‘Collision’ was the dramatic category under which Kierkegaard liked to grasp the meaning of his life. Regine gave him his ‘erotic’ collision. Collision with ‘the crowd’ had been triggered by The Corsair. Course was now set for Mynster. Each collision served a purpose, or so Kierkegaard now believed. Not his own purpose, for if only these clashes could be allowed to play out their possibilities in a space beyond prudence and imprudence, bringing them under Guidance (Styrelsen), they would be in the service of God. Should we not then say ‘God's purpose’?

Surely not. The very idea of God transcends purpose, and thus prudence and imprudence too. In putting ourselves under Guidance we are already acting in the light of eternal justice, not working on God's behalf towards it. That at least is the spirit of much of Kierkegaard's Discourses. However, in looking back on his life as having been favoured by these collisions, Kierkegaard can't help seeing that there was some purpose in it; perhaps the purpose of coming to see and bear witness to the truth that living under Guidance is the form of human fulfilment and serves no further purpose.

‘Guidance knows well how to relate every man's collision to his capacities’, and because Kierkegaard has been ‘granted unusual capacities’, his own collisions with their ‘potential for expansion’ have been particularly fruitful.