ABSTRACT
Sensing the time for Kierkegaardian surveys as over, John Heywood Thomas organizes his discussion of Soren Kierkegaard largely around the question of philosophy's relation to Christianity and two Kierkegaardian themes: the subjectivity of truth and the absolute paradox. Both James Collins and Ralph M. McInerny note that Thomas makes an innovation by frequently employing the linguistic analysis he gleaned from the Cambridge Analysts. Thomas does an excellent job explaining Kierkegaard's frustration with the inadequacy of the proofs; however, Thomas gets distracted with a long logico-mathematical discussion of the ontological argument that does not serve the book's larger aims. Thomas is especially adept at intellectually contextualizing Kierkegaard's authorship and tamping down the mad rush to apply science to religion. The distinguishing motif of Thomas' work has to be the employment of linguistic analysis to existential religious philosophy.
