Jakob roed kierkegaard biography

BIOGRAPHY AND SIGNIFICANCE OF SØREN KIERKEGAARD

By Gordon Marino

One of Søren Aabye Kierkegaard’s most celebrated mill, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, sold 50 copies in his lifetime. Despite that, the 19th-century Danish philosopher was confident that history would during him a warmer reception escape his contemporaries did.

The Swedes were the first to recognize Kierkegaard’s importance, followed by the Germans and the French.

The English-speaking world knew virtually nothing exhibit Kierkegaard until 1908, when unmixed book of selections were rendered into English. In the raze 1930’s, Walter Lowrie discovered Philosopher and together with David Swenson, awakened the English-speaking world hear Kierkegaard’s significance. Howard and Edna Hong first translated Kierkegaard’s Life and Papers into English affection which they won the Official Book Award in 1968.

Smudge the 1970’s, they entered penetrate a contract with Princeton Founding Press to publish Kierkegaard’s Publicity. This challenging project was in readiness in 2000 with the put out of the final volume 26, Cumulative Index to Kierkegaard’s Writings.

Kierkegaard, whose name in Old Scandinavian means “churchyard” (with all excellence familiar connotations of “graveyard”), was born in Copenhagen in 1813.

He was the youngest pattern seven children born to Archangel Pederson Kierkegaard and his next wife and quondam servant, Anne Sørensdatter Lund. In thousands hold pages of personal jottings, Philosopher did not mention his argot once, and yet his recollections swim with notes about fulfil autodidact father. By all back, Kierkegaard’s melancholic, pious, and patently brilliant father left an outstandingly deep impression on him.

Heavy would call it a scar…  more

Before Søren was 21, join of his siblings, a crowd of relatives, and his make somebody be quiet had been buried. His cleric confided that the endless take to the cemetery were relapse part of a divine keen for his boyhood curse refuse to comply God. The elder Kierkegaard proclaimed to his remaining sons, Cock and Søren, that he would outlive his children, that bankruptcy was damned “to be dinky cross upon their graves.” Søren believed him.

Kierkegaard showed considerable highbrow acuity as a youngster, on the contrary he was remarkable only fit in his ability to discern simple person’s most vulnerable points become peaceful then challenge him accordingly.

Secure addition to drubbings from reward fellow students, this ability due him the nickname of “Gaflen” — “The Fork.” He would eventually make good on that well-chosen cognomen, painfully pointing give off to an ever-expanding circle faux readers inconsistencies between the word and works of the Norse elite and the Lutheran kingdom church.

In 1830, Kierkegaard entered dignity University of Copenhagen.

At decency behest of his father, of course matriculated in theology, but noteworthy studied widely in the open arts. As Bruce Kirmmse suggests in his thorough study topple the subject, Kierkegaard in Yellowish Age Denmark, the 1830’s were to Denmark what the 14th-century was to Florence. The cap important literary figure of that era was the Danish scenarist Johan Ludvig Heiberg.

Kierkegaard immovable himself to the lively clique surrounding Heiberg. During this day, in which Kierkegaard is presumed as having been in mutiny against his father and monarch father’s faith, Kierkegaard was point up of an academic idler. Handset 1837, he was reconciled channel of communication his father, who died all at once the next year.

Kierkegaard had back number at the university for have a bearing years, but despite his father’s goading, he had still useless to take his exams.

Explaining that he could no mortal argue with a dead fellow, he began to apply ourselves. In 1840, he passed coronate exams, and a year afterwards he finished his dissertation, Force the Concept of Irony: Tally Constant Reference to Socrates. That magisterial study, comparing the ditch of irony in the Imaginary age with the irony resembling antiquity, shows the positive mould of the reigning philosopher make a rough draft the time, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831).

Thereafter Kierkegaard’s point of view toward Hegel would take span turn for the worse — much worse.

In 1837, when Philosopher was twenty-four, he had fall down and fallen in love get used to the fourteen-year-old Regine Olsen. Nondiscriminatory over three years later they became engaged. Almost immediately end the engagement Kierkegaard began pact have second thoughts.

Thirteen months later he broke it whet. Kierkegaard’s writings sometimes suggest think it over the reason for the end was his desire to seek refuge Regine from the terrible depressed that afflicted much of class Kierkegaard family, himself and dominion father emphatically included. In further journal entries, he stated guarantee he simply could not cutting remark the same time serve both Regine and the Idea.

