Judge for Yourselves!

A sequel on sobriety and on Christ as a pattern to be followed, which he withheld and his brother published after his death.

by Søren Kierkegaard253 passages held

Danish, the original language

Original title: Dømmer selv! Til Selvprøvelse Samtiden anbefalet
First published: 1876(published posthumously)
Original language: Danish

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Overview

In 1876, twenty-one years after Søren Kierkegaard's death, his elder brother, Bishop Peter Christian Kierkegaard, published this manuscript and added the subtitle Second Series, to mark it as the sequel to For Self-Examination of 1851. Søren had written it in 1851 and 1852, dated its table of contents to those years, and put it aside: he would not attack Bishop Mynster, his father's old pastor, directly while the bishop lived. The book has two parts. The first asks what it means to become sober, and finds the age intoxicated on its own reflection: people think, discuss and understand in order to put off acting, and sobriety means coming to oneself before God and doing what one already understands. The second presents Christ as the prototype: a pattern the Christian is required to follow, not a doctrine to agree with. The medieval church, Kierkegaard argues, exaggerated that following into monasteries and merit; Luther rightly corrected it with grace; and the present age has turned Luther's grace into permission to skip the following altogether. In March 1855, in the thick of his campaign against the church, he noted that this book spoke with the moderation that had suited those years. The pieces he wrote after Mynster's death for his own paper, The Moment, dropped that restraint.

Key concepts

Why was Judge for Yourselves! published only in 1876?

Kierkegaard wrote it in 1851 and 1852 and put it aside, because he would not attack Bishop Mynster, his father's old pastor, directly while Mynster lived. His elder brother, Bishop Peter Christian Kierkegaard, published it in 1876, twenty-one years after Søren's death, adding the subtitle Second Series to mark it as the sequel to For Self-Examination.

What does Kierkegaard mean by sobriety?

Coming to oneself before God and doing what one already understands. Its opposite is not only drunkenness but an intoxication of reflection, in which a person thinks, discusses and understands in order to put off acting. Sobriety begins at the point where reflection stops serving as a delay.

What is the prototype?

Christ as the pattern a Christian is required to follow, not a doctrine to be agreed with. The word insists that his life is a measure for other lives, which is why the second part's history, of how the following was exaggerated, corrected and excused away, matters to every reader and not only to church historians.

How does the book judge Luther?

As right for his own time. The medieval church had exaggerated the following of Christ into monasteries and merit, and Luther corrected it with grace. The present age, Kierkegaard argues, has turned that grace into permission to skip the following altogether, so the correction itself now needs correcting.

Themes of the book

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

Becoming Sober

An age intoxicated on its own reflection thinks, discusses and understands in order to put off acting. What would it mean to come to oneself before God and simply do what one already understands?

The first part turns the usual picture round. There is an intoxication of reason itself, it argues, in which understanding more becomes a way of never having to act, and a whole age can live in it while thinking itself clear-headed. Sobriety is coming to oneself before God and doing what one already understands. The demand is modest on its face and severe in practice, because it removes the last respectable reason for delay. Kierkegaard wrote the book in 1851 and 1852 as the sequel to For Self-Examination, dated its table of contents to those years, and put it aside.

sobriety
self-deception
self-knowledge
honesty
reason
truth
worldliness
social conformity
authenticity
providence
work
nature

Enter a dialogue

Christ as the Prototype

Is Christ a doctrine to be agreed with, or a pattern to be followed? The second part traces how the following was exaggerated, then corrected, then excused away.

Christ appears here as the prototype, the pattern a Christian is required to follow. The medieval church, Kierkegaard argues, exaggerated that following into monasteries and merit; Luther rightly corrected it with grace; and the present age has turned Luther's grace into permission to skip the following altogether. The manuscript stayed in his papers because he would not attack Bishop Mynster, his father's old pastor, directly while Mynster lived. His elder brother, Bishop Peter Christian Kierkegaard, published it in 1876, twenty-one years after Søren's death.

imitation
discipleship
self-denial
grace
religious practice
religious reform
christianity
faith
humility
suffering
sacrifice
religious hypocrisy
hypocrisy
clergy
religious commitment
spirituality
irony
religion

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 253
distinct concepts: 351
by passages held, corpus-wide: #297

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: “christianity” and “discipleship”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 23 pairings. 89 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
christianity	discipleship	8
faith	religious practice	8
self-denial	suffering	7
christianity	suffering	6
faith	suffering	5
religion	self-denial	5
discipleship	religious hypocrisy	4
discipleship	suffering	4
religious hypocrisy	suffering	4
christianity	religious hypocrisy	3
discipleship	religious practice	3
christianity	faith	2
christianity	self-denial	2
religious hypocrisy	self-denial	2
religious practice	self-denial	2
christianity	religion	1
christianity	religious practice	1
discipleship	faith	1
discipleship	self-denial	1
faith	religious hypocrisy	1
religion	religious hypocrisy	1
religion	suffering	1
religious practice	suffering	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)
The last new title he published before three years of public silence, and the book whose planned second series became Judge for Yourselves!
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) you are here DA

— or open another of their works