ABSTRACT
The story of Kierkegaard's philosophical reception in Australia is largely the story of his non-reception. Australian philosophy in the nineteenth century was neither ripe for the reception of, nor was it exposed to, Kierkegaard's work. The first mention of Kierkegaard's work in an Australian journal of philosophy was in 1947, in a review of Guido de Ruggiero's Existentialism. In that review article, A. M. Ritchie attributes the relative neglect of existentialism in Australia to geographical isolation. All the articles on Kierkegaard in Sophia in the 1960s focus primarily on the role of reason in religion and are concerned to rebut the charge that Kierkegaard can be dismissed as an irrationalist. Australia's most prolific authors on Kierkegaard have published much more internationally than domestically. They have also achieved more recognition internationally than domestically. There has never been an undergraduate unit in an Australian philosophy department devoted exclusively to Kierkegaard. Other undergraduate units with a Kierkegaard component have all been on existentialism.
