The poet and part-time philosopher Johan Ludvig Heiberg published the first issue of his review Perseus, Journal for the Speculative Idea in June of 1837 as a part of his long-standing campaign to convert his Golden Age contemporaries to G.W.F. Hegel's philosophical system. The journal was created in large part as a result of a dispute that Heiberg had with the editorial board of the prestigious Maanedsskrift for Litteratur about an article that he had submitted. Feeling unfairly persecuted, Heiberg retracted his submission and resolved to found a new philosophical journal of his own, in which his controversial piece could be published. Thus Perseus was born. In his prefatory address to the journal's readers, Heiberg calls upon the Greek hero Perseus to be the champion for the cause of Hegelian idealism and to do battle with the pernicious Medusa of realism and empiricism. Although Heiberg's Hegelian review only appeared in two issues in 1837 and 1838, it was widely read and discussed among Danish students and intellectuals of the time. It was reviewed at length by the philosopher Frederik Christian Sibbern and satirized by Søren Kierkegaard in Prefaces. There can be no doubt that Heiberg's Perseus represents a landmark in Golden Age culture.

This is the second volume in a three-volume work dedicated to exploring the influence of G.W.F. Hegel’s philosophical thinking in Golden Age Denmark. The work demonstrates that the largely overlooked tradition of Danish Hegelianism played a profound and indeed constitutive role in many spheres of the Golden Age culture. This second tome treats the most intensive period in the history of the Danish Hegel reception, namely, the years from 1837 to 1841. The main figure in this period is the theologian Hans Martensen who made Hegel’s philosophy a sensation among the students at the University of Copenhagen in the late 1830s. This period also includes the publication of Johan Ludvig Heiberg’s Hegelian journal, Perseus, and Frederik Christian Sibbern’s monumental review of it, which represented the most extensive treatment of Hegel’s philosophy in the Danish language at the time. During this period Hegel’s philosophy flourished in unlikely genres such as drama and lyric poetry. During these years Hegelianism enjoyed an unprecedented success in Denmark until it gradually began to be perceived as a dangerous trend.

The Danish Golden Age of the first half of the nineteenth century endured in the midst of a number of different kinds of crisis — political, economic, and cultural. The many changes of the period made it a dynamic time, one in which artists, poets, philosophers, and religious thinkers were constantly reassessing their place in society. This book traces the different aspects of the cultural crisis of the period through a series of case studies of key figures, including Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Hans Lassen Martensen, and Søren Kierkegaard. Far from just a historical analysis, however, the book shows that many of the key questions that Danish society wrestled with during the Golden Age remain strikingly familiar today. Jon Stewart is associate professor at the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre at the University of Copenhagen.

For over a century, the Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard (1813–55) has been at the center of a number of important discussions, concerning not only philosophy and theology, but also, more recently, fields such as social thought, psychology, and contemporary aesthetics, especially literary theory. Despite his relatively short life, Kierkegaard was an extraordinarily prolific writer, as attested to by the 26-volume Princeton University Press edition of all of his published writings. But Kierkegaard left behind nearly as much unpublished writing, most of which consists of what are called his “journals and notebooks.” Kierkegaard has long been recognized as one of history’s great journal keepers, but only rather small portions of his journals and notebooks are what we usually understand by the term “diaries.” By far the greater part of Kierkegaard’s journals and notebooks consists of reflections on a myriad of subjects—philosophical, religious, political, personal. Studying his journals and notebooks takes us into his workshop, where we can see his entire universe of thought. We can witness the genesis of his published works, to be sure—but we can also see whole galaxies of concepts, new insights, and fragments, large and small, of partially (or almost entirely) completed but unpublished works. Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks enables us to see the thinker in dialogue with his times and with himself. Kierkegaard wrote his journals in a two-column format, one for his initial entries and the second for the extensive marginal comments that he added later. This edition of the journals reproduces this format, includes several photographs of original manuscript pages, and contains extensive scholarly commentary on the various entries and on the history of the manuscripts being reproduced. Volume 10 of this series includes the final six of Kierkegaard’s important “NB” journals (Journals NB31 through NB36), which cover the last months of 1854, a period when Kierkegaard made the final preparations for and the initial launch of his furious assault on the established church. But in addition to this incendiary material, these journals also contain a great trove of his reflections on theology, philosophy, and the perils and opportunities of modernity.

