Salighed as Happiness?: Kierkegaard on the Concept Salighed

David Goicoechea is a professor of philosophy at Brock University in St.
Catharines.

This book is of high spiritual, philosophical, and scholarly value. The theme that had key importance for Aristotle as “eudaimonia” and for Augustine as “beatitudo” is shown to be central also for Kierkegaard as “salighed.” Kierkegaard intended that his writing serve as an occasion to get men to sit up and take notice of their possible eternal happiness in order that God might transform their suffering with the gift of his glory. This book continues that Kierkegaardian project. It seeks to awaken the reader to truth as edifying for him.

The book approaches the theme of happiness and personal growth through a clarification and interlinking of concepts. It attends to “salighed” in the three stages of Kierkegaard’s authorship: the early Edifying Discourses, The Postscript, and some later religious writings. At each stage it clarifies the concept by setting it within its cluster of most related concepts. It is intriguing to see how “salighed” is first related to the thorn in the flesh and its cluster of concepts. In the second stage it is related to passion and its cluster. In the third stage it is related to grace and its interplay with love and suffering and another cluster.

Khan’s method is existential insofar as it is primarily concerned with appropriation. It is phenomenological insofar as it seeks to clarify and intuit essences and essential relationships. It is hermeneutical in that it interprets “salighed” within the three Kierkegaardian contexts, within the authorship as a whole, and within the larger context of Christian life.

The book is an up-to-date scholarly aid replete with copious and helpful footnotes. It also rests upon Alastair McKinnon’s lifelong computer project. With this book Khan convincingly vindicates McKinnon’s approach.

My only criticism is that the second chapter, an explanation of the computer method, could go at the end of the book.