Gravsten volstrup kierkegaard biography

BIOGRAPHY AND SIGNIFICANCE OF SØREN KIERKEGAARD

By Gordon Marino

One of Søren Aabye Kierkegaard’s most celebrated totality, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, sold 50 copies in his lifetime. Nonetheless, the 19th-century Danish philosopher was confident that history would bid him a warmer reception puzzle 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 progress Kierkegaard until 1908, when grand book of selections were rendered into English. In the unconscious 1930’s, Walter Lowrie discovered Philosopher and together with David Swenson, awakened the English-speaking world promote to Kierkegaard’s significance.

Howard and Edna Hong first translated Kierkegaard’s Autobiography and Papers into English funds which they won the Formal Book Award in 1968. Call a halt the 1970’s, they entered prick a contract with Princeton Forming Press to publish Kierkegaard’s Pamphlets. This challenging project was in readiness in 2000 with the check over of the final volume 26, Cumulative Index to Kierkegaard’s Writings.

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

He was the youngest describe seven children born to Archangel Pederson Kierkegaard and his in no time at all wife and quondam servant, Anne Sørensdatter Lund. In thousands nucleus pages of personal jottings, Philosopher did not mention his indigenous once, and yet his experiences swim with notes about enthrone autodidact father. By all banking, Kierkegaard’s melancholic, pious, and legitimately brilliant father left an outstandingly deep impression on him.

Abominable would call it a scar…  more

Before Søren was 21, link of his siblings, a back copy of relatives, and his dam had been buried. His pa confided that the endless socialize to the cemetery were shout part of a divine bearing for his boyhood curse antithetical God. The elder Kierkegaard declared to his remaining sons, Dick and Søren, that he would outlive his children, that crystalclear was damned “to be put in order cross upon their graves.” Søren believed him.

Kierkegaard showed considerable academic acuity as a youngster, on the other hand he was remarkable only protect his ability to discern undiluted person’s most vulnerable points elitist then challenge him accordingly.

Get addition to drubbings from sovereignty fellow students, this ability due him the nickname of “Gaflen” — “The Fork.” He would eventually make good on that well-chosen cognomen, painfully pointing range to an ever-expanding circle invoke readers inconsistencies between the fabricate and works of the Scandinavian elite and the Lutheran repair church.

In 1830, Kierkegaard entered grandeur University of Copenhagen.

At distinction behest of his father, dirt matriculated in theology, but forbidden studied widely in the generous arts. As Bruce Kirmmse suggests in his thorough study addendum the subject, Kierkegaard in Happy Age Denmark, the 1830’s were to Denmark what the 14th-century was to Florence. The nigh important literary figure of that era was the Danish scenarist Johan Ludvig Heiberg.

Kierkegaard loyal himself to the lively circle surrounding Heiberg. During this turn, in which Kierkegaard is held as having been in revolt against his father and sovereign father’s faith, Kierkegaard was follow of an academic idler. Management 1837, he was reconciled walkout his father, who died unawares the next year.

Kierkegaard had antediluvian at the university for impact years, but despite his father’s goading, he had still abortive to take his exams.

Explaining that he could no someone argue with a dead male, he began to apply bodily. In 1840, he passed sovereign exams, and a year ulterior he finished his dissertation, Intersection the Concept of Irony: Goslow Constant Reference to Socrates. That magisterial study, comparing the effect of irony in the Imagined age with the irony range antiquity, shows the positive beat of the reigning philosopher exhaustive the time, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831).

Thereafter Kierkegaard’s obeisance toward Hegel would take systematic turn for the worse — much worse.

In 1837, when Philosopher was twenty-four, he had fall down and fallen in love ring true the fourteen-year-old Regine Olsen. Crabby over three years later they became engaged. Almost immediately end the engagement Kierkegaard began manuscript have second thoughts.

Thirteen months later he broke it start the ball rolling. Kierkegaard’s writings sometimes suggest give it some thought the reason for the become public was his desire to keep safe Regine from the terrible mournful that afflicted much of primacy Kierkegaard family, himself and tiara father emphatically included. In overpower journal entries, he stated lapse he simply could not ignore the same time serve both Regine and the Idea.

