Life

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was born on May 5, 1813, in a great house his father recently bought near the City Hall of Copenhagen. The house faced one of the great squares of the city, called the New Market (Nytorv). Except his study philosophy in Berlin, Søren Kierkegaard spent all his life in Copenhagen. On November 4, 1855, Søren Kierkegaard closed his rather short, 42 years of life in Frederik's Hospital there.
Copenhagen's population at that time was 200,000 and yet it was the capital of Denmark, which was and still is a monarch. Shakespeare's Hamlet's stage was also Denmark. It has Royal Opera House, Royal Theatre, and Royal Library, etc. An attentive visitor will discover a bronze statue of Søren Kierkegaard by an artist called Aasleff. This is an enlarged copy of another small statue made by Haaelriis and many people claim that the original is far superior. His ferocious attacks to the establishment of the theology in Denmark, his eccentric relationships with others were well recorded in order to portray his personality. Kierkegaard was a great theologian and philosopher who was considered as one of the so-called right Hegelian philosophers with the special emphasis on religion. At any rate, Søren Kierkegaard was one of the most celebrated persons Denmark has ever produced.
Apart from his study trip to Berlin, Prussia (Germany), Kierkegaard made only one trip in his own motherland beyond the island of Seeland, that was the trip to his father's birthplace, i.e., Jutland and the heath country, where he was born and was supposed to have, as a boy, suffered desperate hunger, cold and loneliness. Søren Kierkegaard's trip was made, right after he passed the Theological Examination. This was the fulfillment of his father's greatest wish.
His father, Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard, was born in Saeding, "which was not a village, not even a hamlet, but a scattered parish in the heath country where only shepherds and peat-diggers could make out a scanty existence." The stone church at Saeding suggests the utmost poverty and desolation. At his last stopping place before reaching Saeding Søren Kierkegaard wrote: "Here I sit entirely alone (I have, it is true, often been just as much alone but was never so conscious of it) and I count the hours till I shall see Saeding. I never can remember any change in my father, and now I shall see the places for which I have often felt nostalgia on account of his descriptions. Suppose I were to fall ill and be buried in Saeding cemetery! Uncanny thought. His last wish for me is fulfilled [i.e., in the fact that he had taken his theological examination] ‹ might my whole earthly destiny come to no more than this? Good Lord! My task cannot be so lowly, considering all I owe to him. From him I learned what father-love is, and I got a conception of the divine father love, the one unshakable thing in life, the true archimedean point." There is now no dwelling near it. "The church has its altar, a brightly painted pulpit, and a great crucifix, the only ornaments are two wooden tablets on the wall of the nave, both bearing inscriptions in gilt lettering upon a black ground. One was placed there in 1821 by Søren Kierkegaard's father and records the gift he made to the parish in honor of his mother's brother, Niels Andersen Seading, who when he was a boy of twelve delivered him from his bitter lot, took him to Copenhagen, and started him on the path to wealth. The other records a gift made in behalf f the school and the poor of the parish in honor of Søren Kierkegaard's father by the nephew, Michael Andersen Kierkegaard, to whom he had turned over his business. Michael describes his uncle (i.e., Søren Kierkegaard's father) as "guide and support of my youth, the benefactor of Saeding school." In 1935, Søren Kierkegaard's eightieth anniversary, the Bishop of Ribe dedicated there a marble tablet in memory of our great philosopher and theologian, Søren Kierkegaard. According to Walter Lawrie, "as this church was too poor to have a minster of its own, the parsonage with its glebe (which as well as the cemetery was known as the churchyard or Kierkgaard) was rented, and the family which occupied it was called by this name. The elder Kierkegaard, when he was settled in Copenhagen, added an "e" to the common noun, "Kierkgaard" to distinguish the cognomen. He built for his mother and two sisters a Red House with thatch roofs, that was admired in the neighborhood because it was built by bricks and timber unlike others with clay!
When the younger Kierkegaard stayed in the Red House for three days, he wrote in his diary, "It seems as though I must experience the sharpest contrasts. After living for three days with my poor old aunt, pretty much like Ulysses and his companions [literally, stable-brothers] the next place I came to was so chock full of counts and barons that it was frightful." Søren continues: "It is related here in Saeding that there is a house hereabouts where once there lived a man who in time of the pest outlived all the others and buried them. He plowed long furrows in the peat and buried his neighbors in long rows." "Standing before the door of this little place (Red House), with the aroma which hay always emits, in the light of the late afternoon; the sheep drifting home constitute the foreground; dark clouds broken by strong beams of light such as indicate a gale ‹ the heath rising in the background ‹ if only I might remember clearly the impression of the evening. The heath must be particularly fitted to develop strong minds. Here everything lies naked and unveiled before God; and here is no place for the many distractions, the many nooks and crannies wherein consciousness can hide and from which seriousness so often has trouble in recovering the dispersed thoughts. Here consciousness must definitely and precisely hedge itself in. Truly here upon the heath one well may, 'Wither shall I flee from thy presence?'"
Michael Petersen Kierkegaard, one of the nine children, however gifted in his intellectual capabilities, appeared to be condemned to a life of poverty, obscurity and desolation. However, his mother's brother (Søren's great uncle) Niels Andersen Saeding, suddenly changed Michael's life when he was 12 years old, as he took Michael Petersen to Copenhagen, as Niels Saeding had long established himself there as a hosier. Since wool was produced principally in Jutland in Denmark, it is natural that the Jutlanders were prominent in this trade. The "hosier" referred to more than a dealer in stockings; he dealt also in ready-made clothing. Michael, Søren's father must have been a very able man. He developed a considerable business in cloth, and on 12-04, 1780, when he was 24, he obtained a license to deal also in food stuffs, while on 09-19, 1788, he was licensed by royal patent to deal also in Chinese and East India wares as well as merchandise from the Danish West Indies (sugar, syrup and coffee beans for whole sale and retail. He quickly became a wealthy merchant.
But at the age of 40 years, he retired from business and left it to his nephew, Michael Andersen Kierkegaard. This followed immediately after the death of his wife's death, who was married to Søren's father only for two years. Before the year of mourning was hardly over, Michael married to Anne Søren-datter Lund, a servant at his household yet a distantly relative from Jutland, on 04-26, 1797. The first child, Maren Kiersten, was born on 09-07, 1797, four months and eleven days after the marriage. In the course of next eight years, two more daughters, Nicoline Christine and Petrea Severine and the eldest son, Peter Christian, were born , before they moved to the Central Copenhagen, where Søren Michael was born in 1807, Niels Andreas in 1809. On May 5, 1813, the last of seven children, Søren Aabye Kierkegaard, was born, when his father was 56 years old and his mother was 45. The name Søren is linguistically a corrupted form of the Latin Severinus, the name of a Saint of the fifth century, who attained a great fame in Denmark. However, he was the last to bear this name, as the popular ridicule about this great philosopher was so much that "don't be a Søren" was said as a warning to children not to be mischievous or evil.
The elder Kierkegaard was rigorously pious and brought up his children "in the fear of God."
Søren's father's religious piousness affected Søren Kierkegaard very negatively. On the one hand, he hated Christianity due to this attitude of his father. On the other, he found his father's godfearing attitude intolerable, as Søren found in father's soul the unrest despite such a profound piety. In Postscript which was written by his pseudonym, Johannes Climacus, "To cram Christianity into a child is a thing that cannot be done..." There is a reason to suspect that this father regarded his youngest son not only as his Benjamin but as his Isaac, the son who is to be sacrificed as his atonement, or at least for is guilt. In this regard, Kierkegaard wrote two years before his death in his Diary:

