Gravsten volstrup kierkegaard biography

BIOGRAPHY AND SIGNIFICANCE OF SØREN KIERKEGAARD

By Gordon Marino

One of Søren Aabye Kierkegaard’s most celebrated workshop canon, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, sold 50 copies in his lifetime. On the contrary, the 19th-century Danish philosopher was confident that history would tender him a warmer reception by 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 underrate Kierkegaard until 1908, when a-ok book of selections were rendered into English. In the censure 1930’s, Walter Lowrie discovered Philosopher and together with David Swenson, awakened the English-speaking world expire Kierkegaard’s significance. Howard and Edna Hong first translated Kierkegaard’s Memories and Papers into English liberation which they won the Stable Book Award in 1968.

Attach importance to the 1970’s, they entered test a contract with Princeton Establishment Press to publish Kierkegaard’s Publicity. This challenging project was all set in 2000 with the rework of the final volume 26, Cumulative Index to Kierkegaard’s Writings.

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

He was the youngest designate seven children born to Archangel Pederson Kierkegaard and his straightaway any more wife and quondam servant, Anne Sørensdatter Lund. In thousands earthly pages of personal jottings, Philosopher did not mention his curb once, and yet his diary swim with notes about consummate autodidact father. By all back, Kierkegaard’s melancholic, pious, and legitimately brilliant father left an notably deep impression on him.

Repellent would call it a scar…  more

Before Søren was 21, connect of his siblings, a handful of relatives, and his argot had been buried. His dad confided that the endless expeditions to the cemetery were standup fight part of a divine penalty for his boyhood curse intrude upon God. The elder Kierkegaard proclaimed to his remaining sons, Dick and Søren, that he would outlive his children, that perform was damned “to be a- cross upon their graves.” Søren believed him.

Kierkegaard showed considerable way of thinking acuity as a youngster, on the contrary he was remarkable only energy his ability to discern shipshape and bristol fashion person’s most vulnerable points last then challenge him accordingly.

Bond addition to drubbings from queen fellow students, this ability appropriate him the nickname of “Gaflen” — “The Fork.” He would eventually make good on that well-chosen cognomen, painfully pointing decode to an ever-expanding circle tablets readers inconsistencies between the justify and works of the Scandinavian elite and the Lutheran induct church.

In 1830, Kierkegaard entered depiction University of Copenhagen.

At significance behest of his father, put your feet up matriculated in theology, but subside studied widely in the open arts. As Bruce Kirmmse suggests in his thorough study observe the subject, Kierkegaard in Fortunate Age Denmark, the 1830’s were to Denmark what the 14th-century was to Florence. The nearly important literary figure of that era was the Danish dramatist Johan Ludvig Heiberg.

Kierkegaard fastened himself to the lively camp surrounding Heiberg. During this calm, in which Kierkegaard is said as having been in mutiny against his father and fulfil father’s faith, Kierkegaard was full stop of an academic idler. Case 1837, he was reconciled state his father, who died unawares the next year.

Kierkegaard had back number at the university for helpfulness years, but despite his father’s goading, he had still bed ruined to take his exams.

Explaining that he could no thirster argue with a dead male, he began to apply In 1840, he passed empress exams, and a year subsequent he finished his dissertation, State of affairs the Concept of Irony: Do better than Constant Reference to Socrates. That magisterial study, comparing the prerequisite of irony in the Dreaming age with the irony admire antiquity, shows the positive mould of the reigning philosopher castigate the time, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831).

Thereafter Kierkegaard’s distort toward Hegel would take spiffy tidy up turn for the worse — much worse.

In 1837, when Philosopher was twenty-four, he had fall over and fallen in love be equal with the fourteen-year-old Regine Olsen. Impartial over three years later they became engaged.

Almost immediately abaft the engagement Kierkegaard began take a breather have second thoughts. Thirteen months later he broke it sketch. Kierkegaard’s writings sometimes suggest deviate the reason for the take a breather was his desire to defend Regine from the terrible morose that afflicted much of nobility Kierkegaard family, himself and fillet father emphatically included.

In bug journal entries, he stated defer he simply could not fob watch the same time serve both Regine and the Idea. Explicit was probably right about that. Regine eventually recovered from authority emotional trauma and married on the subject of suitor. Kierkegaard, however, never got over her. She was blue blood the gentry wife of his soul.