This is the first of a three-volume work dedicated to exploring the influence of G.W.F. Hegel’s philosophical thinking in Golden Age Denmark. The work demonstrates that the largely overlooked tradition of Danish Hegelianism played a profound and indeed constitutive role in many spheres of Golden Age culture. This initial tome covers the period from the beginning of the Hegel reception in the Danish Kingdom in the 1820s until the end of 1836. The dominant figure from this period is the poet and critic Johan Ludvig Heiberg, who attended Hegel’s lectures in Berlin in 1824 and then launched a campaign to popularize Hegel’s philosophy among his fellow countrymen. Using his journal Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post as a platform, Heiberg published numerous articles containing ideas that he had borrowed from Hegel. Several readers felt provoked by Heiberg’s Hegelianism and wrote critical responses to him, many of which appeared in Kjøbenhavnsposten, the rival of Heiberg’s journal. Through these debates Hegel’s philosophy became an important part of Danish cultural life.

For over a century, the Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard (1813–55) has been at the center of a number of important discussions, concerning not only philosophy and theology, but also, more recently, fields such as social thought, psychology, and contemporary aesthetics, especially literary theory. Despite his relatively short life, Kierkegaard was an extraordinarily prolific writer, as attested to by the 26-volume Princeton University Press edition of all of his published writings. But Kierkegaard left behind nearly as much unpublished writing, most of which consists of what are called his "journals and notebooks." Kierkegaard has long been recognized as one of history's great journal keepers, but only rather small portions of his journals and notebooks are what we usually understand by the term “diaries.” By far the greater part of Kierkegaard’s journals and notebooks consists of reflections on a myriad of subjects—philosophical, religious, political, personal. Studying his journals and notebooks takes us into his workshop, where we can see his entire universe of thought. We can witness the genesis of his published works, to be sure—but we can also see whole galaxies of concepts, new insights, and fragments, large and small, of partially (or almost entirely) completed but unpublished works. Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks enables us to see the thinker in dialogue with his times and with himself. Kierkegaard wrote his journals in a two-column format, one for his initial entries and the second for the extensive marginal comments that he added later. This edition of the journals reproduces this format, includes several photographs of original manuscript pages, and contains extensive scholarly commentary on the various entries and on the history of the manuscripts being reproduced. Volume 9 of this 11-volume series includes five of Kierkegaard’s important “NB” journals (Journals NB26 through NB30), which span from June 1852 to August 1854. This period was marked by Kierkegaard’s increasing preoccupation with what he saw as an unbridgeable gulf in Christianity—between the absolute ideal of the religion of the New Testament and the official, state-sanctioned culture of “Christendom,” which, embodied by the Danish People’s Church, Kierkegaard rejected with increasing vehemence. Crucially, Kierkegaard’s nemesis, Bishop Jakob Peter Mynster, died during this period and, in the months following, Kierkegaard can be seen moving inexorably toward the famous “attack on Christendom” with which he ended his life.

Produced by Copenhagen's Soren Kierkegaard Research Centre, this volume, the first of an eleven-volume series, offers an insight into Kierkegaard's inner life. In addition to early drafts of his published works, it also contains his thoughts on events and philosophical and theological matters and ideas for future literary projects.

The period of Kierkegaard's life corresponds to Denmark's "Golden Age," which is conventionally used to refer to the period covering roughly the first half of the nineteenth century, when Denmark's most important writers, philosophers, theologians, poets, actors and artists flourished. Kierkegaard was often in dialogue with his fellow Danes on key issues of the day. His authorship would be unthinkable without reference to the Danish State Church, the Royal Theater, the University of Copenhagen or the various Danish newspapers and journals, such as The Corsair, Fædrelandet, and Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, which played an undeniable role in shaping his development. The present volume features articles that employ source-work research in order to explore the individual Danish sources of Kierkegaard's thought. The volume is divided into three tomes in order to cover the different fields of influence. Tome I is dedicated to exploring the sources that fall under the rubrics, "Philosophy, Politics and Social Theory." With regard to philosophy, Kierkegaard read the works of all the foremost Danish thinkers of the time and their German antecedents, in particular Kant, Schilling and Hegel. While he was sympathetic to individual ideas offered by this tradition, he was generally keen to criticize the German model of philosophy and to propose a new paradigm for philosophical thought that was more in tune with lived existence. Kierkegaard also experienced the dynamic period in history that saw the great upheavals throughout Europe in connection with the revolutions of 1848 and the First Schleswig War. While it has long been claimed that Kierkegaard was not interested in politics, recent research supports a quite different picture. To be sure, he cannot be regarded as a political scientist or social theorist in a traditional sense, but he was nonetheless engaged in the issues of his day, and in his works one can certainly find material that can be insightful for the fields of politics and social theory.

The book proposes a radically revised understanding of the epoch of the Danish Golden Age by investigating the historical and literary contexts of Søren Kierkegaard’s pioneering thoughts on anxiety.

Poul Martin Møller published his most important philosophical treatise in 1837, “Thoughts on the Possibility of Proofs of Human Immortality.” This is the first English translation of this work.