ABSTRACT
Anti-realism can betray a different form of presumption, neutralizing the otherness to which the language of faith bears witness. In both cases, there is an attempt to evade the tentativeness of faith for something more direct and controllable. There are a cluster of trends and ideas which give some hint of what links the different readings of postmodernity – and why Soren Kierkegaard has appeared to some to be one of its first harbingers. Kierkegaard's textual tactics and indirectness seem to lend themselves to a certain style of 'postmodern' reading in which authorial intention and authority are dethroned. Language is not a ready made collection of signs which copy the world, return us to nature or perfect our reason. Nor is it merely a structure of differences. It is a contradiction in which reflection is opened out to its other in passion and freedom.
