Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) was a Danish philosopher, theologian, and writer, widely regarded as the father of existentialism. Born in Copenhagen to the family of Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard, a prosperous hosier whose wealth allowed his son to devote himself entirely to writing, Søren studied theology and philosophy at the University of Copenhagen. His intellectual development was profoundly marked by personal turmoil: his father’s tortured religious conscience—rooted in a boyhood memory of cursing God on a Jutland heath—instilled in him a lasting sense of inherited guilt, while his broken engagement to Regine Olsen in 1841 became a near-symbolic motif that echoed throughout his authorship.
Kierkegaard’s works, many written under elaborate pseudonyms, explored individual choice, anxiety, faith, and the absurd. His 1843 breakthrough Either/Or was followed the same year by Fear and Trembling, and later by The Sickness Unto Death (1849), among many others. These texts emphasized subjective truth and the “leap”—a term he used in connection with faith, though the familiar phrase “leap of faith” is largely a later anglophone formulation. He critiqued both Hegelian rationalism and what he saw as the complacent Christianity of bourgeois Denmark, arguing for a deeply personal and paradoxical relationship with the divine.
In Copenhagen, Kierkegaard was a recognizable and often controversial public figure. His feud with the satirical paper The Corsair (1845-46) made him a subject of street caricature, and in the final year of his life he launched a blistering attack on the Danish State Church through the pamphlet series The Moment, accusing the established clergy of betraying authentic Christianity. He collapsed in the street shortly after this campaign and died in Copenhagen in November 1855. Though his international reputation developed only posthumously—chiefly through German translations and the rise of 20th-century existentialism—his ideas have since profoundly shaped modern philosophy, theology, and literature.
“Desire in our age is simultaneously sinful and boring, because it desires what belongs to the neighbor.”
— Søren Kierkegaard Primary source“The most beautiful time is the first period of falling in love, when, from every encounter, every glance, one fetches home something new to rejoice over.”
— Søren Kierkegaard Primary source“There are particular occasions when one may be most painfully moved to see a person standing utterly alone in the world. The other day I saw a poor girl walking utterly alone to church to be confirmed.”
— Søren Kierkegaard Primary source“Pleasure disappoints; possibility does not.”
— Søren Kierkegaard Primary source“Real enjoyment consists not in what one enjoys but in the idea.”
— Søren Kierkegaard Primary source“Recollection is more richly satisfying than all actuality.”
— Søren Kierkegaard Primary source“My time I divide as follows: the one half I sleep; the other half I dream. I never dream when I sleep; that would be a shame, because to sleep is the height of genius.”
— Søren Kierkegaard Primary source“No one comes back from the dead; no one has come into the world without weeping. No one asks when one wants to come in; no one asks when one wants to go out.”
— Søren Kierkegaard Primary source“Marry, and you will regret it. Do not marry, and you will also regret it. Marry or do not marry, you will regret it either way.”
— Søren Kierkegaard Primary sourceMore quotes by Søren Kierkegaard →
⭐️ Either/Or (February 20, 1843)
Either/Or, published under the pseudonym Victor Eremita (“victorious hermit”), presents a dialectical exploration of two contrasting life views: the aesthetic and the ethical.
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