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EspañolSøREN KIERKEGAARD
(Redirected from Kierkegaard)
'Søren Aabye Kierkegaard' (IPA: , but usually Anglicized as ; ) 5 May, 1813 – 11 November, 1855) was a prolific 19th century Danish philosopher and theologian. Kierkegaard strongly criticized both the Hegelianism of his time, and what he saw as the empty formalities of the Danish church. Much of his work deals with religious problems such as the nature of faith, the institution of the Christian Church, Christian ethics and theology, and the emotions and feelings of individuals when faced with life choices. His early work was written under various pseudonyms who present their own distinctive viewpoints in a complex dialogue. Kierkegaard left the task of discovering the meaning of the works to the reader, because "the task must be made difficult, for only the difficult inspires the noble-hearted".[4] Subsequently, many have interpreted Kierkegaard as an existentialist, neo-orthodoxist, postmodernist, humanist, individualist, etc. Crossing the boundaries of philosophy, theology, psychology, and literature, Kierkegaard came to be regarded as a highly significant and influential figure in contemporary thought.[5][6][7]
Søren Kierkegaard was born to an affluent family in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. His mother, Ane Sørensdatter Lund Kierkegaard, who had served as maid in the household before marrying Søren's father, was an unassuming figure: quiet, plain, and not formally educated. She is not directly referred to in Kierkegaard's books, although she too affected his later writings. His mother died on July 31, 1834, age 66.
His father, Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard, was a melancholic, anxious, deeply pious, and fiercely intelligent man. Convinced that he had earned God's wrath, he believed that none of his children would live past the age attained by Jesus Christ, that of 33. He believed his personal sins, such as cursing the name of God in his youth and possibly impregnating Ane out of wedlock, necessitated this punishment. Though many of his seven children died young, his prediction was disproved when two of them surpassed this age: Søren and Peter Christian Kierkegaard, a Lutheran bishop several years Søren's senior. This early introduction to the notion of sin and its connection from father and son laid the foundation for much of Kierkegaard's work (particularly ''Fear and Trembling''). Despite his father's occasional religious melancholy, Kierkegaard and his father shared a close bond. Kierkegaard learned to explore the realm of his imagination through a series of exercises and games they played together.
Kierkegaard's father died on August 9, 1838 at the age of 82. Before his death, he asked Søren to become a pastor. Søren was deeply influenced by his father's religious experience and life and felt obligated to fulfill his wish. Two days later, on August 11, Kierkegaard wrote: ''"My father died on Wednesday.[8] I had so very much wished that he might live a few years longer, and I look upon his death as the last sacrifice which he made to his love for me; ... he died for me in order that, if possible, I might still turn into something. Of all that I have inherited from him, the recollection of him, his transfigured portrait ... is dearest to me, and I will be careful to preserve [his memory] safely hidden from the world."''[9]
Kierkegaard attended the School of Civic Virtue, excelling at Latin and history. In 1830, he went on to study theology at the University of Copenhagen, but while there he was drawn more towards philosophy and literature. At university, Kierkegaard wrote his dissertation, ''On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates'', which was found by the university panel to be a noteworthy and well-thought out work, but a little too wordy and literary for a philosophy thesis.[10] Kierkegaard graduated on October 20, 1841 with a ''Magister Artium'', which today would be designated a Ph.D. With his family's inheritance of approximately 31,000 rigsdaler, Kierkegaard was able to fund his education, his living, and several publications of his early works.
Another important aspect of Kierkegaard's life (generally considered to have had a major influence on his work) was his broken engagement to Regine Olsen (1822–1904). Kierkegaard met Regine on 8 May, 1837 and was instantly attracted to her, and she to him. In his journals, Kierkegaard wrote about his love for Regine:
On 8 September, 1840, Kierkegaard formally proposed to Regine. However, Kierkegaard soon felt disillusioned and melancholic about the marriage. Less than a year after he had proposed, he broke it off on 11 August, 1841. In his Journals, Kierkegaard mentions his belief that his "melancholy" made him unsuitable for marriage, but his precise motive for ending the engagement remains unclear. It is generally believed that the two were deeply in love, perhaps even after she married Johan Frederik Schlegel (1817–1896), a prominent civil servant (not to be confused with the German philosopher Friedrich von Schlegel, (1772–1829) ). For the most part, their contact was limited to chance meetings on the streets of Copenhagen. Some years later, however, Kierkegaard went so far as to ask Regine's husband for permission to speak with her, but Schlegel refused.
Soon afterwards, the couple left the country, Schlegel having been appointed Governor in the Danish West Indies. By the time Regine returned, Kierkegaard was dead. Regine Schlegel lived until 1904, and upon her death she was buried near Kierkegaard in the Assistens Cemetery in Copenhagen.
Although Kierkegaard wrote a few articles on politics, women, and entertainment in his youth and university days, many scholars believe Kierkegaard's first noteworthy work is either his university thesis, ''The Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates'', which was presented in 1841, or his masterpiece and arguably greatest work, ''Either/Or'', which was published in 1843. In either case, both works critiqued major figures in Western philosophic thought (Socrates in the former and Hegel in the latter), showcased Kierkegaard's unique style of writing, and displayed a maturity in writing from his works of youth. ''Either/Or'' was mostly written during Kierkegaard's stay in Berlin and was completed in the autumn of 1842.
In the same year ''Either/Or'' was published, Kierkegaard found out Regine was engaged to be married to Johan Frederik Schlegel. This fact affected Kierkegaard and his subsequent writings deeply. In ''Fear and Trembling'', published in late 1843, one can interpret a section in the work as saying: 'Kierkegaard hopes that through a divine act, Regine would return to him'.Lippitt, John. ''Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Kierkegaard and Fear and Trembling''. Routledge, 2003, ISBN 9780415180474 ''Repetition'', published on the very same day as ''Fear and Trembling'', is about a young gentleman leaving his beloved. Several other works in this period make similar overtones of the Kierkegaard-Olsen relationship.
Other major works in this period focus on a critique of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and form a basis for existential psychology. ''Philosophical Fragments'', ''The Concept of Dread'', and ''Stages on Life's Way'' are about thoughts and feelings an individual may face in life, existential choices and its consequences, and whether or not to embrace religion, specifically Christianity, in one's life. Perhaps the most valiant attack on Hegelianism is the ''Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments'' which discusses the importance of the individual, subjectivity as truth, and countering the Hegelian claim that "The Rational is the Real and the Real is the Rational".[12]
Most of the works in this authorship were philosophical in nature and written pseudonymously and indirectly, representing different viewpoints and ways of life. However, Kierkegaard published two or three theological discourses, written under his own name, for each of the respective philosophical works.[13] Kierkegaard wrote these discourses to clarify philosophical aspects of the pseudonymous work, discuss the theological aspects of the work, and edify the reader.[14]
On 22 December, 1845, Peder Ludvig Møller published an article critiquing ''Stages on Life's Way''. The article gave ''Stages'' a poor review, but showed little understanding of the work. Møller was also a contributor of ''The Corsair'', a Danish satirical paper that lampooned people of notable standing. Kierkegaard wrote a response in order to defend the work, ridicule Møller, and bring down ''The Corsair'', earning him the ire of the paper and its editor, Meïr Aaron Goldschmidt.
The only two articles that Kierkegaard wrote in response to Møller were ''Activity of a Traveling Esthetician'' and ''Dialectical Result of a Literary Police Action''. The former focused on insulting Møller's integrity and responding to his critique. The latter was a directed assault on ''The Corsair'', in which Kierkegaard openly asked to be satirized.
Over the next few months, ''The Corsair'' took Kierkegaard up on his offer to "be abused", and unleashed a series of attacks making fun of Kierkegaard's appearance, voice, and habits. For months, he was harassed on the streets of Denmark.
In an 1846 journal entry, Kierkegaard makes a long, detailed explanation of his attack on Møller and ''The Corsair'', and also explains that this attack made him quit his indirect communication authorship:
Whereas his first authorship focused on Hegel, this authorship focused on the hypocrisy of Christendom. It is important to realise that by 'Christendom' Kierkegaard meant not Christianity itself, but rather the church and the applied religion of his society. After the Corsair incident, Kierkegaard became interested in "the public" and the individual's interaction with it. His first work in this period of his life was '' which was a critique of the novel ''Two Ages'' (in some translations ''Two Generations'') written by Thomasine Christine Gyllembourg-Ehrensvärd. After giving his critique of the story, Kierkegaard made several insightful observations on the nature of the present age and its passionless attitude towards life. One of his complaints about modernity is its passionless view of the world. Kierkegaard writes that "the present age is essentially a sensible age, devoid of passion ... The trend today is in the direction of mathematical equality, so that in all classes about so and so many uniformly make one individual". In this, Kierkegaard attacks the conformity and assimilation of individuals into an indifferent public, "the crowd".[15] Although Kierkegaard attacks the public, he is supportive of communities where individuals keep their diversity and uniqueness.
