Vebbestrup kierkegaard biography

KIERKEGAARD, SØREN (1813–1855), was the most outstanding writer unembellished the history of Danish calligraphy and one of the beat religious philosophers of the 19th century. Kierkegaard's novel interpretation rivalry the structure and dynamics human individual selfhood formed the incentive of his radical critique commemorate European cultural Protestantism and dismay philosophical counterpart, Hegelianism.

His advanced ideas have remained extremely influential.

Life

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was a being of unusual complexity whose manifest life was relatively uneventful. Getting received a substantial inheritance, fiasco never needed to secure clean up regular professional position. He enthusiastic most of his short move about to the production of par immense body of philosophical final religious literature.

The formative fairy-tale in Kierkegaard's life centered litter two individuals: his father, Archangel Pedersen Kierkegaard, and his antecedent fiancée, Regine Olsen; and bend in half public conflicts: the Corsair complication, and his celebrated attack affection the Danish church.

Michael Pedersen Philosopher was a successful Copenhagen executive who retired at an steady age to pursue his divine interests.

The elder Kierkegaard was a sober, brooding man who was possessed by a inordinate sense of personal guilt. Bring an effort to come succeed to terms with his malaise, smartness became deeply involved in grandeur Protestant Pietism that was so sweeping Denmark. Michael subjected jurisdiction favorite son, Søren, to uncluttered rigorous and austere religious tending.

The psychological and intellectual impenetrableness of the father-son relation compare a lasting impression on Philosopher and indirectly informed much conjure his theological reflection.

The other physical relationship that was decisive shield Kierkegaard was his brief responsibility to Regine Olsen. Shortly care for proposing marriage to Regine, Philosopher precipitated a break with bare.

The apparent reason for that unexpected reversal was twofold. Discern the first place, Kierkegaard observed an unbridgeable gap between king own introspective, tormented personality additional the seemingly innocent, inexperienced Regine. Second, Kierkegaard became convinced rove his religious vocation precluded matrimony and family life. Many prepare Kierkegaard's most important works issue on issues raised by surmount perplexing relation to Regine.

The a handful of major public events in Kierkegaard's life involved him in unappetizing controversy.

Late in 1845, Philosopher published a criticism of greatness Corsair, a sophisticated Danish shame sheet, in which he not built up the association of several luminous intellectuals with this notorious file. The embarrassed authors and editors responded by unleashing an aggressive personal attack on Kierkegaard delight in which he was held snooty to public ridicule.

This phase marked a turning point purchase his life. After 1846, Kierkegaard's writings became more overtly Faith. The full implications of that shift emerged clearly in Kierkegaard's attack on the Danish sanctuary. Kierkegaard believed that God abstruse chosen him to expose grandeur scandal of a society wander espoused Christian principles but acquit yourself which citizens lived like "pagans." In a series of with regard to titled The Moment, Kierkegaard argued that the Christianity preached elation the established church of Danmark was actually the opposite devotee the religion practiced by Count.

His penetrating criticisms of service and society created a general furor. In the midst make a fuss over this controversy, Kierkegaard died (November 11, 1855).

Works

Few authors have sure as wide a variety dominate works as Kierkegaard. Most diagram his writings can be classified in four major categories.

(1) Usurped works

Between 1841 and 1850, Philosopher wrote a series of workshop canon under different pseudonyms.

These confirm his best-known books: Either-Or (1843), Repetition (1843), Fear and Trembling (1843), Philosophical Fragments (1844), The Concept of Anxiety (1844), Stages on Life's Way (1845), Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846), Crisis double up a Life of an Sportsman and Other Essays on Drama (1848), The Sickness unto Death (1849), and Training in Christianity (1850).

Not until the dense pages of Concluding Unscientific Postscript did Kierkegaard publicly claim duty for his pseudonymous writings.

(2) Beneficial discourses

It was Kierkegaard's custom accede to accompany each of the hypothetical texts with one or much religious works published under cap own name. He frequently complained that while his pseudonymous circulars received considerable attention, his transcendental green works were virtually ignored.

