{"title":"Books by Bruce H. Kirmmse","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781324093572","title":"Fear and Trembling – A New Translation","description":"First published in 1843 under the pseudonym Johannes de silentio (“John of Silence”), Søren Kierkegaard’s richly resonant Fear and Trembling has for generations stood as a pivotal text in the history of moral philosophy, inspiring such artistic and philosophical luminaries as Edvard Munch, W. H. Auden, Walter Benjamin, and existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. Now, in our era of immense uncertainty, renowned Kierkegaard scholar Bruce H. Kirmmse eloquently brings this classic work to a new generation of readers.   Retelling the biblical story of the binding of Isaac, Fear and Trembling expounds on the ordeal of Abraham, who was commanded by God to sacrifice his own son in an exceptional test of faith. Disgusted at the self-certainty of his own age, Kierkegaard investigates the paradox underlying Abraham’s decision to allow his duty to God to take precedence over his duties to his family. As Kierkegaard’s narrator explains, the story presents a difficulty that is not often considered—namely, that after the ordeal is over and Isaac has been spared at the last moment, Abraham is capable of receiving him again and living normally, even joyfully, for the rest of his days. Almost inexplicably, “Abraham had faith and did not doubt.”Deftly tracing the autobiographical threads that run throughout the work, Kirmmse initially, in his lucid and engaging introduction, demystifies Kierkegaard’s fictive narrator, Johannes de silentio, drawing parallels between Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son and the author’s personal “sacrifices.” Ultimately, however, Kirmmse reveals Fear and Trembling as a fiercely polemical volume, designed to provoke the reader into considering what is actually meant by the word “faith”, and whether those who consider themselves “true believers” actually are.   With a vibrancy almost never before seen in English, and “a matchless grasp of the intricacies of Kierkegaard’s writing process” (Gordon Marino), Kirmmse here definitively demonstrates Kierkegaard’s enduring power to illuminate the terrible wonder of faith.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56297524363637,"sku":"9781324093572","price":15.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781324093572_e3278f1c-ab09-48d6-a6c2-ca988bba0082.jpg?v=1786034650"},{"product_id":"9781324094487","title":"The Sickness Unto Death – A New Translation","description":"First published in 1849 under the pseudonym “Anti-Climacus,” Soren Kierkegaard’s The Sickness unto Death endures as a seminal text in the history of theology and moral philosophy, and an essential companion to his earlier works. Beginning with the biblical story of Lazarus, whom Jesus miraculously raised from the dead, Kierkegaard here presents his explication of despair as the “sickness unto death,” that is, a sickness not of the body, but of the spirit, and thus, of the self. A dramatic “medical history” of the course of this sickness, The Sickness unto Death culminates, as all medical histories do, in a crisis, a turning point at which the self, the patient, either realises or abandons itself. Masterfully translated by Bruce H. Kirmmse, with his “historian’s eye” and “craftsman’s feel for the challenges of Kierkegaard’s syntax” (Vanessa Parks Rumble), this trenchant, explosive inquiry into the human soul spares no one, not even its author.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Hardback","offer_id":57685720629621,"sku":"9781324091240","price":20.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":56297726542197,"sku":"9781324094487","price":13.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781324094487.jpg?v=1792598883"},{"product_id":"9781324093671","title":"Works of Love – A New Translation","description":"First published in 1847, Works of Love is among Søren Kierkegaard’s most explicitly religious works. Intended to awaken rather than convince the book consists of a series of fifteen deliberations on love. Contrasting romantic love and love for one’s friends with the selfless Christian love—agape—of the New Testament, Works of Love contends that the only way to purge self-interest from love is to love one’s neighbour, who is “indeed unconditionally every person.” Though always careful to distinguish his “deliberations” from clerical “sermons”, Kierkegaard insisted that in order to grasp the full meaning of the work, one must hear it.   Whereas other translations have obscured or disregarded the rhetorical aspect of the text, Kirmmse’s translation preserves it—thus making the same request of its readers that Kierkegaard once made of his: to hear the argument by reading it aloud.   Søren Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Anxiety was praised as:“[A] book at once so profound and byzantine that it seems to aim at evoking the very feeling it dissects. Perhaps more than any other philosopher, Kierkegaard reflected on the question of how to communicate the truths that we live by.”—The New York Times","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56297920528757,"sku":"9781324093671","price":28.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781324093671.jpg?v=1791212812"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-bruce-h-kirmmse.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}