Finished reading: Provocations by Søren Kierkegaard 📚

This book is the first thing that I’ve read by Kierkegaard. It’s more of a “Kierkegaard for Dummies”, since it’s excerpts from his various books, collected and retranslated.

All the rumors are true: Kierkegaard is dense, and intense! His writing is challenging, but very inspiring.

In the introduction, the author explains how Kierkegaard’s goal was not to lay out a moral path for his readers, but instead to point out moral contradiction, and force the reader to make decisions as to what it is she truly believes.

It’s a badass approach that I think works well - this book challenged me, personally, to think critically about how I live out the spiritual dimensions of my life.

Where as the first half of the book is a selection of standalone essays, the back half has the subheading “excerpts and aphorisms”, and reads like a series of disjointed paragraphs (organized into loose topics). I don’t think the reader is best served by reading this part of the book serially (I couldn’t make it through this way), but instead treat it like an index, whenever you’re interested in reading Kierkegaard excerpts or perspective on the given topics.

Overall, this book is worth a read. And one I’d like to return to again at some point in the future. At the same time, I don’t think it has inspired me to dig deeper into Kierkegaard’s other books. If this is meant to be an introduction, then an introduction may be all I need.