ABSTRACT
Arnold Ljungdal's The Problem Kierkegaard was published in Swedish in 1964, with a Danish translation following the year after. In the Introduction, Ljungdal describes his task and motivation for writing by drawing on dramatic military imagery. For the remainder of the book, Ljungdal divides his work into two major parts. His purpose in the first part is to challenge both Kierkegaard's presentation of himself as a Christian thinker and Kierkegaard's view of faith in general. As he argues, despite Kierkegaard's apparent claim to the contrary, there is nothing in the authorship that supports Kierkegaard ever having an authentic meeting with a religious reality. In the second part, Ljungdal focuses on Kierkegaard as a philosopher and a writer as well as the Danish thinker's posthumous relevance. Perhaps Ljungdal's most significant contribution to Kierkegaard studies is his attempt to re-appropriate certain aspects of Kierkegaard's thought for secular purposes within his contemporary Swedish context.
