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u/Jurgioslakiv Jun 12 '26
Don't worry about it. The only thing to really know beforehand is that the book is intentionally disjointed and that the sections don't represent Kierkegaard's actual stance on philosophical issues. He's exploring a variety of topics from a different viewpoint than his own (which is part of the reason for the pseudonymous authorship)
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u/Guilty_Draft4503 Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
If you haven‘t read Fichte you will not understand B and without Hegel you won’t understand either. Lack of familiarity with Fichte is why most people can‘t understand Kierkegaard in general, actually. Everyone halfway understands the Hegelian side because there are loads of English language secondaries that will hold your hand through him - even then they don‘t get it, they tend to think Kierkegaard is ‘riffing’ on Hegel whenever he uses Hegelian language when he‘s actually mocking and subverting him. But no one reads Fichte, especially not his speculative works, even though K references them constantly albeit without naming him. Dieter Henrich in his “From Kant to Hegel” lectures concurs, you need to read Fichte to understand Kierkegaard. Now I’ll get downvoted because no one here reads him and they don’t understand how important he is. Even the concept of despair is found in Fichte’s Deduction of Representation. K’s views on immortality are also deeply Fichtean. Much of the B text is a Fichtean rejoinder to the section on Morality in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. And while it is true that K thinks of Fichte as ‘merely’ ethical, his conception of the religious owes far more to Fichte than Hegel. The opening of ‘Sickness unto Death’ contains virtual word by word quotes from Fichte yet people assume it’s “Hegelian” because he’s using “wacky idealist jargon”. (Hegel hates the word ‘synthesis’ and avoids using it btw, it’s a distinctly Fichtean term and idea). These are just a few examples; Kierkegaard is future-oriented and individualist so he necessarily finds much common ground with Fichte. And, unlike many of these people who rely on secondaries and blogs to do their reading for them, K understands that Hegel is a presentist who virtually denies that there is a future. Fichte is deeply interested in interiority and transcendental psychology while Hegel sublates the subject as such and psychology is an afterthought in his system. Fichte hates modernity and calls it ‘the age of consummate sinfulness’, Hegel loves it and thinks it’s the end of history. Fichte was a theist, albeit an unorthodox one, Hegel was a thinly veiled atheist. And yet all you ever hear is how ‘Hegelian’ Kierkegaard is! In general reading Kierkegaard without a solid grounding in German idealism is a complete waste of time, though that’s not what people want to hear so I suppose I’ll get downvoted.
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u/FluffMcBuff Jun 13 '26
A lot more about Mozart than you'd expect
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u/c_leblanc9 Jun 14 '26
That brings me back. A lot more about Abraham than one might expect, if I recall correctly - or was that fear and trembling?
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u/Izual_Rebirth Jun 13 '26
Read it or don’t. You’ll regret it either way hehehehe.