The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard is considered a father of existentialist thought. Many of the core themes that would define the existentialist movement originate in his writings, but he started out as an anxious seeker of truth. He did not have a very happy or fulfilling life. He was crippled in both his appearance and in his emotional development. He had a difficult relationship to his father, and he was burdened by an oppressive sense of guilt and inadequacy. He spent virtually his entire life in Copenhagen while he despised bourgeois complacency and the whole of "the present age." As a young man, he spent a year in Berlin.
"What I really need is to get clear about what I must do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every act. What matters is to find a purpose, to see what it really is that God wills that I shall do; the crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die."
In his writings, he emphasized the importance of the individual and the significance of personal choice and responsibility in how to live one's life. He focused on subjective human experience over abstract rationalism, arguing that truth can only be realized and appropriated subjectively by the individual. This foreshadowed existentialism’s focus on subjective experience and perspective.
A major theme in Kierkegaard's work was the question of how to live as an individual in an increasingly impersonal, secular, and materialistic society. His concept of the three spheres of existence – the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious – served as a framework for existentialist reflections on modes of life and their meaning.
He examined themes of anxiety, despair, and angst in facing the uncertainties and freedom of modern life. This inspired later existentialist explorations of the anxious character of human existence. He also emphasized the importance of personal choice in shaping one’s beliefs and values, which became central to existentialism.
Kierkegaard criticized abstract philosophical systems like Hegel’s that sought to explain life and history. Instead he advocated for the singularity of lived experience, which existentialists would later echo. He also provided an in-depth psychological and literary account of different ways of existing as a human being.
On Becoming a Christian:
Christianity is a commitment, not something to which one passively adheres.
Christianity is a paradox, but this paradox demands passionate faith.
Against Hegel: The real is rational, the rational is real.
Subjective Truth:
Questions concerning God and religion are not objective questions.
Subjectivity is, first of all, inwardness and passion.
It is a commitment, not a mere discovery or "correctness.”
Personal choice is the key to subjectivity, "taking hold"of one's life.
You can love someone with all your heart without it being evident to anyone else.
Most of what he says could be translated to virtually any other religion.
Existential Dialectic
An "existential dialectic" has no ultimate purpose, no rational direction, only various choices, ''modi of existence" that should be approached subjectively. Kierkegaard distinguishes three modes: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious.
from desire I rush to satisfaction; from satisfaction I leap to desire.
Reason is universal in the realm of ethics, but not outside it.
To choose the ethical life is to choose to live rationally. but one does not rationally choose the ethical life.
Tension between ethical and religious life: Abraham.
“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”
“I have just now come from a party where I was its life and soul; witticisms streamed from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me. But I went away — yes, the dash should be as long as the radius of the earth’s orbit ——————————— and wanted to shoot myself.”
“Never cease loving a person, and never give up hope for him, for even the prodigal son who had fallen most low, could still be saved; the bitterest enemy and also he who was your friend could again be your friend; love that has grown cold can kindle”
“I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations — one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it — you will regret both.”
“God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but He does what is still more wonderful: He makes saints out of sinners.”
“Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth — look at the dying man’s struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment.”
“My standpoint is armed neutrality.”
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
“Without risk, faith is an impossibility.”
“A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that’s just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it’s a joke.”
“The truth is a trap: you cannot get it without it getting you; you cannot get the truth by capturing it, only by its capturing you.”
“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 honor.”
The term "existence" is striking, and eminently important. As we have seen, the word itself first means a projection, a spouting: Exsistere or existare means “to stand outside of” or “to spring out of.”
Kierkegaard interprets it in this way (under Schelling’s influence): "Existing does not designate an observable reality as much as an event, an active upheaval or outgrowth, which resists being grasped rationally. The term expresses the sudden appearance of humankind itself exposed to its Being—and therefore to its nothingness—and who is thereby confronted with a decision about its Being. "
“The Self is a relation which relates itself to its own self,” writes Kierkegaard at the beginning of Sickness unto Death. Suspended above nothingness, existence is not a clearly defined reality, but a perpetual relation to self; in a word, anxiety awaiting resolution. As a Protestant preacher, Kierkegaard sought to remind individuals that their existential and religious choices decide the fate of their Being.
His existential call was accompanied by a critique of conceptual philosophy, especially Hegel’s, who was the Dane’s sworn enemy. According to Kierkegaard, Hegel, by reducing reality to a universal and reassuring order, had sidestepped the fundamental human reality, its concrete existence and the individual—and in a way irrational—decisions it must make.