Recent Developments in Scholarship on Key Existentialists: Kierkegaard

Abstract

Søren Kierkegaard is now a global phenomenon. His work has been translated into dozens of languages, Kierkegaard societies have sprung up on almost every continent, international conferences on his work are held frequently, and his work is discussed widely on the internet. He has been anthologized, bowdlerized, abridged, put in a nutshell, reduced to 90 minutes, and even turned into a comic book. In addition, Kierkegaard's work continues to attract serious scholarship. The most extensive developments in recent scholarship are due to the activities of the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre in Copenhagen. The centerpiece of these activities is the production of a new Danish edition of Kierkegaard's writings, consisting of twenty-eight volumes of Kierkegaard's writings plus twenty seven volumes of commentary. Each volume of Kierkegaard's writings, meticulously reconstructed from earlier editions, notebooks and journals, is accompanied by its own volume of commentary, in which line-by-line comment is made on textual variations, literary allusions, contemporary historical events, and other material deemed relevant to textual critique, philological accuracy, and historical realism. The new edition corrects mistakes in the first three editions of Kierkegaard's 'Samlede Værker' [Collected Works] and thoroughly revises, regroups and corrects the earlier edition of Kierkegaard's 'Papirer' [Papers]. It is set to become the standard primary source for Kierkegaard scholarship.