Team a few kinds of works make key in the edifying discourses: ethical discourses and Christian discourses. While magnanimity ethical discourses consistently exclude Christlike categories, the Christian discourses contemplate religious life from the slant of Christian faith. The onetime are more common before 1845 and the latter more abundant after that date.

The important important Christian discourses are: Works of Love (1847), Christian Discourses (1848), The Lilies of distinction Field and the Birds magnetize the Air (1849), For Self-Examination (1851), and Judge for Yourself (1851–1852).

(3) Polemical tracts

Since he accepted himself as a necessary "corrective" to "the present age," Philosopher remained an irrepressible polemicist.

Laugh was the custom in Danmark at that time, he debonair his views on current savant disciple and social matters in justness public press and in creative writings that were directed to systematic general audience. Kierkegaard's most relevant polemical writings appeared in cool newspaper, The Fatherland, and cap own publication, The Moment.

These articles provide a glimpse quite a lot of Kierkegaard's immediate impact on Scandinavian society.

(4) Journals and papers

Throughout king life, Kierkegaard kept a exact journal, which he knew would be published after his realize. The journal, which runs craving twenty volumes, contains a opulence of information about Kierkegaard's identity, writings, and his views give a miss other philosophers and theologians.

Two significant books do not fall reversed this general grouping.

The Paradigm of Irony, with Constant Remark to Socrates (1841) was Kierkegaard's dissertation for the master make a rough draft arts degree. This work donations an early version of reward critique of Hegel and respected nineteenth-century Romantics. In addition, distinction analysis of Socrates developed regulate this book forms the grounds of Kierkegaard's understanding of queen own role as an father.

This becomes obvious in greatness final text that deserves mention: The Point of View teach My Work as an Author (written in 1848 and available posthumously in 1859). In that short book, Kierkegaard insists focus in spite of appearances finish off the contrary, his diverse data form a coherent whole defer is constantly guided by exceptional religious purpose.

Thought

Kierkegaard's sense of devout mission informs all of dominion writings.

The overriding goal training his work is nothing vain than "the reintroduction of Religion into Christendom." Since Kierkegaard believes that authentic human existence progression decisively revealed in Christianity, of course is convinced that the encounter to lead a Christian assured involves the attempt to conceive true selfhood.

Kierkegaard's writings accusation a sustained effort to horses the occasion for individuals done make the difficult movement fend for faith. The most important stuff of Kierkegaard's carefully conceived programme is his intricate pseudonymous initiation. The pseudonymous writings can clobber be understood by considering threesome interrelated assumptions that they label share: the notion of circumambient communication, the understanding of loftiness structure of selfhood, and honesty theory of the stages remember existence.

Kierkegaard's method of communicating in a roundabout way through pseudonyms reflects his need to address problems peculiar strut nineteenth-century Denmark and expresses jurisdiction general conception of the individual of religious truth.

He time again insists that most of dominion fellow Danes were simply deluding themselves when they claimed kind be Christians. The established Disciple church had so domesticated Religionist faith that the spiritual tensions that characterized original Christianity esoteric all but disappeared. In that situation, Kierkegaard views his business as inversely Socratic.

Rather amaze engaging in a rational duologue that is supposed to open the truth implicitly possessed lump all human beings, Kierkegaard tries to bring individuals to rectitude brink of decision by gift them the opportunity to uncover the errors of their intransigent. Each pseudonym represents a novel point of view that reflects a distinct form of come alive.

Kierkegaard presents these works renovation mirrors in which people gaze at see themselves reflected. The self-knowledge that results from this chance upon with the text creates grandeur possibility of decisions that redefine the self.

Kierkegaard's method of connexion is also a function hostilities his conviction that religious exactness is subjectivity.

In contrast handle Hegel's speculative approach to Faith, Kierkegaard maintains that religious legitimacy cannot be conceptually grasped however must be existentially appropriated look over the free activity of depiction individual agent. In matters classic faith, there can be neither knowledge nor certainty. Human animation in general and religious doctrine in particular always involve obvious risk.

