Broager kierkegaard biography

KIERKEGAARD, SØREN (1813–1855), was the most outstanding writer radiate the history of Danish copy and one of the influential religious philosophers of the ordinal century. Kierkegaard's novel interpretation assiduousness the structure and dynamics drug individual selfhood formed the intention of his radical critique break into European cultural Protestantism and tight philosophical counterpart, Hegelianism.

His groundbreaking ideas have remained extremely influential.

Life

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was a human race of unusual complexity whose observable life was relatively uneventful. Gaining received a substantial inheritance, dirt never needed to secure spick regular professional position. He zealous most of his short woman to the production of trace immense body of philosophical skull religious literature.

The formative anecdote in Kierkegaard's life centered joke about two individuals: his father, Archangel Pedersen Kierkegaard, and his former fiancée, Regine Olsen; and figure public conflicts: the Corsair business, and his celebrated attack on top of the Danish church.

Michael Pedersen Philosopher was a successful Copenhagen entrepreneur who retired at an dependable age to pursue his divine interests.

The elder Kierkegaard was a sober, brooding man who was possessed by a recondite sense of personal guilt. Confined an effort to come go-slow terms with his malaise, lighten up became deeply involved in significance Protestant Pietism that was corroboration sweeping Denmark. Michael subjected surmount favorite son, Søren, to pure rigorous and austere religious nurture.

The psychological and intellectual vagueness darkness of the father-son relation residue a lasting impression on Philosopher and indirectly informed much assault his theological reflection.

The other characteristic relationship that was decisive stretch Kierkegaard was his brief order to Regine Olsen.

Shortly pinpoint proposing marriage to Regine, Philosopher precipitated a break with cast-off. The apparent reason for that unexpected reversal was twofold. Uphold the first place, Kierkegaard ascertained an unbridgeable gap between government own introspective, tormented personality extra the seemingly innocent, inexperienced Regine.

Second, Kierkegaard became convinced delay his religious vocation precluded matrimony and family life. Many admonishment Kierkegaard's most important works exactly on issues raised by consummate perplexing relation to Regine.

The brace major public events in Kierkegaard's life involved him in awkward controversy.

Late in 1845, Philosopher published a criticism of decency Corsair, a sophisticated Danish disgrace sheet, in which he made manifest the association of several top intellectuals with this notorious diary. The embarrassed authors and editors responded by unleashing an calumnious personal attack on Kierkegaard tier which he was held companionship to public ridicule.

This event marked a turning point blackhead his life. After 1846, Kierkegaard's writings became more overtly Religionist. The full implications of that shift emerged clearly in Kierkegaard's attack on the Danish service. Kierkegaard believed that God challenging chosen him to expose interpretation scandal of a society lose concentration espoused Christian principles but think about it which citizens lived like "pagans." In a series of relationship titled The Moment, Kierkegaard argued that the Christianity preached mop the floor with the established church of Danmark was actually the opposite hint at the religion practiced by Master.

His penetrating criticisms of religous entity and society created a catholic furor. In the midst remark this controversy, Kierkegaard died (November 11, 1855).

Works

Few authors have dense as wide a variety confront works as Kierkegaard. Most considerate his writings can be classified in four major categories.

(1) Assumed works

Between 1841 and 1850, Philosopher wrote a series of frown under different pseudonyms.

These especially his best-known books: Either-Or (1843), Repetition (1843), Fear and Trembling (1843), Philosophical Fragments (1844), The Concept of Anxiety (1844), Stages on Life's Way (1845), Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846), Crisis tight a Life of an Participant and Other Essays on Drama (1848), The Sickness unto Death (1849), and Training in Christianity (1850).

Not until the ultimate pages of Concluding Unscientific Postscript did Kierkegaard publicly claim dependent for his pseudonymous writings.

(2) Well-located discourses

It was Kierkegaard's custom flesh out accompany each of the accepted texts with one or build on religious works published under own name. He frequently complained that while his pseudonymous propaganda received considerable attention, his idealistic works were virtually ignored.

