological approach that it recommends, and the subsequent: picture of Kierkegaard that emerges; evaluation of his thought; and the conclusions that this allows us to draw. The methodological approach we adopt conditioning what we can and cannot achieve with Kierkegaard philosophically, and so the question of his contribution to the Western intellectual tradition. This question is particularly pertinent in introducing Kierkegaard to new readers. In the introduction to her book, “Reading Kierkegaard”, Ferreira claims to proceed not by outlining what Kierkegaard thought, but by showing how he thought: considering the encounter between reader and text as a “performance” (2). (I hope it does not betray the spirit of this approach to say that throughout the course of Kierkegaard Ferreira gives particular attention to the themes of: inner and outer (or
    
    subject and object), love, quantative and qualitative, concrete and abstract, dialectic, faith, love, sin, and responsibility.) Ferreira does not intend her book to function as a substitute for the reader’s engagement with the primary sources, but rather to act in the manner of a cultured companion. What, then, is the significant feature of Kierkegaard’s work by means of which it is to be introduced? Ferreira’s answer is: “[t]he first, and in one sense the most important, piece of guidance that can be given to a reader concerns the most unusual feature of Kierkegaard’s writing – namely, the variety of forms it takes” (3-4). The variety of literary forms Kierkegaard’s work assumes thus acts as Ferreira’s point of entry to the authorship, for “if we cease to care about the literary strategies in the texts, we will fail to understand the ideas in the text” (10). If we begin with the literary dimension of Kierkegaard’s work, according to Ferreira, other aspects of it will necessarily be brought into play. As she tells us: “It is not possible to separate Kierkegaard’s literary works from his religious/philosophical works – he was literary ‘all the way down’, even in his religious and philosophical writings. Therefore I want to explore the ways in which his literary sensibilities go hand in hand with all the dimensions of his life and issue in a complex overdetermination of his writing. By overdetermination I mean simply that there is not necessarily one single thing going on at any given time, not one single motivation informing a given text. We are embodied, contextualized human beings who cannot neatly compartmentalize the various dimensions of our life, so it is not surprising that more than a single motivation or single concern would inform a piece of writing” (11). The requirement being that “[w]e need to do justice to Kierkegaard’s wide variety of concerns and interests: I propose that we call them religious/theological, philosophical, psychological, literary, and personal” (12). As a way of thinking about the multivalent nature of Kierkegaard’s work, Ferreira proposed the “heuristic device” of “concentric circles”, which “conveys the notion of several thoughts with the same centre” (13). The idea is that at the centre of Kierkegaard’s work lies his life experience, and from this we might envisage circles with different radii to emanate: the religious/theological, philosophical, psychological, literary, and personal. These circles overlap, but their areas are not coextensive. Extending this image, if we think of Kierkegaard’s works as lines segmenting these concentric circles: Ferreira’s project charts the intersection (and thereby the relationship between) each work and circle. The other part of Kierkegaard I would like to give particular attention to is the final section of the conclusion, “Looking Ahead”. In this section Ferreira comments upon where she thinks that value in reading Kierkegaard lies, and precisely how that value is to be determined. In this, Ferreira writes: “Are Kierkegaard’s writings of lasting significance? Descriptively the question is answered positively by reference to the numbers of people who have cared and continue to care about these writings. A more interesting answer arises from the variety of different audiences his writings have sustained, and from the reasons people care” (194). For “much of the lasting impact of
    
