Questions about Søren Kierkegaard
Short answers, pulled from the story.
Who was Søren Kierkegaard and why is he considered the first existentialist philosopher?
Søren Kierkegaard was a Danish Lutheran theologian, philosopher, poet, and social critic who lived from the 5th of May 1813 to the 11th of November 1855. He is widely regarded as the first existentialist philosopher because he prioritized concrete human reality over abstract thinking, emphasized authenticity, personal choice, and commitment, and argued that truth is subjective and bound to the individual rather than to collective systems.
What was Kierkegaard's relationship with Regine Olsen and how did it affect his writing?
Kierkegaard met Regine Olsen on the 8th of May 1837 and proposed to her on the 8th of September 1840, but broke off the engagement on the 11th of August 1841. He wrote in his journals that his "melancholy" made him unsuitable for marriage. The relationship shaped several of his works directly, including Repetition, published on the 16th of October 1843, which uses a young man's anguished love as its central subject.
What pseudonyms did Søren Kierkegaard use and why did he write under them?
Kierkegaard used more than a dozen pseudonyms, including Victor Eremita, Johannes de Silentio, Anti-Climacus, and Johannes Climacus. He used them as a technique of indirect communication, allowing each persona to embody a distinct philosophical or religious viewpoint and to engage the others in dialogue. He argued that genuine spiritual insight cannot be transferred directly from one person to another the way facts can.
What was the Corsair affair and how did it change Kierkegaard's approach to writing?
In December 1845, Kierkegaard publicly invited the Danish satirical paper The Corsair to attack him after criticizing its contributor Peder Ludvig Møller. The Corsair, under editor Meïr Aron Goldschmidt, responded with months of caricatures mocking Kierkegaard's appearance, voice, and habits. In a journal entry dated the 9th of March 1846, Kierkegaard wrote that the experience led him to reconsider his strategy of indirect communication and eventually to begin publishing more directly under his own name.
What was Kierkegaard's attack on the Church of Denmark about?
Kierkegaard launched a sustained public attack on the Church of Denmark through the newspaper Fædrelandet and a series of pamphlets called The Moment. He argued that the state-controlled church corrupted Christianity by making membership a social convenience, producing what he called "unbelieving believers". He believed the church's bureaucratic interest in growing membership ran directly counter to Christianity's true concern with the individual's personal relationship with God.
How did Kierkegaard's ideas reach an international audience after his death?
Kierkegaard's German reception was pivotal: the first substantial German translations began in 1873 under Albert Bärthold, and the first English translation appeared in 1923. In the 1930s, translators including Walter Lowrie and Alexander Dru produced major English editions under the guidance of Oxford University Press editor Charles Williams. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong's translation of the Journals and Papers won the 1968 National Book Award for Translation, and by 1959 Kierkegaard's works had been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and almost every other major living language.