With reference to an anonymous proposal 23 made to me in No. 47 of this newspaper
April 4, 1855. S. Kierkegaard.
To propose to me that I write a presentation of the teaching of the New Testament, perhaps a big book, a dogmatic treatise, which again perhaps could best be written on a scientific journey in foreign parts, makes upon me (as doubtless it does upon those for whom my articles in the Fatherland are a living issue), makes upon me the impression that either it is a piece of foolishness, or that a trap is laid for me, in order that I might let the instant be filched from me, view the task amiss, the consequence of which possibly might be, either that I perish, or else remain away on a prolix scientific investigation. Instead of exhorting me to write a new work, the anonymous writer might rather (for to me it seems preferable that the contemporaries be exhorted to read over and over again my articles in the Fatherland) have exhorted the contemporaries to make themselves better acquainted with my earlier works, with the Concluding Postscript, Sickness unto Death, and especially with Training in Christianity, which last book, it is true, cannot at the instant be had from the booksellers, but that will soon be made good, since it is being printed for a new edition.24 These books are related precisely to the instant, furnish for the instant the introductory knowledge which is desirable, for they are the introduction to...the instant.25
Translator's Footnotes
23The Danish editors quote a good part of the anonymous proposal, which not only demanded a complete exposition of New Testament doctrine, but affirmed that it was time to stop ringing the fire alarm — to which S. K. responded in the following article.
24It was issued about a month later, on May 8, and was announced on May 16 in S. K.'s twentieth article in the Fatherland.
25The fact that S. K. was about to issue a magazine entitled the Instant suggests that this was for him an important category. How it is related to Greek thought is explained in the long footnote at the beginning of chapter III of The Concept of Dread. In the Fragments he had already connected it with the "leap," he says in another place that "the instant is not an atom of time but of eternity," and in one of the articles in the Instant he speaks of it as "the breaking through of eternity." On the other hand, he said of the mere "instant of time" that "it is filled with emptiness." This was the decisive instant for Christianity.