Other works continue to focus on the superficiality of "the crowd" attempting to limit and stifle the unique individual. ''The Book on Adler'' is a work about Pastor Adolf Peter Adler's claim to have had a sacrilegious revelation and to have suffered ostracisation and expulsion from the pastorate as a consequence.
As part of his analysis of the crowd, Kierkegaard realized the decay and decadence of the Christian church, especially the Danish State Church. Kierkegaard believed Christendom had "lost its way" on the Christian faith. Christendom in this period ignored, skewed, or gave mere 'lip service' to the original Christian doctrine. Kierkegaard felt his duty in this later era was to inform others about the shallowness of so-called "Christian living". He wrote several criticisms on contemporary Christianity in works such as ''Christian Discourses'', ''Works of Love'', and ''Edifying Discourses in Diverse Spirits''.
''The Sickness Unto Death'' is one of Kierkegaard's most popular works of this era, and although some contemporary atheistic philosophers and psychologists dismiss Kierkegaard's suggested solution as faith, his analysis on the nature of despair is one of the best accounts on the subject and has been emulated in subsequent philosophies, such as Heidegger's concept of existential guilt and Sartre's bad faith.
Around 1848, Kierkegaard began a literary attack on the Danish State Church with books such as ''Practice in Christianity'', ''For Self-Examination'', and ''Judge for Yourselves!'', which attempted to expound the true nature of Christianity, with Jesus as its role model.
Kierkegaard's final years were taken up with a sustained, outright attack on the Danish People's Church by means of newspaper articles published in ''The Fatherland'' (''Fædrelandet'') and a series of self-published pamphlets called ''The Moment'' (''Øjeblikket'').[16] Kierkegaard was initially called to action by a speech by Professor Hans Lassen Martensen who called his recently deceased predecessor Bishop Jakob P. Mynster a "truth-witness, one of the authentic truth-witnesses."[17]
Kierkegaard had an affection towards Mynster, but had come to see that his conception of Christianity was in man's interest, rather than God's, and in no way was Mynster's life comparable to that of a 'truth-witness.'
Before the tenth chapter of ''The Moment'' could be published, Kierkegaard collapsed on the street and was eventually taken to a hospital. He stayed in the hospital for over a month and refused to receive communion from a pastor, whom Kierkegaard regarded as merely an official and not a servant of God.
He said to Emil Boesen, a friend since childhood who kept a record of his conversations with Kierkegaard and was himself a pastor, that his life had been one of great and unknown suffering, which looked like vanity to others but was not.
Kierkegaard died in Frederik's Hospital after being there for over a month, possibly from complications from a fall he had taken from a tree when he was a boy. He was interred in the Assistens Kirkegård in the Nørrebro section of Copenhagen. At Kierkegaard's funeral, his nephew Henrik Lund caused a disturbance by protesting that Kierkegaard was being buried by the official church even though in his life he had broken from and denounced it. Lund was later fined.
Main articles: Philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard
Kierkegaard has been called a philosopher, a theologian,[18] the Father of Existentialism, a literary critic, a humorist,[19] a psychologist,[20] and a poet.[21] Two of his popular ideas are "subjectivity",[22] and the "leap to faith," popularly referred to as the "leap of faith."[23]2 The leap of faith is his conception of how an individual would believe in God, or how a person would act in love. It is not a rational decision, as it is transcending rationality in favour of something more uncanny, that is, faith. As such he thought that to have faith is at the same time to have doubt. So, for example, for one to truly have faith in God, one would also have to doubt that God exists; the doubt is the rational part of a person's thought, without which the faith would have no real substance. Doubt is an essential element of faith, an underpinning. In plain words, to believe or have faith that God exists, without ever having doubted God's existence or goodness, would not be a faith worth having. For example, it takes no faith to believe that a pencil or a table exists, when one is looking at it and touching it. In the same way, to believe or have faith in God is to know that one has no perceptual or any other access to God, and yet still has faith in God.[24]
Kierkegaard also stressed the importance of the self, and the self's relation to the world as being grounded in self-reflection and introspection. He argued in ''Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments'' that "subjectivity is truth" and "truth is subjectivity." This has to do with a distinction between what is objectively true and an individual's subjective relation (such as indifference or commitment) to that truth. People who in ''some sense'' believe the same things may relate to those beliefs quite differently. Two individuals may both believe that many of those around them are poor and deserve help, but this knowledge may lead only one of them to decide to actually help the poor.
Kierkegaard primarily discusses subjectivity with regard to religious matters, however. As already noted, he argues that doubt is an element of faith and that it is impossible to gain any objective certainty about religious doctrines such as the existence of God or the life of Christ. The most one could hope for would be the conclusion that it is probable that the Christian doctrines are true, but if a person were to believe such doctrines only to the degree they seemed ''likely'' to be true, he or she would not be genuinely religious at all. Faith consists in a subjective relation of absolute commitment to these doctrines.[25]
Half of Kierkegaard's authorship was written behind the mask of several pseudonymous characters he created to represent different ways of thinking. This was part of Kierkegaard's indirect communication. According to several passages in his works and journals, such as ''The Point of View of my Work as an Author'', Kierkegaard wrote this way in order to prevent his works from being treated as a philosophical system with a systematic structure. In the ''Point of View'', Kierkegaard wrote: "In the pseudonymous works, there is not a single word which is mine. I have no opinion about these works except as a third person, no knowledge of their meaning, except as a reader, not the remotest private relation to them."[26]
Kierkegaard used indirect communication to make it difficult to ascertain whether he actually held any of the views presented in his works. He hoped readers would simply read the work at face value without attributing it to some aspect of his life. Kierkegaard also did not want his readers to treat his work as an authoritative system, but rather look to themselves for interpretation.
Early Kierkegaardian scholars, such as Theodor W. Adorno, have disregarded Kierkegaard's intentions and argue the entire authorship should be treated as Kierkegaard's own personal and religious views.[27] This view leads to many confusions and contradictions which make Kierkegaard appear incoherent.[28] However, many later scholars such as the post-structuralists, have respected Kierkegaard's intentions and interpreted his work by attributing the pseudonymous texts to their respective authors.
Kierkegaard's most important pseudonyms, in chronological order:
★ Victor Eremita, editor of ''Either/Or''
★ A, writer of many articles in ''Either/Or''
★ Judge William, author of rebuttals to A in ''Either/Or''
★ Johannes de Silentio, author of ''Fear and Trembling''
★ Constantin Constantius, author of the first half of ''Repetition''
★ Young Man, author of the second half of ''Repetition''
★ Vigilius Haufniensis, author of ''The Concept of Anxiety''
★ Nicolaus Notabene, author of ''Prefaces''
★ Hilarius Bookbinder, editor of ''Stages on Life's Way''
★ Johannes Climacus, author of ''Philosophical Fragments'' and ''Concluding Unscientific Postscript''
★ Inter et Inter, author of ''The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress''
★ H.H., author of ''Two Ethical-Religious Essays''
★ Anti-Climacus, author of ''The Sickness Unto Death'' and ''Practice in Christianity''
Kierkegaard's journals are essential to understanding him and his work.[29] He wrote over 7000 pages in his journals describing key events, musings, thoughts about his works and everyday remarks.[30] The entire collection of Danish journals has been edited and published in 13 volumes which consist of 25 separate bindings including indices. The first English edition of the journals was edited by Alexander Dru in 1938.9
His journals reveal many different facets of Kierkegaard and his work and help elucidate many of his ideas. The style in his journals is among the most elegant and poetic of his writings. Kierkegaard took his journals seriously and even once wrote that they were his ''most trusted confidant'':
His journals are also the source of many aphorisms credited to Kierkegaard. The following passage is perhaps the most oft-quoted aphorism from Kierkegaard's journals and is usually a key quote for existentialist studies: ''"The thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die."'' It was written on August 1, 1835.
