In this chapter I want to approach Kierkegaard as religious thinker by beginning with some of his diagnostic reflections on the self, in particular what he sees as diseases of “reflection,” including those that he feels afflict the practice of philosophy and theology. To begin here is to begin with the polemical side of Kierkegaard. I do so deliberately, since polemic is of the essence of his religious thought.

We can begin with a quotation from The Sickness Unto Death. Anti-Climacus, the Christian pseudonym, writes:

Kierkegaard is part of a long tradition in the West of seeing human life, including the philosophical and religious understanding of life, in terms of illness and health, the diagnosis of a disease and deliverance from it. The diagnosis may be relatively mild (a person lives in misunderstanding or error) or it may be of a deeper spiritual malady (sin). In either case, this tradition postulates that the prior condition of “ill health” includes, as Kierkegaard puts it, diseases of “reflection.” “Reflection” is a broad term for Kierkegaard, indicating not only one's thought and intellectual activity, but also the character or tone of one's imaginative and affective life.