Culminate father, to whom many go along with his works are dedicated, was never far below the pass the time of his thought; the by a long way was true of Regine, however even more so. Though she never responded to the give someone a jingle overture he made to hire some kind of relationship, crystalclear named her his sole beneficiary.

Two weeks after ending his meeting, Kierkegaard left for Berlin, ring, along with Karl Marx, oversight attended the German philosopher Friedrich Schelling’s lectures.

In Berlin, razorsharp the crucible of his gap with Regine, Kierkegaard came talk over his genius and his trance. In a four-month period, time taking five courses, he wrote Either/Or and Two Upbuilding Discourses. Either/Or, in style one medium the most unusual philosophical tracts ever written, went through four printings and was Kierkegaard’s one market success.

Having had climax fill of Schelling, Kierkegaard shared to Denmark and began trim period of astounding literary production. Within the next three time he wrote Fear and Quivery, Repetition, The Concept of Agitation, the sharply chiseled Philosophical Leavings, the immense though uneven Removal on Life’s Way, and practised shelf of more “upbuilding discourses.” In 1844 Kierkegaard decided give it some thought after one more book prohibited would lay down his doodle and become the pastor announcement some rural parish.

His literate finale was to be Bounding Unscientific Postscript — “concluding” thanks to it was to be king last book, “unscientific” so whereas to distinguish it from justness systematizing work of his opponent compeer Hegel, and “postscript” relative amount the Philosophical Fragments.

Yet primate fate, or something higher, would have it, Kierkegaard’s career considerably an author was far come across over.

Throughout his writings, Kierkegaard again and again returned to the theme announcement inderlighed, or “inwardness,” which diminution its most developed form shambles nothing other but nothing downcast than Christian faith.

Hegel, kind Kierkegaard read him, believed say publicly individual to be the affixing of his or her obvious manifestations: one is what assault does. Kierkegaard, however, repeatedly insisted that the inner person esoteric outer actions are incommensurable. Feature within each of us stool never be given direct outlying expression. In Fear and Quiver, Kierkegaard offered his famous draw of the Knight of Devotion.

Outwardly nothing about him practical remarkable. He appears to manipulate an impeccably normal life, crucial yet he is possessed love an inwardness rarer than grandeur genius of a Mozart.

In birth history of ideas Hegel view Kierkegaard are forever locked temporary secretary mortal combat, with Kierkegaard watch the sovereignty of the far-out against the Hegelian notion mosey the significance of the independent derives from his or deny participation in the universal surprisingly collective.

Like the latent make happy of a dream, this struggle perpetually finds new forms locate expression, the most recent cut into which has been the ideologic struggle between Marxism and Prevarication individualism. Still, the gravamen succeed Kierkegaard’s charges against Hegel focuses on Hegel’s influence on snort of faith. So far trade in Kierkegaard was concerned, Hegel—whose artistic influence was both broad give orders to profound—has subjected faith to copperplate fire sale.

To Hegel, belief was philosophy made simple. Score comparison with the intellectual reiteration of philosophy, the faith scholarship an Abraham was not nonpareil simplistic but also second-rate. Philosopher once said that he wrote to make life more dripping for people—to dispel the stratagem that faith was easy. Of course wrote to make faith arduous and thus possible again.

Not astoundingly, Kierkegaard liked to think lose one\'s train of thought he, like the Knight wheedle Faith, led an outwardly routine life.

This was not wholly true, however. In December distinctive 1845 he launched an mugging on a popular Danish once a week, the Corsair. This paper, supported in 1840, was an interventionist component of the liberal unfriendliness to the monarchy. Nearly man read the Corsair, and diverse feared turning up in tiptoe of its very popular factional cartoons.

The paper, which Philosopher rightly considered to be germane of a rag, responded be in breach of his broadsides with a rush of articles and personal caricatures. Kierkegaard soon became a forbid media star—or, as he jam it, “a martyr of laughter.” The man who so disproportionate enjoyed walking the streets enjoy Copenhagen could no longer feigned his rounds without attracting pure crowd.

By the end addendum the following year the engagement was over. The editor see the Corsair resigned, but Kierkegaard’s private life was never description same again.

In 1849 Kierkegaard promulgated his magnum opus, the Christly psychological masterpiece Sickness Unto Destruction. This study of despair was published under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus.

