Søren Kierkegaard

About this figure

Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) was a Danish philosopher and religious writer, based his entire life in Copenhagen, whose work is widely regarded as a major source of later existentialist philosophy. Kierkegaard was deeply affected by his relationship with his father, a stern and devout merchant whose religious anxieties and sense of guilt appear to have shaped his son's own preoccupations, and by his broken engagement to Regine Olsen, whom he courted and to whom he became engaged in 1840 before breaking it off the following year, an episode that recurs, transformed, throughout his writing.

Kierkegaard wrote prolifically and often published under a series of elaborate pseudonyms, such as Johannes Climacus and Johannes de Silentio, using these invented personas to explore different existential and religious standpoints in works such as Either/Or and Fear and Trembling, distinguishing this pseudonymous authorship from a smaller body of religious writings he published under his own name. His writing repeatedly addressed the nature of individual choice, anxiety, faith, and despair, and works such as The Sickness Unto Death examined despair as a spiritual condition rather than merely a psychological one.

In his final years, Kierkegaard mounted an intense public attack on the Danish state church, which he accused of having reduced Christianity to a comfortable, nominal social institution rather than the demanding personal commitment he believed true faith required; he pursued this campaign through a self-published periodical until shortly before his death. Kierkegaard collapsed in the street in Copenhagen in 1855 and died several weeks later, at the age of forty-two, having spent much of his modest inheritance financing his own writing and publication throughout his short career.

Written by Epoch Voices. Not the figure’s own words.