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Philosopher

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Søren Kierkegaard

1813–1855 · Existentialism (forerunner) · Modern

Søren Kierkegaard wrote under his own name and under several pseudonyms, on purpose, so that a sentence is often a character's view and not a doctrine. Johannes de Silentio writes Fear and Trembling. Johannes Climacus writes the Concluding Unscientific Postscript and says subjectivity is the truth. Anti-Climacus writes The Sickness unto Death. The aesthete and Judge William divide Either/Or.

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Treating any of those voices as 'Kierkegaard says' is the fastest way to misread him. He is attacking Hegelian system-building and a Christianity that has become a result one can recite without becoming the person the truth requires. Anxiety, in The Concept of Anxiety, is the dizziness of freedom, published under yet another name, Vigilius Haufniensis.

Works of Love, which he did sign, makes love of the neighbour a duty to the people you actually see. He is a source of existentialism, not a member of a twentieth-century school. Hong and Hong are the English this library names. Where a card compresses them, it says so. The humour is part of the philosophy. A meme that keeps the humour and drops the pseudonym has kept the wrong half.

Start here

Fear and Trembling in Hong and Hong, slowly, then the first pages of The Sickness unto Death.

Fear and Trembling is short, fierce, and obviously pseudonymous, so you cannot pretend the voice does not matter. The sickness book shows the cost of quoting only the first clause of a definition.

Quotations

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

Søren Kierkegaard · Existentialism (forerunner)

knowledgemeaningchange
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Meaning & application
“Marry, and you will regret it. Do not marry, and you will also regret it.”

Søren Kierkegaard · Existentialism (forerunner)

selflovemeaning
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Meaning & application
“The choice itself is decisive for the content of the personality.”

Søren Kierkegaard · Existentialism (forerunner)

selfethicsfreedom
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Meaning & application

Key ideas

  • Pseudonym

    The speaker is part of the claim. Climacus is not Silentio, and neither is a plain signature.

  • Stages

    The aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious are ways of existing, not rungs you collect.

  • Anxiety

    Dizziness before possibility, not fear of an object. The book is also a theology of the fall.

  • Faith

    For Silentio, faith begins where thinking leaves off, and infinite resignation is only the last stage before it.

  • The self

    A relation that relates itself to itself, and, in the signed aim of the book, rests in God.

Major works

  • Either/Or (1843)

    The aesthete and Judge William. Regret, boredom, and the choice of a self.

  • Fear and Trembling (1843)

    Abraham, the two knights, and the teleological suspension of the ethical.

  • The Concept of Anxiety (1844)

    Anxiety as the dizziness of freedom.

  • Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846)

    Climacus: subjectivity is the truth.

  • Works of Love (1847)

    Signed. The duty to love the people we see.

  • The Sickness unto Death (1849)

    Anti-Climacus defines the self and sorts despair.

Influences

Influenced

Common misreadings

  • 'Subjectivity is the truth' is Climacus, not a signed slogan, and it is not 'my feelings invent facts'.
  • The marriage joke in the diapsalmata is the aesthete. Either/Or II exists in order to answer him.
  • Faith, in Fear and Trembling, is not a feeling that skips ethics. Resignation comes first, and Silentio says he cannot make the leap.

Famous lines Søren Kierkegaard never said

None of the lines this library files for Søren Kierkegaard is marked Questionable or Misattributed. That is only a fact about these cards. It is not a certificate that every popular sentence is theirs.

FAQ

What is the best book to start with?

Fear and Trembling in Hong and Hong, slowly, then the first pages of The Sickness unto Death. Fear and Trembling is short, fierce, and obviously pseudonymous, so you cannot pretend the voice does not matter. The sickness book shows the cost of quoting only the first clause of a definition.

What is the most famous quote?

This library does not measure fame, and it does not rank lines by how often they are shared. The first line it files for Søren Kierkegaard that is not marked Questionable or Misattributed is “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” (Journals, 1843 (JJ:167), Paraphrase or translation).

What is the most misquoted line?

None of the lines this library files for Søren Kierkegaard is marked Misattributed or Questionable. That is a fact about these cards, not a certificate that every popular sentence is theirs.

What is one key idea, in a sentence?

Pseudonym: The speaker is part of the claim. Climacus is not Silentio, and neither is a plain signature.