The title of this chapter and this book, ‘The Joy of Kierkegaard’, is the same as that of a module that I once taught at a leading British university. As part of the process of getting the module accepted, I had to present the paper work for the proposed module to the relevant Faculty committee. The philosophers present fell off their chairs laughing. ‘That'll be the shortest module ever taught’, they chortled. ‘Well’, I replied, ‘if that's what you think, that's all the more reason why I should teach it. Why don't you all enrol and you might learn something?’ Needless to say, they did not take me up on this, but the module went ahead and was much appreciated by the students.

At one level, of course, their reaction was quite understandable. The melancholy Dane, the father of existentialism, inventor of angst, favourite philosopher of anguished teenagers, the writer of The Concept of Dread, Sickness unto Death and The Gospel of Suffering—these stereotypes hardly convey a bundle of fun. To be fair, a casual, or even a more than casual, reading of the journals with their constant allusions to suffering and misunderstanding and isolation tends to bear this out.