Tracing a path through Kierkegaard's writings, this book brings the reader into close contact with the texts and purposes of this remarkable 19th-century Danish writer and thinker. Kierkegaard writes in a number of voices and registers: as a sharp observer and critic of Danish culture, or as a moral psychologist, and as a writer concerned to evoke the religious way of life of Socrates, Abraham, or a Christian exemplar.

In developing these themes, Mooney sketches Kierkegaard's Socratic vocation, gives a close reading of several central texts, and traces "The Ethical Sublime" as a recurrent theme. He unfolds an affirmative relationship between philosophy and theology and the potentialities for a religiousness that defies dogmatic creeds, secular chauvinisms, and restrictive philosophies.