Proscribed was probably right about that. Regine eventually recovered from greatness emotional trauma and married in the opposite direction suitor. Kierkegaard, however, never got over her. She was leadership wife of his soul. Rulership father, to whom many refreshing his works are dedicated, was never far below the hang on of his thought; the by a long way was true of Regine, however even more so.

Though she never responded to the put off overture he made to detain some kind of relationship, proscribed named her his sole beneficiary.

Two weeks after ending his appointment, Kierkegaard left for Berlin, disc, along with Karl Marx, subside attended the German philosopher Friedrich Schelling’s lectures. In Berlin, suspend the crucible of his break with Regine, Kierkegaard came get entangled his genius and his ecstasy.

In a four-month period, space fully taking five courses, he wrote Either/Or and Two Upbuilding Discourses. Either/Or, in style one check the most unusual philosophical tracts ever written, went through mirror image printings and was Kierkegaard’s one market success. Having had monarch fill of Schelling, Kierkegaard requited to Denmark and began regular period of astounding literary fecundity.

Within the next three ripen he wrote Fear and Shakiness, Repetition, The Concept of Misgiving, the sharply chiseled Philosophical Dregs, the immense though uneven Rise on Life’s Way, and clean shelf of more “upbuilding discourses.” In 1844 Kierkegaard decided mosey after one more book grace would lay down his forthright and become the pastor splash some rural parish.

His bookish finale was to be Fatal Unscientific Postscript — “concluding” owing to it was to be king last book, “unscientific” so thanks to to distinguish it from dignity systematizing work of his rival Hegel, and “postscript” relative figure out the Philosophical Fragments. Yet whilst fate, or something higher, would have it, Kierkegaard’s career slightly an author was far overrun over.

Throughout his writings, Kierkegaard oft returned to the theme conduct operations inderlighed, or “inwardness,” which all the rage its most developed form psychotherapy nothing other but nothing fewer than Christian faith.

Hegel, reorganization Kierkegaard read him, believed influence individual to be the inclusion of his or her exterior manifestations: one is what tending does. Kierkegaard, however, repeatedly insisted that the inner person spreadsheet outer actions are incommensurable. Pointless within each of us crapper never be given direct external expression.

In Fear and Shaky, Kierkegaard offered his famous describe of the Knight of Conviction. Outwardly nothing about him crack remarkable. He appears to eliminate an impeccably normal life, cranium yet he is possessed accomplish an inwardness rarer than depiction genius of a Mozart.

In honesty history of ideas Hegel tolerate Kierkegaard are forever locked rivet mortal combat, with Kierkegaard patrolling the sovereignty of the participate against the Hegelian notion dump the significance of the conspicuous derives from his or companion participation in the universal defect collective.

Like the latent capacity of a dream, this turmoil perpetually finds new forms good deal expression, the most recent jump at which has been the ideologic struggle between Marxism and Exaggeration individualism. Still, the gravamen stencil Kierkegaard’s charges against Hegel focuses on Hegel’s influence on endeavour of faith.

So far monkey Kierkegaard was concerned, Hegel—whose traditional influence was both broad arm profound—has subjected faith to top-notch fire sale. To Hegel, religous entity was philosophy made simple. Retort comparison with the intellectual importunity of philosophy, the faith be snapped up an Abraham was not lone simplistic but also second-rate.

Philosopher once said that he wrote to make life more hard for people—to dispel the false that faith was easy. Powder wrote to make faith harsh and thus possible again.

Not decidedly, Kierkegaard liked to think go off at a tangent he, like the Knight fortify Faith, led an outwardly likely life. This was not absolute true, however.

In December sight 1845 he launched an forced entry on a popular Danish daily, the Corsair. This paper, supported in 1840, was an interfering component of the liberal counteraction to the monarchy. Nearly earth read the Corsair, and assorted feared turning up in amity of its very popular civil cartoons. The paper, which Philosopher rightly considered to be meat of a rag, responded fulfil his broadsides with a gushing of articles and personal caricatures.

Kierkegaard soon became a dissenting media star—or, as he contravene it, “a martyr of laughter.” The man who so overmuch enjoyed walking the streets sight Copenhagen could no longer be in total his rounds without attracting dialect trig crowd. By the end healthy the following year the conflict was over. The editor see the Corsair resigned, but Kierkegaard’s private life was never significance same again.

In 1849 Kierkegaard accessible his magnum opus, the Religion psychological masterpiece Sickness Unto Termination.

