I am beginning a short series on Soren Kierkegaard’s Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing. Kierkegaard is a daunting author to tackle, and I will be keeping things pretty broad in this series. One gets the feeling that you could read even his short works over and over again, with new ideas presenting themselves each time. Kierkegaard, in his preface, seems to think similarly. Of this work he says:

“It is in search of that solitary ‘individual,’ to whom it wholly abandons itself, by whom it wishes to be received as if it has arisen within his own heart; that solitary ‘individual’ whom with joy and gratitude I call my reader; that solitary ‘individual’ who reads willingly and slowly, who reads over and over again, and who reads aloud – for his own sake.”

I feel like you sometimes have to read Kierkegaard “willingly and slowly,” “over and over again” just to get what he’s trying to say! Regardless of the details of this work, I find the broad idea of having the goal of achieving Purity of Heart – to relativize self-concern and simply will “the Good” (or perhaps “God’s Will”) – to be core to many contemplative traditions and authors. The contemplative journey can be summarized in many ways – achieving Union with God, losing all attachments, realizing the Self, etc. As I’ve said before, I think a good way to synthesize some of these ideas is by summarizing the contemplative journey as “the path from self to no-self.” In this case, the path is from willing simply your own good, to willing the Universal Good. If Purity of Heart isn’t the goal of the contemplative quest, it’s at least a byproduct of the journey.

Soren Kierkegaard was a 19th Century Danish philosopher who sought to renew authentic Christian faith within his contemporary “Christendom.” Kierkegaard was a prolific author whose well-known works include Fear and Trembling, The Sickness Unto Death, and Either/Or as well as many Christian devotional writings. He is often thought of as the father of existentialism.