ABSTRACT
Anthony Rudd's Soren Kierkegaard and the Limits of the Ethical was published in 1993 by Clarendon Press. Despite its relatively small size, Rudd's book can be said to mark something of a milestone in Kierkegaard scholarship. In making the case for the relevance of Kierkegaard in this respect, Rudd provides a brief sketch of Kierkegaard's thought in his historical context. Kierkegaard is said to have inherited "Hegel's concern to find a synthesis in which our rootedness and our capacity for disengagement could be reconciled." For Kierkegaard, by contrast, "the synthesis is to be brought about not on the level of world history, through the transformation of society, but as a task for each individual to achieve for himself, within himself." Rudd begins his interpretation of Kierkegaard from the premises that human beings desire "to live a coherent and meaningful life," and that the human task is to "integrate the various aspects of human existence into a stable and coherent personality."
