„Nulla dies sine linea“

Abstract

Zusammenfassung The article explores the question to what extent Søren Kierkegaard’s journals, unpublished during his lifetime, manifest a Protestant work ethic in the sense of Max Weber. The journals bear witness to a daily writing process that provides information about Kierkegaard’s conception of his profession as a religious writer. They can be placed in the tradition of pietistic diaries and testify to the awareness of being called as an author. By focusing on the two terms produktivitet and virksomhed, which Kierkegaard uses to reflect on his own activity, numerous parallels can be drawn with Weber’s „concept of profession in ascetic Protestantism“. Accordingly, Kierkegaard speaks of an „intellectual capital“ that he has earned and that he leaves to a posterity without being able to dispose of the use of this inheritance.