"Selections From the Writings of Kierkegaard" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kierkegaard Soren)

these meditations has for text: "The purity of the heart consists in
willing one thing" and this one thing is necessarily the good, the
ideal; but only he who lives his life as the individual can possibly
will the good else it is lived in duplicity, for the world will share
his aspirations, he will bid for the rewards which the bowing
before the crowd can give him. In the second part, entitled "What
we may learn from the Lilies of the Field and the Birds of the Air"
one of Kierkegaard's favorite texts the greatest danger to the
ethico-religious life is shown to be the uneasiness about our
material welfare which insidiously haunts our thought-life, and,
notwithstanding our best endeavors, renders us essentially slaves
to "the crowd"; whereas it is given to man, created in the image of
God, to be as self-contained, unafraid, hopeful as are
(symbolically) the lily and the bird. The startlingly new
development attained through his recent experiences is most
evident in the third part, "The Gospel of Sufferings," in which
absolute stress is laid on the imitation of Christ in the strictest
sense. Only the "individual" can compass this: the narrow way to
salvation must be traveled alone; and will lead to salvation only if
the world is, literally, overcome in persecution and tribulation.
And, on the other hand, to be happy in this world is equivalent to
forfeiting salvation. Thus briefly outlined, the contents of this
book would seem to be sheer monkish asceticism; but no synopsis,
however full, can hope to give an idea of its lyrical pathos, its
wealth of tender reflections, the great love tempering the stern
severity of its teaching.

With wonderful beauty "The Deeds of Love" (Kjerlighedens
Gjerninger) (1847) are exalted as the Christian's help and salvation
against the tribulations of the world love, not indeed of the human
kind, but of man through God. "You are not concerned at all with
what others do to you, but only with what you do to others; and
also, with how you react to what others do to you you are
concerned, essentially, only with yourself, before God."

In rapid succession there follow "Christian Discourses"; "The Lily
of the Field and the Bird of the Air"; "Sickness Unto Death" (with
the sub-title "A Christian Psychological Exposition"); "Two
Religious Treatises"; "The High Priest, the Publican, the Sinner";
"Three Discourses on the 0ccasion of Communion on Friday."

In the course of these reflections it had become increasingly clear
to Kierkegaard that the self-constituted representative of Christ the
Church or, to mention only the organization he was intimately
acquainted with, the Danish State Church had succeeded in
becoming a purely worldly organization whose representatives, far
from striving to follow Christ, had made life quite comfortable for
themselves; retort to which was presently made that by thus
stressing "contemporaneousness" with its aspects of suffering and
persecution, Kierkegaard had both exceeded the accepted teaching