Myths attach rather easily to some thinkers, especially to those who like Hegel are hard to read or like Kierkegaard hard to place. Such myths are often based on hearsay or a superficial reading of the texts. One lingering myth about Kierkegaard is that he is an irrationalist in some sense that denies the value of clear and honest thinking. Kierkegaard did deny the ability of reasoned thought to arrive at universal and objective truth on matters of value, but today that is considered quite rational. This collection of previously unpublished essays is offered as proof of how wrong it is to suppose that if Kierkegaard's philosophical star is in the ascendant, as it now is, things must be going badly with philosophy.

Besides this general myth, though owing as much to them as they to it, are the particular myths - of Kierkegaard's uncontrolled predilection for paradox, a delight in exaggeration, and his writer's weakness for rhetoric over perspicuity - myths that have led in their turn to superficial renditions of the ideas and to failures to detect consistency or development in his multiauthored production. More than with any other recent thinker, and for good or ill, the reception of Kierkegaard's work has carried the subjective stamp of the receiver's own preferences. So much so that one might well ask if Kierkegaard has not so much enjoyed as “suffered“ his several renaissances.