    Kierkegaard’s writing is on readers who care little about the academic or scholarly assessment of Kierkegaard’s thought” (195). The audiences of Kierkegaard’s performances thereby include spectators, or participants, who are not scholars but laymen and women readers. The suggestion being that the value of Kierkegaard’s work is to be determined by the meaning that work has for, or the affect it has upon, such audiences. Ferreira gives examples of two such audiences. First is Jim Hernandez, a member of a street gang, who was moved to change his life as a result of reading Kierkegaard; second, one thousand Iranian students that attended a gathering on Kierkegaard in 2004. Why were these Iranian students interested in Kierkegaard? “In great part, it seems, it was because they saw Kierkegaard’s ‘attack on Christendom’ as an attack on a state church – an attack on the politicization of religion and on the religious ‘fundamentalism’ often aligned with it” (195-96). On the basis of these examples, Ferreira concludes: “An appreciation of the significance of Kierkegaard’s writings will, therefore, have to include his reception by very different kinds of audiences” (196). Ferreira has admirably achieved her goal of introducing the lay-reader to Kierkegaard’s work. Kierkegaard is a significant contribution to the genre of introductions to Kierkegaard. In the remainder of this review I would like to assess Ferreira’s hope that Kierkegaard scholars might also find something of value in her book. The remarks that follow are advanced scholarly concerns, and should not be taken to detract from Ferreira’s achievement of penning a significant and valuable introduction. Ferreira’s hope is fulfilled by means of the illuminating connections she draws between the pseudonymous and non-pseudonymous authorship. In this Kierkegaard serves as a corrective to an obsessive focus on the pseudonymous texts, at the expense of overlooking the more overly religious writings. No one, I think, can read Ferreira’s book and seriously remain convinced that his texts are to be treated as hermetically sealed particulars. In offering some more critical remarks, I would like to focus upon both Ferreira’s methodology and her conclusion. As witnessed, Ferreira recommends taking the literary form and strategies of Kierkegaard’s authorship as a point of departure. Although Ferreira at times draws connections between the literary form of Kierkegaard’s works and their contents, for the majority of the journey we get by perfectly well without having to make reference to such form or strategies. One might, thereby, draw into question Ferreira’s emphasis that the literary dimensions of Kierkegaard’s work should take some priority in our approach. As well as the suggestion that there is some necessary connection between the literary form or strategies of these works and their intellectual contents. One might further draw into question the heuristic value of Ferreira’s emphasis on the multivalent nature of Kierkegaard’s works. That “there is not necessarily one single thing going on at any given time” in a particular text is, perhaps trivially, true. Yet that we might think about Kierkegaard’s works in terms of such multivalence does not, of course, entail that certain accounts of his work and thought are not of greater explanatory value than others. At times Ferreira sounds as though she does not wish to prioritise any particular type of reading (religious/theological, philosophical,
    
    psychological, and literary) over any other, but to maintain that all have equal legitimacy. For instance, we are told that: “An ‘either-or’ may apply to being a Christian or not, but it does not justify reading the authorship as suggesting that we must be either esthetic or ethical or religious. I have also pointed to the limits of an ‘either-or’ as a way of interpreting the goal of a text or an authorship. In Kierkegaard’s case, the literary, religious, philosophical, theological, psychological, and personal are not mutually exclusive. Here again a ‘both-and’ is at work” (194). Yet I take it that we do not want Kierkegaard’s work to be simply whatever the reader desires it to be; that there is some overarching ethical and religious message and purpose to that work. We can recognise that Kierkegaard’s texts are multivalenced without it following that anything goes, and thus continue to maintain that certain interpretations will be richer than others. (To think otherwise would seem to stand in tension with Ferreira’s image of concentric circles. For in terms of that image the larger circles have a greater area than, and thus incorporate, the smaller). The other remark I wish to make concerns Ferreira’s conclusion. There, as outlined, Ferreira states that the lasting significance of Kierkegaard’s writings can be positively determined by reference to the numbers of people who have cared about these writings. That this should be the conclusion of a book about Kierkegaard, even an introduction, is ironic, certainly given his views about whether truth is to be determined by consensus and numbers. Additionally Ferreira tells us that the significance of Kierkegaard’s writings is to be established in relation to his reception by different audiences, and peoples reasons for caring about these works. Although Ferreira suggests that this will only comprise part of such an assessment, she does not tell us what else will be incorporated. Given that we can only evaluate Ferreira’s conclusion on what she does in fact say, this is my concern. If the value and significance of Kierkegaard’s work is to be determined by reference to the affect it has on particular non-specialist readers, or audiences, Ferreira is very close (again) to the postmodern view that there is no meaning to Kierkegaard’s works over and above the particular meanings it has for individual readers. That the value of a work is to be determined by its affect on the uninformed, as opposed to deference to the reasoned views of experts, is presumably not a claim that Ferreira would wish to hold generally true. For instance, is the value of Shakespeare or Van Gogh’s works to be determined by its affect on lay-spectators as opposed to informed experts? If not, we are clearly owned some explanation as to why Kierkegaard’s work constitutes a special case. Conversely, if the claim is generalised, it might be used to justify anything to be of significance of value; and so will leave us unable to apply any evaluatitive standards at all. Although Ferreira admits that the reasons why people care about Kierkegaard’s works will have a role to play - in the case of Jim Hernandez one will expect these reasons to be mostly, if not wholly, psychological; in the case of the one thousand Iranian students they will be conditioned by their political situation. Yet Ferreira seems reluctant to allow that such reasons might be extricable from these
    
    audiences, and so be capable of evaluation by means of reasoned and scholarly debate. The above critical remarks will perhaps only be of interested to Kierkegaard scholars and they are not, therefore, to be taken to belie the significance and contribution of Kierkegaard: both as a teaching aid, and as the work of one of the finest Kierkegaard scholars of our age.

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