(1813-1855)

There are, as is known, insects that die in the moment of fertilization. So it is with all joy: life's highest, most splendid moment of enjoyment is accompanied by death. -- Kierkegaard

Søren Kierkegaard was born in Copenhagen on May 5, 1813, the youngest of seven children. His father, Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard, was in the hosiery business. He was a powerful man who held to a particularly gloomy Christianity, obsessed with guilt over having once cursed God. His mother was Ane Sørensdatter Lund, a servant of the Kierkegaard's.

Two of Søren's brothers and two of his sisters died. By 1834, his mother had died as well, and Kierkegaard became nearly as depressed as his father. He lost his faith and turned to a hedonistic life-style, but had a religious experience in 1838. He received his theology degree in 1840, and proposed to Regine Olsen, daughter of a prominent Copenhagen government official.

No one knows precisely why, but in late 1841, he broke off the engagement, which led to considerable negative social press. It seems to have been the pivotal crisis in his life, and he abruptly left to Berlin to study.

When he returned, he finished a manuscript he had been working on, and in 1843 published Either/Or.  It takes the form of an argument about how to live life between an "aesthetic" man and an "ethical" man -- very probably reflecting two aspects of Kierkegaard's own soul.

The aesthetic man is basically a hedonist and an atheist.  Although he is portrayed as a refined gentleman, his sections of the book are rambling, suggesting that his life is likewise without focus.  The ethical man is a judge, and his arguments are far more orderly and eloquent:  He spends considerable time analyzing the ancient Roman emperor Nero and his mental states.

Also in 1843, he published his famous book Fear and Trembling, which retells the story of Abraham and his near-sacrifice of his son.  This time, Kierkegaard compares the ethical response -- it is clearly wrong to kill one's own son -- with a religious response, which is reflected in Abraham's faith in his God.

In his various books, Kierkegaard develops his three "stages" or competing life philosophies:  The aesthetic person, who lives in the moment and lacks commitment;  the ethical person, who is in fact committed to his ideals; and the religious person, who recognizes the transcendent nature of true ideals.  Notice the similarity to Schopenhauer, although for Schopenhauer "aesthetic" refers to a love of art and music, not hedonism.

Throughout his work, he was concerned with passions.  He defined anxiety, for example, as "the dizziness of freedom." Despair is what the hedonist feels when he finally recognized the emptiness of his life.  Guilt is what the ethical man feels when he inevitably discovers his inability to forgive himself. These definitions would profoundly influence a number of later philosophers and writers.

In 1849, he published Sickness unto Death, which was his strongest call to the conventional Christians of Copenhagen to take what Kierkegaard called "a leap of faith" into a more personal kind of religion.  But his community is not quite ready for this passionate brand of Christianity, and he was severely criticized by the religious powers of Denmark.

Kierkegaard is often considered the first existentialist, mostly because of the way he used the word existence.  He said that God doesn't exist because he is eternal.  Only people exist, because they are always an unfinished product.  And the nature of existence is, first, that it is the domain of the individual, and second, that individual must take responsibility for his or her own creation.

But Kierkegaard noted that his was not a "system" of philosophy.  Human existence is an  ongoing process of creation, and cannot be encompassed by any "system."  This has been a central theme in existentialism ever since.

Kierkegaard died on October 2, 1855, of spinal paralysis.  He would not take communion, and he asked that no clergy participate in his funeral.  His epitaph reads "The Individual."