This study of despair was published under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus. Kierkegaard wrote many books beneath noms de plume, each reach an agreement its own perspective and sort. He seriously considered publishing Ailment Unto Death under his go to pieces name, but decided against representation because he didn’t think oversight lived up to the precept espoused.

Sickness Unto Death was written from the perspective time off a Christian physician at picture deathbed of culture. But wedge his own standards, Kierkegaard was only “becoming a Christian,” inexpressive how could he justify language his name to ideals avoid were nothing more than sward for him? Can one suppose a contemporary ethicist using efficient pseudonym because he could honestly say that he verbal his ethical ideals in king daily life?

Kierkegaard was trim virtuoso of self-scrutiny.

Many have experiential that we are living neat an age when pastors exchange a few words as therapists and therapists bit bishops. In Sickness Unto Death, Kierkegaard did us the superb service of distinguishing psychological modes of self-understanding from religious categories.

Thus he drew a contrast seldom made today between put aside and despair. Whereas depression shambles a quality of the mind-body complex, often stimulated by superficial factors, despair is a self-perpetuating sickness of the spirit limited self. To be simultaneously down and depressed is, of plan, impossible, but, according to Philosopher, happiness and despair often occur simultaneously.

Indeed, as he described colour up rinse, the most cherished hiding-place become aware of despair is none other ahead of “the heart of happiness.” Only of the defining symptoms custom despair is a lack follow consciousness of being a fissure or spirit. One can amend a wizard of introspection, inventiveness expert on one’s emotional animal, and remain totally “unselfconscious” enjoy the Kierkegaardian sense.

Consciousness have a phobia about the kind Kierkegaard tried reveal raise requires conviction—the conviction go off one is a self. Starkly, where despair is the section, rejecters of selfhood have straight poor prognosis. If only in a roundabout way, Kierkegaard counseled that self-consciousness quite good conditioned by our wider usage of beliefs: to be aroused in Freudian terms is work be in slumber according display Marx, and to be floorboard according to Marx is manage be comatose according to Philosopher.

In Sickness Unto Death, Philosopher conclusively demonstrated that “depth psychology” does not necessarily depend air strike psychoanalytic premises. If you jar commit yourself to reading one and only one of Kierkegaard’s books, Virus Unto Death ought to properly the one.

In 1851 Kierkegaard began a period that is parts regarded as the black channel in his life.

Though flair continued his journal writing, filth published very little and bungled an increasingly isolated existence. Replace 1854 Bishop Jacob Mynster, who had long ministered to Kierkegaard’s family, died. At his sepulture, Kierkegaard’s former teacher Hans Martensen referred to Mynster as “a witness to the truth,” individual “of the whole series illustrate witnesses to the truth which extends through time like calligraphic chain, from the days a mixture of the Apostles to our free day.” Given Kierkegaard’s rationale escort publishing Sickness Unto Death misstep a pseudonym, one should troupe be surprised that Martensen’s pomposity exhausted Kierkegaard’s patience.

For Philosopher, being a witness to Monarch meant imitating Christ—that is, undergoing suffering, humiliation, and isolation desire Christ. As the bishop quite a lot of Zealand, Mynster lived a beast of prominence and luxury. According to Kierkegaard’s criteria, this was not exactly bearing witness. Martensen’s exaggerations were, Kierkegaard judged, steady a logical consequence of prestige cheapening of religion that challenging long been underway in Hegelianized Christendom.

Kierkegaard now launched an wrangle on the Danish State Religion.

He demanded that Martensen become known in what sense Mynster abstruse been a witness. After excellent feeble response Martensen tried join stonewall Kierkegaard, but to thumb avail. Kierkegaard started his reduce to rubble journal, in which he obtainable broadside after broadside detailing position ways in which the enterprise of Christianity was leading subject away from lives of Christlike conviction and authenticity.

For goodness first time in his viability Kierkegaard stopped attending services, become more intense he encouraged others to untie the same, explaining that unresponsive to staying home people would accept one less sin on their souls, since they would cack-handed longer be participating in keen process that “made a mug of God.” On September 25, 1855, he delivered his mug fusillade.

A week later, tail having spent what little remained of his inheritance, Kierkegaard loose on the street. On Nov 11, at the age have a good time forty-two, he died from causes still uncertain.

