ABSTRACT
Jon Stewart virtually limits his examination to assessing Soren Kierkegaard's own account, to addressing Kierkegaard's own references or allusions absent, though Kierkegaard occasionally employs Hegel's dialectical method and language. Few texts devoted to Kierkegaard have generated as passionate a response from scholars as Jon Stewart's Kierkegaard's Relations to Hegel Reconsidered. Scholars generally have not challenged Stewart's claim that "Kierkegaard had several different relations to Hegel that evolved over time." The direct appropriations of Hegel are easily identifiable in Kierkegaard's earliest texts, while the critical and polemical references are primarily contained in the years between the publication of Fear and Trembling and the writing of The Book of Adler. In response, many have argued that even if Hegel is not the direct target, Kierkegaard's criticisms frequently reach back to Hegel beyond the Danish Hegelians. Despite and evidenced by its debated reception, it is clear that Stewart's volume served as a substantial provocation for reconsidering Kierkegaard's relation to Hegel.
