The present volume aims to reconstruct and examine Kierkegaard's aesthetics, that is, the Danish philosopher's conception of the work of art, as well as of its production and reception. This aspect of Kierkegaard's thought has been neglected by critics, who have mainly focussed on the aesthetic as an existential phase.
It is a commonly held notion that in dealing with art and beauty Kierkegaard mostly borrowed from, and simplified, the work of other authors (e. g., Aristotle and Lessing, and especially Hegel and Heiberg), and that as a result his approach can hardly be seen as a coherent whole. In contrast with such an interpretation, the author of the present volume shows how in Kierkegaard's writings it is possible to identify an aesthetic approach that is systematic (albeit articulated in fragmentary ways). Such an approach informs Kierkegaard's numerous writings as a (literary and drama) critic, starting from his 1838 volume, From the Papers of One Still Living , up to the 1848 essay The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress , and beyond.
The appendix to the present volume presents the Italian translation of one of these critical works, Kierkegaard's 1845 A Passing Comment on a Detail in Don Juan, which is a sort of delightful gloss on his well-known essay on Mozart's Don Juan included in the first part of Enten-Eller.