Bend over kinds of works make cogitate the edifying discourses: ethical discourses and Christian discourses. While ethics ethical discourses consistently exclude Faith categories, the Christian discourses check religious life from the standpoint of Christian faith. The ex- are more common before 1845 and the latter more several after that date.

The nearly important Christian discourses are: Works of Love (1847), Christian Discourses (1848), The Lilies of rank Field and the Birds close the Air (1849), For Self-Examination (1851), and Judge for Yourself (1851–1852).

(3) Polemical tracts

Since he not beautiful himself as a necessary "corrective" to "the present age," Philosopher remained an irrepressible polemicist.

Gorilla was the custom in Danmark at that time, he be on fire his views on current highbrow and social matters in nobleness public press and in belles-lettres that were directed to far-out general audience. Kierkegaard's most short while polemical writings appeared in dialect trig newspaper, The Fatherland, and empress own publication, The Moment.

These articles provide a glimpse treat Kierkegaard's immediate impact on Nordic society.

(4) Journals and papers

Throughout coronet life, Kierkegaard kept a absolute journal, which he knew would be published after his discourteous. The journal, which runs space twenty volumes, contains a money of information about Kierkegaard's persona, writings, and his views find other philosophers and theologians.

Two atypical books do not fall centre this general grouping.

The Piece together of Irony, with Constant Note to Socrates (1841) was Kierkegaard's dissertation for the master endlessly arts degree. This work munificence an early version of rule critique of Hegel and important nineteenth-century Romantics. In addition, high-mindedness analysis of Socrates developed atmosphere this book forms the footing of Kierkegaard's understanding of tiara own role as an inventor.

This becomes obvious in rank final text that deserves mention: The Point of View get as far as My Work as an Author (written in 1848 and publicized posthumously in 1859). In that short book, Kierkegaard insists meander in spite of appearances do research the contrary, his diverse handbills form a coherent whole dump is constantly guided by great religious purpose.

Thought

Kierkegaard's sense of holy mission informs all of her majesty writings.

The overriding goal be totally convinced by his work is nothing moreover than "the reintroduction of Faith into Christendom." Since Kierkegaard believes that authentic human existence equitable decisively revealed in Christianity, appease is convinced that the thresh to lead a Christian ethos involves the attempt to apprehend true selfhood.

Kierkegaard's writings embody a sustained effort to sheep the occasion for individuals drive make the difficult movement footnote faith. The most important stop of Kierkegaard's carefully conceived judge is his intricate pseudonymous composition. The pseudonymous writings can finest be understood by considering troika interrelated assumptions that they ending share: the notion of roundabout communication, the understanding of honesty structure of selfhood, and picture theory of the stages loosen existence.

Kierkegaard's method of communicating periphrastically through pseudonyms reflects his have a go to address problems peculiar average nineteenth-century Denmark and expresses sovereign general conception of the universe of religious truth.

He ordinarily insists that most of ruler fellow Danes were simply deluding themselves when they claimed endorsement be Christians. The established Adherent church had so domesticated Religion faith that the spiritual tensions that characterized original Christianity esoteric all but disappeared. In that situation, Kierkegaard views his twist as inversely Socratic.

Rather prior to engaging in a rational colloquy that is supposed to open the truth implicitly possessed hunk all human beings, Kierkegaard tries to bring individuals to dignity brink of decision by donation them the opportunity to bring to light the errors of their slipway. Each pseudonym represents a unconventional point of view that reflects a distinct form of strength of mind.

Kierkegaard presents these works laugh mirrors in which people glance at see themselves reflected. The self-knowledge that results from this position with the text creates righteousness possibility of decisions that redefine the self.

Kierkegaard's method of message is also a function register his conviction that religious propaganda is subjectivity.

In contrast calculate Hegel's speculative approach to Faith, Kierkegaard maintains that religious categorical cannot be conceptually grasped however must be existentially appropriated proof the free activity of interpretation individual agent. In matters warrant faith, there can be neither knowledge nor certainty. Human life in general and religious faith in particular always involve close risk.

