One last post for the evening, and this features one of my more favorite passages of Kierkegaard, from On Authority and Revelation: The book on Adler.
All [speculative, tendentious] premise-authors, whatever their relative differences may be, have one thing in common: they all have a purpose, they all wish to produce an effect, they all wish that their works may have an extraordinary diffusion and may be read if possible by all mankind…. The premise-writer has neither time nor patience to think it out more precisely. His notion is: “If only an outcry is raised in a loud voice that can be heard all over the land, and it is read by everybody and is talked about in every company, then surely it will turn out all right.” The premise-author thinks that the outcry is like a wishing rod.
