ABSTRACT
Theodor Haecker made his appearance at the beginning of the twentieth century in the context of German-language Kierkegaard reception and quickly established himself as one of its dominant figures. In Haecker’s role as mediator of Kierkegaard it is impossible to distinguish clearly where he intends to reproduce Kierkegaard and where he interprets him, where he holds himself back and where he actively inserts his own opinions. German-language Kierkegaard reception, as it was advanced and steered by Haecker, and his own encounter with Kierkegaard became inextricably intertwined. Haecker makes no secret of the program within which his encounter with Kierkegaard takes place. Haecker’s commitment to Kierkegaard, which is expressed in numerous translations, introductions, afterwords, lectures, essays, and studies, does not serve to integrate Kierkegaard into contemporary intellectual movements but rather to formulate an uncompromising criticism of the present. In his view, the opposition between the dogmatically presupposed Christian order of things and an age which ignores or perverts this order of things-to use a fitting formulation from the critic of the age himself, between hierarchism and anarchism in its various forms2-should be, if not eliminated, then at least raised as the decisive problem. Haecker’s program is thus unambiguously formulated-which, however,
I would like to thank Prof. Dr. Hinrich Siefken (Nottingham), Gerhard Thonhauser (Vienna), and Christian Wiebe (Bielefeld) for their useful comments on this article. 1 Theodor Haecker, “Vorwort,” in Sören Kierkegaard, Die Tagebücher, ed. and trans. by Theodor Haecker, 2nd ed. in one volume, Leipzig: Hegner 1941, pp. 9-18, see p. 17.