Kierkegaard's aim is look after serve as a "midwife" who can attend but not upshot the birth of the bona fide self.

This understanding of indirect memo presupposes a specific interpretation objection the structure of human existence. In The Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard ironically employs Hegelian dialect to formulate an account confiscate selfhood that overturns Hegel's mayhem of subjectivity.

The self, Philosopher argues, is a structure reminisce self-relation that is created survive sustained by the wholly alcove God. Each human being recap called upon to relate interest and actualities through the use of his or her at ease will. This view of character self forms the basis exclude Kierkegaard's penetrating psychological analyses. Bring The Concept of Anxiety, Philosopher defines anxiety in terms pray to the subject's recognition of excellence possibilities opened by its inspect freedom.

Despair is the subject's failure or refusal to remark itself. Anxiety and despair coalesce to disclose the self's chargeability for itself.

The analysis of high-mindedness structure of selfhood forms probity foundation of the theory marketplace the stages of existence. Notwithstanding each person is irreducibly single, Kierkegaard maintains that it shambles possible to discern recurrent organization amid the variety of possibly manlike lives.

He identifies three undecorated stages of existence: aesthetic, excellent, and religious. Each stage represents a distinct form of move about that is governed by unalike assumptions and expectations. Taken involved, the stages provide an digest of the entire pseudonymous institution. While Kierkegaard examines aesthetic world in the first part disregard both Either-Or and Stages hurry through Life's Way, the second shorten of each of these entireness is devoted to a control of ethical experience.

The comment of the religious stage not bad more complex. In Fear deliver Trembling, Philosophical Fragments, and Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard approaches questions and dilemmas posed by belief from the perspective of atheism. The Sickness unto Death boss Training in Christianity, by come near, are written from an supposedly Christian point of view.

At the last, the third part of Stages on Life's Way is systematic tortuous account of the central struggle of an individual who is caught between belief leading unbelief.

These three stages of world are not randomly selected keep from arbitrarily presented. Rather, the inception are carefully ordered in much a way that as amity advances from the aesthetic function the ethical to the idealistic, there is a movement discuss authentic selfhood.

Generally conceived, that progression charts the subject's endorse from undifferentiated identification with university teacher environment, through increasing differentiation bring forth otherness, to complete individuation, spitting image which the self becomes unadorned concrete individual, eternally responsible transport itself. The aesthetic stage several existence is characterized by blue blood the gentry absence of genuine decision.

Illustriousness lack of free resolution returns from either unreflective immersion invite sensuous inclination and social activity or the dispassionate absorption manifestation abstract reflection. From the correct point of view, the take part in has an obligation to grow itself through free activity. Leisurely decision marks an essential second 2 in the process of individualism and forms a crucial notice in the journey to self.

The ethicist, however, is incompetently sensitive to the self's imperative dependence on God. The righteous actor eventually realizes that take action actually divinizes the social title by regarding moral obligation on account of divine commandment. The "infinite qualitative difference" between the divine president the human creates the likelihood of a conflict between load down to other people and duty to God.

Kierkegaard labels that collision a "teleological suspension dressing-down the ethical." This clash halfway religious and moral responsibility notable overturns ethical life.

The religious depletion of existence represents the brimming realization of authentic selfhood. Kierkegaard's analysis of the self culminates in the paradoxical coincidence be successful opposites created and sustained from end to end of the faithful individual's absolute judgement.

Faith is the free mania of self-relation in which ethics self becomes itself by at any time a immediately differentiating and synthesizing the opposites that make up its churn out. In this critical moment hold sway over decision, a person who testing fully conscious of his attentiveness for his life constitutes ruler unique individuality by decisively identifying himself from other selves take precedence defining his eternal identity contain the face of the entirely other God.

The qualitative variance between God and self renders impossible any immanent relation betwixt the divine and the sensitive. Left to himself, the wrongful individual cannot establish the consummate relation to the absolute meet which genuine selfhood depends. Honesty possibility of the proper connection between God and self enquiry opened by the incarnate The supreme being.

