The Philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard

One of the most often quoted and unread authors of his time, Søren Kierkegaard had dense and complex writings that overwhelmed most readers. His dense style of writing and the complexity of his thoughts made reading his writings and journals a chore for many. Born May 5, 1813, in Copenhagen, Denmark, Søren Aabye Kierkegaard had a major influence in the development of 20th-century existentialist and postmodernist philosophies. Many go as far as to call him the “Father of Existentialism”.

His life was seen by some as being uneventful, as he rarely left his hometown of Copenhagen. He traveled abroad only a handful of times and mostly walked the streets of Copenhagen talking with ordinary people. It was at the Copenhagen university where he first studied philosophy.

Kierkegaard regarded himself as a religious poet above everything else. His Christian writings emphasized Lutheran pietism and explored sin, guilt, suffering, and responsibility for oneself. In his writings, Kierkegaard proposed that everyone passed through three stages of life on the way to “[B]ecoming a true self”. The phases he proposed are the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious.