Abstract: Kierkegaard's ethics of authorship has redefined the author's responsibility to the reader. He believes that a strategy of deception should be employed to hide the author's real intention, leaving the readers to interpret the work, thus revealing the independent status of the work. He uses means like pseudonym, irony, indirect communication intentionally to distance the reader from the author, which establishes an ethical paradox that the author must enlighten the reader through deception, the reader can only get access to truth through introspection of this deception. Kierkegarrd's ethics of authorship contradicts the explicit emotional emission of Romanticism, the blunt expression of Hegel's philosophy of rationality, highlighting the reader's subjectivity, individuality. Kierkegarrd's theory can be traced back to the ways of Socrates' “spirituak maieutics”, Jesus' preaching, has a tremendous impact on the20th century literary theories like reader-response criticism.

Key words: ethics of authorship, Kierkegaard, deception, pseudonym, indirect communication