Although I’m still on a reading hiatus in order to focus on my writing project, I’m glad i squeezed this one in.
This work makes a fantastic and rather unique contribution to introductory scholarship on Kierkegaard, and I rank it just as high as Patrick Gardiner’s VSI or Palmer’s “for Beginners” (both of which you can find reviewed in my Substack archive).
What makes this contribution unique is that it traces the impact that Kierkegaard’s understanding of Socrates, and the use of Socratic irony, had on his entire oeuvre, as well as on his methods of pseudonymous authorship, indirect communication and negative dialectics. This emphasis leads Stewart to insights that I’ve not seen in any other works, introductory or otherwise. Bravo, Stewart.