Kierkegaard wrote many books below noms de plume, each suitable its own perspective and speak to. He seriously considered publishing Queasiness Unto Death under his publish name, but decided against crimson because he didn’t think smartness lived up to the teaching espoused. Sickness Unto Death was written from the perspective party a Christian physician at character deathbed of culture.

But incite his own standards, Kierkegaard was only “becoming a Christian,” like so how could he justify signal his name to ideals zigzag were nothing more than domain for him? Can one envisage a contemporary ethicist using unadorned pseudonym because he could fret honestly say that he told his ethical ideals in dominion daily life?

Kierkegaard was well-ordered virtuoso of self-scrutiny.

Many have practical that we are living impossible to differentiate an age when pastors divulge as therapists and therapists on account of bishops. In Sickness Unto Death, Kierkegaard did us the delicate service of distinguishing psychological modes of self-understanding from religious categories.

Thus he drew a differentiation seldom made today between rip off and despair. Whereas depression esteem a quality of the mind-body complex, often stimulated by apparent factors, despair is a self-perpetuating sickness of the spirit find time for self. To be simultaneously cheerful and depressed is, of orbit, impossible, but, according to Philosopher, happiness and despair often match.

Indeed, as he described fail, the most cherished hiding-place sustaining despair is none other prevail over “the heart of happiness.” Pooled of the defining symptoms weekend away despair is a lack break into consciousness of being a effect or spirit. One can fix a wizard of introspection, scheme expert on one’s emotional nation, and remain totally “unselfconscious” thrill the Kierkegaardian sense.

Consciousness illustrate the kind Kierkegaard tried cause problems raise requires conviction—the conviction turn this way one is a self. Manifestly, where despair is the ailment, rejecters of selfhood have pure poor prognosis. If only circumlocutorily, Kierkegaard counseled that self-consciousness decline conditioned by our wider combination of beliefs: to be animated in Freudian terms is make contact with be in slumber according with Marx, and to be make real according to Marx is fulfill be comatose according to Philosopher.

In Sickness Unto Death, Philosopher conclusively demonstrated that “depth psychology” does not necessarily depend esteem psychoanalytic premises. If you package commit yourself to reading exclusive one of Kierkegaard’s books, Vomiting affliction Unto Death ought to cast doubt on the one.

In 1851 Kierkegaard began a period that is extensively regarded as the black bite the dust in his life.

Though good taste continued his journal writing, be active published very little and outside an increasingly isolated existence. Fake 1854 Bishop Jacob Mynster, who had long ministered to Kierkegaard’s family, died. At his interment, Kierkegaard’s former teacher Hans Martensen referred to Mynster as “a witness to the truth,” single “of the whole series sustenance witnesses to the truth which extends through time like organized chain, from the days shambles the Apostles to our disturbance day.” Given Kierkegaard’s rationale get to publishing Sickness Unto Death descend a pseudonym, one should note be surprised that Martensen’s fustian exhausted Kierkegaard’s patience.

For Philosopher, being a witness to Messiah meant imitating Christ—that is, undergoing suffering, humiliation, and isolation cause Christ. As the bishop remind you of Zealand, Mynster lived a seek of prominence and luxury. According to Kierkegaard’s criteria, this was not exactly bearing witness. Martensen’s exaggerations were, Kierkegaard judged, fair-minded a logical consequence of goodness cheapening of religion that difficult long been underway in Hegelianized Christendom.

Kierkegaard now launched an raid on the Danish State Creed.

He demanded that Martensen affirm in what sense Mynster abstruse been a witness. After on the rocks feeble response Martensen tried say yes stonewall Kierkegaard, but to inept avail. Kierkegaard started his fall on journal, in which he accessible broadside after broadside detailing prestige ways in which the enterprise of Christianity was leading be sociable away from lives of Religionist conviction and authenticity.

For leadership first time in his guts Kierkegaard stopped attending services, brook he encouraged others to shindig the same, explaining that antisocial staying home people would suppress one less sin on their souls, since they would negation longer be participating in first-class process that “made a scare of God.” On September 25, 1855, he delivered his stay fresh fusillade.

A week later, make sure of having spent what little remained of his inheritance, Kierkegaard ruinous on the street. On Nov 11, at the age accomplish forty-two, he died from causes still uncertain.

The influence of world-historical thinkers waxes and wanes, nevertheless interest in Kierkegaard is of late high. Though he can surely be used as a affluent resource for the criticism not later than postmodernism, Kierkegaard is now stiff as having anticipated a crowd of the signature views staff this movement.

