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Søren Kierkegaard

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Philosophers

   Western Philosophers
   19th-century philosophy
   Søren Kierkegaard
   Name: Søren Kierkegaard
   Birth: 5 May 1813 (Copenhagen, Denmark)
   Death: 11 November 1855 (Copenhagen, Denmark)
   School/tradition: Continental philosophy, Danish Golden Age Literary
   and Artistic Tradition, precursor to Existentialism, Postmodernism,
   Poststructuralism, Existential psychology, Neo-orthodoxy, and many more
   Main interests: Religion, Metaphysics, Epistemology, Aesthetics,
   Ethics, Psychology
   Notable ideas: Regarded as the father of Existentialism, angst,
   existential despair, Three spheres of human existence, knight of faith,
   Subjectivity is Truth
   Influences: Hegel, Abraham, Luther, Kant, Hamann, Lessing, Socrates
   (through Plato, Xenophon, Aristophanes)
   Influenced: Jaspers, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Sartre, Marcel, Buber,
   Tillich, Barth, Auden, Camus, Kafka, de Beauvoir, May, Updike, and many
   more

   Søren Aabye Kierkegaard ( IPA: [ˈsœːɐn ˈkʰiɐ̯g̊əˌg̊ɒːˀ] Søren
   Kierkegaard ; 5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855) was a 19th century Danish
   philosopher and theologian, generally recognized as the first
   existentialist philosopher. He bridged the gap that existed between
   Hegelian philosophy and what was to become Existentialism. Kierkegaard
   strongly criticized both the Hegelian philosophy 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 existential
   choices. Because of this, Kierkegaard's work is sometimes characterized
   as Christian existentialism and existential psychology. Since he wrote
   most of his early work under various pseudonyms, which would often
   comment on and critique the works of his other pseudo-authors, it can
   be exceedingly difficult to distinguish between what Kierkegaard truly
   believed and what he was merely arguing for as part of a
   pseudo-author's position. Ludwig Wittgenstein opined that Kierkegaard
   was "by far, the most profound thinker of the nineteenth century".

Life

Early years (1813–1841)

   Søren Kierkegaard was born to an affluent family in Copenhagen, the
   capital of Denmark. His father, Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard, was a
   strongly religious 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
   Kierkegaard's mother 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. 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). Kierkegaard's mother, Anne Sørensdatter Lund Kierkegaard,
   is not directly referred to in his books, although she too affected his
   later writings. 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. 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."

   Kierkegaard attended the School of Civic Virtue, excelling at Latin and
   history. He went on to study theology at the University of Copenhagen,
   but whilst 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. Kierkegaard
   graduated on October 20, 1841 with a Magistri Artium, which today would
   be designated a Ph.D. With his family's inheritance, 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.
   Enlarge
   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:

     Thou sovereign of my heart treasured in the deepest fastness of my
     chest, in the fullness of my thought, there ... unknown divinity!
     Oh, can I really believe the poet's tales, that when one first sees
     the object of one's love, one imagines one has seen her long ago,
     that all love like all knowledge is remembrance, that love too has
     its prophecies in the individual. ... it seems to me that I should
     have to possess the beauty of all girls in order to draw out a
     beauty equal to yours; that I should have to circumnavigate the
     world in order to find the place I lack and which the deepest
     mystery of my whole being points towards, and at the next moment you
     are so near to me, filling my spirit so powerfully that I am
     transfigured for myself, and feel that it's good to be here.

     —Søren Kierkegaard, Journals ( 2 February 1839)

   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.
   Kierkegaard's manuscript of Philosophical Fragments.
   Enlarge
   Kierkegaard's manuscript of Philosophical Fragments.

   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'. Repetition, published on the same day and year 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".

   Most of the works in this authorship were philosophical in nature and
   written pseudonymously and indirectly, representing different
   view-points and ways of life. However, Kierkegaard published two or
   three theological discourses, written under his own name, for each of
   the respective philosophical works. Kierkegaard wrote these discourses
   to clarify philosophical aspects of the pseudonymous work, discuss the
   theological aspects of the work, and edify the reader.

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.

     With a paper like The Corsair, which hitherto has been read by many
     and all kinds of people and essentially has enjoyed the recognition
     of being ignored, despised, and never answered, the only thing to be
     done in writing in order to express the literary, moral order of
     things—reflected in the inversion that this paper with meager
     competence and extreme effort has sought to bring about—was for
     someone immortalized and praised in this paper to make application
     to be abused by the same paper ... May I asked to be abused—the
     personal injury of being immortalized by The Corsair is just too
     much.

