Faust, Romantic Irony, and System

Kierkegaard readers are familiar with his dogged polemicagainst Hegelianism, his critique of Friedrichvon Schlegel’s Romantic irony, and his visit to Schelling’slectures in Berlin. However, these are only a fewwell-known examples of a much deeper relation ofinfluence and inspiration. Kierkegaard read Germanfluently and was interested in many different authorsand thinkers from the German-speaking countries.The auction catalogue of his personal library revealsa wealth of works in German from a number of differentfields.Given his famous criticisms of the Hegelians,Schlegel, and Schelling, one might be tempted to believethat Kierkegaard was anti-German. But this isclearly not the case since he had high praise for someGerman thinkers such as Hamann, Lessing and Trendelenburg.The present work is dedicated to an explorationof Kierkegaard’s relation to different aspectsof Germanophone culture. Its goal is to gain a betterappreciation of the importance of his various Germansources for his thought. The points of contact are sonumerous that it can truly be said that if it were not forthe influence of German culture, Kierkegaard wouldnot have been KierkegKiaard and the Danish GoldenAge would not have been the Golden Age.Jon Stewart is Research Fellow at the Institute of Philosophyat the Slovak Academy of Sciences. He is the founderand general editor of the series Kierkegaard Research:Sources, Reception and Resources (Routledge), Texts fromGolden Age Denmark and Danish Golden Age Studies(both Museum Tusculanum Press).