Although his journals clarify some aspects of his work and life, Kierkegaard took care not to reveal too much. Abrupt changes in thought, repetitive writing, and unusual turns of phrase are some among the many tactics he uses to throw readers off track. Consequently, there are many varying interpretations of his journals. However, Kierkegaard did not doubt the importance his journals would have in the future. In 1849, he wrote:
As mentioned above, Kierkegaard took up a sustained attack on all of Christendom, or Christianity as a political entity, during the final years of his life. In the 19th century, most Danes who were citizens of Denmark were necessarily members of the Danish State Church. Kierkegaard felt this state-church union was unacceptable and perverted the true meaning of Christianity.17 The main points of the attack include:
★ ''Church congregations are meaningless'': The idea of congregations keeps individuals as children since Christians are disinclined from taking the initiative to take responsibility for their own relation to God. Kierkegaard stresses that "Christianity is the individual, here, the single individual."[31]
★ ''Christendom had become secularized and political'': Since the Church was controlled by the State, Kierkegaard believed the State's bureaucratic mission was to increase membership and oversee the welfare of its members. More members would mean more power for the clergymen: a corrupt ideal. This mission would seem at odds with Christianity's true doctrine, which is to stress the importance of the individual, not the whole.9
★ ''Christianity becomes an empty religion'': Thus, the state church political structure is offensive and detrimental to individuals, since everyone can become "Christian" without knowing what it means to be Christian. It is also detrimental to the religion itself since it reduces Christianity to a mere fashionable tradition adhered to by unbelieving "believers", a "herd mentality" of the population, so to speak.
Attacking the incompetence and corruption of the Christian churches, Kierkegaard seemed to have anticipated philosophers like Nietzsche who would go on to criticize the Christian religion.
Some of Kierkegaard's famous philosophical critics in the 20th century include Theodor Adorno and Emmanuel Levinas. Atheistic philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre and agnostic philosophers like Martin Heidegger mostly support Kierkegaard's philosophical views, but criticize and reject his religious views.[32][33]
Adorno's take on Kierkegaard's philosophy has been less than faithful to the original intentions of Kierkegaard. At least one critic of Adorno considers his book ''Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic'' to be "the most irresponsible book ever written on Kierkegaard" because Adorno takes Kierkegaard's pseudonyms literally, and constructs an entire philosophy of Kierkegaard which makes him seem incoherent and unintelligible. This is like confusing William Shakespeare with Othello and Dostoevsky with Raskolnikov.[34] Another reviewer mentions that "Adorno is [far away] from the more credible translations and interpretations of the Collected Works of Kierkegaard we have today".28
Levinas' main attack on Kierkegaard is focused on his ethical and religious stages, especially in ''Fear and Trembling''. Levinas criticizes the leap of faith by saying this suspension of the ethical and leap into the religious is a type of violence.
Levinas points to the fact that it was God who first commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac and that it was an angel who commanded Abraham to stop. If Abraham was truly in the religious realm, he would not have listened to the angel to stop and should have continued to kill Isaac. "Transcending ethics" seems like a loophole to excuse would-be murders from their crime and thus is unacceptable.[35]
On Kierkegaard's religious views, Sartre offers this argument against existence of God: If existence precedes essence, it follows from the meaning of the term sentient that a sentient being cannot be complete or perfect. In ''Being and Nothingness'', Sartre's phrasing is that God would be a ''pour-soi'' [a being-for-itself; a consciousness] who is also an ''en-soi'' [a being-in-itself; a thing]: which is a contradiction in terms.
Sartre agrees with Kierkegaard's analysis of Abraham undergoing anxiety (Sartre calls it anguish), but Sartre doesn't agree that God told him to do it. In his lecture, ''Existentialism is a Humanism'', he says:
In Kierkegaard's view, Abraham's certainty had its origin in that 'inner voice' which cannot be demonstrated or shown to another ("The problem comes as soon as Abraham wants to be understood"). To Kierkegaard, every external "proof" or justification is merely on the outside and external to the subject.[36] Kierkegaard's proof for the immortality of the soul, for example, is rooted in the extent to which one wishes to live forever.
Kierkegaard's works were not widely available until several decades after his death. In the years immediately after his death, the Danish State Church, a major institution in Denmark at the time, shunned his work and urged other Danes to do likewise. In addition, the obscurity of the Danish language, relative to German, French, and English, made it nearly impossible for Kierkegaard to acquire non-Danish readers.
The first academic to draw attention to Kierkegaard was his fellow Dane Georg Brandes, who published in German as well as Danish. Brandes gave the first formal lectures on Kierkegaard and helped bring Kierkegaard to the attention of the rest of Europe.[37] In 1877, Brandes also published the first book on Kierkegaard's philosophy and life. The dramatist Henrik Ibsen became interested in Kierkegaard and introduced his work to the rest of Scandinavia. While independent German translations of some of Kierkegaard's works began to appear in the 1870s,[38] academic German translations of whole portions of Kierkegaard's work had to wait until the 1910s. These translations made it possible for Kierkegaard to begin exerting his enormous influence on 20th-century German, French, and English thinkers and authors.
In the 1930s, the first academic English translations,[39] by Alexander Dru, David F. Swenson, Douglas V. Steere, and Walter Lowrie appeared, under the editorial efforts of Oxford University Press editor Charles Williams.2 The second and currently widely used academic English translations were published by the Princeton University Press in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, under the supervision of Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. A third official translation, under the aegis of the Søren Kierkegaard Research Center, will extend to 55 volumes and is expected to be completed sometime after 2009.[40]
Many 20th-century philosophers, both theistic and atheistic, and theologians drew many concepts from Kierkegaard, including the notions of angst, despair, and the importance of the individual. His fame as a philosopher grew tremendously in the 1930s, in large part because the ascendant existentialist movement pointed to him as a precursor, although he is now seen as a highly significant and influential thinker in his own right.[41] Kierkegaard is commemorated as a teacher in the Calendar of Saints of the Lutheran Church on November 11.
Philosophers and theologians influenced by Kierkegaard include Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Barth, Simone de Beauvoir, Niels Bohr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Emil Brunner, Martin Buber, Rudolf Bultmann, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Karl Jaspers, Gabriel Marcel, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Reinhold Niebuhr, Franz Rosenzweig, Jean-Paul Sartre, Joseph Soloveitchik, Paul Tillich, Miguel de Unamuno. Paul Feyerabend's scientific anarchism was inspired by Kierkegaard's idea of subjectivity as truth. Ludwig Wittgenstein was immensely influenced and humbled by Kierkegaard,7 claiming that "Kierkegaard is far too deep for me, anyhow. He bewilders me without working the good effects which he would in deeper souls".7 Karl Popper referred to Kierkegaard as "the great reformer of Christian ethics, who exposed the official Christian morality of his day as anti-Christian and anti-humanitarian hypocrisy".[42]
Contemporary philosophers such as Emmanuel Lévinas, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jacques Derrida, Jürgen Habermas, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Richard Rorty, although sometimes highly critical, have also adapted some Kierkegaardian insights.[43][44][45] Jerry Fodor has written that Kierkegaard was "a master and way out of the league that the rest of us [philosophers] play in".[46]
Kierkegaard has also had a considerable influence on 20th-century literature. Figures deeply influenced by his work include W. H. Auden, Jorge Luis Borges, Hermann Hesse, Franz Kafka,[47] David Lodge, Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, Rainer Maria Rilke, and John Updike.[48]
Kierkegaard also had a profound influence on psychology and is more or less the founder of Christian psychology[49] and of existential psychology and therapy.20 Existentialist (often called "humanistic") psychologists and therapists include Ludwig Binswanger, Viktor Frankl, Erich Fromm, Carl Rogers, and Rollo May. May based his ''The Meaning of Anxiety'' on Kierkegaard's ''The Concept of Anxiety''. Kierkegaard's sociological work ''Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age'' provides an interesting critique of modernity.15 Kierkegaard is also seen as an important precursor of postmodernism.43
Kierkegaard predicted his posthumous fame, and foresaw that his work would become the subject of intense study and research. In his journals, he wrote:
''For a complete bibliography, see List of works by Søren Kierkegaard''
★ (1841) ''The Concept of Irony'' (''Om Begrebet Ironi med stadigt Hensyn til Socrates'')
★ (1843) ''Either/Or'' (''Enten - Eller'')
★ (1843) ''Fear and Trembling'' (''Frygt og Bæven'')
★ (1843) ''Repetition'' (''Gjentagelsen'')
★ (1844) ''Philosophical Fragments'' (''Philosophiske Smuler'')
★ (1844) ''The Concept of Dread'' (''Begrebet Angest'')
★ (1845) ''Stages on Life's Way'' (''Stadier paa Livets Vei'')
★ (1846) ''Concluding Unscientific Postscript to The Philosophical Fragments'' (''Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift'')
★ (1847) ''Edifying Discourses in Diverse Spirits'' (''Opbyggelige Taler i forskjellig Aand'')
★ (1847) ''Works of Love'' (''Kjerlighedens Gjerninger'')
★ (1848) ''Christian Discourses'' (''Christelige Taler'')
★ (1849) ''The Sickness Unto Death'' (''Sygdommen til Døden'')
★ (1850) ''Practice in Christianity'' (''Indøvelse i Christendom'')
★ Garff, Joakim, 2005. ''Søren Kierkegaard: A Biography'', Princeton University Press. ISBN 069109165X
★ Hannay, Alastair, 2003. ''Kierkegaard: A Biography'' (new ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521531810
★ Hong, Howard V. and Edna H., 2000. ''The Essential Kierkegaard''. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691033099
★ MacDonald, William. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Søren Kierkegaard.
