On the Genesis of Philosophical Fragments

This paper, which is partly a summary of the critical account of the text to Philosophical Fragments, published in vol. K4 of Søren Kierkegaard’s Writings, has four goals: 1) To survey the surviving manuscripts. 2) To determine the period of its composition. 3) To point out older material which has been worked into Philosophical Fragments. 4) To reconstruct Kierkegaard’s method of composition. The paper also compares the hermeneutical approach of the editors of Writings to the post-structuralist school of genetic criticism (critique génétique). Philosopical Fragments was published June 13, 1844. It did not appear alone, but as the second volume in a small shoal of works: five days earlier, June 8, Three Upbuilding Discourses had been published and four days later, June 17, both The Concept of Anxiety and Prefaces would be published. Kierkegaard was in a period of almost manic productivity. He described himself in a letter to his brother, Peter Christian Kierkegaard, in May of the same year as a steamship with far too much horsepower onboard and expressed fear that his body could not withstand the strivings of his spirit.1 The task at hand is to isolate Philosophical Fragments from the rest of Kierkegaard’s production in the relevant period and follow the process of the book’s composition, its genesis. It is a project that involves at least three questions or topics: First, the external chronology of the work, i. e., a determination of the period in which the work was written. Second, an overview of older material that has been incorporated into 1 NKS [New Royal Collection, The Royal Library, Copenhagen] 3174, published in B&A, vol. 1, pp. 134f. The letter is undated, but the date can be established by referring to the list of letters recieved in P. C. Kierkegaard’s diaries (NKS 2656, 4o, vol. 1, p. [136]).