There are two thoughts which arose in my soul so early that I really cannot indicate in their origin The first is that there are men whose destiny it is to be sacrificed in one way or another for others in order to bring the idea out ‹ and that I wish my peculiar cross was one of them. The other thought is that I should never be tried by having to work for my living ‹ partly because I thought that I should die very young, and partly because I thought that in consideration of my peculiar cross God would spare me this suffering and problem...

Solomon's judgment is well known. It availed to discriminate between truth and deceit and to make the judge famous as a wise prince. His dream is not so well known.

If there is any pang of sympathy, it is that of having to be ashamed of one's father, of him whom one loves above all,to whom one is most indebted ‹ to have to approach him backwards with averted face in order not to behold his dishonor. But what greater bliss of sympathy can be imagined than to dare to love as the son's wish prompts him, and to dare to be proud of the father, moreover, because he is the only elect, the singularly distinguished man, a nation's strength, a country's pride, God's friend, a promise for the future, extolled in his lifetime, held by memory in the highest esteem! Happy Solomon, this was thy lot! Among the chosen people (how glorious it was even to belong to them!) he was the KIng's son (enviable lot!), son of that king who was the elect among kings.

Thus Solomon lived happily with the prophet Nathan. The father's strength and the father's achievements did not inspire him to deeds of valor, for indeed no opportunity was left for that, but it inspired him with admiration, and admiration made him a poet. But if the poet was almost jealous of his hero, the son was blissful in his devotion to the father.

Then one time the son made a visit to his royal father. In the night he awoke at hearing movement where the father slept. Horror seizes him, he fears it is a villain who would murder David. He steals nearer‹he beholds David with a crushed and contrite heart, he hears a cry of despair from the soul of the penitent.