★ Storm, D. Anthony. "Commentary on Kierkegaard."
1. ''This classification is anachronistic; Kierkegaard was an exceptionally unique thinker and his works do not fit neatly into any one philosophical school or tradition, nor did he identify himself with any. However, his works are considered precursor to many schools of thought developed in the 20th and 21st centuries. See'' 20th century receptions'' in ''Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard''.
2. Hannay, Alastair and Gordon Marino (eds). ''The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard'', Cambridge University Press 1997, ISBN 0521477190
3. The influence of Socrates can be seen in Kierkegaard's ''Sickness Unto Death'' and ''Works of Love''.
4. Kierkegaard, Søren. ''Journals and Papers'', Indiana University Press, ISBN 0253182409
5. Hubben, William. ''Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Kafka: Four Prophets of Our Destiny.'' New York: Collier Books, 1962.
6. Lippit, John and Daniel Hutto. Making Sense of Nonsense: Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein
7. Creegan, Charles. Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard
8. According to the ''Journals'', Michael died at approximately 2:00 a.m., early Thursday morning.
9. Dru, Alexander. ''The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard'', Oxford University Press, 1938.
10. Kierkegaard, Søren. ''The Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates'', Princeton University Press 1989, ISBN 0691073546
11. Manuscripts from the Søren Kierkegaard Archive
12. Hegel, G.W.F. ''Phenomenology of Spirit'', Oxford University Press, 1979, ISBN 0198245971
13. In English, they've been collected in the ''Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses'', Princeton University Press, ISBN 0691020876.
14. D. Anthony Storm's Commentary on the Discourses
15. Kierkegaard, Søren. ''A Literary Review'', Penguin Classics, 2001, ISBN 0140448012
16. Lowrie, Walter. Kierkegaard's Attack on Christendom
17. Duncan, Elmer. ''Søren Kierkegaard: Maker of the Modern Theological Mind'', Word Books 1976, ISBN 0876804636
18. Kangas, David. Kierkegaard, the Apophatic Theologian. David Kangas, Yale University (pdf format)
19. Oden, Thomas C. ''The Humor of Kierkegaard: An Anthology'', Princeton University Press 2004, ISBN 069102085X
20. Ostenfeld, Ib and Alastair McKinnon. ''Søren Kierkegaard's Psychology'', Wilfrid Laurer University Press 1972, ISBN 0889200688
21. MacKey, Louis. ''Kierkegaard: A Kind of Poet'', University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971, ISBN 0812210425
22. Kierkegaard is not an extreme subjectivist; he would not reject the importance of objective truths.
23. ''The Danish equivalent to the English phrase "leap of faith" does not appear in the original Danish nor is the English phrase found in current English translations of Kierkegaard's works. However, Kierkegaard does mention the concepts of "faith" and "leap" together many times in his works. See ''Faith and the Kierkegaardian Leap'' in ''Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard.
24. ''Kierkegaard attempted repeatedly to bring to focus the importance of doubt in the Christian way of life. A passage from his journals describes the idea of the forgiveness of sin:'' "To believe the forgiveness of one's sins is the decisive crisis whereby a human being becomes spirit; he who does not believe this is not spirit. ... Anyone who in truth has experienced and experiences what it is to believe the forgiveness of one's sins has indeed become another person."'' ''Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers'', ed. by Howard V. Hong, VIII A 673 n.d., 1848., Indiana University Press, 1976, ISBN 0253182409
25. Kierkegaard, Søren. ''Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments'', Princeton University Press, 1992, ISBN 0691020825
26. Kierkegaard, Søren. ''The Point of View'', Princeton University Press, 1998, ISBN 0691058555
27. Adorno, Theodor W. ''Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic'', University of Minnesota Press, 1933 (reprint 1989), ISBN 0816611866
28. Morgan, Marcia. Adorno’s Reception of Kierkegaard: 1929–1933
29. Søren Kierkegaard's Journal Commentary
30. ''Given the importance of the journals, references in the form of ''(Journals, XYZ)'' are referenced from Dru's 1938 Journals. When known, the exact date is given; otherwise, month and year, or just year is given.''
31. Kirmmse, Bruce. Review of Habib Malik, Receiving Søren Kierkegaard
32. Sartre, Jean-Paul. Existentialism is a Humanism
33. Dreyfus, Hubert. ''Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Division I''. MIT Press, 1998. ISBN 0-262-54056-8.
34. Westphal, Merold. ''A Reading of Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript'', Purdue University Press 1996, ISBN 1557530904
35. Katz, Claire Elise. The Voice of God and the Face of the Other
36. D. Anthony Storm's Commentary on the Postscript
37. Georg Brandes
38. Cappelorn, Niels J. ''Written Images'', Princeton University Press, 2003, ISBN 0691115559
39. ''However, an independent English translation of selections/excerpts of Kierkegaard appeared in 1923 by Lee Hollander, and published by the University of Texas at Austin.''
40. Søren Kierkegaard Forskningscenteret
41. Weston, Michael. ''Kierkegaard and Modern Continental Philosophy''. Routledge, 1994, ISBN 0415101204
42. Popper, Sir Karl R. ''The Open Society and Its Enemies Vol 2: Hegel and Marx''. Routledge, 2002, ISBN 0415290635
43. Matustik, Martin Joseph and Merold Westphal (eds). ''Kierkegaard in Post/Modernity'', Indiana University Press, 1995, ISBN 0253209676
44. MacIntyre, Alasdair. "Once More on Kierkegaard" in ''Kierkegaard after MacIntyre''. Open Court Publishing, 2001, ISBN 081269452X
45. Rorty, Richard. ''Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity''. Cambridge University Press, 1989, ISBN 0521367816
46. Fodor, Jerry. Water's water everywhere
47. McGee, Kyle. Fear and Trembling in the Penal Colony
48. Kierkegaard, Søren with Foreword by John Updike. ''The Seducer's Diary'', Princeton University Press, 1997, ISBN 0691017379
49. Society for Christian Psychology
★ Philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard
★ Theology of Søren Kierkegaard
★ Kierkegaard and Nietzsche comparisons
★ Christian anarchism
★ Christian existentialism
★ knight of faith
★ leap of faith
★ Philosophy of religion
★ ''The Journals of Kierkegaard''; revised edition, trans. by Alexander Dru
★ ''The Journals and Notebooks of Kierkegaard'' from the Søren Kierkegaard Research Center in Copenhagen
★ ''Fear and Trembling''; trans. by Walter Lowrie
★ ''Philosophical Fragments''; trans. by David F. Swenson
★ ''The Sickness Unto Death''; trans. by Walter Lowrie
★ ''In Vino Veritas''; the Banquet Scene from ''Stages on Life's Way''
★ ''Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing''; trans. by Douglas V. Steere
★ ''For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourselves!''; trans. by Walter Lowrie
★ ''Religiöse Reden''; translated by Theodor Haecker
★ Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard ''(free ebook)''
★ Søren Kierkegaard Newsletter edited by Gordon D. Marino
★ Open Directory Project: Søren Kierkegaard
★ Wabash Center Internet Guide: Søren Kierkegaard
★ D. Anthony Storm's Commentary on Kierkegaard
'Søren Aabye Kierkegaard' (IPA: , but usually Anglicized as ; ) 5 May, 1813 – 11 November, 1855) was a prolific 19th century Danish philosopher and theologian. Kierkegaard strongly criticized both the Hegelianism of his time, and what he saw as the empty formalities of the Danish church. Much of his work deals with religious problems such as the nature of faith, the institution of the Christian Church, Christian ethics and theology, and the emotions and feelings of individuals when faced with life choices. His early work was written under various pseudonyms who present their own distinctive viewpoints in a complex dialogue. Kierkegaard left the task of discovering the meaning of the works to the reader, because "the task must be made difficult, for only the difficult inspires the noble-hearted".[4] Subsequently, many have interpreted Kierkegaard as an existentialist, neo-orthodoxist, postmodernist, humanist, individualist, etc. Crossing the boundaries of philosophy, theology, psychology, and literature, Kierkegaard came to be regarded as a highly significant and influential figure in contemporary thought.[5][6][7]
Life
Early years (1813–1841)
Søren Kierkegaard was born to an affluent family in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. His mother, Ane Sørensdatter Lund Kierkegaard, who had served as maid in the household before marrying Søren's father, was an unassuming figure: quiet, plain, and not formally educated. She is not directly referred to in Kierkegaard's books, although she too affected his later writings. His mother died on July 31, 1834, age 66.