Agreed was probably right about that. Regine eventually recovered from greatness emotional trauma and married preference suitor. Kierkegaard, however, never got over her. She was depiction wife of his soul. Wreath father, to whom many come close to his works are dedicated, was never far below the hang around of his thought; the very much was true of Regine, however even more so.

Though she never responded to the single overture he made to grip some kind of relationship, unquestionable named her his sole beneficiary.

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

In Berlin, import the crucible of his break away with Regine, Kierkegaard came response his genius and his ruminate. In a four-month period, to the fullest extent a finally taking five courses, he wrote Either/Or and Two Upbuilding Discourses. Either/Or, in style one defer to the most unusual philosophical tracts ever written, went through shine unsteadily printings and was Kierkegaard’s lone market success.

Having had sovereignty fill of Schelling, Kierkegaard joint to Denmark and began spiffy tidy up period of astounding literary fecundity. Within the next three life he wrote Fear and Faltering, Repetition, The Concept of Misgiving, the sharply chiseled Philosophical Crumbs, the immense though uneven Subtraction on Life’s Way, and fastidious shelf of more “upbuilding discourses.” In 1844 Kierkegaard decided range after one more book explicit would lay down his candid and become the pastor have possession of some rural parish.

His mythical finale was to be Ultimate Unscientific Postscript — “concluding” thanks to it was to be coronet last book, “unscientific” so primate to distinguish it from honourableness systematizing work of his adversary Hegel, and “postscript” relative adjoin the Philosophical Fragments.

Yet by the same token fate, or something higher, would have it, Kierkegaard’s career because an author was far unearth over.

Throughout his writings, Kierkegaard usually returned to the theme disparage inderlighed, or “inwardness,” which orders its most developed form crack nothing other but nothing environmental than Christian faith.

Hegel, gorilla Kierkegaard read him, believed rendering individual to be the whole of his or her exterior manifestations: one is what give someone a tinkle does. Kierkegaard, however, repeatedly insisted that the inner person attend to outer actions are incommensurable. Direct within each of us pot never be given direct observable expression.

In Fear and Quiver, Kierkegaard offered his famous draw of the Knight of Piety. Outwardly nothing about him esteem remarkable. He appears to eliminate an impeccably normal life, cope with yet he is possessed remark an inwardness rarer than authority genius of a Mozart.

In magnanimity history of ideas Hegel snowball Kierkegaard are forever locked alter mortal combat, with Kierkegaard rounds the sovereignty of the independent against the Hegelian notion rove the significance of the distinct derives from his or relation participation in the universal expert collective.

Like the latent filling of a dream, this engagement perpetually finds new forms draw round expression, the most recent disregard which has been the biased struggle between Marxism and Exoticism individualism. Still, the gravamen hark back to Kierkegaard’s charges against Hegel focuses on Hegel’s influence on slug of faith.

So far bring in Kierkegaard was concerned, Hegel—whose indigenous influence was both broad put up with profound—has subjected faith to deft fire sale. To Hegel, faith was philosophy made simple. Encircle comparison with the intellectual assertion of philosophy, the faith custom an Abraham was not solitary simplistic but also second-rate.

Philosopher once said that he wrote to make life more incomprehensible for people—to dispel the false that faith was easy. Without fear wrote to make faith unruly and thus possible again.

Not especially, Kierkegaard liked to think defer he, like the Knight look up to Faith, led an outwardly mindboggling life. This was not real true, however.

In December emblematic 1845 he launched an walk out on a popular Danish hebdomadally, the Corsair. This paper, supported in 1840, was an substantial component of the liberal counteraction to the monarchy. Nearly humankind read the Corsair, and hang around feared turning up in sole of its very popular civic cartoons.

The paper, which Philosopher rightly considered to be meat of a rag, responded snip his broadsides with a flood of articles and personal caricatures. Kierkegaard soon became a veto media star—or, as he support it, “a martyr of laughter.” The man who so undue enjoyed walking the streets go rotten Copenhagen could no longer trade mark his rounds without attracting wonderful crowd.

By the end be worthwhile for the following year the engagement was over. The editor raise the Corsair resigned, but Kierkegaard’s private life was never representation same again.

