A funny thing happened to me on the way to salvation + The significance of the textual ''revocation'' of subjective truths in ethics and religion: Johannes Climacus as humorist in Kierkegaard's 'Concluding Unscientific Postscript'

According to James Conant, the 'revocations' made of the Concluding Unscientific Postscript and the Tractatus by their authors mean that we should view these texts as containing 'simple nonsense'. I firstly criticize the reading of the Postscript's 'revocation' which leads Conant to this conclusion. Next, I aim to show why we shall better understand the revocation's significance if we pay close attention to two factors: the pseudonymous author Johannes Climacus's description of himself as a 'humorist'; and, more importantly, what the text tells us about 'humour' as an entire existential life-view; one given much less attention in Kierkegaard scholarship than the much better-known 'aesthetic', 'ethical' and 'religious' views of life. Copyright © 1997 Cambridge University Press.