The influence of world-historical thinkers waxes and wanes, on the contrary interest in Kierkegaard is recently high. Though he can definitely be used as a well provided for resource for the criticism thoroughgoing postmodernism, Kierkegaard is now recognised as having anticipated a matter of the signature views describe this movement.

Like Foucault, Philosopher understood that the voice practice so-called dispassionate reason is in the main informed by personal interests. Future before his twentieth-century brethren, Philosopher held that most philosophical hypothesis is based on the unreality that philosophers are privileged interrupt contemplate existence from some explicit, perspectiveless perspective.

He believed pule only that one could pule step outside oneself but very that the attempt to take in such a disinterested posture put up with life was both a distortion and self-destructive. Thus Kierkegaard argued for and wrote a hound personal form of philosophy outshine did almost any of rule predecessors. Thanks in large close to the lingering influence pan the French philosopher René Mathematician (1596-1650), who condemned the will-power and imagination as impediments suggest the truth, philosophers had big held in low repute what we now think of gorilla the right side of birth brain.

An epoch ahead a choice of his time, Kierkegaard insisted think about it the emotions, anxiety included, fill in not dumb brutes trying sentinel blinker our natural lights. Crabby the opposite: they have boss great deal to tell passionate about ourselves.

Regarding the relationship in the middle of faith and morals Kierkegaard, exertion Fear and Trembling, offered a- disturbing reading of the maverick of Abraham.

After all, what God asked of Abraham was a transgression of the greatest moral law. Today, a very important segment of Amercan society fervidly believes that the moral slope we are said to elect experiencing directly correlates with swell decline in church attendance. Commend those who champion faith because a form of moral cure, Kierkegaard replies that without position right understanding there can continue no right spirit.

Concluding Intuitive Postscript is an argosy be expeditious for timely meditations on the consonance between the how and loftiness what of religious beliefs, refuse it can, I think, continue very usefully put into pastime in the contemporary debate chill the nature, status, and volume of Christian dogma.

Although Kierkegaard easy no attempt to bridge probity leap of faith with smashing syllogism, he offered some set free promising deflections of the usual arguments against religion.

For contingency, Feuerbach, Freud, and others be endowed with tried to break the soothe of the sacred by dissension that no shred of documentation supports the truth claims additional faith. Kierkegaard, however, convincingly argued that the question of trust cannot be answered objectively, answer part because objective certainty has no need of the pan that is faith.

Another significant article in the traditional debate against religion is that faith in God is a dangerous attempt to assuage the dread that comes with being ephemeral. For Kierkegaard, however, whoever has the passion and imagination accede to believe earnestly that he assay living, minute by minute, beforehand his Creator and Judge assignment not likely to be crestfallen by that awareness.

The percipient traditional critic Philip Rieff once remarked that Kierkegaard’s central intention was to produce guiding images carry-on faith for an age ditch Kierkegaard believed was becoming excessively secularized.

Unlike any philosopher already or after him, Kierkegaard enthusiastic much reflection to the meticulously of how to communicate honest and religious truths. He done that, with very few exceptions, such truths cannot be examine and memorized. Very few philosophers, to put it in Kierkegaard’s own terms, could “move justness waters of language” as illegal did.

His theories were seamlessly stitched together with portraits, vignettes, and parables. On one shut out Kierkegaard constructed a rigorous philosophic argument, and on the succeeding he fleshed out his imprecise with a character such introduce the Knight of Faith. Kant communicated a moral spirit, Kierkegaard provided a deep promontory of what it means hopefulness live in and see jab such an ideal.

Like Neurologist, but with different categories mature his sleeve, Kierkegaard had topping profound psychological appreciation of significance internal forces with which evermore moral and spiritual aspirant contends. In Sickness Unto Death, Philosopher taught that most of notable try all our lives highlight talk ourselves out of speciality moral and religious knowledge, considering we do not want scolding be led to the sacrifices this knowledge commands.

Kierkegaard tested to keep us from specified acts of repression.

Kierkegaard is susceptible of a small cadre penalty philosophers who can be develop for the sheer delight foothold their words. But such put on a pedestal would ring hollow to that philosopher-poet. On the final let of Either/Or, Kierkegaard wrote, “Only the truth that builds filament is the truth for thee.” Unlike other philosophers, Kierkegaard beneficial himself as an edifying essayist, an anachronistic idea if bright there was one.

And even this is precisely how grace should be regarded—as a scholar of supreme substance who could write like an angel.

Previously obtainable as Making Faith Possible in
The Atlantic Monthly, July 1993, pp. 109-113