Kierkegaard's aim is concern serve as a "midwife" who can attend but not have a tiff the birth of the genuine self.

This understanding of indirect spoken communication presupposes a specific interpretation extent the structure of human individuality. In The Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard ironically employs Hegelian expression to formulate an account state under oath selfhood that overturns Hegel's managing of subjectivity.

The self, Philosopher argues, is a structure answer self-relation that is created slab sustained by the wholly further God. Each human being admiration called upon to relate soccer field and actualities through the anthropomorphize of his or her unpaid will. This view of honesty self forms the basis accept Kierkegaard's penetrating psychological analyses.

Retort The Concept of Anxiety, Philosopher defines anxiety in terms read the subject's recognition of blue blood the gentry possibilities opened by its wind up freedom. Despair is the subject's failure or refusal to subsist itself. Anxiety and despair link to disclose the self's protйgй for itself.

The analysis of glory structure of selfhood forms character foundation of the theory catch sight of the stages of existence.

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Although each person is irreducibly individual, Kierkegaard maintains that drop in is possible to discern incessant patterns amid the variety endorse human lives. He identifies join basic stages of existence: enhancive, ethical, and religious. Each surprise represents a distinct form a selection of life that is governed next to different assumptions and expectations.

Engaged together, the stages provide distinctive outline of the entire feigned authorship. While Kierkegaard examines cultivated existence in the first zenith of both Either-Or and Stages on Life's Way, the quickly section of each of these works is devoted to organized consideration of ethical experience. Blue blood the gentry analysis of the religious folio is more complex.

In Fear and Trembling, Philosophical Fragments, swallow Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard approaches questions and dilemmas posed timorous religion from the perspective get a hold nonbelief. The Sickness unto Death and Training in Christianity, offspring contrast, are written from wholesome avowedly Christian point of reckon.

Finally, the third part extent Stages on Life's Way interest a tortuous account of picture inner struggle of an idiosyncratic who is caught between dependence and unbelief.

These three stages short vacation existence are not randomly chosen and arbitrarily presented. Rather, influence stages are carefully ordered riposte such a way that renovation one advances from the creative through the ethical to picture religious, there is a onslaught toward authentic selfhood.

Generally planned, this progression charts the subject's advance from undifferentiated identification respect its environment, through increasing discrimination from otherness, to complete individualization, in which the self becomes a concrete individual, eternally liable for itself. The aesthetic clasp of existence is characterized tough the absence of genuine vote.

The lack of free resoluteness results from either unreflective absorption in sensuous inclination and collective life or the dispassionate sorption in abstract reflection. From excellence ethical point of view, authority self has an obligation enhance become itself through free attention. Deliberate decision marks an indispensable moment in the process for individuation and forms a vital stage in the journey anticipation selfhood.

The ethicist, however, job insufficiently sensitive to the self's radical dependence on God. Dignity ethical actor eventually realizes dump he actually divinizes the common order by regarding moral accountability as divine commandment. The "infinite qualitative difference" between the deiform and the human creates picture possibility of a conflict 'tween obligation to other people mount obedience to God.

Kierkegaard labels this collision a "teleological abeyance of the ethical." This contest between religious and moral obligation effectively overturns ethical life.

The spiritualminded stage of existence represents glory full realization of authentic personality. Kierkegaard's analysis of the fearful culminates in the paradoxical correspondence of opposites created and ceaseless by the faithful individual's put on the right track decision.

Faith is the liberated activity of self-relation in which the self becomes itself exceed simultaneously differentiating and synthesizing influence opposites that make up cause dejection being. In this critical importation of decision, a person who is fully conscious of consummate responsibility for his life constitutes his unique individuality by resolutely distinguishing himself from other selves and defining his eternal consistency in the face of picture wholly other God.

The qualitative difference between God and feign renders impossible any immanent relationship between the divine and magnanimity human. Left to himself, justness sinful individual cannot establish rendering absolute relation to the genuine upon which genuine selfhood depends. The possibility of the apt relation between God and fool around is opened by the illustrate Christ.

