Soren Kierkegaard 1813 – 1855
Soren Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855) was a Danish philosopher of the Modern era, associated with Existentialism and Christian Philosophy.
Soren Kierkegaard was a 19th-century Danish philosopher, theologian, and religious author, widely regarded as the first existentialist thinker. His pseudonymous works, including Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, and The Sickness Unto Death, dramatize the inner life of the individual confronted with anxiety, despair, freedom, and faith. Writing in opposition to the systematic rationalism of Hegel, he insisted on the priority of subjective truth and the leap of faith. He produced major contributions to the philosophy of religion, ethics, and psychology, often through indirect literary forms. His work was largely ignored during his lifetime but became foundational for 20th-century existentialism, theology, and continental philosophy.
Søren Kierkegaard was born in Copenhagen in 1813 to a wealthy and religiously intense father whose melancholy decisively shaped his son's psychology. His brief life — he died in 1855 at forty-two — produced an extraordinary body of work characterized by pseudonymous indirection, theological seriousness, and sustained polemic against the established Danish Lutheran Church and against Hegel's systematic philosophy.
Kierkegaard's pseudonymous works — Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, The Concept of Anxiety, Stages on Life's Way, Concluding Unscientific Postscript — present existence as structured by three irreducible spheres: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. Each sphere has its own form of self-relation and its own mode of choice; the transitions between them are leaps that no rational mediation can perform. The leap of faith, in which the existing individual stands in absolute relation to the absolute, is the highest and most paradoxical category.
Kierkegaard wrote nothing systematic by design: the existing individual cannot be subsumed in any system, and the philosophical task is to make Christianity difficult again rather than to integrate it into Hegelian logic. He has been claimed as the founder of existentialism, of dialectical theology, and of philosophical psychology; his influence on Heidegger, Sartre, Barth, and Wittgenstein is incalculable.
Key facts
- Nationality
- Danish
- Era
- Modern
- Movements
- Existentialism, Christian Philosophy
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Soren Kierkegaard:
“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”
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“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
Det er ganske sandt, hvad Philosophien siger, at Livet maa forstaaes baglænds. Men derover glemmer man den anden Sætning, at det maa leves forlænds. -
Attributed to Soren Kierkegaard:
“The most common form of despair is not being who you are.”
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Attributed to Soren Kierkegaard:
“To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.”
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Attributed to Soren Kierkegaard:
“Faith is the highest passion in a human being.”
Soren Kierkegaard by topic
Soren Kierkegaard vs other philosophers
Three-way comparisons including Soren Kierkegaard
Frequently asked about Soren Kierkegaard
- When did Soren Kierkegaard live?
- Soren Kierkegaard was born in 1813 and died in 1855.
- Where was Soren Kierkegaard from?
- Soren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher of the Modern era.
- What philosophical movements is Soren Kierkegaard associated with?
- Soren Kierkegaard was associated with Existentialism and Christian Philosophy.
- What was Soren Kierkegaard known for?
- Soren Kierkegaard was a 19th-century Danish philosopher, theologian, and religious author, widely regarded as the first existentialist thinker.
- How many quotes are attributed to Soren Kierkegaard?
- There are 22 attributed quotations from Soren Kierkegaard in the 1001Philosophers collection, organized by topic.
Quotes that are not actually from Soren Kierkegaard
These lines are widely circulated as Soren Kierkegaard, but they do not appear in Soren Kierkegaard's works. Each entry below identifies the actual source.
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“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”
Attributed to Kierkegaard in a number of books, the earliest located on Google Books being the 1976 book Jack Kerouac: Prophet of the New Romanticism by Robert A. Hipkiss, p. 83 . In the 1948 The Hibbert Journal: Volumes 46-47 the quote is referred to as "the famous Kierkegaardian slogan" on p. 237 , which may be intended to suggest the phrase is Kierkegaard-esque rather than being something written by Kierkegaard, while in the 1949 The Ampleforth Journal the quote is now described on p. 5 as "Kierkegaard's famous slogan". In reality this seems to be a slightly altered version of the quote "The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved; it is a reality to be experienced" which appeared…
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“I am no part of a whole, I am not integrated, not included. To put me in this whole you imagine is to negate me.”
Attributed as part of Kierkegaard's response to Hegel in the article "Existentialism: A Preface" by Jean Wahl , in The New Republic , 30 September 1945. Though the statement is in quotes it may have been intended as a paraphrase of Kierkegaard's criticism of Hegel. The paragraph of Wahl's article containing these words was also quoted on p. 190 of the book A Kierkegaard Anthology edited by Robert Bretall (1946 edition); the book Kierkegaard's Relations to Hegel Reconsidered by Jon Stewart (2003), the first few pages of which are viewable here , mentions on p. 8 that Bretall's anthology "has served as an introductory textbook for anglophone students of Kierkegaard for many years now." (Disputed.)
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“Put me in a System and you negate me—I am not just a mathematical symbol—I am.”
The Outsider (1956) by Colin Wilson , p. 20. The statement was prefaced by "He declared" but was not in quotes, so unclear if intended as a direct quote or a paraphrase, and it was part of a paragraph discussing Kierkegaard's response to Hegel, so may have been based on Wahl's article. (Disputed.)
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“Put a label on me and you negate me.”
Attributed to Kierkegaard in a letter from Marcia Jacobs to the New York Times Magazine , 15 October 1967, p. 16. Viewable on p. 241 of the online "timesmachine" here . (Disputed.)