His father, Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard, was a melancholic, anxious, deeply pious, and fiercely intelligent man. Convinced that he had earned God's wrath, he believed that none of his children would live past the age attained by Jesus Christ, that of 33. He believed his personal sins, such as cursing the name of God in his youth and possibly impregnating Ane out of wedlock, necessitated this punishment. Though many of his seven children died young, his prediction was disproved when two of them surpassed this age: Søren and Peter Christian Kierkegaard, a Lutheran bishop several years Søren's senior. This early introduction to the notion of sin and its connection from father and son laid the foundation for much of Kierkegaard's work (particularly ''Fear and Trembling''). Despite his father's occasional religious melancholy, Kierkegaard and his father shared a close bond. Kierkegaard learned to explore the realm of his imagination through a series of exercises and games they played together.
Kierkegaard's father died on August 9, 1838 at the age of 82. Before his death, he asked Søren to become a pastor. Søren was deeply influenced by his father's religious experience and life and felt obligated to fulfill his wish. Two days later, on August 11, Kierkegaard wrote: ''"My father died on Wednesday.[8] I had so very much wished that he might live a few years longer, and I look upon his death as the last sacrifice which he made to his love for me; ... he died for me in order that, if possible, I might still turn into something. Of all that I have inherited from him, the recollection of him, his transfigured portrait ... is dearest to me, and I will be careful to preserve [his memory] safely hidden from the world."''[9]
Kierkegaard attended the School of Civic Virtue, excelling at Latin and history. In 1830, he went on to study theology at the University of Copenhagen, but while there he was drawn more towards philosophy and literature. At university, Kierkegaard wrote his dissertation, ''On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates'', which was found by the university panel to be a noteworthy and well-thought out work, but a little too wordy and literary for a philosophy thesis.[10] Kierkegaard graduated on October 20, 1841 with a ''Magister Artium'', which today would be designated a Ph.D. With his family's inheritance of approximately 31,000 rigsdaler, Kierkegaard was able to fund his education, his living, and several publications of his early works.
Regine Olsen (1837–1841)
Regine Olsen, the love of his life, and a muse for his writings.
Another important aspect of Kierkegaard's life (generally considered to have had a major influence on his work) was his broken engagement to Regine Olsen (1822–1904). Kierkegaard met Regine on 8 May, 1837 and was instantly attracted to her, and she to him. In his journals, Kierkegaard wrote about his love for Regine:
On 8 September, 1840, Kierkegaard formally proposed to Regine. However, Kierkegaard soon felt disillusioned and melancholic about the marriage. Less than a year after he had proposed, he broke it off on 11 August, 1841. In his Journals, Kierkegaard mentions his belief that his "melancholy" made him unsuitable for marriage, but his precise motive for ending the engagement remains unclear. It is generally believed that the two were deeply in love, perhaps even after she married Johan Frederik Schlegel (1817–1896), a prominent civil servant (not to be confused with the German philosopher Friedrich von Schlegel, (1772–1829) ). For the most part, their contact was limited to chance meetings on the streets of Copenhagen. Some years later, however, Kierkegaard went so far as to ask Regine's husband for permission to speak with her, but Schlegel refused.
Soon afterwards, the couple left the country, Schlegel having been appointed Governor in the Danish West Indies. By the time Regine returned, Kierkegaard was dead. Regine Schlegel lived until 1904, and upon her death she was buried near Kierkegaard in the Assistens Cemetery in Copenhagen.
First authorship (1841–1846)
Although Kierkegaard wrote a few articles on politics, women, and entertainment in his youth and university days, many scholars believe Kierkegaard's first noteworthy work is either his university thesis, ''The Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates'', which was presented in 1841, or his masterpiece and arguably greatest work, ''Either/Or'', which was published in 1843. In either case, both works critiqued major figures in Western philosophic thought (Socrates in the former and Hegel in the latter), showcased Kierkegaard's unique style of writing, and displayed a maturity in writing from his works of youth. ''Either/Or'' was mostly written during Kierkegaard's stay in Berlin and was completed in the autumn of 1842.
In the same year ''Either/Or'' was published, Kierkegaard found out Regine was engaged to be married to Johan Frederik Schlegel. This fact affected Kierkegaard and his subsequent writings deeply. In ''Fear and Trembling'', published in late 1843, one can interpret a section in the work as saying: 'Kierkegaard hopes that through a divine act, Regine would return to him'.Lippitt, John. ''Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Kierkegaard and Fear and Trembling''. Routledge, 2003, ISBN 9780415180474 ''Repetition'', published on the very same day as ''Fear and Trembling'', is about a young gentleman leaving his beloved. Several other works in this period make similar overtones of the Kierkegaard-Olsen relationship.
Other major works in this period focus on a critique of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and form a basis for existential psychology. ''Philosophical Fragments'', ''The Concept of Dread'', and ''Stages on Life's Way'' are about thoughts and feelings an individual may face in life, existential choices and its consequences, and whether or not to embrace religion, specifically Christianity, in one's life. Perhaps the most valiant attack on Hegelianism is the ''Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments'' which discusses the importance of the individual, subjectivity as truth, and countering the Hegelian claim that "The Rational is the Real and the Real is the Rational".[12]
Most of the works in this authorship were philosophical in nature and written pseudonymously and indirectly, representing different viewpoints and ways of life. However, Kierkegaard published two or three theological discourses, written under his own name, for each of the respective philosophical works.[13] Kierkegaard wrote these discourses to clarify philosophical aspects of the pseudonymous work, discuss the theological aspects of the work, and edify the reader.[14]
Corsair affair (1845–1846)
On 22 December, 1845, Peder Ludvig Møller published an article critiquing ''Stages on Life's Way''. The article gave ''Stages'' a poor review, but showed little understanding of the work. Møller was also a contributor of ''The Corsair'', a Danish satirical paper that lampooned people of notable standing. Kierkegaard wrote a response in order to defend the work, ridicule Møller, and bring down ''The Corsair'', earning him the ire of the paper and its editor, Meïr Aaron Goldschmidt.
The only two articles that Kierkegaard wrote in response to Møller were ''Activity of a Traveling Esthetician'' and ''Dialectical Result of a Literary Police Action''. The former focused on insulting Møller's integrity and responding to his critique. The latter was a directed assault on ''The Corsair'', in which Kierkegaard openly asked to be satirized.
Over the next few months, ''The Corsair'' took Kierkegaard up on his offer to "be abused", and unleashed a series of attacks making fun of Kierkegaard's appearance, voice, and habits. For months, he was harassed on the streets of Denmark.
In an 1846 journal entry, Kierkegaard makes a long, detailed explanation of his attack on Møller and ''The Corsair'', and also explains that this attack made him quit his indirect communication authorship:
Second authorship (1846–1853)
Kierkegaard's manuscript of ''The Sickness Unto Death''.11
Whereas his first authorship focused on Hegel, this authorship focused on the hypocrisy of Christendom. It is important to realise that by 'Christendom' Kierkegaard meant not Christianity itself, but rather the church and the applied religion of his society. After the Corsair incident, Kierkegaard became interested in "the public" and the individual's interaction with it. His first work in this period of his life was '' which was a critique of the novel ''Two Ages'' (in some translations ''Two Generations'') written by Thomasine Christine Gyllembourg-Ehrensvärd. After giving his critique of the story, Kierkegaard made several insightful observations on the nature of the present age and its passionless attitude towards life. One of his complaints about modernity is its passionless view of the world. Kierkegaard writes that "the present age is essentially a sensible age, devoid of passion ... The trend today is in the direction of mathematical equality, so that in all classes about so and so many uniformly make one individual". In this, Kierkegaard attacks the conformity and assimilation of individuals into an indifferent public, "the crowd".[15] Although Kierkegaard attacks the public, he is supportive of communities where individuals keep their diversity and uniqueness.