Faint at the sight he returns to his couch, he falls asleep, but he does not rest, he dreams, he dreams that David is an ungodly man, rejected by God, that the royal majesty is a sign of God's wrath upon him, that he must wear the purple as a punishment, that he is condemned to rule, condemned to hear the benediction of the people, whereas the justice of the Lord secretly and hiddenly pronounces judgement upon the guilty one; and the dream suggests the surmise that God is not the God of the pious but of the ungodly, and that one must be an ungodly man to be God's elect‹and the horror of the dream is this contradiction.

While David lay upon the ground with crushed and contrite heart, Solomon arose from his couch, but his understanding was crushed. Horror seized him when he thought of what it is to be God's elect. He surmised that holy intimacy with God, the sincerity of the pure man before the Lord, was not the explanation, but that a private guilt was the secret which explained everything.

And Solomon became wise, but he did not became a hero; and he became a thinker, but he did not become a man of prayer; and he became a preacher; but he did not become a believer; and he was able to help many, but he was not able to help himself; and he became sensual, but not repentant; and he became contrite and downcast, but not again erect, for the power of the will had been strained by what surpassed the strength of youth. And he tossed through life, tossed about by life‹strong, supernaturally strong (that is womanishly weak) in the stirring infatuations and marvelous inventions of imagination, ingenious in expounding thoughts. But there was rift in his nature, and Solomon was like the paralytic who is unable to support his own body. In his harem he sat like a disillusioned old man, until desire for pleasure awoke, and he shouted, "Strike the tumbrels, dance before me, ye women." But when the Queen of the South came to visit him, attracted by his wisdom, then was his soul rich, and the wise answer flowed from his lips like the precious myrrh which flows from the trees in Arabia.

I must again occupy myself with my 'Antigone.' The task will be to develop and explain the presentiment of guilt. It was with this in view I reflected upon Solomon and David, Solomon's youthful relationship to David...

So the race of Labdakos is the object of the fury of the angry gods; Oedipus has killed the Sphinx, liberated Thebes, murdered his father, married his mother, and Antigone is the fruit of this marriage. So it is in the Greek tragedy. Here I diverge. In my version everything remains the same and yet all is different. Oedipus has killed the Sphinx and liberated Thebes, so much is known to all, and Oedipus lives honored and admired, happy in his love for Jocasta. The rest is hidden from men's eyes and no suspicion has recalled that horrible dream to reality. Only antigone knows it. How she came to know it lies outside the tragic interest, and every one is free in that respect to make his own surmise. At an early age, when she was not yet fully mature, dark hints of that horrible secret had at moments gripped her soul, until at last certainty at one blow cast her into the arms of anguished dread.

He (Søren Kierkegaard) stresses the fact that Antigone cannot divulge the secret which would bring shame upon her father's memory, and that therefore she cannot marry him, for she will not enter int a marriage which is not perfectly open-hearted. the grim secret is her undoing. (p. 78)

Angust (Dread) is not sudden like a dart, but slowly bores its way into the heart.

What I really need is to become clear in my own mind what I must do, not what must know‹except in so far as a knowing must precede every action. The important thing is to understand what I am destined for, to perceive what the Deity wants me to do; the point is to find the truth which truth for me, to find that idea for which I am ready to live and die. What good would it do me to discover a so-called objective truth...? ... What good would it do me if I were able to expound the significance of Christianity,..., if for me and for my life it did not have any really profound importance?What good would it do me that I were able to develop a theory of the State [like Hegel] and out of particulars fetched from many quarters put together a totality, construct a world wherein again I did not live but which I merely held up to the gaze of others? ...What good would it do me that truth stood before me cold and naked, indifferent as to whether I recognized it or not, producing rather a fearful shudder than a trustful devotion? To be sure, I am willing to recognize an imperative of the understanding and to admit that persons may be influenced through this; but then it must be livingly embodied in me‹and this it is I now recognize as the principal thing. It is for this my soul thirsts as the deserts of Africa thirst after water... It was this that I lacked, the experience of leading a complete human life and not merely a life of understanding, so that with this I should not be basing the development of my thought‹well, upon something that is called objective, something which at all events is not my own, but I should be basing it upon something connected with the deepest roots of my soul, through which, so to speak, I have grown into the divine nature and cling fast to it even thought the whole world collapses. This is what I lack, and towards it I am striving...