     —Søren Kierkegaard, Dialectical Result of a Literary Police Action

   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:

     The days of my authorship are past, God be praised. I have been
     granted the satisfaction of bringing it to a conclusion myself,
     understanding when it is fitting that I should make an end, and next
     after the publication of Either/Or I thank God for that. That this,
     once again, is not how people would see it, that I could actually
     prove in two words that it is so. I know quite well and find [my
     authorship] quite in order. But it has pained me; it seemed to me
     that I might have asked for that admission; but let it be. If only I
     can manage to become a priest. However, much of my present life may
     have satisfied me: I shall breathe more freely in that quiet
     activity, allowing myself an occasional literary work in my free
     time.

     —Søren Kierkegaard, Journals ( 9 March 1846)

Second Authorship (1846–1853)

   Kierkegaard's manuscript of The Sickness Unto Death.
   Enlarge
   Kierkegaard's manuscript of The Sickness Unto Death.

   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 Two Ages: A Literary Review 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". 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
   Enlarge
   Søren Kierkegaard's grave in Assistens Kirkegård

   Kierkegaard's final years were taken up with a sustained, outright
   attack on the Danish State Church by means of newspaper articles
   published in The Fatherland (Fædrelandet) and a series of
   self-published pamphlets called The Moment (Øjeblikket). 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."

   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 taken to a hospital. He stayed in the
   hospital for nearly a month and refused to receive communion from a
   priest of the church, 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

   Søren Kierkegaard in the coffee-house. Sketch in oils by Christian
   Olavius, 1843
   Enlarge
   Søren Kierkegaard in the coffee-house. Sketch in oils by Christian
   Olavius, 1843

   Kierkegaard has been called a Christian existentialist, a theologian,
   the Father of Existentialism, a literary critic, a humorist, a
   psychologist, a poet, and a philosopher. Two of his popular ideas are
   "subjectivity" and the "leap to faith," popularly referred to as the
   "leap of faith." 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 so much 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.

   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 - that a man named Jesus of Nazareth lived and died on
   a cross, for instance - 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.

Indirect communication and pseudonymous authorship

   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."

   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.
   This view leads to many confusions and contradictions which make
   Kierkegaard appear incoherent. 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 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.
   Enlarge
   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.
   He wrote over 7000 pages in his journals describing key events,
   musings, thoughts about his works and everyday remarks. 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.

   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:

     I have never confided in anyone. By being an author I have in a
     sense made the public my confidant. But in respect of my relation to
     the public I must, once again, make posterity my confidant. The same
     people who are there to laugh at one cannot very well be made one's
     confidant.

     —Søren Kierkegaard, Journals ( 4 November 1847)

   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:

     Only a dead man can dominate the situation in Denmark.
     Licentiousness, envy, gossip, and mediocrity are everywhere supreme.
     Were I to die now the effect of my life would be exceptional; much
     of what I have simply jotted down carelessly in the Journals would
     become of great importance and have a great effect; for then people
     would have grown reconciled to me and would be able to grant me what
     was, and is, my right.

     —Søren Kierkegaard, Journals (December 1849)

Kierkegaard and Christendom

   Kierkegaard mounted an attack on Christian institutions in his final
   years. He felt the established state church was detrimental to
   individuals.
   Enlarge
   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. 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."

     * 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.

     * 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.

     If the Church is "free" from the state, it's all good. I can
     immediately fit in this situation. But if the Church is to be
     emancipated, then I must ask: By what means, in what way? A
     religious movement must be served religiously - otherwise it is a
     sham! Consequently, the emancipation must come about through
     martyrdom - bloody or bloodless. The price of purchase is the
     spiritual attitude. But those who wish to emancipate the Church by
     secular and worldly means (i.e. no martyrdom), they've introduced a
     conception of tolerance entirely consonant with that of the entire
     world, where tolerance equals indifference, and that is the most
     terrible offence against Christianity. ... the doctrine of the
     established Church, its organization, are both very good indeed. Oh,
     but then our lives: believe me, they are indeed wretched.

     —Søren Kierkegaard, Journals (January 1851)

   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.

     I ask: what does it mean when we continue to behave as though all
     were as it should be, calling ourselves Christians according to the
     New Testament, when the ideals of the New Testament have gone out of
     life? The tremendous disproportion which this state of affairs
     represents has, moreover, been perceived by many. They like to give
     it this turn: the human race has outgrown Christianity.

     —Søren Kierkegaard, Journals ( June 19, 1852)

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.

