The integration of life and works is a feature which each author understood and cultivated. Their lives are important reminders in the showing of their purposes. Readers of the two authors' works are not spared the personal involvement which the authors themselves felt. Indirect communication demands that the 'task' of philosophy falls at least as much on the shoulders of the audience as on those of the speaker. Both Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein hoped that their work might have uses in the daily life of their audiences.
Most studies take on some of the flavor of the works under review.
But in light of the fact that both Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein look to their readers to continue in the appropriate way, any work 'about' them must adhere to their categories more closely than usual - must in fact become work 'with' or 'after' them. Three ideas about method, held in common by the two figures, will be constantly adopted in this particular investigation. The first recommendation to be appropriated is that of limitation of the task. Kierkegaard's work was expressly limited. So while it would doubtless be possible to fill an encyclopedia with the catalogue of differences between Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein, it would hardly be in their spirit to make the attempt.