Works
S. A. Kierkegaard's Collected Works in 14 volumes, 1901-1906,
Ether/Or, e. A Life's Fragment, edit. by Viktor Eremita, 1843
Two religious Sermons, 1843
Fear and Trembling , Dialectic Lyrics by Johannes de silentio, 1843
On Repetition, An Attempt of Experimental Psychology by johannes Climacus, 1844
Philosophical Brocks by Johannes Climacus, 1846
The Concept of Anxeity by Nigilius Haufniensis, 1844
Religious Sermons in the Various Spirit, 1848
Christian Sermons, 1848
The Crisis, by Inter et Inter, 1848
The Viewpoint for my author's effectiveness, 1848
The Sickness onto Death, 1849
Two Small Ethico-Religious Articles, 1849
Indoctrination in Christianity, 1850
The recommended Self-Examination Today, 1851
The Diaries in 2 volumes edit. by Th. Haecker, 1923
Selections of Kierkegaard's Confessions and Thoughts, 1918

Philosophy

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was also strongly influenced by Hegel not only in his extensive use of dialectics but also in his employment of other Hegelian concepts and is therefore called sometimes as one of the right Hegelians (together with such people as Grockner). In Hegel's system, it is generally understood, a concrete particular individual and its unique experience never come to be properly accounted for, but it is so-to-speak totally ignored, although it is integrated into the development of the absolute spirit. Such an interpretation is common, because the particular was starting point, but was never the end in Hegel's understanding of reality. To Hegel, the concrete particular is meaningful, as long as it is mediated by the universal, while the universal as such in abstraction is totally meaningless and is also to be mediated by the concrete, particular. Nevertheless, from the point view of Kierkegaard, this particular, individual as Søren Aabye cannot be properly understood and grasped by such an dialectical mediation alone. On the contrary, according to Kierkegaard, such a concrete, particular individual is beyond the grasp of Hegel's dialectic approach and his system of philosophy. Therefore, Kierkegaard strongly objected Hegel's so-called "universal logicism" and "objectivism." However, such an understanding of Hegel's philosophy itself may be subjected to criticism, for such an interpretation is based on the assumption that Hegel's system was constructed by the prinicple, so called reason, which was and still is considered the human (and possibly inclduing the divine) highest cognitive faculty. The concept of reason in Hegel's system is perhaps the most misunderstood of all. This is not well elaborated here at the introductory portion of his philosophy. We intend to explore the genuine nature of Hegel's philosophy which has been overlooked and misinterpreted and totally blinded by our sight.

At any rate, in his emphasis on the concrete particular individual and subjectivity, however, Kierkegaard is often considered as the forerunner of the existential philosophy. (We would like to carefully use the term "existentialism" which was only employed by Jean-Paul Sartre and applicable to his philosophy, so the latter could not universally be applied to such existential philosophers as Heidegger, Jaspers, Gabriel Marcel, Albert Camus, Merleau-Ponty, etc.) In contrast to Hegel, as the tradition of the History of the Western philosophy, Kierkegaard's philosophy and the alpha and amega of his philosophy may be simply characterized as "individualism" in that he developed his philosophy on the basis of his own personal experience and made the concrete, particular individual as the principle of all.

It is also well known that Kierkegaard radically criticized the establishment of the current Christianity, that is , the Protestant church then in Denmark and made it as one of the steps for obtaining the new relationship to God. The process in which Kierkegaard underwent was a series of personal, philosophical struggles with inner conflicts and contradictions that were well recorded and revealed in his own diaries and other publications. Unlike Hegel's case, Kierkegaard was not able to find the solution by negation and the ultimate, harmonious unity of those opposing strives. Strange as it may sound, clearly seen in his biography above, Kierkegaard in his youth suffered even from his father's profound sense of guilt and his fear the panishment by God.

He stated, "It is and remains the hardest trial, when the human-being does not know whether one's suffering is the psychic malaise or sin."(1844) To Kierkegaard, it was always clear that he could only follow his "calling" (the call of conscience and the calling from God at the same time) by means of a certain, concrete decision and action through his own experience, but not just through speculative thinking as Kierkegaard and many other understood Hegel's philosophy.

Truth is for him not a universal necessity, but his own, concrete personal truth, which he experiences in the face of choice between his own life and death and in his responsibility. Kierkegaard made a resolution:

Now I will exert myself to solely focus my own gaze on myself and to start to internally act!

All those discourses about the higher unity which is supposed to unify the absolute opposites is a metaphysical assassination of ethics. (1844)

The existential thinking must not mean "Both/and" but "Either/or." : It is not the problem of reconciliation and mediating the contradictories as in the case of Hegel's philosophy, but the problem here is "repetition." ... The repetition is primarily that which is wrongly called "mediation." (Repetition, P. 33)

The history of the individual life makes progress through its motion from one stage to another. Each stage will be set by a leap. (Die Angst, S. 113)

The paradox is the passion of thought and the thinker who avoids paradox is like a lover who keeps oneself from passion ‹ a mediocre patron. The highest potency of every passion is such that it will its own downfall, and it is the highest passion of understanding that understanding will make a blow, although such a blow will have to bring about its own downfall in some way or other. This is the highest passion of thinking to discover something, which it cannot think of. (Philosophical Bite)

Subjectivity is truth. (Die Wahrheit is die Subjektivität.)

Whatever my ethical significance is, it is unconditionally connected to the category of individuality.

I do now feel the drive to attain the relationship to myself in that I myself am closely related to God. (august 1847)