Soren Kierkegaard's Philosophical Struggles
Soren Kierkegaard was an author and philosopher who struggled with a variety of ways to communicate his thoughts. He believed his contemporaries had too much knowledge and needed to strip it away in order to become more aware of their inwardness. At the same time, he felt that things and people had become too easy, which is why he devised a system of indirect communication.
Kierkegaard's Life and Writing
Kierkegaard's life and writing were marked by a profound sense of guilt. He was impregnated out of wedlock and felt that God would punish him by taking all of his children before he turned 34. The only one of his seven children to survive, Peter, was very surprised to be alive. The guilt and shame Kierkegaard felt drove him to write prolifically before he reached his early thirties.
Composition of Kierkegaard's Works
Kierkegaard's works were primarily composed between the years 1846 and 1855. The later works did not contain pseudonyms and were regarded as reflecting Kierkegaard's own views.
The Fascinating Mix of Kierkegaard's Works
Kierkegaard's works are a fascinating mix of philosophy, theology, and literature. His works are also deeply rooted in religion, as they attempt to renew Christian faith within Christendom. His writings have a rich history and are highly influential. Many of Kierkegaard's works are published in translation.
The Dialectic of Existential Stages
The philosophic works of Kierkegaard often involve a dialectic of existential stages. The first stage is the aesthetic, which leads to the ethical and religious stages. The aesthetic stage of life is characterized by a focus on sensuous experiences and the valorization of possibility over actuality. The aesthetic stage is also characterized by the egocentric aversion to the world, the fragmentation of the subject of experience, and the nihilistic use of irony.
Narrative Point of View in Kierkegaard's Works
The works of Kierkegaard also play with narrative point of view. The texts contain contrasting internal partitions, irony, paradox, and semantic opacity. They are shaped by these complexities and become polished surfaces for the reader. In addition, Kierkegaard's works emphasize the renewal of the individual's subjective relationship with a mysterious object.
Kierkegaard's Life and Personal Perspective
In a biography, an author adopts a certain objectivity, adopting the point of view of an outsider, and attempts to present a life as a rounded whole. Carlisle, on the other hand, adopts a more subjective point of view, writing from the inside of Kierkegaard's life, asking questions that elicit more than just a narrative of events. The book begins in 1843, filling in missing years from that year through to 1848. Despite this method, Carlisle still manages to give us a sense of the man and his life.
Kierkegaard's Anti-Systematic Writings
The anti-systematic character of Kierkegaard's writings made it difficult to determine whether he held a definitive view of any given topic. Instead, he sought to create a "new subjectivity" in his readers and in himself. In doing so, he created characters that expressed ideas that he did not embrace. These characters allowed him to represent various stages in his life and different ways of thinking.
Soren Kierkegaard as a Philosopher
Soren Kierkegaard is a nineteenth-century Danish philosopher who was rediscovered in the twentieth century. Although he is best known for Either/Or, Kierkegaard also published two earlier works on Hans Christian Andersen and irony. Although he wrote under a pseudonym, his early writings reveal an esthetic view of life.
Anxiety and Faith in Kierkegaard's Works
During the period between February 27, 1846 and March 13, 1847, Kierkegaard wrote extensively. His first intention was to become a rural pastor, but after he wrote Postscript1, he changed his mind. Ultimately, Kierkegaard hoped history would be more accepting of his writings than of his contemporaries. In The Concept of Anxiety, Kierkegaard places anxiety in the mental-emotional domain of human existence. This domain precedes the qualitative leap of faith that leads to the spiritual state of Christianity. Anxiety serves as a way for the self to become aware of the dialectical relationship between temporal and infinite.
Kierkegaard's Relationship with H.L. Martensen
In the early nineteenth century, Kierkegaard was studying philosophy to prepare for his theological exams. He briefly studied under H. L. Martensen, the future Primate of Denmark and a prominent theological scholar. Martensen and Kierkegaard had an uneasy relationship. Martensen opposed Kierkegaard's project to study three medieval figures. Kierkegaard's rejection of Martensen's ideas resulted in a bitter conflict with Martensen.
Kierkegaard's Battle for Language
Kierkegaard was deeply enamored of the Danish language and fought to establish its superiority over German and Latin. He even petitioned the king to defend his philosophy dissertation in Danish, but the king insisted on making it in Latin. At that time, Latin was still the pan-European language of science and scholarship. But by Kierkegaard's time, German was at least as dominant in knowledge production.