Other works continue to focus on the superficiality of "the crowd" attempting to limit and stifle the unique individual. ''The Book on Adler'' is a work about Pastor Adolf Peter Adler's claim to have had a sacrilegious revelation and to have suffered ostracisation and expulsion from the pastorate as a consequence.
As part of his analysis of the crowd, Kierkegaard realized the decay and decadence of the Christian church, especially the Danish State Church. Kierkegaard believed Christendom had "lost its way" on the Christian faith. Christendom in this period ignored, skewed, or gave mere 'lip service' to the original Christian doctrine. Kierkegaard felt his duty in this later era was to inform others about the shallowness of so-called "Christian living". He wrote several criticisms on contemporary Christianity in works such as ''Christian Discourses'', ''Works of Love'', and ''Edifying Discourses in Diverse Spirits''.
''The Sickness Unto Death'' is one of Kierkegaard's most popular works of this era, and although some contemporary atheistic philosophers and psychologists dismiss Kierkegaard's suggested solution as faith, his analysis on the nature of despair is one of the best accounts on the subject and has been emulated in subsequent philosophies, such as Heidegger's concept of existential guilt and Sartre's bad faith.
Around 1848, Kierkegaard began a literary attack on the Danish State Church with books such as ''Practice in Christianity'', ''For Self-Examination'', and ''Judge for Yourselves!'', which attempted to expound the true nature of Christianity, with Jesus as its role model.
Attack upon Christendom (1854–1855)
Søren Kierkegaard's grave in Assistens Kirkegård
Kierkegaard's final years were taken up with a sustained, outright attack on the Danish People's Church by means of newspaper articles published in ''The Fatherland'' (''Fædrelandet'') and a series of self-published pamphlets called ''The Moment'' (''Øjeblikket'').[16] Kierkegaard was initially called to action by a speech by Professor Hans Lassen Martensen who called his recently deceased predecessor Bishop Jakob P. Mynster a "truth-witness, one of the authentic truth-witnesses."[17]
Kierkegaard had an affection towards Mynster, but had come to see that his conception of Christianity was in man's interest, rather than God's, and in no way was Mynster's life comparable to that of a 'truth-witness.'
Before the tenth chapter of ''The Moment'' could be published, Kierkegaard collapsed on the street and was eventually taken to a hospital. He stayed in the hospital for over a month and refused to receive communion from a pastor, whom Kierkegaard regarded as merely an official and not a servant of God.
He said to Emil Boesen, a friend since childhood who kept a record of his conversations with Kierkegaard and was himself a pastor, that his life had been one of great and unknown suffering, which looked like vanity to others but was not.
Kierkegaard died in Frederik's Hospital after being there for over a month, possibly from complications from a fall he had taken from a tree when he was a boy. He was interred in the Assistens Kirkegård in the Nørrebro section of Copenhagen. At Kierkegaard's funeral, his nephew Henrik Lund caused a disturbance by protesting that Kierkegaard was being buried by the official church even though in his life he had broken from and denounced it. Lund was later fined.
Kierkegaard's thought
Main articles: Philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard in the coffee-house. Sketch in oils by Christian Olavius, 1843
Kierkegaard has been called a philosopher, a theologian,[18] the Father of Existentialism, a literary critic, a humorist,[19] a psychologist,[20] and a poet.[21] Two of his popular ideas are "subjectivity",[22] and the "leap to faith," popularly referred to as the "leap of faith."[23]2 The leap of faith is his conception of how an individual would believe in God, or how a person would act in love. It is not a rational decision, as it is transcending rationality in favour of something more uncanny, that is, faith. As such he thought that to have faith is at the same time to have doubt. So, for example, for one to truly have faith in God, one would also have to doubt that God exists; the doubt is the rational part of a person's thought, without which the faith would have no real substance. Doubt is an essential element of faith, an underpinning. In plain words, to believe or have faith that God exists, without ever having doubted God's existence or goodness, would not be a faith worth having. For example, it takes no faith to believe that a pencil or a table exists, when one is looking at it and touching it. In the same way, to believe or have faith in God is to know that one has no perceptual or any other access to God, and yet still has faith in God.[24]
Kierkegaard also stressed the importance of the self, and the self's relation to the world as being grounded in self-reflection and introspection. He argued in ''Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments'' that "subjectivity is truth" and "truth is subjectivity." This has to do with a distinction between what is objectively true and an individual's subjective relation (such as indifference or commitment) to that truth. People who in ''some sense'' believe the same things may relate to those beliefs quite differently. Two individuals may both believe that many of those around them are poor and deserve help, but this knowledge may lead only one of them to decide to actually help the poor.
Kierkegaard primarily discusses subjectivity with regard to religious matters, however. As already noted, he argues that doubt is an element of faith and that it is impossible to gain any objective certainty about religious doctrines such as the existence of God or the life of Christ. The most one could hope for would be the conclusion that it is probable that the Christian doctrines are true, but if a person were to believe such doctrines only to the degree they seemed ''likely'' to be true, he or she would not be genuinely religious at all. Faith consists in a subjective relation of absolute commitment to these doctrines.[25]
Indirect communication and pseudonymous authorship
Either/Or, one of Kierkegaard's works, was authored under the pseudonyms "A" and "B," or Judge William, and edited under the pseudonym Victor Eremita.
Half of Kierkegaard's authorship was written behind the mask of several pseudonymous characters he created to represent different ways of thinking. This was part of Kierkegaard's indirect communication. According to several passages in his works and journals, such as ''The Point of View of my Work as an Author'', Kierkegaard wrote this way in order to prevent his works from being treated as a philosophical system with a systematic structure. In the ''Point of View'', Kierkegaard wrote: "In the pseudonymous works, there is not a single word which is mine. I have no opinion about these works except as a third person, no knowledge of their meaning, except as a reader, not the remotest private relation to them."[26]
Kierkegaard used indirect communication to make it difficult to ascertain whether he actually held any of the views presented in his works. He hoped readers would simply read the work at face value without attributing it to some aspect of his life. Kierkegaard also did not want his readers to treat his work as an authoritative system, but rather look to themselves for interpretation.
Early Kierkegaardian scholars, such as Theodor W. Adorno, have disregarded Kierkegaard's intentions and argue the entire authorship should be treated as Kierkegaard's own personal and religious views.[27] This view leads to many confusions and contradictions which make Kierkegaard appear incoherent.[28] However, many later scholars such as the post-structuralists, have respected Kierkegaard's intentions and interpreted his work by attributing the pseudonymous texts to their respective authors.
Kierkegaard's most important pseudonyms, in chronological order:
★ Victor Eremita, editor of ''Either/Or''
★ A, writer of many articles in ''Either/Or''
★ Judge William, author of rebuttals to A in ''Either/Or''
★ Johannes de Silentio, author of ''Fear and Trembling''
★ Constantin Constantius, author of the first half of ''Repetition''
★ Young Man, author of the second half of ''Repetition''
★ Vigilius Haufniensis, author of ''The Concept of Anxiety''
★ Nicolaus Notabene, author of ''Prefaces''
★ Hilarius Bookbinder, editor of ''Stages on Life's Way''
★ Johannes Climacus, author of ''Philosophical Fragments'' and ''Concluding Unscientific Postscript''
★ Inter et Inter, author of ''The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress''
★ H.H., author of ''Two Ethical-Religious Essays''
★ Anti-Climacus, author of ''The Sickness Unto Death'' and ''Practice in Christianity''
Journals
The cover of the first English edition of ''The Journals'', edited by Alexander Dru in 1938.
Kierkegaard's journals are essential to understanding him and his work.[29] He wrote over 7000 pages in his journals describing key events, musings, thoughts about his works and everyday remarks.[30] The entire collection of Danish journals has been edited and published in 13 volumes which consist of 25 separate bindings including indices. The first English edition of the journals was edited by Alexander Dru in 1938.9
His journals reveal many different facets of Kierkegaard and his work and help elucidate many of his ideas. The style in his journals is among the most elegant and poetic of his writings. Kierkegaard took his journals seriously and even once wrote that they were his ''most trusted confidant'':
His journals are also the source of many aphorisms credited to Kierkegaard. The following passage is perhaps the most oft-quoted aphorism from Kierkegaard's journals and is usually a key quote for existentialist studies: ''"The thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die."'' It was written on August 1, 1835.
