Udo Doedens takes a circuitous route to address
a delicate issue which is of obviously great interest
to various of the contributors to this list.
If I understand him correctly, he asserts that
in order to be worthy of the venia legendi
concerning Kierkegaard, whose monumental contempt
for the academic mind permeates every book that
Kierkegaard wrote, one must read, think, and write
like a professor.

It seems to me ironic that Udo Doedens should chide
us for the profusion and sponteneity, and for the
consequent lack of scholarly reserve with which we
write about Kierkegaard, whose prolific work
exhibits just such freedom from scholarly inhibition
as that of which Udo Doedens complains.  Whatever
criticism may be leveled against the contributors
to this list, it is obvious that they care, and care
deeply about the questions that Kierkegaard discusses;
it seems to me that the passion of their concern goes
a long way to compensate for any deficiency in their
scholarship.

Kierkegaard's advice was different from Udo Doedens':

"Do not check your soul's flight, do not grieve the
better promptings within you, do not dull your spirit
with half wishes and half thoughts, ask yourself, and
continue to ask, until you find the answer; for one may
have known a thing many times and acknowledged it, one
may have willed a thing many times and attempted it,
and yet it is only by the deep inward movements, only
by the indescribable emotions of the heart, that for
the first time you are convinced that what you have known
belongs to you, that no power can take it from you;
for only the truth which edifies is truth for you."
(Either/Or, II)