^{page 347 note 1} See MacIntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue, second edition (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), pp. 36–50.Google Scholar

^{page 347 note 2} See Blanshard, Brand, ‘Kierkegaard on Faith’, in Essays on Kierkegaard, edited by Gill, Jerry (Minneapolis: Burgess Publishing Company, 1969), pp. 113–25.Google Scholar

^{page 348 note 1} All these claims can be found in chapters 3–5 in Phiiosophical Fragments (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985).

^{page 348 note 2} The relationship between Kierkegaard and his pseudonyms is a vexed one which I will not attempt to resolve in this paper. See my Kierkegaard's Fragments and Postscript (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1983), chapter one, for my views on the problem of pseudonymity. In this paper I sometimes speak of Kierkegaard and some of the pseudonyms interchangeably, particularly the Climacus pseudonym, because the charge of irrationalism made against Kierkegaard draws on the texts of these pseudonyms. One could of course defend Kierkegaard in such a case by arguing that the views of the pseudonyms are not his own. In principle such a defence is legitimate, but I do not think it is necessary in this case, though I do think that many of the comments made by the pseudonyms reflect their less–than–Christian status.

^{page 348 note 3} See Swenson's, David classic Something About Kierkegaard, revised edition (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing Co., 1945).Google Scholar Also see MacKinnon's, Alastair ‘Kierkegaard: “Paradox” and Irrationalism’, in Gill, Jerry, ed., Essays on KierkegaardGoogle Scholar, and his ‘Kierkegaard's Irrationalism Revisited’, International Philosophical Quarterly, IX (1969), 165–76. Classic essays by Fabro and See can be found in A Kierkegaard Critique, ed. by Johnson, Howard and Thulstrup, Niels (New York: Harper and Row, 1962).Google Scholar

^{page 348 note 4} See Hannay's, AlastairKierkegaard (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982), pp. 106–8.Google Scholar

^{page 348 note 5} See again Blanshard's, article, ‘Kierkegaard on Faith,’ in Essays on Kierkegaard.Google Scholar

^{page 348 note 6} Garelick, Herbert, The Anti–Christianity of Kierkegaard (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1965), p. 28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

^{page 349 note 1} Pojman, Louis, The Logic of Subjectivity (University, Alabama: The University of Alabama Press, 1984), p. 136.Google Scholar

^{page 349 note 2} Pojman, , p. 137.Google Scholar

^{page 349 note 3} See, for example, the famous opening pages of The Sickness Unto Death, edited and translated by Howard, V. and Hong, Edna H. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), pp. 13–14.Google Scholar

^{page 349 note 4} In Concluding Unscientific Postscript Johannes Climacus describes existence as a ‘striving’, which involves a ‘self–contradiction’. VII, 72; p. 84. Quotations from Postscript and from Philosophical Fragments are given in the following form. The first number given will be to the volume number and page number of the first Danish edition of Kierkegaard's collected works. Seren Kierkegaard's Samlede Varker (Copenhagen: Gyldendals, 1901–1906). The number after the semi–colon will refer to an English translation, which will be the new Hong translation for Fragments (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), and the old Swenson–Lowrie, translation of Postscript (Princeton University Press, 1941).Google Scholar I have felt free to modify or use my own translations, but English page numbers are included for the convenience of readers.

^{page 350 note 1} Fragments, IV, 250; p. 87.

^{page 350 note 2} Postscript, VII, 504; p. 512.

^{page 350 note 3} For example, see Postscript, VII, 171, p. 183. Though here it is worth noting that Alastair McKinnon's computer studies of the Kierkegaardian text have shown that references to the incarnation as the absurd come almost exclusively from the pseudonymous authorship, which represents how the incarnation will appear to a non–Christian, and are almost non–existent in Kierkegaard's non–pseudonymous writings. See MacKinnon, Alastair, The Kierkegaard Indices (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970–1975)Google Scholar, particularly volumes III and IV.

^{page 350 note 4} For example, Hegel says that nature is a contradiction. See his Philosophy of Nature, translated by Miller, A. V. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), pp. 17–22.Google Scholar

^{page 350 note 5} Postscript, VII, 447; p. 459.

^{page 351 note 1} Fragments, IV, 270; p. 108.

^{page 351 note 2} Fragments, IV, 219; p. 53.

^{page 351 note 3} Fragments, IV, 263 p. 101.

^{page 352 note 1} Fragments, IV, 263–4; p. 101.

^{page 352 note 2} Practice in Christianity, Samlede Værker, XII, 117; pp. 124–5 in old Lowrie, Walter translation, Training in Christianity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1944).Google Scholar

^{page 352 note 3} Postscript, VII, 495; p. 504.

^{page 352 note 4} See Pojman, , The Logic of Subjectivity, p. 123.Google Scholar

^{page 353 note 1} Fragments, IV, 207; p. 39.

^{page 354 note 1} Fragments, IV, 214; pp. 46–7.

^{page 355 note 1} Postscript, VII, 24N; p. 35.

^{page 355 note 2} Postscript VII, 505; p. 514.

^{page 356 note 1} Fragments, IV, 224; p. 59.

^{page 356 note 2} Soren Kierkegaard's journals and Papers, Vol I. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967), entry no. 10, p. 7.

^{page 356 note 3} Fragments, IV, 215; p. 48.

^{page 356 note 4} Fragments, IV, 214–15; Pp. 47–8.

^{page 356 note 5} Fragments, IV, 224; p. 59.

^{page 357 note 1} Fragments, IV, 222; pp. 55–6.

^{page 357 note 2} Fragments, IV, 227; p. 62.

^{page 357 note 3} Fragments, IV, 227; p. 62.

^{page 358 note 1} Plantinga, Alvin, ‘Reason and Belief in God’, in Faith and Rationality, edited by Plantinga, Alvin and Wolterstorff, Nicholas (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), pp. 16–91.Google Scholar

^{page 358 note 2} See Plantinga, , ‘Reason and Belief in God,’ pp. 78–82.Google Scholar

^{page 358 note 3} See Fragments, IV, 225–6; pp. 59–60, where Climacus defends these claims by a thought–experiment in which he first imagines an individual with an overwhelming amount of evidence who lacks faith, and then a person with almost no evidence who nonetheless manages to have his life transformed by the encounter with the god.

^{page 359 note 1} Bloom, Anthony, Beginning to Pray (New York: Paulist Press, 1970), p. xii.Google Scholar

^{page 359 note 2} Philosophical Fragments, IV, 266; p. 104.

^{page 359 note 3} Pojman makes this charge, for example, in Religious Belief and the Will (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986).

^{page 360 note 1} The following passage is crucial here: ‘If the teacher (the god) is to be the occasion that reminds the learner, he cannot assist him to recollect that he actually does know the truth … That for which the teacher can become the occasion of his recollecting is that he is untruth … To this act of consciousness, the Socratic principle applies: the teacher is only an occasion, whoever he may be, even if he is a god.’ Fragments, IV, 184; p. 14.

^{page 360 note 2} See especially the second section. The following quote is very typical: ‘The decisive mark of Christian suffering is the fact that it is voluntary, and that it is the possibility of offence for the sufferer.’ (Italics Kierkegaard's.) Practice in Christianity (Training in Christianity), XII, 104; p. III.

^{page 360 note 3} Sickness Unto Death, Samlede XI, 195Google Scholar; p. 83 in Hong, translation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980).Google Scholar

^{page 361 note 1} Postscript, VII, 39; p. 51.

^{page 362 note 1} The author wishes to thank the National Endowment for the Humanities (U.S.A.) for a fellowship which made this paper possible.