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Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (/ ˈ s ɒr ə n ˈ k ɪər k ə ɡ ɑːr d / SORR-ən KEER-kə-gard, US also /-ɡ ɔːr /-gor, Danish: [ˈsɶːɐn ˈɔˀˌpyˀ ˈkʰiɐ̯kəˌkɒˀ] ⓘ; 5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855) was a Danish theologian, philosopher, poet, social critic, and religious author who is widely considered to be the first ...
- Overview
- A life of collisions
Søren Kierkegaard was the seventh and last child of Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard, a wealthy businessman, and Ane Sørensdatter Lund, a household maid whom he first impregnated and then married within a year of his first wife’s death. His father’s stern piety, deep melancholy, and profound sense of guilt greatly influenced Søren’s life and writings.
Where was Søren Kierkegaard educated?
Søren Kierkegaard entered the University of Copenhagen in 1830. His father’s death in 1838 spurred him to complete his education, and he finished and defended a dissertation in philosophy, On the Concept of Irony, with Constant Reference to Socrates, in 1841.
What did Søren Kierkegaard write?
Søren Kierkegaard’s voluminous works, many of which were pseudonymous, included Either/Or (1843), Fear and Trembling (1844), Philosophical Fragments (1844), The Concept of Anxiety (1844), Stages on Life’s Way (1845), Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846), Sickness unto Death (1849), and Training in Christianity (1850).
Why is Søren Kierkegaard famous?
Kierkegaard’s life has been called uneventful, but it was hardly that. The story of his life is a drama in four overlapping acts, each with its own distinctive crisis or “collision,” as he often referred to these events. His father, Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard, was a prosperous but retired businessman who devoted the later years of his life to raising his children. He was a man of deep but gloomy and guilt-ridden piety who was haunted by the memory of having once cursed God as a boy and of having begun his family by getting his maid pregnant—and then marrying her—shortly after the death of his first wife. His domineering presence stimulated young Søren’s imaginative and intellectual gifts but, as his son would later bear witness, made a normal childhood impossible.
Kierkegaard enrolled at the University of Copenhagen in 1830 but did not complete his studies until 1841. Like the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), whose system he would severely criticize, Kierkegaard entered university in order to study theology but devoted himself to literature and philosophy instead. His thinking during this period is revealed in an 1835 journal entry, which is often cited as containing the germ of his later work:
The thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die.…What is truth but to live for an idea?
While a student at the university, Kierkegaard explored the literary figures of Don Juan, the wandering Jew, and especially Faust, looking for existential models for his own life.
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Philosophy 101
May 22, 2023 · Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813–1855) was an astonishingly prolific writer whose work—almost all of which was written in the 1840s—is difficult to categorize, spanning philosophy, theology, religious and devotional writing, literary criticism, psychology and social critique.
Kierkegaard, Søren | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Søren Kierkegaard (1813—1855) Søren Kierkegaard is an outsider in the history of philosophy.
- “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” ― Søren Kierkegaard.
- “The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.” ― Soren Kierkegaard.
- “People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.” ― Søren Kierkegaard.
- “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” ― Søren Kierkegaard , The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin.
Philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard. Unfinished sketch of Kierkegaard by his cousin Niels Christian Kierkegaard, c. 1840. The philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard has been a major influence in the development of 20th-century philosophy, especially existentialism and postmodernism.
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Dec 3, 1996 · Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (b. 1813, d. 1855) was a profound and prolific writer in the Danish “golden age” of intellectual and artistic activity. His work crosses the boundaries of philosophy, theology, psychology, literary criticism, devotional literature and fiction.
