Some Misinterpretations of Kierkegaard

Abstract

One cannot help being somewhat chagrined over the fact that the more widely Kierkegaard’s works are translated and read, the greater is the extent to which the Danish author is misunderstood, caricatured, and falsified. Thus so eminent a philosopher as H. J. Paton has, in a single paragraph of The Modern Predicament,¹ issued a series of misinterpretations which are typical of the assertions which have been made by many writers who have read Kierkegaard’s works in too cursory a fashion — or perhaps not at all! In the following remarks, I shall not attempt merely to refute Prof. Paton. Rather, I shall use his charges to illustrate the general kinds of remarks which are frequently made about Kierkegaard. Similar misinterpretations have appeared in many works, but seldom have they been so neatly assembled in one paragraph.