Søren Kierkegaard

The Melancholy Dane Who Made Anxiety Sacred

Most people know Søren Kierkegaard as the gloomy father of existentialism, but few realize he was also one of the wittiest writers of his age—a man who could dissect the pretensions of Copenhagen society with surgical precision while wrestling with the deepest questions of faith and despair. He wrote under multiple pseudonyms not out of cowardice, but because he believed that truth about existence could only be approached indirectly, like trying to catch your own shadow.

Chronological Timeline

1813 - Born in Copenhagen to wealthy merchant Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard and his second wife Ane
1830 - Enrolls at University of Copenhagen to study theology, begins keeping extensive journals
1834 - Father confesses to cursing God as a child and having premarital relations with Søren's mother
1837 - Meets and falls in love with Regine Olsen, age 14; begins serious philosophical writing
1838 - Father dies, leaving Søren wealthy but psychologically tormented; experiences religious awakening
1840 - Becomes engaged to Regine Olsen after three-year courtship
1841 - Breaks engagement with Regine, travels to Berlin to hear Schelling lecture; begins writing career
1843 - Publishes Either/Or and Fear and Trembling under pseudonyms
1844 - Publishes The Concept of Anxiety and Philosophical Fragments
1845 - Publishes Stages on Life's Way; Regine marries Fritz Schlegel
1846 - Attacked by satirical paper The Corsair, becomes object of public ridicule in Copenhagen
1847 - Publishes Works of Love under his own name
1849 - Publishes The Sickness Unto Death as Anti-Climacus
1850 - Begins attack on "Christendom" vs. true Christianity
1854-55 - Launches fierce public campaign against Danish Lutheran Church
1855 - Dies at age 42, possibly from spinal disease, after collapsing on Copenhagen street

The Life That Shaped the Philosophy

Kierkegaard's philosophy emerged from a perfect storm of guilt, melancholy, and religious intensity that began in childhood. His father, Michael, was a man haunted by two secrets: as a poor boy tending sheep, he had once cursed God from a hilltop, and later, he had gotten his maid (Søren's future mother) pregnant while his first wife was dying. When Michael confessed these sins to his son, it shattered young Søren's world. He became convinced that his family was cursed, that all his siblings would die young (five of seven did), and that he too was marked for early death.

This revelation transformed Kierkegaard's relationship with Christianity from simple belief into an agonizing question. How could a loving God allow such suffering? How could faith coexist with doubt? Rather than driving him away from religion, these questions drove him deeper into it—but not the comfortable, social Christianity of the Danish Lutheran Church. Instead, he developed what he called "the sickness unto death"—a spiritual despair that could only be cured by a radical leap of faith.

The defining crisis of his personal life came with Regine Olsen. He loved her desperately, but believed himself too melancholy, too burdened by his family's curse, to make her happy. After their engagement, he became convinced that marriage would destroy both of them. In 1841, he broke off the engagement in a way designed to make her hate him, telling her he was a scoundrel who had never really loved her. It was a lie meant to free her, but it tortured him for the rest of his life.

This sacrifice became the crucible for his philosophy. The broken engagement taught him that the most profound truths about existence couldn't be communicated directly—they had to be lived, suffered through, chosen in fear and trembling. You couldn't simply tell someone about the nature of faith or despair; they had to discover it through their own crisis of existence.

Kierkegaard's daily life reflected his philosophical method. He was a familiar figure on Copenhagen's streets, taking long walks while thinking, often stopping to jot notes in his journal. He wrote obsessively, producing an enormous body of work in just fourteen years. He used pseudonyms not to hide his identity (everyone knew who wrote the books) but to create different "authors" who could explore different approaches to existence without being trapped by consistency.

His relationship with the Danish Church became increasingly antagonistic. He saw "Christendom"—organized, comfortable, social Christianity—as the enemy of true faith. Real Christianity, he argued, required individual decision, risk, and the willingness to stand alone before God. The church had made faith easy and social; Kierkegaard wanted to make it difficult and personal again.

Core Philosophical Contributions

Kierkegaard's central insight was that existence precedes essence—that we must choose who we are before we can know who we are. This idea, which would later influence Sartre and other existentialists, emerged from his conviction that the most important truths about human life couldn't be discovered through abstract reasoning but only through lived experience.

The Three Stages of Existence formed the backbone of his psychology. The aesthetic stage is the life of immediate pleasure and experience—the seducer, the artist, the person who lives for the moment. But this leads inevitably to boredom and despair because no finite pleasure can satisfy infinite longing. The ethical stage involves commitment to universal moral principles—marriage, duty, social responsibility. This is more satisfying but ultimately reveals its own limitations when moral rules conflict or when following them leads to suffering. The religious stage requires a leap beyond both pleasure and morality into a direct relationship with God, exemplified by Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac.

Anxiety (Angst) was Kierkegaard's most influential psychological concept. Unlike fear, which has a specific object, anxiety is the dizziness we feel when confronted with our own freedom. Standing at the edge of a cliff, we're not just afraid of falling—we're anxious about the possibility that we might jump. This anxiety reveals our fundamental condition: we are free, but freedom is terrifying because it means we're responsible for creating ourselves.

