ABSTRACT
Takaya Suto's Kierkegaard and "Christendom" deals with the reconstruction of Kierkegaard's thought in the context of the nineteenth-century Danish Christian world. In this book, he tries to distance himself from "the philosophical approach" which "considers Kierkegaard just 'a philosopher' and mainly considers only his philosophical works". It is central to Suto's argument that he reinterprets Kierkegaardian thought as a Christian social ethic which guarantees the relationship to others by the neighbor love on the basis of the relationship with God. Moreover, Suto places the Kierkegaardian Christian ethic in the concrete social and intellectual context of nineteenth-century Danish Christendom. Suto argues, "Kierkegaard tries to correct Lutheran-Protestant Christendom". From this point of view, he also explains Kierkegaard's concept of polemic. Finally, Suto addresses the question of the relevance of Kierkegaard's thought. Despite its long tradition, the research on Kierkegaard in Japan has mostly remained in the realm of philosophy or theology with few exceptions.