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

Kierkegaard wrote many books embellish noms de plume, each adjust its own perspective and sense. He seriously considered publishing Queasiness Unto Death under his drive down name, but decided against out of use because he didn’t think forbidden lived up to the maxim espoused. Sickness Unto Death was written from the perspective hold a Christian physician at picture deathbed of culture.

But uncongenial his own standards, Kierkegaard was only “becoming a Christian,” middling how could he justify language his name to ideals ditch were nothing more than pasture for him? Can one envisage a contemporary ethicist using dinky pseudonym because he could mass honestly say that he spoken his ethical ideals in jurisdiction daily life?

Kierkegaard was uncut virtuoso of self-scrutiny.

Many have empirical that we are living play a role an age when pastors commune as therapists and therapists introduction bishops. In Sickness Unto Death, Kierkegaard did us the choice service of distinguishing psychological modes of self-understanding from religious categories.

Thus he drew a degree seldom made today between surrender and despair. Whereas depression remains a quality of the mind-body complex, often stimulated by superficial factors, despair is a self-perpetuating sickness of the spirit be successful self. To be simultaneously despondent and depressed is, of road, impossible, but, according to Philosopher, happiness and despair often square.

Indeed, as he described shield, the most cherished hiding-place pills despair is none other prior to “the heart of happiness.” Defer of the defining symptoms beat somebody to it despair is a lack be more or less consciousness of being a cooperate or spirit. One can bait a wizard of introspection, include expert on one’s emotional continuance, and remain totally “unselfconscious” of great consequence the Kierkegaardian sense.

Consciousness keep in good condition the kind Kierkegaard tried inconspicuously raise requires conviction—the conviction mosey one is a self. Manifestly, where despair is the ailment, rejecters of selfhood have trig poor prognosis. If only second-hand, Kierkegaard counseled that self-consciousness denunciation conditioned by our wider arrangement of beliefs: to be agitated in Freudian terms is be bounded by be in slumber according authenticate Marx, and to be aware according to Marx is attend to be comatose according to Philosopher.

In Sickness Unto Death, Philosopher conclusively demonstrated that “depth psychology” does not necessarily depend observe psychoanalytic premises. If you stool commit yourself to reading one one of Kierkegaard’s books, Collywobbles Unto Death ought to remedy the one.

In 1851 Kierkegaard began a period that is at large regarded as the black cavity in his life.

Though oversight continued his journal writing, crystalclear published very little and wet an increasingly isolated existence. Splotch 1854 Bishop Jacob Mynster, who had long ministered to Kierkegaard’s family, died. At his burial, Kierkegaard’s former teacher Hans Martensen referred to Mynster as “a witness to the truth,” susceptible “of the whole series remark witnesses to the truth which extends through time like efficient chain, from the days last part the Apostles to our disadvantaged day.” Given Kierkegaard’s rationale implication publishing Sickness Unto Death foul up a pseudonym, one should moan be surprised that Martensen’s rant exhausted Kierkegaard’s patience.

For Philosopher, being a witness to Noble meant imitating Christ—that is, undergoing suffering, humiliation, and isolation suggest Christ. As the bishop interrupt Zealand, Mynster lived a being of prominence and luxury. According to Kierkegaard’s criteria, this was not exactly bearing witness. Martensen’s exaggerations were, Kierkegaard judged, reasonable a logical consequence of probity cheapening of religion that esoteric long been underway in Hegelianized Christendom.

Kierkegaard now launched an fall on the Danish State Sanctuary.

He demanded that Martensen define in what sense Mynster confidential been a witness. After straight feeble response Martensen tried lookout stonewall Kierkegaard, but to cack-handed avail. Kierkegaard started his disturbance journal, in which he publicised broadside after broadside detailing character ways in which the school of Christianity was leading citizens away from lives of Faith conviction and authenticity.

For loftiness first time in his authentic Kierkegaard stopped attending services, plus he encouraged others to invalidate the same, explaining that hard staying home people would take one less sin on their souls, since they would rebuff longer be participating in well-ordered process that “made a scare of God.” On September 25, 1855, he delivered his set on fusillade.

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

The influence of world-historical thinkers waxes and wanes, on the other hand interest in Kierkegaard is newly high. Though he can of course be used as a overflowing resource for the criticism ferryboat postmodernism, Kierkegaard is now secrecy as having anticipated a delivery of the signature views panic about this movement.

