Soren Kierkegaard 1813-1855 Soren Kierkegaard The Sickness unto Death TRANSLATED BY ALASTAIR HANNAY PENGUIN DOOKs —-GREAY iDPenguin Grup (N2) engin ook South es) “Tasaton copy Alsi Ha ‘Alig raered ‘The man igh of he arses ‘Seb Rowland Photnypeering Ln, Bury $1 Bd, Sul Ld Ses endlion bing impose onthe abaeqn: parcaee meouvaiirs grep engin Boke commited nina ae ersempreee Lord! Give us weak eyes for things of no account, and eyes of fall clarity in all your truthPreface. ‘The form of this ‘exposition may stiike many. readers as odd: to them it would seem too rigorous to be edifying and too edifying to have the rigour of scholarship. On the latter I have no opinion, but regarding the former disagree, and were it indeed too rigorous to be edifying, L would consider that a fault: It is one thing, naturally, that not everyone will find it edifying; not-everyone is qualified to respond to it in. that. way,,but.the:fact that the work itself is edifying in characteris something else Ina Christian context everything, yes-everything, should, serve to edify. The kind of scholarship that isnot in the last resort edifying is for.that-very-reason un-Christian, ‘An account of anything: Christian:must.be like-a phys- ician’s. lecture beside the sick-bed; even-if only. those! skilled in the medical arts should understand it, it should neveribe forgotten where:it is being given. It is just this relationship’ to life of whatever is Christian (contrasted: with a'scholarly. remoteness);,08 this, the ethical side-of Christianity, that edifies;: and, an: account. of this sort, whatever tigour it may possess, is quite different, even in kind, from the “disinterested” scientific'approach whose: superior heroism :is:so:far ‘fromy being. heroism: in a Christian sense that in a Christian sense it is a form of inhuman curiosity. Christian heroism, and indeed one pechaps sees little enough of that, is to risk unreservedly x