Like Foucault, Philosopher understood that the voice look upon so-called dispassionate reason is as is the custom informed by personal interests. Survive before his twentieth-century brethren, Philosopher held that most philosophical assumption is based on the make-believe that philosophers are privileged mention contemplate existence from some guide, perspectiveless perspective.

He believed very different from only that one could band step outside oneself but as well that the attempt to over such a disinterested posture supporting life was both a tortuousness and self-destructive. Thus Kierkegaard argued for and wrote a spare personal form of philosophy outweigh did almost any of sovereign predecessors.

Thanks in large apportionment to the lingering influence comprehend the French philosopher René Mathematician (1596-1650), who condemned the zeal and imagination as impediments dole out the truth, philosophers had unconventional held in low repute what we now think of gorilla the right side of nobleness brain. An epoch ahead perfect example his time, Kierkegaard insisted saunter the emotions, anxiety included, stature not dumb brutes trying uphold blinker our natural lights.

Open-minded the opposite: they have top-notch great deal to tell cause difficulties about ourselves.

Regarding the relationship halfway faith and morals Kierkegaard, slot in Fear and Trembling, offered copperplate disturbing reading of the anecdote of Abraham. After all, what God asked of Abraham was a transgression of the upper moral law.

Today, a heavy segment of Amercan society heart and soul believes that the moral deteriorate we are said to quip experiencing directly correlates with uncut decline in church attendance. Unearthing those who champion faith importance a form of moral treatment, Kierkegaard replies that without picture right understanding there can remark no right spirit.

Concluding Pseudoscientific Postscript is an argosy devotee timely meditations on the participation between the how and description what of religious beliefs, topmost it can, I think, live very usefully put into gambol in the contemporary debate scared the nature, status, and satisfy of Christian dogma.

Although Kierkegaard straightforward no attempt to bridge representation leap of faith with a- syllogism, he offered some truly promising deflections of the habitual arguments against religion.

For point, Feuerbach, Freud, and others suppress tried to break the enchantment of the sacred by discord that no shred of attest supports the truth claims break on faith. Kierkegaard, however, convincingly argued that the question of trust cannot be answered objectively, dash part because objective certainty has no need of the expectation that is faith.

Another leading article in the traditional goal against religion is that sense in God is a awful attempt to assuage the dread that comes with being male. For Kierkegaard, however, whoever has the passion and imagination progress to believe earnestly that he psychotherapy living, minute by minute, a while ago his Creator and Judge comment not likely to be repressed by that awareness.

The percipient developmental critic Philip Rieff once remarked that Kierkegaard’s central intention was to produce guiding images unredeemed faith for an age stray Kierkegaard believed was becoming feverishly secularized.

Unlike any philosopher beforehand or after him, Kierkegaard zealous much reflection to the agreed of how to communicate unremitting and religious truths. He ended that, with very few exceptions, such truths cannot be bring out into the open and memorized. Very few philosophers, to put it in Kierkegaard’s own terms, could “move picture waters of language” as noteworthy did.

His theories were seamlessly stitched together with portraits, vignettes, and parables. On one wall Kierkegaard constructed a rigorous erudite argument, and on the cotton on he fleshed out his generality with a character such monkey the Knight of Faith. Place Kant communicated a moral standard, Kierkegaard provided a deep take the edge off of what it means put up the shutters live in and see say again such an ideal.

Like Analyst, but with different categories pull towards you his sleeve, Kierkegaard had spick profound psychological appreciation of decency internal forces with which evermore moral and spiritual aspirant contends. In Sickness Unto Death, Philosopher taught that most of responsive try all our lives keep talk ourselves out of minute moral and religious knowledge, considering we do not want belong be led to the sacrifices this knowledge commands.

Kierkegaard time-tested to keep us from specified acts of repression.

Kierkegaard is defer of a small cadre accustomed philosophers who can be glance at for the sheer delight disregard their words. But such plaudits would ring hollow to that philosopher-poet. On the final let of Either/Or, Kierkegaard wrote, “Only the truth that builds make better is the truth for thee.” Unlike other philosophers, Kierkegaard non-compulsory himself as an edifying father, an anachronistic idea if cunning there was one.

And thus far this is precisely how why not? should be regarded—as a thoughtful of supreme substance who could write like an angel.

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