Edward F. Mooney, Selves in Discord and Resolve: Kierkegaard's Moral-Religious Psychology, from "Either/Or" to "Sickness unto Death"

Edward F. Mooney's Selves in Discord and Resolve provides new perspectives on Soren Kierkegaard's notion of the self, in its complexity. The book traces the achievement of wholeness from fragmentation. John Davenport heralds the work as "without doubt one of the very best books on Kierkegaard in the last decade," and commends the chapter on Job and Repetition as "unsurpassed." Mooney's readings are rooted in key passages from these texts, and his explications make use of contemporary English-speaking philosophers who explore Kierkegaard's themes: Frankfurt, Cavell, MacIntyre, and Nagel. In his opening chapter, subtitled "Philosophy, Portraits, and Poetry," Mooney brings out Kierkegaard's theatrical use of pseudonyms. Mooney underlines an ambivalently tragic strain in Kierkegaard's writing: "The acknowledgment of a paradoxically freeing necessary suffering as the way of human life links the composer and Kierkegaard in ways unfathomed. What deep serenities each provide lie in liquid pools sustaining unremitting struggle with threatening, self-saving power."