Although his journals clarify some aspects of his work and life, Kierkegaard took care not to reveal too much. Abrupt changes in thought, repetitive writing, and unusual turns of phrase are some among the many tactics he uses to throw readers off track. Consequently, there are many varying interpretations of his journals. However, Kierkegaard did not doubt the importance his journals would have in the future. In 1849, he wrote:
Kierkegaard and Christendom
Kierkegaard mounted an attack on Christian institutions in his final years. He felt the established state church was detrimental to individuals.
As mentioned above, Kierkegaard took up a sustained attack on all of Christendom, or Christianity as a political entity, during the final years of his life. In the 19th century, most Danes who were citizens of Denmark were necessarily members of the Danish State Church. Kierkegaard felt this state-church union was unacceptable and perverted the true meaning of Christianity.17 The main points of the attack include:
★ ''Church congregations are meaningless'': The idea of congregations keeps individuals as children since Christians are disinclined from taking the initiative to take responsibility for their own relation to God. Kierkegaard stresses that "Christianity is the individual, here, the single individual."[31]
★ ''Christendom had become secularized and political'': Since the Church was controlled by the State, Kierkegaard believed the State's bureaucratic mission was to increase membership and oversee the welfare of its members. More members would mean more power for the clergymen: a corrupt ideal. This mission would seem at odds with Christianity's true doctrine, which is to stress the importance of the individual, not the whole.9
★ ''Christianity becomes an empty religion'': Thus, the state church political structure is offensive and detrimental to individuals, since everyone can become "Christian" without knowing what it means to be Christian. It is also detrimental to the religion itself since it reduces Christianity to a mere fashionable tradition adhered to by unbelieving "believers", a "herd mentality" of the population, so to speak.
Attacking the incompetence and corruption of the Christian churches, Kierkegaard seemed to have anticipated philosophers like Nietzsche who would go on to criticize the Christian religion.
Criticisms of Kierkegaard
Some of Kierkegaard's famous philosophical critics in the 20th century include Theodor Adorno and Emmanuel Levinas. Atheistic philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre and agnostic philosophers like Martin Heidegger mostly support Kierkegaard's philosophical views, but criticize and reject his religious views.[32][33]
Adorno's take on Kierkegaard's philosophy has been less than faithful to the original intentions of Kierkegaard. At least one critic of Adorno considers his book ''Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic'' to be "the most irresponsible book ever written on Kierkegaard" because Adorno takes Kierkegaard's pseudonyms literally, and constructs an entire philosophy of Kierkegaard which makes him seem incoherent and unintelligible. This is like confusing William Shakespeare with Othello and Dostoevsky with Raskolnikov.[34] Another reviewer mentions that "Adorno is [far away] from the more credible translations and interpretations of the Collected Works of Kierkegaard we have today".28
Levinas' main attack on Kierkegaard is focused on his ethical and religious stages, especially in ''Fear and Trembling''. Levinas criticizes the leap of faith by saying this suspension of the ethical and leap into the religious is a type of violence.
Levinas points to the fact that it was God who first commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac and that it was an angel who commanded Abraham to stop. If Abraham was truly in the religious realm, he would not have listened to the angel to stop and should have continued to kill Isaac. "Transcending ethics" seems like a loophole to excuse would-be murders from their crime and thus is unacceptable.[35]
On Kierkegaard's religious views, Sartre offers this argument against existence of God: If existence precedes essence, it follows from the meaning of the term sentient that a sentient being cannot be complete or perfect. In ''Being and Nothingness'', Sartre's phrasing is that God would be a ''pour-soi'' [a being-for-itself; a consciousness] who is also an ''en-soi'' [a being-in-itself; a thing]: which is a contradiction in terms.
Sartre agrees with Kierkegaard's analysis of Abraham undergoing anxiety (Sartre calls it anguish), but Sartre doesn't agree that God told him to do it. In his lecture, ''Existentialism is a Humanism'', he says:
In Kierkegaard's view, Abraham's certainty had its origin in that 'inner voice' which cannot be demonstrated or shown to another ("The problem comes as soon as Abraham wants to be understood"). To Kierkegaard, every external "proof" or justification is merely on the outside and external to the subject.[36] Kierkegaard's proof for the immortality of the soul, for example, is rooted in the extent to which one wishes to live forever.
Influence and reception
The Søren Kierkegaard Statue in Copenhagen.
Kierkegaard's works were not widely available until several decades after his death. In the years immediately after his death, the Danish State Church, a major institution in Denmark at the time, shunned his work and urged other Danes to do likewise. In addition, the obscurity of the Danish language, relative to German, French, and English, made it nearly impossible for Kierkegaard to acquire non-Danish readers.
The first academic to draw attention to Kierkegaard was his fellow Dane Georg Brandes, who published in German as well as Danish. Brandes gave the first formal lectures on Kierkegaard and helped bring Kierkegaard to the attention of the rest of Europe.[37] In 1877, Brandes also published the first book on Kierkegaard's philosophy and life. The dramatist Henrik Ibsen became interested in Kierkegaard and introduced his work to the rest of Scandinavia. While independent German translations of some of Kierkegaard's works began to appear in the 1870s,[38] academic German translations of whole portions of Kierkegaard's work had to wait until the 1910s. These translations made it possible for Kierkegaard to begin exerting his enormous influence on 20th-century German, French, and English thinkers and authors.
In the 1930s, the first academic English translations,[39] by Alexander Dru, David F. Swenson, Douglas V. Steere, and Walter Lowrie appeared, under the editorial efforts of Oxford University Press editor Charles Williams.2 The second and currently widely used academic English translations were published by the Princeton University Press in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, under the supervision of Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. A third official translation, under the aegis of the Søren Kierkegaard Research Center, will extend to 55 volumes and is expected to be completed sometime after 2009.[40]
Many 20th-century philosophers, both theistic and atheistic, and theologians drew many concepts from Kierkegaard, including the notions of angst, despair, and the importance of the individual. His fame as a philosopher grew tremendously in the 1930s, in large part because the ascendant existentialist movement pointed to him as a precursor, although he is now seen as a highly significant and influential thinker in his own right.[41] Kierkegaard is commemorated as a teacher in the Calendar of Saints of the Lutheran Church on November 11.
Philosophers and theologians influenced by Kierkegaard include Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Barth, Simone de Beauvoir, Niels Bohr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Emil Brunner, Martin Buber, Rudolf Bultmann, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Karl Jaspers, Gabriel Marcel, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Reinhold Niebuhr, Franz Rosenzweig, Jean-Paul Sartre, Joseph Soloveitchik, Paul Tillich, Miguel de Unamuno. Paul Feyerabend's scientific anarchism was inspired by Kierkegaard's idea of subjectivity as truth. Ludwig Wittgenstein was immensely influenced and humbled by Kierkegaard,7 claiming that "Kierkegaard is far too deep for me, anyhow. He bewilders me without working the good effects which he would in deeper souls".7 Karl Popper referred to Kierkegaard as "the great reformer of Christian ethics, who exposed the official Christian morality of his day as anti-Christian and anti-humanitarian hypocrisy".[42]
Contemporary philosophers such as Emmanuel Lévinas, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jacques Derrida, Jürgen Habermas, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Richard Rorty, although sometimes highly critical, have also adapted some Kierkegaardian insights.[43][44][45] Jerry Fodor has written that Kierkegaard was "a master and way out of the league that the rest of us [philosophers] play in".[46]
Kierkegaard has also had a considerable influence on 20th-century literature. Figures deeply influenced by his work include W. H. Auden, Jorge Luis Borges, Hermann Hesse, Franz Kafka,[47] David Lodge, Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, Rainer Maria Rilke, and John Updike.[48]
Kierkegaard also had a profound influence on psychology and is more or less the founder of Christian psychology[49] and of existential psychology and therapy.20 Existentialist (often called "humanistic") psychologists and therapists include Ludwig Binswanger, Viktor Frankl, Erich Fromm, Carl Rogers, and Rollo May. May based his ''The Meaning of Anxiety'' on Kierkegaard's ''The Concept of Anxiety''. Kierkegaard's sociological work ''Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age'' provides an interesting critique of modernity.15 Kierkegaard is also seen as an important precursor of postmodernism.43
Kierkegaard predicted his posthumous fame, and foresaw that his work would become the subject of intense study and research. In his journals, he wrote:
Selected bibliography
''For a complete bibliography, see List of works by Søren Kierkegaard''
★ (1841) ''The Concept of Irony'' (''Om Begrebet Ironi med stadigt Hensyn til Socrates'')
★ (1843) ''Either/Or'' (''Enten - Eller'')
★ (1843) ''Fear and Trembling'' (''Frygt og Bæven'')
★ (1843) ''Repetition'' (''Gjentagelsen'')
★ (1844) ''Philosophical Fragments'' (''Philosophiske Smuler'')
★ (1844) ''The Concept of Dread'' (''Begrebet Angest'')
★ (1845) ''Stages on Life's Way'' (''Stadier paa Livets Vei'')
★ (1846) ''Concluding Unscientific Postscript to The Philosophical Fragments'' (''Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift'')
★ (1847) ''Edifying Discourses in Diverse Spirits'' (''Opbyggelige Taler i forskjellig Aand'')
★ (1847) ''Works of Love'' (''Kjerlighedens Gjerninger'')
★ (1848) ''Christian Discourses'' (''Christelige Taler'')
★ (1849) ''The Sickness Unto Death'' (''Sygdommen til Døden'')
★ (1850) ''Practice in Christianity'' (''Indøvelse i Christendom'')
References
★ Garff, Joakim, 2005. ''Søren Kierkegaard: A Biography'', Princeton University Press. ISBN 069109165X
★ Hannay, Alastair, 2003. ''Kierkegaard: A Biography'' (new ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521531810
★ Hong, Howard V. and Edna H., 2000. ''The Essential Kierkegaard''. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691033099
★ MacDonald, William. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Søren Kierkegaard.
