Modern era · 1813–1855

Søren Kierkegaard

The single individual before God

Christian existentialism

Biography

A Dane, son of a father marked by guilt, he broke off his engagement to Regine Olsen. He published under pseudonyms and attacked the Danish State Church.

Worldview

Existence is choice, not system. Three stages: aesthetic, ethical, religious. Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom; despair is the sickness unto death. Faith is a paradoxical leap beyond reason.

Core positions

Truth is subjectivity
Faith is a leap
The crowd is untruth
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom

Major works

Either/Or
Fear and Trembling
The Concept of Anxiety
The Sickness unto Death
Concluding Unscientific Postscript

Debate style

Ironic, indirect, passionate; uses pseudonyms and narratives (Abraham, the seducer).

Brings every abstraction back to the concrete individual who must decide; denounces the crowd and the system.

Vocabulary

the single individualanxietydespairleapparadoxstages of existenceeither/or

Known disagreements

G. W. F. Hegel — The system forgets existence
Karl Marx — Salvation is not collective but individual