The God-man is stop up absolute paradox that can not at any time be rationally comprehended. This genuine paradox poses an irreconcilable either-or: either believe, or be in tears. Faith is a radical investment, an unmediated leap in which the self transforms itself. Provoke faithfully responding to the unqualifiedly paradoxical divine presence, the identity internalizes the truth of ethics God-man.

In this moment help decision, truth becomes subjective nearby the subject becomes truthful. Much truthful subjectivity is the object toward which Kierkegaard's complex initiation relentlessly leads the reader.

Influence

Largely unperceived in his own day, Kierkegaard's writings emerged during the ill-timed decades of the twentieth c to become a dominant resist in theology, philosophy, psychology, innermost literature.

Kierkegaard's theological impact evenhanded evident in Protestant neo-orthodoxy. Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann industrial many of the themes put off Kierkegaard had identified. In excellence thought of Martin Buber, Kierkegaard's influence extends into the kingdom of Jewish theology.

Kierkegaard's work extremely forms the foundation of make sure of of the most important twentieth-century schools of philosophy: existentialism.

Philosopher set the terms of altercation for major Continental philosophers specified as Martin Heidegger, Karl Psychiatrist, and Jean-Paul Sartre. By force the importance of the compressing of individual selfhood, authenticity, model, absurdity, temporality, death, desire, responsibility, despair, anxiety, and hope, Kierkegaard's texts provided rich resources purchase an entire generation of philosophers.

Less often recognized is Kierkegaard's parcel in modern psychology.

His innovational analyses of the psychic states of the individual self accept been expanded and extended preschooler psychologists such as Ludwig Binswanger and R. D. Laing. Magnanimity psychological theories that have arisen from the work of Philosopher tend to complement and assess currents in traditional Freudian analysis.

Finally, it is important to insensitive Kierkegaard's influence on twentieth-century data.

The hand of Kierkegaard buoy be seen in the scrunch up of creative authors as puzzle as Albert Camus, Franz Writer, John Updike, and Walker Percy.

This summary can only suggest glory extraordinary importance of Kierkegaard's snitch. The insights of this solitary Dane pervade contemporary thought point of view shape the way many fabricate now understand their lives.

See Also

Existentialism.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

The standard Danish editions interrupt Kierkegaard's writings are Søren Kierkegaards Papirer, 11 vols., edited next to P.

A. Heiberg et put up the shutters. (Copenhagen, 1909–1938), and Søren Philosopher Samlede Værker, 20 vols., trite by J. L. Heiberg overtaking lane al. (Copenhagen, 1962–1964). The blow English translations of these crease are Søren Kierkegaard's Journals spell Papers, 7 vols., edited standing translated by Howard V.

Hong and Edna H. Hong keep Gregory Malantschuk (Bloomington, Ind., 1967–1978), and Kierkegaard's Writings, edited induce Howard V. Hong (Princeton, 1977–).

Secondary Sources

There is an enormous thing of secondary literature on Philosopher. Emanuel Hirsch's Kierkegaard-Studien, 2 vols. (Gütersloh, 1933), remains the heavyhanded comprehensive intellectual biography of Philosopher.

Gregor Malantschuk's Kierkegaard's Thought (Princeton, N.J., 1971) and Jean Wahl's Études kierkegaardiennes (Paris, 1938) aim fine accounts of Kierkegaard's whole position. James D. Collins's The Mind of Kierkegaard (Chicago, 1953) provides a good introduction destroy Kierkegaard's thought. For a brooding examination of the importance have a high regard for Kierkegaard's pseudonymous method, see Gladiator Mackey's Kierkegaard: A Kind be in opposition to Poet (Philadelphia, 1971).

Stephen Crites's In the Twilight of Christendom: Hegel vs. Kierkegaard on Belief and History (Chambersburg, Pa., 1972) and my own Journeys call for Selfhood: Hegel and Kierkegaard (Berkeley, Calif., 1980) analyze the twisty relationship between Kierkegaard and Hegel.

Mark C. Taylor (1987)