The Leap of Faith became his most famous concept, though often misunderstood. Kierkegaard didn't mean blind faith that ignores reason, but rather the recognition that the most important life decisions—whom to marry, how to live, whether to believe in God—can't be made on purely rational grounds. At some point, we must choose without certainty, and that choice reveals who we are.

Indirect Communication was his method for conveying existential truths. Direct teaching, he argued, creates the illusion that we can possess truth like an object. But existential truth must be appropriated personally. By using irony, pseudonyms, and paradox, he forced readers to work out the implications for themselves, to become co-creators of meaning rather than passive recipients of doctrine.

The Individual stood at the center of his philosophy. Against Hegel's emphasis on historical progress and social development, Kierkegaard insisted that the single individual is higher than the universal. Each person must work out their own salvation, make their own leap of faith, choose their own existence. This wasn't selfish individualism but rather the recognition that authentic existence requires personal responsibility that can't be delegated to society, church, or philosophy.

The Ripple Effects

Kierkegaard's immediate impact was limited—Denmark was too small a stage for such radical ideas. But his influence exploded in the twentieth century when existentialist philosophers like Heidegger, Sartre, and Camus discovered in him a kindred spirit who had anticipated their concerns about authenticity, freedom, and the absurd.

His psychological insights proved remarkably prescient. His analysis of anxiety predated Freud's work on neurosis, and his understanding of despair as a spiritual sickness influenced both psychology and theology. Modern cognitive therapy's emphasis on how our thoughts create our emotional reality echoes Kierkegaardian themes.

The existentialist movement claimed him as a founding father, though they often ignored his religious commitments. Sartre's famous declaration that "existence precedes essence" was a direct descendant of Kierkegaardian thought, even as Sartre rejected the leap of faith. Camus found in Kierkegaard's analysis of Abraham a perfect example of the absurd—the collision between human need for meaning and the universe's silence.

His critique of "Christendom" influenced twentieth-century theology profoundly. Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and other neo-orthodox theologians used Kierkegaardian insights to challenge comfortable, bourgeois Christianity. Liberation theologians found in his emphasis on individual decision and social critique tools for challenging institutional religion's complicity with oppression.

But Kierkegaard's ideas also had unintended consequences. His emphasis on subjective truth and individual choice contributed to the relativism he would have despised. His critique of systematic philosophy helped undermine confidence in reason itself. His romantic individualism, stripped of its religious context, became the self-absorbed narcissism of consumer culture.

The Human Behind the Ideas

Despite his reputation for melancholy, Kierkegaard was often delightfully funny. His journals reveal a sharp wit and keen eye for human folly. He once wrote, "The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you'll never have." He loved the theater, took pleasure in good food and wine, and enjoyed shocking Copenhagen's bourgeoisie with his unconventional behavior.

His relationship with his servant Anders was one of the few stable connections in his life. Anders understood his master's moods and protected his writing time, becoming almost a collaborator in the philosophical enterprise. When visitors came, Anders would often say Kierkegaard wasn't home, even when he was clearly visible through the window.

The Regine affair haunted him until his death. He never stopped loving her, and his journals are filled with anguished reflections on their relationship. When she married Fritz Schlegel, Kierkegaard was devastated but also relieved—it confirmed that he had been right to set her free. Years later, when they occasionally encountered each other on Copenhagen's streets, the meetings were painful for both.

His attack on the Danish Church in his final years revealed both his courage and his isolation. He refused communion, declared that Christianity no longer existed in Denmark, and called the bishops "cannibals" who devoured Christ for profit. The campaign destroyed his health and his remaining social connections, but he felt compelled to speak what he saw as truth.

In his final illness, he refused to see a pastor, saying he would only speak to a layman. When his brother Peter (a bishop) visited, Søren turned his face to the wall. He died as he had lived—alone with his convictions, having chosen authenticity over comfort.

Revealing Quotes

"The thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die." - From his journals, 1835, expressing his lifelong quest for authentic existence rather than abstract knowledge.

"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." - Reflecting his belief that meaning emerges through lived experience, not philosophical analysis.

"The most common form of despair is not being who you are." - From The Sickness Unto Death, capturing his insight that most people live inauthentic lives without realizing it.

"If you marry, you will regret it; if you do not marry, you will also regret it." - From Either/Or, illustrating his belief that existence involves unavoidable choices without guaranteed outcomes.

"Faith is precisely the contradiction between the infinite passion of the individual's inwardness and the objective uncertainty." - Defining his concept of faith as passionate commitment despite rational doubt.

"I have only one friend, and that is echo. Why is it my friend? Because I love my sorrow, and echo does not take it away from me." - From his journals, revealing both his isolation and his complex relationship with melancholy.

"The individual must stand alone—alone in so far as he must receive the conditions of his life from his own hand." - His final emphasis on personal responsibility and authentic choice, written during his attack on the Danish Church.