Questions of canonicity form an inclusio for Concluding Unscientific Postscript. The book begins with Climacus' discussion of the irrelevance of historical and theological debates about the canon of the Scriptures to Christian faith and ends with the ‘First and Last Explanation’, signed by Kierkegaard himself, which discusses the canon of his own authorship. This circling back to the initial question is fitting in view of the fact that these questions themselves lead to a series of circularities in our reading of Postscript. Furthermore, in the body of Postscript there is another more elaborate discussion of the constitution of the canon of the authorship in ‘A Glance at a Contemporary Effort in Danish Literature’, where Climacus comments on the interrelationships between not one but three ‘canons’: the set of pseudonymous works, behind which Climacus implies there is a single author; Magister Kierkegaard's Upbuilding Discourses; and Climacus' own Philosophical Fragments, with the present text Postscript assigned its canonical role as a sequel. These discussions have their own problems of canonical status: what is the significance of the fact that ‘A Glance…’ is described as an appendix, and that the ‘Explanation’ is on unnumbered pages, following on Climacus' revocation of Postscript? Are these texts part of Postscript or not?

The question of what constitutes a canon and how awareness of a text's place in a canon shapes our reading of it can be applied to our reading of Postscript itself.