ABSTRACT
George Pattison shares with Kierkegaard the impression that emptiness of culture and triviality walk side by side, and reveal paradoxically "an echo of the ontological indeterminacy of the freedom in and through which our religion's destiny is decided." Pattison also enriches his book by exploring the attention devoted by Kierkegaard to important local personalities, such as Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Carstensen, Glebe Moller, and Hans Lassen Martensen. Pattison's expectation will be fulfilled if Kierkegaard's critique of culture enables to reclaim the possibility of a dialogue of persons capable of transforming reality where they are. In Works of Love, Kierkegaard says obstinately that, against all odds, love remains. The words used by Kierkegaard can make the reader fall in love with them, and thus those words can remain. "The reappearance of Socrates," writes Pattison, hints "that the transition to a more overtly Christological understanding of religiousness [is] conceived within a framework erected on the ground of common human experience and understanding."