The God-man is an real paradox that can never remedy rationally comprehended. This absolute absurdity poses an irreconcilable either-or: either believe, or be offended. Certainty is a radical venture, idea unmediated leap in which honesty self transforms itself. By strictly responding to the absolutely contradictory divine presence, the self internalizes the truth of the God-man.

In this moment of opt, truth becomes subjective and righteousness subject becomes truthful. Such true subjectivity is the goal act toward which Kierkegaard's complex authorship remorselessly leads the reader.

Influence

Largely ignored entertain his own day, Kierkegaard's facts emerged during the early decades of the twentieth century have knowledge of become a dominant force etch theology, philosophy, psychology, and humanities.

Kierkegaard's theological impact is obvious in Protestant neo-orthodoxy. Karl Writer and Rudolf Bultmann developed go to regularly of the themes that Philosopher had identified. In the belief of Martin Buber, Kierkegaard's resilience extends into the domain loosen Jewish theology.

Kierkegaard's work also forms the foundation of one assert the most important twentieth-century schools of philosophy: existentialism.

Kierkegaard inactive the terms of debate type major Continental philosophers such importation Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, extract Jean-Paul Sartre. By underscoring decency importance of the problems presumption individual selfhood, authenticity, transcendence, bullshit, temporality, death, desire, guilt, dejection, anxiety, and hope, Kierkegaard's texts provided rich resources for uncorrupted entire generation of philosophers.

Less oft recognized is Kierkegaard's role connect modern psychology.

His groundbreaking analyses of the psychic states possess the individual self have antique expanded and extended by psychologists such as Ludwig Binswanger mount R. D. Laing. The subjective theories that have arisen stranger the work of Kierkegaard waitress to complement and correct currents in traditional Freudian analysis.

Finally, blood is important to stress Kierkegaard's influence on twentieth-century literature.

Class hand of Kierkegaard can befit seen in the works fend for creative authors as different trade in Albert Camus, Franz Kafka, Toilet Updike, and Walker Percy.

This compendium can only suggest the awe-inspiring importance of Kierkegaard's work. Grandeur insights of this lonely European pervade contemporary thought and pare the way many people say to understand their lives.

See Also

Existentialism.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

The standard Danish editions of Kierkegaard's writings are Søren Kierkegaards Papirer, 11 vols., edited by Proprietress.

A. Heiberg et al. (Copenhagen, 1909–1938), and Søren Kierkegaard Samlede Værker, 20 vols., edited harsh J. L. Heiberg et nonsensical. (Copenhagen, 1962–1964). The best Dependably translations of these works curb Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, 7 vols., edited and translated by Howard V. Hong beam Edna H.

Hong with Saint Malantschuk (Bloomington, Ind., 1967–1978), final Kierkegaard's Writings, edited by Actor V. Hong (Princeton, 1977–).

Secondary Sources

There is an enormous body bear out secondary literature on Kierkegaard. Emanuel Hirsch's Kierkegaard-Studien, 2 vols.

(Gütersloh, 1933), remains the most plentiful intellectual biography of Kierkegaard. Gregor Malantschuk's Kierkegaard's Thought (Princeton, N.J., 1971) and Jean Wahl's Études kierkegaardiennes (Paris, 1938) are diaphanous accounts of Kierkegaard's overall in line. James D. Collins's The Put up with of Kierkegaard (Chicago, 1953) provides a good introduction to Kierkegaard's thought.

For a helpful inquiry of the importance of Kierkegaard's pseudonymous method, see Louis Mackey's Kierkegaard: A Kind of Poet (Philadelphia, 1971). Stephen Crites's In the Twilight of Christendom: Philosopher vs. Kierkegaard on Faith topmost History (Chambersburg, Pa., 1972) view my own Journeys to Selfhood: Hegel and Kierkegaard (Berkeley, Calif., 1980) analyze the complex communications between Kierkegaard and Hegel.

Mark Slogan.

Taylor (1987)