Philosophy › The 19th century › Existentialism
Søren Kierkegaard
1813–1855· Philosopher· Ethics & how to live
Well documentedSolid records, texts or physical evidence.
Danish thinker who argued that each person's existence and choices, not abstract systems, are what matter, and that faith is a leap beyond reason.
See it on the Philosophy map →The idea
The idea: the truths that matter are 'subjective,' lived and chosen, not proved. Writing under playful pseudonyms, he described three stages of life: aesthetic (pleasure), ethical (duty) and religious (faith). Fear and Trembling (1843) uses Abraham, told to sacrifice Isaac, to show faith can exceed ethics. Either/Or (1843) and Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846) attack Hegel's all-embracing system. He later fought Denmark's state church. Main objection: faith beyond reason gives no way to tell true faith from fanaticism.
Why it matters
He is the forerunner of existentialism and modern religious thought, putting anxiety, choice and personal commitment at the center of philosophy.
Legacy and sources
His books and voluminous journals survive in Copenhagen; he was little read outside Denmark until German translations appeared in the early 1900s.
Still debated
How to read the pseudonyms: which views are Kierkegaard's own? Also why he broke off his engagement to Regine Olsen in 1841, an event that haunts his work.
Connections (3)
▸G. W. F. Hegel was attacked by Søren KierkegaardWell documented
The connection
Copenhagen's leading intellectuals were Hegelians, and Kierkegaard rebelled. A system that explains everything, he argued, cannot help an individual decide how to live; life demands 'either/or,' not Hegel's both-and synthesis. He mocked a thinker who builds a vast palace of a system but lives in a shed beside it.
When and how
Copenhagen, 1841–1846, after he attended Schelling's anti-Hegel lectures in Berlin; the attack peaks in Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846).
How we know
His pseudonymous books, especially the Postscript, and his journals, which contain the palace-and-shed image.
Debates and open questions
His real target may have been Danish Hegelians like Hans Lassen Martensen; Jon Stewart (2003) argues he also borrowed heavily from Hegel himself.
▸Søren Kierkegaard anticipated ExistentialismWell documented
The connection
Kierkegaard insisted that what matters is how a person lives, chooses and commits, not abstract systems like Hegel's: 'truth is subjectivity'. His themes of anxiety, despair, the lone individual and the 'leap' of faith became existentialism's core vocabulary a century later, though he wrote as a Christian.
When and how
He wrote in Copenhagen in the 1840s (Either/Or and Fear and Trembling, 1843; The Concept of Anxiety, 1844). German translations from about 1909 brought him to Jaspers, Heidegger and later Sartre.
How we know
Jaspers, Heidegger and Sartre all cite him; Being and Time footnotes him, and Sartre wrote the essay 'Kierkegaard: The Singular Universal' (1964).
Debates and open questions
Whether a Christian thinker whose goal was faith belongs in a largely atheist movement is debated; he is called its 'father' only in hindsight.
▸Søren Kierkegaard chose faith over proof in answering Does God exist?Mostly agreed
The connection
Kierkegaard held that God cannot be proved: 'if God does not exist it would be impossible to prove it; and if he does exist it would be folly to attempt it.' Faith is passionate commitment despite 'objective uncertainty,' and Christianity's claim that God became a man is an 'absolute paradox' reason cannot digest.
When and how
Copenhagen, 1844–46, in Philosophical Fragments and Concluding Unscientific Postscript, written under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus.
How sure are we?
Both texts survive; scholars widely read them as founding statements of Christian existentialism and fideism, faith independent of rational proof.
Debates and open questions
Whether he was an irrationalist or put faith above, not against, reason; the phrase 'leap of faith' itself is not exactly his.