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Søren Kierkegaard
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Kierkegaard, Søren Aaby

Kierkegaard (kîr´kî-gärd´, -gôr´), Søren Aaby
1813-1855
Danish religious philosopher. A precursor of modern existentialism, he insisted on the need for individual decision and leaps of faith in the search for religious truth, thereby contradicting Protestant dogma and Hegelianism. His works include Either/Or and Fear and Trembling (both 1843).

Kierkegaard, Søren

Kierkegaard, Søren, 1813-55, Danish philosopher and religious writer, a precursor of 20th-cent. EXISTENTIALISM and a major influence on modern Protestant theology. Kierkegaard described the various stages of existence as the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious; advancing through this "existential dialectic," the individual becomes increasingly aware of his relationship to god. This awareness leads to despair as he realizes the antithesis between temporal existence and eternal truth. Reason is no help in achieving the final religious stage; a "leap of faith" is required. Kierkegaard's works, largely ignored in his own lifetime, include Either/Or (1843), Fear and Trembling (1843), Philosophical Fragments (1844), and Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846).

Personality

Personality is only ripe when a man has made the truth his own.
Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55), Danish philosopher. The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard: A Selection, no. 432 (ed. and tr. by Alexander Dru, 1938), 1843 entry.

At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference.
Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55), Danish philosopher. The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard: A Selection, no. 1144 (ed. and tr. by Alexander Dru, 1938), entry for 1850.

Memory

The more a man can forget, the greater the number of metamorphoses which his life can undergo, the more he can remember the more divine his life becomes.
Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55), Danish philosopher. The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard: A Selection, no. 429 (ed. and tr. by Alexander Dru, 1938), entry for 1842.

Primitive Life

Destroy your primitivity, and you will most probably get along well in the world, maybe achieve great success-but Eternity will reject you. Follow up your primitivity, and you will be shipwrecked in temporality, but accepted by Eternity.
Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55), Danish philosopher. The Diary of Søren Kierkegaard, pt. 6, sct. 3, no. 196 (ed. by Peter Rohde, 1960), 1854 entry.

Literature, 1843

Nonfiction Either-Or (Euten-Eller) by Danish philosopher Søren Aabye Kierkegaard, 30, who repudiates the objective philosophy of the Absolute propounded by the late German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel and reaches instead a religion of acceptance and suffering based on faith, knowledge, thought, and reality that will be called "existentialism." Holding that religion is an individual matter, Kierkegaard denounces the theology and practice of the state church; History of the Conquest of Mexico by W. H. Prescott.

Idleness

Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good.
Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55), Danish philosopher. Either/Or, vol. 1, "The Rotation Method" (1843).

Minorities

Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion-and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is evident that the minority is the stronger) assume its opinion … while Truth again reverts to a new minority.
Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55), Danish philosopher. The Diary of Søren Kierkegaard, pt. 5, sct. 3, no. 128 entry from 1850, ed. by Peter Rohde, 1960.

Music, 1954

Prayers of Kierkegaard by Samuel Barber 12/3 at Boston's Symphony Hall.

Possibility

If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility!
Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55), Danish philosopher. Either/Or, vol. 1, "Diapsalmata" (1843; tr. 1987).

I divide my time as follows: half the time I sleep, the other half I dream. I never dream when I sleep, for that would be a pity, for sleeping is the highest accomplishment of genius.
Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55), Danish philosopher. Either/Or, vol. 1, "Diapsalmata" (1843; tr. 1987).

Marriage

Marriage brings one into fatal connection with custom and tradition, and traditions and customs are like the wind and weather, altogether incalculable.
Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55), Danish philosopher. Either/Or, vol. 1, "The Rotation Method" (1843).

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