Walter Lowrie's classic, bestselling translation of Soren Kierkegaard's most important and popular books remains unmatched for its readability and literary quality. Fear and Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death established Kierkegaard as the father of existentialism and have come to define his contribution to philosophy. Lowrie's translation, first published in 1941 and later revised, was the first in English, and it has introduced hundreds of thousands of readers to Kierkegaard's thought.

A major re-evaluation of the complex relations between the philosophies of Kierkegaard and Hegel.

Embracing the viewpoints of Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox thinkers, of conservatives, liberals, radicals, and agnostics, Christianity today is anything but monolithic or univocal. In The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought, general editor Adrian Hastings has tried to capture a sense of the great diversity of opinion that swirls about under the heading of Christian thought. Indeed, the 260 contributors, who hail from twenty countries, represent as wide a range of perspectives as possible.Here is a comprehensive and authoritative (though not dogmatic) overview of the full spectrum of Christian thinking. Within its 600 alphabetically arranged entries, readers will find lengthy survey articles on the history of Christian thought, on national and regional traditions, and on various denominations, from Anglican to Unitarian. There is ample coverage of Eastern thought as well, examining the Christian tradition in China, Japan, India, and Africa. The contributors examine major theological topics such as resurrection, the Eucharist, and grace as well as controversial issues such as homosexuality and abortion. In addition, short entries illuminate symbols such as water and wine, and there are many profiles of leading theologians, of non-Christians who have deeply influenced Christian thinking, including Aristotle and Plato, and of literary figures such as Dante, Milton, and Tolstoy. Most articles end with a list of suggested readings and the book features a large number of cross-references.The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought is an indispensable guide to one of the central strands of Western culture. An essential volume for all Christians, it is a thoughtful gift for the holidays.

One of the most remarkable philosophical works of the nineteenth century, The Sickness Unto Death is also famed for the depth and acuity of its modern psychological insights. Writing under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus, Kierkegaard explores the concept of 'despair', alerting readers to the diversity of ways in which they may be described as living in this state of bleak abandonment - including some that may seem just the opposite - and offering a much-discussed formula for the eradication of despair. With its penetrating account of the self, this late work by Kierkegaard was hugely influential upon twentieth-century philosophers including Karl Jaspers, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. The Sickness unto Death can be regarded as one of the key works of theistic existentialist thought - a brilliant and revelatory answer to one man's struggle to fill the spiritual void.

Best known as a philosopher, one of the founders of existentialism, Kierkegaard also wrote books whose themes were primarily religious, psychological or literary. He was opposed to much in organised Christianity, stressing the necessity for individual choice against prescribed dogma and ritual. In this book, he concentrates his penetrating psychological observations on the theme of despair.

Kierkegaard has always enjoyed a rich reception in the fields of theology and religious studies. This reception might seem obvious given that he is one of the most important Christian writers of the nineteenth century, but Kierkegaard was by no means a straightforward theologian in any traditional sense. He had no enduring interest in some of the main fields of theology such as church history or biblical studies, and he was strikingly silent on many key Christian dogmas. Moreover, he harbored a degree of animosity towards the university theologians and churchmen of his own day. Despite this, he has been a source of inspiration for numerous religious writers from different denominations and traditions. Tome I is dedicated to the reception of Kierkegaard among German Protestant theologians and religious thinkers. The writings of some of these figures turned out to be instrumental for Kierkegaard's breakthrough internationally shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. Leading figures of the movement of 'dialectical theology' such as Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, Paul Tillich and Rudolf Bultmann spawned a steadily growing awareness of and interest in Kierkegaard's thought among generations of German theology students. Emanuel Hirsch was greatly influenced by Kierkegaard and proved instrumental in disseminating his thought by producing the first complete German edition of Kierkegaard's published works. Both Barth and Hirsch established unique ways of reading and appropriating Kierkegaard, which to a certain degree determined the direction and course of Kierkegaard studies right up to our own times.

Jeffrey Hanson is an adjunct assistant professor of philosophy at Boston College. --Book Jacket.

The A to Z of Kierkegaard's Philosophy provides a contextual introduction to Kierkegaard's 19th century world of Copenhagen, a chronology of events and key figures in his life, as well as definitions of the key systems of his thought-theology, existentialism, literature, and psychology. The extensive bibliographical section covers secondary literature and electronic materials of help to researchers. The appendix includes detailed information on his writings, along with a list of his pseudonyms. This book is useful not only as a guide for experienced scholars, but also as an introduction to new students of Kierkegaard's Philosophy.

This bibliography on Sren Kierkegaard carries on the work of Jens Himmelstrup's international bibliography (1962). It collates everything written about Kierkegaard - books, contributions to edited collections, and journals - and also features an appendix of primary text editions and translations. Discussion notes, reviews, etc., are catalogued according to the items they refer to. The bibliography contains more than 5,600 primary entries and is a testament to the expanding worldwide interest in the Danish philosopher. It also remedies the deeply-felt need for a collected overview of the extensive literature on Kierkegaard.

The literature on Kierkegaard is often content to paraphrase. By contrast, Michael Theunissen articulates one of Kierkegaard's central ideas, his theory of despair, in a detailed and comprehensible manner and confronts it with alternatives. Understanding what Kierkegaard wrote on despair is vital not only because it illuminates his thought as a whole, but because his account of despair in The Sickness unto Death is the cornerstone of existentialism. Theunissen's book, published in German in 1993, is widely regarded as the best treatment of the subject in any language. Kierkegaard's Concept of Despair is also one of the few works on Kierkegaard that bridge the gap between the Continental and analytic traditions in philosophy. Theunissen argues that for Kierkegaard, the fundamental characteristic of despair is the desire of the self "not to be what it is." He sorts through the apparently chaotic text of The Sickness unto Death to explain what Kierkegaard meant by the "self," how and why individuals want to flee their selves, and how he believed they could reconnect with their selves. According to Theunissen, Kierkegaard thought that individuals in despair seek to deny their authentic selves to flee particular aspects of their character, their past, or the world, or in order to deny their "mission." In addition to articulating and evaluating Kierkegaard's concept of despair, Theunissen relates Kierkegaard's ideas to those of Heidegger, Sartre, and other twentieth-century philosophers.