Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) was a Danish philosopher, writer, and theologian. He was born in Copenhagen, the youngest of seven children, and spent almost his entire life in that city. His father was a wealthy merchant who was deeply religious and had a dark, guilt-ridden character that had a profound effect on Søren. Kierkegaard studied theology at the University of Copenhagen and fell deeply in love with a young woman named Regine Olsen, who he became engaged to and then, mysteriously, broke off the engagement with. This rupture haunted much of his later writing. He wrote an enormous amount in a short life: philosophical works, religious meditations, literary criticism, and a sustained public argument with the established Danish Lutheran church, which he believed had become comfortable and dishonest. He published many works under pen names, using different voices to explore different philosophical positions. He died at forty-two, and much of his work was not read widely outside Denmark until the twentieth century, when it became a major influence on existentialism, theology, and literary theory.
Kierkegaard matters because he raised questions about the individual human being that philosophy before him had largely ignored. Most philosophy, from Plato onwards, had focused on universal truths: what is knowledge, what is justice, what is the good life in general? Kierkegaard said that this kind of abstract universal philosophy missed the most important thing: what does it mean to be this particular human being, living this particular life, making these particular choices? He argued that genuine human existence requires passionate personal commitment, that truth is not only something you know but something you live, and that the most important questions cannot be answered by reason alone but require a leap into personal engagement. He is often called the father of existentialism because these ideas, taken up and developed by thinkers including Sartre, de Beauvoir, and Camus in the twentieth century, became the foundation of existentialist philosophy. He is also important for his three stages of existence: aesthetic, ethical, and religious, which offer a framework for thinking about different ways of living and their limitations.
Either/Or (1843) is Kierkegaard's most accessible major work, presenting the aesthetic and ethical stages through contrasting voices. The Diaries are the most personal entry point and give a vivid sense of his character and concerns. For a short overview: Clare Carlisle's Philosopher of the Heart (2019, Allen Lane) is the most accessible recent biography, written for a general audience. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a freely available article on Kierkegaard.
The Sickness Unto Death (1849) is Kierkegaard's most systematic philosophical work and develops his analysis of despair and selfhood. The Concept of Anxiety (1844) develops his account of anxiety and freedom. For the existentialist context: Walter Kaufmann's anthology Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre (1956, Meridian Books) places Kierkegaard alongside the thinkers he influenced and provides the best single introduction to the tradition.
Kierkegaard was simply a pessimist who thought life is meaningless and despairing.
Kierkegaard analysed despair, anxiety, and the difficulties of genuine existence because he believed that honest engagement with these difficulties was necessary for genuine freedom and authentic selfhood. He was not promoting despair but diagnosing it so it could be overcome. He believed in genuine joy, genuine love, and genuine faith as possible outcomes of authentic existence. His writings contain passages of real warmth and humour. His goal was not to promote pessimism but to challenge the comfortable, dishonest optimism that he believed prevented people from genuinely engaging with their lives.
Kierkegaard's focus on the individual means he thought we owe nothing to others.
The ethical stage of Kierkegaard's framework is explicitly about commitment to universal moral duties and obligations to others. He saw the transition from the aesthetic to the ethical stage as a deepening of the self, not a retreat from the social world. His emphasis on the individual was directed against the comfortable conformity of collective opinion, not against genuine ethical relationships. He believed that genuine love, friendship, and commitment to others were among the most important dimensions of authentic human existence.
Kierkegaard's ideas only apply to religious people or to questions of faith.
While Kierkegaard was deeply Christian and much of his writing concerns religious questions, his philosophical concepts, including authenticity, anxiety, despair, the individual against the crowd, and indirect communication, have been applied extensively in secular contexts. The existentialist philosophers Sartre, de Beauvoir, and Camus all drew heavily on Kierkegaard while largely removing the religious content. His analysis of what it means to be a genuine individual, to make real choices with real consequences, and to avoid the comfortable self-deceptions of conformity applies to human existence regardless of religious belief.
Kierkegaard's use of pen names means we cannot trust what he wrote.
Kierkegaard used pseudonyms deliberately as a philosophical method. By giving voice to different positions through different authors, he invited readers to engage critically with each position rather than simply accepting it as his own view. He was careful to distinguish between what the pseudonymous authors said and what he himself believed, and his journals make clear which positions he personally held. The use of indirect communication was not deceptive but pedagogical: he believed that genuine understanding could not be produced by direct assertion but had to be earned through active engagement by the reader.
Fear and Trembling (1843), his meditation on Abraham and the teleological suspension of the ethical, is his most discussed philosophical text. Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846) is his most comprehensive philosophical statement.
Alastair Hannay's Kierkegaard (1982, Routledge) is the most thorough philosophical treatment available in English.
Sylvia Walsh's Kierkegaard: Thinking Christianly in an Existential Mode (2009, Oxford University Press) examines how his literary and philosophical methods work together.
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