For Self-Examination

Three discourses meant to be read aloud, asking readers to look into Scripture as into a mirror rather than study it.

Danish, the original language

Original title: Til Selvprøvelse, Samtiden anbefalet
First published: 1851(aged 38)
Original language: Danish

Overview

The preface asks one thing of its reader: to read the book aloud if possible. Søren Kierkegaard published it under his own name in September 1851, subtitled as recommended to the present age, and it is made of three discourses. The first takes the Letter of James, which tells Christians to be doers of the word and not only hearers, and asks what it takes to look at oneself in the mirror of the Word. Kierkegaard's example is a lover who receives a letter in a language he cannot read: he may need a dictionary to get through it, but he reads it for what it asks of him, and does not treat it as a text to be interpreted. His Copenhagen, he suggests, has made Scripture into material for scholarship, commentary piled on commentary, so that nobody ever has to stand alone before the mirror and do what it says. He brings in Luther, who stressed grace against the church of his own day, and argues that an age which uses grace as an excuse needs James's insistence on works again. The second discourse follows Christ's way as a narrow road, and the third holds that the Spirit gives life only after a person has died to the world. A first printing of 500 copies was followed in February 1852 by a second.

Key concepts

What does it mean to be a doer of the word?

The Letter of James tells Christians to be doers of the word and not only hearers, and compares a hearer who does nothing to a man who looks at his face in a mirror and at once forgets what he saw. Kierkegaard makes that mirror the book's image: Scripture read rightly shows the reader himself, and asks to be acted on.

What is the lover's letter?

Kierkegaard's example of right reading. A lover receives a letter in a language he cannot read; he may need a dictionary to work through it, but the translating is only a means, and he reads the letter for what it asks of him. Scripture, on this account, is to be read the same way, not treated as a text to be interpreted.

Why does the preface ask for the book to be read aloud?

Because a reader who reads aloud, the preface says, has only himself to consider. Hearing the words in one's own voice turns reading from an exercise of the mind into something closer to being addressed, which is exactly the situation the three discourses want to put their reader in.

Why does Luther appear in a book urging works?

Because Luther stressed grace against the church of his own day, and Kierkegaard thinks his own age has turned that emphasis into an excuse. The argument is not against Luther but about timing: what corrected one age can corrupt another, and an age that hides behind grace needs the Letter of James again.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Looking at Oneself in the Mirror of the Word

What does it take to read Scripture as a letter addressed to oneself, rather than as a text to be interpreted? The first discourse sets a lover's letter against a library of commentary.

The Letter of James tells Christians to be doers of the word and not only hearers, and Kierkegaard asks what it means to look at oneself in that mirror. His example is a lover who receives a letter in a language he cannot read. He may need a dictionary to get through it, but he reads it for what it asks of him. Copenhagen, he suggests, has turned Scripture into material for scholarship, commentary piled on commentary, so that nobody ever has to stand alone before the mirror and do what it says. The preface asks the reader to read the book aloud.

scripture
biblical interpretation
interpretation
scholarship
self-examination
self-deception
religious obedience
silence
religious practice
rhetoric
preaching
conscience
subjectivity

Enter a dialogue

Grace Used as an Excuse

Luther stressed grace against the church of his own day. What does an age need to hear once it has turned grace into a reason to do nothing, and what is the narrow way it has excused itself from?

Kierkegaard brings in Luther, who stressed grace against the church of his own day, and argues that an age which uses grace as an excuse needs the Letter of James's insistence on works again. The emphasis that corrected one age can put another to sleep. The second discourse follows Christ's way as a narrow road, and the third holds that the Spirit gives life only after a person has died to the world. Published under his own name in September 1851 and reprinted the next February, it was his last new book before three years of public silence.

grace
faith
discipleship
christian discipleship
self-denial
suffering
sacrifice
holy spirit
salvation
humility
love
christianity
religious doubt
moral responsibility
religious experience

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 161
distinct concepts: 246
by passages held, corpus-wide: #394