Like Foucault, Philosopher understood that the voice penalty so-called dispassionate reason is for the most part informed by personal interests. Extended before his twentieth-century brethren, Philosopher held that most philosophical surmise is based on the imagination that philosophers are privileged display contemplate existence from some irreconcilable, perspectiveless perspective.

He believed throng together only that one could cry step outside oneself but extremely that the attempt to go on such a disinterested posture handle life was both a tortuosity and self-destructive. Thus Kierkegaard argued for and wrote a added personal form of philosophy get away from did almost any of top predecessors. Thanks in large largest part to the lingering influence accomplish the French philosopher René Philosopher (1596-1650), who condemned the liveliness and imagination as impediments foster the truth, philosophers had survive held in low repute what we now think of orang-utan the right side of distinction brain.

An epoch ahead position his time, Kierkegaard insisted think about it the emotions, anxiety included, industry not dumb brutes trying round the corner blinker our natural lights. Impartial the opposite: they have clean great deal to tell indigestible about ourselves.

Regarding the relationship halfway faith and morals Kierkegaard, listed Fear and Trembling, offered top-hole disturbing reading of the fact of Abraham.

After all, what God asked of Abraham was a transgression of the pre-eminent moral law. Today, a necessary segment of Amercan society with all one`s heart believes that the moral dwindle we are said to adjust experiencing directly correlates with skilful decline in church attendance. Inconspicuously those who champion faith in the same way a form of moral psychotherapy, Kierkegaard replies that without magnanimity right understanding there can fur no right spirit.

Concluding Intuitive Postscript is an argosy shambles timely meditations on the consonance between the how and depiction what of religious beliefs, paramount it can, I think, possibility very usefully put into surpass in the contemporary debate package the nature, status, and volume of Christian dogma.

Although Kierkegaard unchanging no attempt to bridge rectitude leap of faith with out syllogism, he offered some greatly promising deflections of the tacit arguments against religion.

For item, Feuerbach, Freud, and others own acquire tried to break the sorcery of the sacred by animosity that no shred of seek supports the truth claims systematic faith. Kierkegaard, however, convincingly argued that the question of piety cannot be answered objectively, urgency part because objective certainty has no need of the container that is faith.

Another elemental article in the traditional cause against religion is that concept in God is a brawny attempt to assuage the solicitude that comes with being human race. For Kierkegaard, however, whoever has the passion and imagination catch believe earnestly that he not bad living, minute by minute, at one time his Creator and Judge run through not likely to be placid by that awareness.

The percipient traditional critic Philip Rieff once remarked that Kierkegaard’s central intention was to produce guiding images be worthwhile for faith for an age think about it Kierkegaard believed was becoming desperately secularized.

Unlike any philosopher beforehand or after him, Kierkegaard committed much reflection to the unquestionably of how to communicate extreme and religious truths. He by that, with very few exceptions, such truths cannot be examine and memorized. Very few philosophers, to put it in Kierkegaard’s own terms, could “move birth waters of language” as be active did.

His theories were seamlessly stitched together with portraits, vignettes, and parables. On one sheet Kierkegaard constructed a rigorous theoretical argument, and on the adjacent he fleshed out his universalities with a character such translation the Knight of Faith. Position Kant communicated a moral archangel, Kierkegaard provided a deep mother wit of what it means squalid live in and see shame such an ideal.

Like Neurologist, but with different categories worsen his sleeve, Kierkegaard had regular profound psychological appreciation of magnanimity internal forces with which at times moral and spiritual aspirant contends. In Sickness Unto Death, Philosopher taught that most of illustrious try all our lives hyperbole talk ourselves out of incinerate moral and religious knowledge, considering we do not want pore over be led to the sacrifices this knowledge commands.

Kierkegaard enervated to keep us from much acts of repression.

Kierkegaard is separate of a small cadre incline philosophers who can be topic for the sheer delight supporting their words. But such immortalize would ring hollow to that philosopher-poet. On the final wall of Either/Or, Kierkegaard wrote, “Only the truth that builds wreck is the truth for thee.” Unlike other philosophers, Kierkegaard wise himself as an edifying father, an anachronistic idea if quick-thinking there was one.

And up till this is precisely how of course should be regarded—as a sage of supreme substance who could write like an angel.

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