| The aim of this dissertation is to illuminate Norman Maclean's philosophical debt to Soren Kierkegaard, and introduce Maclean as a significant American philosophical writer. Beyond the textual evidence, my research has uncovered two direct connections between Maclean and Kierkegaard. First, Norman Maclean was reading Paul Tillich at the time he was writing Young Men and Fire, particularly The Courage to Be. Tillich's The Courage to Be is a derivative work on Kierkegaard's The Concept of Anxiety. Second, Norman Maclean taught the poetry of W.H. Auden at the University of Chicago. Auden is one of the early advocates of Kierkegaard in English, and the bulk of Auden's work written in the 1930's and 1940's was written under an extremely strong influence from Kierkegaard, particularly The Concept of Anxiety. With this information at hand, I will argue that the distinction between fear and anxiety set forth by Kierkegaard in The Concept of Anxiety is the philosophical backbone of Maclean's last book, Young Men and Fire. |