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “scripture” and “self-examination”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 13 pairings. 93 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
scripture	self-examination	12
scripture	self-deception	7
christianity	holy spirit	4
christianity	suffering	3
faith	suffering	3
self-deception	self-examination	3
faith	self-examination	2
christianity	faith	1
christianity	scripture	1
christianity	self-examination	1
faith	holy spirit	1
scripture	silence	1
self-examination	silence	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1841 The Concept of Irony (Om Begrebet Ironi)
Defended in September 1841 — after he had returned Regine Olsen's engagement ring, before the final break with her — this academic dissertation is the last book he signed himself before the pseudonymous books began with Either/Or.
DA
1843 Either/Or (Enten – Eller)
The first of the pseudonymous books: an invented editor presenting two invented authors, whose argument Stages on Life's Way would reopen two years later.
DA
1843 Fear and Trembling (Frygt og Bæven)
Twin of Repetition, published the same October day: both books take up a man who must give up what he loves, one through Abraham and Isaac, the other through an engagement broken off.
DA
1843 Repetition (Gjentagelsen)
A short fiction, subtitled a venture in experimenting psychology: one man's account of a journey back to Berlin, and another man's letters about a love he has fled.
DA
1844 Philosophical Fragments (Philosophiske Smuler)
Johannes Climacus signs his first book here and returns in the far longer Postscript; in its author's lifetime this short thought experiment was little read outside Denmark.
DA
1844 The Concept of Anxiety (Begrebet Angest)
Philosophical Fragments had appeared four days earlier under another pseudonym; this is its companion, and it takes a point of church doctrine, inherited sin, and treats it as a problem in psychology.
DA
1845 Stages on Life's Way (Stadier paa Livets Vei)
Characters from Either/Or and Repetition return here, and the argument moves past the ethical into the religious.
DA
1846 Concluding Unscientific Postscript to "Philosophical Fragments" (Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift)
He meant it to close his authorship and later called it the authorship's turning point; after it, the openly religious writing takes over.
DA
1846 Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age. A Literary Review (En literair Anmeldelse)
After the Postscript's farewell, the first book he published was, in form, a review of a contemporary novel, and he signed it with his own name.
DA
1847 Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (Opbyggelige Taler i forskjellig Aand)
Begun in the spring of 1846, while the satirical weekly The Corsair was still caricaturing him, it opens the run of signed religious books that fills the years after the Postscript.
DA
1847 Works of Love (Kjerlighedens Gjerninger)
Two series of deliberations, a form he set apart from the discourse because it is meant to unsettle a reader rather than console one, published six months after the Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits.
DA
1848 Christian Discourses (Christelige Taler)
The first book of 1848, the year he later called the richest of his authorship and the year he wrote The Sickness unto Death.
DA
1849 The Sickness unto Death (Sygdommen til Døden)
The first of two books signed by Anti-Climacus, with Practice in Christianity following in 1850; Kierkegaard later ranked the pair among the most important things he wrote.
DA
1849 Two Ethical-Religious Essays (Tvende ethisk-religieuse Smaa-Afhandlinger)
A slim pamphlet, the only book under the initials H.H., salvaged from a planned cycle of ethical-religious essays that he gave up in the spring of 1849.
DA
1850 Practice in Christianity (Indøvelse i Christendom)
Kierkegaard judged it the truest of all his books; with The Sickness unto Death it makes up the pair signed by Anti-Climacus.
DA
1851 For Self-Examination (Til Selvprøvelse, Samtiden anbefalet) you are here DA
1855 The Moment (Øieblikket Nr. 1–10)
The open, signed form of the criticism that Practice in Christianity had made under a pseudonym, carried in a periodical of his own through the last months of his life.
DA
1876 Judge for Yourselves! (Dømmer selv! Til Selvprøvelse Samtiden anbefalet)
Of the books on this shelf, the only one he finished and then chose not to publish; it stands between the signed discourses of 1851 and the open attack on the church of 1854–55.
DA

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