During an idle moment in my office at the university, now well over ten years ago, I selected from my bookcase a thin blue hardcover volume that I had never before opened. The book was Philosophical Fragments by Johannes Climacus, translated into English by David F. Swenson, and published in 1944 for the American-Scandinavian Foundation by Princeton University Press. Of Climacus, I knew only that he was one of a handful of authorial personae under whose names Søren Kierkegaard published such pseudonymous works as Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, and Stages on Life's Way. Of Kierkegaard, I knew only what little I could remember from a brief encounter in an undergraduate survey course. But Climacus obviously had something to say to me. He talked about the absolute importance of the truth in human life, and he wasted no words in doing so. His insights into the essential nature of Socratic teaching and learning were especially striking. His understanding of Socrates, I thought, was rivaled only by Plato and Xenophon, two authors who had long stood at the center of my philosophical interests. Yet as far as I could tell, the real subject of his book was not Socrates, and not even philosophy. It was religious faith.

There was brilliance in Climacus's writing, and there was ardor. Above all there was mystery. His book was a literary gem as well as a philosophical tour de force.