Authorship and Authenticity: Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein

Abstract

‘In this age, and indeed for many ages past, people have quite lost sight of the fact that authorship ought to be a serious calling implying an appropriate mode of personal existence.’¹ So wrote Kierkegaard in his The Point of View for my Work as an Author. He accused metaphysicians of losing sight of this serious calling. There is a comic pretentiousness in the disparity between their speculative systems, and the actualities of human existence. Kierkegaard said that they built castles in the air, dwellings no one lives in, and created a fantastic language for fantastic beings. Wittgenstein recognised that the problems which lead to metaphysical systems are deep problems. Nevertheless, he said that language in such systems is idle language which has gone on holiday. His aim was to bring words back from their metaphysical to their ordinary use; to bring us back from castles in the air to rough ground. Wittgenstein insisted that what is ragged should be left ragged.