The Long ConversationA timeline of world philosophy

Philosopher

Søren Kierkegaard

1813–1855

Also known as Soren Kierkegaard

Danish writer who opposed philosophical system-building, and explored faith, anxiety and what it means to exist as a single individual.

Unfinished pencil sketch of a young man with tousled hair
Unfinished sketch by his cousin Niels Christian Kierkegaard, about 1840. Royal Danish Library.Niels Christian Kierkegaard · Public domain · See the original

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

The Concept of Anxiety, p. 61, translated by Reidar Thomte with Albert B. Anderson

Søren Kierkegaard spent almost his whole life in Copenhagen and wrote nearly all of his vast output in the 1840s, much of it under pseudonyms that let him present views he did not simply share. His work spans philosophy, theology, devotional writing, literary criticism and psychology.

He opposed the system-building of Hegel and his followers, and took his model instead from Socrates. In books such as Either/Or and Fear and Trembling (both 1843) and the Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846), he examined the choices by which an individual becomes a self, and the leap of faith that no system can make for us. He is often regarded as a forerunner of existentialism.

Key ideas

Becoming a self
A human self is less a thing than an achievement. The self must become what it is to become, shaping itself while accepting the limits that biology and history give it.
Despair
In The Sickness Unto Death, a healthy self rests on God. Most of us instead try to ground our identities in “worldly distinctions” such as riches and fame, which leaves us in despair, “the sickness unto death”.
The spheres of existence
Kierkegaard’s works describe different ways of living, and of failing to become a self, often grouped as the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious.
Faith and Abraham
Fear and Trembling explores faith through Abraham, who was willing to sacrifice his son Isaac at God’s command. Its pseudonymous author retells the story again and again, admitting he cannot understand Abraham.
Anxiety
“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom”, felt when we look down into our own possibilities. For Kierkegaard, a free act can’t be explained as necessary; it always comes from a “leap”.
Tradition
Western
Region
Copenhagen

Influences

Influenced by

Søren Kierkegaard1813–1855

Influenced

Influenced by

Søren Kierkegaard1813–1855

Influenced

Key works

  • Either/Or (Enten – Eller), 1843
  • Fear and Trembling (Frygt og Bæven), 1843
  • Concluding Unscientific Postscript (Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift), 1846

Sources

  1. John Lippitt and C. Stephen Evans, Søren Kierkegaard, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy