Søren Kierkegaard
1813 – 1855 · Copenhagen
The Danish writer often called the first existentialist, who insisted that truth must be lived by an individual, not just understood.
Key ideas
Kierkegaard rebelled against grand philosophical systems that explained everything except what it is like to be one particular person who must choose how to live. For him the crucial questions are personal: what am I to do, and what am I living for? Truth in these matters is a matter of subjectivity, of passionate commitment, not detached proof.
He described stages of life: the aesthetic, devoted to pleasure and avoiding boredom; the ethical, devoted to duty and commitment; and the religious, which may require a leap beyond what reason can justify. He analysed anxiety as the 'dizziness of freedom', the feeling of standing before possibilities you alone must choose between.
These ideas passed directly to existentialism and to Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Albert Camus, and bear on the meaning of life and existence precedes essence.
Life, briefly
Kierkegaard was the son of a wealthy, devout and melancholy Copenhagen merchant. In 1841 he broke off his engagement to Regine Olsen, a decision that haunted his writing. He published many books under pseudonyms, each voicing a different outlook, which makes him hard to pin down.
He spent his last years in a fierce public attack on the Danish state church, and died at forty-two.
Major works
- Either/Or (1843)
- Fear and Trembling (1843)
- The Concept of Anxiety (1844)
- Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846)
- The Sickness unto Death (1849)
Schools of thought
Appears in
Further reading
- EncyclopediaStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Søren Kierkegaard
- WikipediaSøren Kierkegaard