Volume 44, Number 9 · May 29, 1997
On 'The Seducer's Diary'
By John Updike
Søren Kierkegaard's method, dictated by his volatile and provocative temperament, resembles that of a fiction writer: he engages in multiple impersonations, assuming various poses and voices with an impartial vivacity. The method is, in one of his favorite words, maieutic, from the Greek term for midwifery, like that of his beloved model Socrates, who in his questioning style sought to elicit his auditors' ideas rather than impose his own.
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