Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits

Written for a reader preparing for confession, it asks whether anyone can will one thing, and what the lilies and the birds teach.

by Søren Kierkegaard738 passages held

Danish, the original language

Original title: Opbyggelige Taler i forskjellig Aand
First published: 1847(aged 34)
Original language: Danish

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Overview

The first and longest part of this book is written for someone on the way to confession, and it asks that reader a single question: do you will one thing? Søren Kierkegaard's answer is that only the good can be willed wholeheartedly, because anything else divides the person who wants it. Most of the discourse is a patient catalogue of the ways people will the good with half a heart: for the reward, out of fear of punishment, for their own advantage, or only up to a point. The confessional hour matters to the argument because there a person stands before God alone, not as one of a crowd, and Kierkegaard addresses the reader throughout as that single individual. He drafted it in the spring of 1846, weeks after his review of Two Ages had described a public that answers for nothing. Over the winter he added two further parts: three discourses on the lilies of the field and the birds of the air from the Sermon on the Mount, and seven on how suffering can be borne as a schooling. The book came out on 13 March 1847 in 525 copies. By July only 55 of the 300 delivered to the bookshop had sold; Kierkegaard handed the edition to his bookseller, C. A. Reitzel, for a flat fee of 225 rigsdaler, and noted bitterly in his journal that a book by J. L. Heiberg, the dramatist and critic, would have sold out in eight days. In 1938 the American Quaker philosopher Douglas Steere translated the first part as Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing.

Key concepts

What is double-mindedness?

Willing the good with half a heart: wanting it for the reward, out of fear of punishment, for one's own advantage, or only up to a point. The double-minded person may do exactly what the wholehearted person does, but keeps a second aim alongside the good, and so remains divided within.

Why is the first part addressed to someone going to confession?

Because confession is the one occasion where a person stands before God alone, not as a member of a crowd. The discourse uses that hour to put a single question, whether the reader wills one thing, to someone who cannot pass it on to anyone else or answer it on another's behalf.

What is an upbuilding discourse?

Kierkegaard's name for a religious address meant to build up the one who reads it, rather than to argue a thesis or teach doctrine. He published many under his own name alongside the pseudonymous books, and they speak to a single reader rather than a congregation. This volume gathers three sets of them, each in a different spirit.

Is Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing a separate book?

No. It is the opening discourse of this volume, written for the occasion of confession. The American Quaker philosopher Douglas Steere translated it on its own in 1938 under that title, detached from the two parts that follow it here.

Themes of the book

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

Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing

Only the good can be willed wholeheartedly, because anything else divides the person who wants it. The first part asks a reader on the way to confession whether they will one thing, and catalogues the ways people will the good by halves.

Most of the discourse is a patient inventory of double-mindedness: willing the good for the reward, out of fear of punishment, for one's own advantage, or only up to a point. Each looks like goodness and each keeps something back. The confessional hour matters to the argument because it is the one place where a person stands before God alone, not as a member of a crowd, and Kierkegaard addresses the reader throughout as that single individual. He drafted it in the spring of 1846, weeks after Two Ages had described a public that answers for nothing.

double-mindedness
the good
goodness
will
self-deception
repentance
confession
conscience
individuality
eternity
moral responsibility
self-knowledge
time
responsibility
freedom

Enter a dialogue

The Lilies, the Birds and the School of Suffering

What can a worried person learn from creatures that do not worry, and what can suffering teach that nothing else can? The second and third parts turn from the divided will to the heart that has to bear things.

The second part takes the lilies of the field and the birds of the air from the Sermon on the Mount as teachers. They do not compare themselves with others, and so are spared the worries a human being creates by comparing. The third part, seven discourses, treats suffering as a kind of schooling, something in which a person can learn obedience and hope rather than only endure. Both parts speak to someone already in difficulty, and neither promises that the difficulty will go away.

suffering
consolation
hope
humility
meekness
perseverance
obedience
faith
divine love
anxiety
despair
guilt
christianity
human nature
religion

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 738
distinct concepts: 651
by passages held, corpus-wide: #89

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: “faith” and “suffering”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 24 pairings. 91 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
faith	suffering	52
eternity	suffering	36
consolation	suffering	18
guilt	suffering	11
eternity	faith	10
faith	guilt	8
anxiety	faith	6
consolation	faith	6
anxiety	consolation	4
consolation	eternity	4
eternity	self-deception	4
anxiety	eternity	3
consolation	guilt	3
double-mindedness	eternity	3
self-deception	suffering	3
anxiety	self-deception	2
consolation	double-mindedness	2
double-mindedness	self-deception	2
double-mindedness	suffering	2
anxiety	suffering	1
consolation	self-deception	1
double-mindedness	faith	1
eternity	guilt	1
guilt	self-deception	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) you are here 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)
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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