Two Upbuilding Discourses (1844)

Two Upbuilding Discourses (1844) is a book by Søren Kierkegaard.

Two Upbuilding Discourses

Author	Søren Kierkegaard
Original title	To opbyggelige Taler
Language	Danish
Series	First authorship (Discourses)
Genre	Christianity, philosophy
Publisher	Bookdealer P. G. Philipsen
Publication date	March 5, 1844
Publication place	Denmark
Published in English	1945 – first translation
Pages	24
Preceded by	Four Upbuilding Discourses, 1843
Followed by	Three Upbuilding Discourses, 1844

History

Kierkegaard wrote the Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses in 1843–1844. These discourses were translated from Danish to English in the 1940s, from Danish to German in the 1950s, and then to English again in 1990. These discourses were published along with Kierkegaard's pseudonymous works.

Structure

His Two Upbuilding Discourses of 1844 are:

• "To Preserve One's Soul in Patience"
• "Patience in Expectation"

"To Preserve One's Soul in Patience"

Kierkegaard stressed the value of patience in expectancy when facing life situations in these two short essays.

He provides examples of how different people react to danger and anxiety. He regards the single individual very highly and says, "Let us praise what is truly praiseworthy, the glory of human nature; let us give thanks that it was granted also to us to be human beings."^[1]

Kierkegaard provides three examples of people reacting to anxiety and despair, all of them as praiseworthy as the physical endurance to defeat an external enemy.

This act of self-discovery is the essence of what Kierkegaard wrote about. He says, "People are prone to pay attention to earthly dangers^[2] but these are external dangers. Kierkegaard says, we need to preserve something internal; our souls."^[3]

"Patience in Expectation"

Is Anna not patient in her expectancy? Even though in the world we hear at times of someone who expects nothing at all, even though such a person is sometimes thought to have attained the proper assurance, because he craftily made it impossible for himself to discern the loss, yet it is also admitted that this wisdom is of later origin, and that no one has it in early youth. Originally, like every other human being he was expectant. With a smile or with tears, one confesses that expectancy is in the soul originally. Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Patience in Expectation, p. 220

Kierkegaard's intention in the preceding discourse was to speak as if patience were outside a person.

Criticism

These discourses were translated by David F. Swenson in the mid-1940s. He wrote in his preface to this discourse: "The discourses appearing in the present volume constitute the fourth and fifth groups in the series of eighteen devotional addresses, and both groups were published in 1844. It may be of some interest to consider more particularly than has hitherto been done, the plan and purpose of these productions, paralleling as they do in time of publication the publication of the esthetic works. Unlike the latter, these addresses were published under Kierkegaard's own name, because as religious works he assumed personal responsibility for the views expressed, since their purpose was to indicate that from the beginning his writing had a religious motivation and plan, of which the esthetic works were also a part."^[4]

David J. Gouwens, Professor of Theology at Brite Divinity School,^[5] says that Kierkegaard was always more interested in the "how" than in the "why".^[6] Robert L. Perkins has termed Kierkegaard’s “second authorship”, with respect to the straightforward religious literature published (with some exceptions) under Kierkegaard’s own name after Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846).

William Blake - The Soul Exploring the Recesses of the Grave ~ "The more a person weans his soul from understanding the imperfect to grasping the perfect, the more he will appropriate the explanation of life that comforts while it is day and remains with him when night comes, when he lies forgotten in his grave and has himself forgotten what moth and rust have consumed and human sagacity has found out, and yet he will have a thought that can fill out the long interval for him, that will know nothing of the difference that troubled him but is aware only of the equality that is from above, the equality in love, which lasts and is the only thing that lasts, the equality that does not allow any human being to be another’s debtor, except as Paul says, in the one debt, the debt of loving one another." Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses p. 158