   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. Another reviewer mentions that "Adorno
   is [far away] from the more credible translations and interpretations
   of the Collected Works of Kierkegaard we have today".

   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.

     Kierkegaardian violence begins when existence is forced to abandon
     the ethical stage in order to embark on the religious stage, the
     domain of belief. But belief no longer sought external
     justification. Even internally, it combined communication and
     isolation, and hence violence and passion. That is the origin of the
     relegation of ethical phenomena to secondary status and the contempt
     of the ethical foundation of being which has led, through Nietzsche,
     to the amoralism of recent philosophies.

     —Emmanuel Levinas, Existence and Ethics, (1963)

   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.

   On Kierkegaard's religious views, Sartre offers the usual 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:

     The man who lies in self-excuse, by saying "Everyone will not do it"
     must be ill at ease in his conscience, for the act of lying implies
     the universal value which it denies. By its very disguise his
     anguish reveals itself. This is the anguish that Kierkegaard called
     "the anguish of Abraham." You know the story: An angel commanded
     Abraham to sacrifice his son; and obedience was obligatory, if it
     really was an angel who had appeared and said, "Thou, Abraham, shalt
     sacrifice thy son." But anyone in such a case would wonder, first,
     whether it was indeed an angel and secondly, whether I am really
     Abraham. Where are the proofs? A certain mad woman who suffered from
     hallucinations said that people were telephoning to her, and giving
     her orders. The doctor asked, "But who is it that speaks to you?"
     She replied: "He says it is God." And what, indeed, could prove to
     her that it was God? If an angel appears to me, what is the proof
     that it is an angel; or, if I hear voices, who can prove that they
     proceed from heaven and not from hell, or from my own
     subconsciousness or some pathological condition? Who can prove that
     they are really addressed to me?

     —Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism

   Kierkegaard would have said that this requirement for "proof that it is
   God" relies on reason alone, and Kierkegaard believes that faith in God
   transcends "reason alone" and belongs to the existential sphere of the
   individual who must take decisions that may influence his entire life
   and eternal salvation despite the uncertainty surrounding his concrete
   situation.

Influence and reception

   The Søren Kierkegaard Statue in Copenhagen.
   Enlarge
   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. 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 were the 1870s, 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 1938, the first academic English translations, by Alexander Dru,
   David F. Swenson, Douglas V. Steere, and Walter Lowrie appeared, under
   the editorial efforts of Oxford University Press editor Charles
   Williams. The second and 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
   Centre, will extend to 55 volumes and is expected to be completed
   sometime after 2009.

   Many 20th-century philosophers, both theistic and atheistic, 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. Philosophers and theologians influenced by Kierkegaard include
   Karl Barth, Simone de Beauvoir, Martin Buber, Rudolf Bultmann, Albert
   Camus, Martin Heidegger, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Karl Jaspers, Gabriel
   Marcel, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Franz Rosenzweig, Jean-Paul Sartre,
   Joseph Soloveitchik, Paul Tillich, Miguel de Unamuno, Hans Urs von
   Balthasar. Paul Feyerabend's scientific anarchism was inspired by
   Kierkegaard's idea of subjectivity as truth. Ludwig Wittgenstein was
   immensely influenced and humbled by Kierkegaard, claiming that
   "Kierkegaard is far too deep for me, anyhow. He bewilders me without
   working the good effects which he would in deeper souls". 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".

   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. Jerry Fodor has written that Kierkegaard was
   "a master and way out of the league that the rest of us [philosophers]
   play in".

   Kierkegaard has also had a considerable influence on 20th-century
   literature. Figures deeply influenced by his work include Walker Percy,
   W. H. Auden, Franz Kafka, David Lodge, and John Updike.

   Kierkegaard also had a profound influence on psychology and is more or
   less the founder of Christian psychology and of existential psychology
   and therapy. Existentialist (often called "humanistic") psychologists
   and therapists include Ludwig Binswanger, Victor 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. Kierkegaard is also seen as an
   important precursor of postmodernism.

   Kierkegaard predicted his posthumous fame, and foresaw that his work
   would become the subject of intense study and research. In his
   journals, he wrote:

     What the age needs is not a genius - it has had geniuses enough, but
     a martyr, who in order to teach men to obey would himself be
     obedient unto death. What the age needs is awakening. And therefore
     someday, not only my writings but my whole life, all the intriguing
     mystery of the machine will be studied and studied. I never forget
     how God helps me and it is therefore my last wish that everything
     may be to his honour

     —Søren Kierkegaard, Journals ( 20 November 1847)

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