ABSTRACT
John W. Elrod’s study Kierkegaard and Christendom was first published by Princeton University Press in 1981. An identical reproduction was reissued as a paperback in 2014 as part of the Princeton Legacy Library series. Elrod provides a background for his discussion with a chapter on the modernization of Denmark in the nineteenth century. A student of F.W.J. Schelling before 1802, Steffens held that “German idealism and romanticism were both refined expressions of the individualistic spirit of Protestantism.” Elrod offers a succinct introduction to the Danish context that is crucial to understanding Kierkegaard’s social thought. Egotism pervaded the world Kierkegaard called “Christendom,” Elrod argues, requiring an ethical-religious corrective from the very Christianity falsely supposed to suffuse it. The “theocentric nineteenth century” criticized in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript was the prevailing attitude of the so-called Hegelian intelligentsia.
