Soren Kierkegaard
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An Unlikely Meditation on Modern Happiness February 09, 2022
In his preface to Fear and Trembling (1843), Søren Kierkegaard (writing under the pseudonym, Johannes de silentio) says he hopes no one will read his book. Further, he predicts his wish will be granted because of the reading proclivities of his conte...
Pascal of the North February 09, 2021
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), a hybrid poet, theologian, and philosopher, widely regarded as the Ur-existentialist, argued that there is no riskier strategy in life than being risk-averse. In this, the eighth large-scale biography of the Danish fire...
Kierkegaard Is for Lovers December 11, 2020
It is relatively easy, if perhaps a bit crude, to draw a dividing line between two groups of great philosophers: those whose lives we pass over without comment, and those whose personal experiences continually whet our appetites for more. Does anyone...
A Ride Through Applied Philosophy September 01, 2020
I was 12- or 13-years-old when an uncle gave me a copy of Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World. It was long and full of ideas that were new to me, so I spent the summer with my head in and out of that book.It opened the door to philosophy, and I crossed ...
2020's Existentialist Turn August 28, 2020
Existentialist ideas have seen a remarkable comeback during the COVID-19 pandemic, from Albert Camus’s frequently invoked novel The Plague, Friedrich Nietzsche’s turn to tragedy, and Simone de Beauvoir’s and Jean-Paul Sartre’s critique of bad faith, ...
How Should One Live July 28, 2020
To the question implicit in all of Søren Kierkegaard’s writings—how can one be a human being in the world?—one is tempted to respond: by not being Søren Kierkegaard. ...
The Emo Existentialism of Søren Kierkegaard July 08, 2020
KIERKEGAARD WAS AN EARNEST, brilliant, difficult, vituperative, sensitive, sickly emo brat whose statue in the Valhalla of Sad Young Literary Men is surely the size of a Bamiyan Buddha. He was a Christian whose devoutness was so idiosyncratic as to b...
Life of a Philosopher for Whom Life Was the Main Question May 08, 2020
Early in life, the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard was bestowed the nickname gaflen, or “fork,” for his talent at detecting weakness in others — and his taste for prodding at it.Recently, that gaflen, that proud gadfly of the church, “the doctor...
The Philosopher Who Rebelled on Matters of the Soul May 05, 2020
In his trial before the citizens of Athens, Socrates famously compared himself to a gadfly — a pest, sent by god, perhaps, to “awaken and persuade and reproach” his fellow Athenians so that they did not “spend the rest of [their] lives asleep.” If he...