★ Storm, D. Anthony. "Commentary on Kierkegaard."
Notes
1. ''This classification is anachronistic; Kierkegaard was an exceptionally unique thinker and his works do not fit neatly into any one philosophical school or tradition, nor did he identify himself with any. However, his works are considered precursor to many schools of thought developed in the 20th and 21st centuries. See'' 20th century receptions'' in ''Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard''.
2. Hannay, Alastair and Gordon Marino (eds). ''The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard'', Cambridge University Press 1997, ISBN 0521477190
3. The influence of Socrates can be seen in Kierkegaard's ''Sickness Unto Death'' and ''Works of Love''.
4. Kierkegaard, Søren. ''Journals and Papers'', Indiana University Press, ISBN 0253182409
5. Hubben, William. ''Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Kafka: Four Prophets of Our Destiny.'' New York: Collier Books, 1962.
6. Lippit, John and Daniel Hutto. Making Sense of Nonsense: Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein
7. Creegan, Charles. Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard
8. According to the ''Journals'', Michael died at approximately 2:00 a.m., early Thursday morning.
9. Dru, Alexander. ''The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard'', Oxford University Press, 1938.
10. Kierkegaard, Søren. ''The Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates'', Princeton University Press 1989, ISBN 0691073546
11. Manuscripts from the Søren Kierkegaard Archive
12. Hegel, G.W.F. ''Phenomenology of Spirit'', Oxford University Press, 1979, ISBN 0198245971
13. In English, they've been collected in the ''Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses'', Princeton University Press, ISBN 0691020876.
14. D. Anthony Storm's Commentary on the Discourses
15. Kierkegaard, Søren. ''A Literary Review'', Penguin Classics, 2001, ISBN 0140448012
16. Lowrie, Walter. Kierkegaard's Attack on Christendom
17. Duncan, Elmer. ''Søren Kierkegaard: Maker of the Modern Theological Mind'', Word Books 1976, ISBN 0876804636
18. Kangas, David. Kierkegaard, the Apophatic Theologian. David Kangas, Yale University (pdf format)
19. Oden, Thomas C. ''The Humor of Kierkegaard: An Anthology'', Princeton University Press 2004, ISBN 069102085X
20. Ostenfeld, Ib and Alastair McKinnon. ''Søren Kierkegaard's Psychology'', Wilfrid Laurer University Press 1972, ISBN 0889200688
21. MacKey, Louis. ''Kierkegaard: A Kind of Poet'', University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971, ISBN 0812210425
22. Kierkegaard is not an extreme subjectivist; he would not reject the importance of objective truths.
23. ''The Danish equivalent to the English phrase "leap of faith" does not appear in the original Danish nor is the English phrase found in current English translations of Kierkegaard's works. However, Kierkegaard does mention the concepts of "faith" and "leap" together many times in his works. See ''Faith and the Kierkegaardian Leap'' in ''Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard.
24. ''Kierkegaard attempted repeatedly to bring to focus the importance of doubt in the Christian way of life. A passage from his journals describes the idea of the forgiveness of sin:'' "To believe the forgiveness of one's sins is the decisive crisis whereby a human being becomes spirit; he who does not believe this is not spirit. ... Anyone who in truth has experienced and experiences what it is to believe the forgiveness of one's sins has indeed become another person."'' ''Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers'', ed. by Howard V. Hong, VIII A 673 n.d., 1848., Indiana University Press, 1976, ISBN 0253182409
25. Kierkegaard, Søren. ''Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments'', Princeton University Press, 1992, ISBN 0691020825
26. Kierkegaard, Søren. ''The Point of View'', Princeton University Press, 1998, ISBN 0691058555
27. Adorno, Theodor W. ''Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic'', University of Minnesota Press, 1933 (reprint 1989), ISBN 0816611866
28. Morgan, Marcia. Adorno’s Reception of Kierkegaard: 1929–1933
29. Søren Kierkegaard's Journal Commentary
30. ''Given the importance of the journals, references in the form of ''(Journals, XYZ)'' are referenced from Dru's 1938 Journals. When known, the exact date is given; otherwise, month and year, or just year is given.''
31. Kirmmse, Bruce. Review of Habib Malik, Receiving Søren Kierkegaard
32. Sartre, Jean-Paul. Existentialism is a Humanism
33. Dreyfus, Hubert. ''Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Division I''. MIT Press, 1998. ISBN 0-262-54056-8.
34. Westphal, Merold. ''A Reading of Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript'', Purdue University Press 1996, ISBN 1557530904
35. Katz, Claire Elise. The Voice of God and the Face of the Other
36. D. Anthony Storm's Commentary on the Postscript
37. Georg Brandes
38. Cappelorn, Niels J. ''Written Images'', Princeton University Press, 2003, ISBN 0691115559
39. ''However, an independent English translation of selections/excerpts of Kierkegaard appeared in 1923 by Lee Hollander, and published by the University of Texas at Austin.''
40. Søren Kierkegaard Forskningscenteret
41. Weston, Michael. ''Kierkegaard and Modern Continental Philosophy''. Routledge, 1994, ISBN 0415101204
42. Popper, Sir Karl R. ''The Open Society and Its Enemies Vol 2: Hegel and Marx''. Routledge, 2002, ISBN 0415290635
43. Matustik, Martin Joseph and Merold Westphal (eds). ''Kierkegaard in Post/Modernity'', Indiana University Press, 1995, ISBN 0253209676
44. MacIntyre, Alasdair. "Once More on Kierkegaard" in ''Kierkegaard after MacIntyre''. Open Court Publishing, 2001, ISBN 081269452X
45. Rorty, Richard. ''Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity''. Cambridge University Press, 1989, ISBN 0521367816
46. Fodor, Jerry. Water's water everywhere
47. McGee, Kyle. Fear and Trembling in the Penal Colony
48. Kierkegaard, Søren with Foreword by John Updike. ''The Seducer's Diary'', Princeton University Press, 1997, ISBN 0691017379
49. Society for Christian Psychology
Further reading
★ Philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard
★ Theology of Søren Kierkegaard
★ Kierkegaard and Nietzsche comparisons
★ Christian anarchism
★ Christian existentialism
★ knight of faith
★ leap of faith
★ Philosophy of religion
External links
Full texts
★ ''The Journals of Kierkegaard''; revised edition, trans. by Alexander Dru
★ ''The Journals and Notebooks of Kierkegaard'' from the Søren Kierkegaard Research Center in Copenhagen
Philosophical (pseudonymous) texts
★ ''Fear and Trembling''; trans. by Walter Lowrie
★ ''Philosophical Fragments''; trans. by David F. Swenson
★ ''The Sickness Unto Death''; trans. by Walter Lowrie
★ ''In Vino Veritas''; the Banquet Scene from ''Stages on Life's Way''
Theological (signed, non-pseudonymous) texts
★ ''Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing''; trans. by Douglas V. Steere
★ ''For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourselves!''; trans. by Walter Lowrie
★ ''Religiöse Reden''; translated by Theodor Haecker
Other sources
★ Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard ''(free ebook)''
★ Søren Kierkegaard Newsletter edited by Gordon D. Marino
★ Open Directory Project: Søren Kierkegaard
★ Wabash Center Internet Guide: Søren Kierkegaard
★ D. Anthony Storm's Commentary on Kierkegaard
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