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Søren Kierkegaard

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On the Coordinates: 6.1 Philosophy of Religion

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

Also known as Johannes de Silentio, Johannes Climacus, Anti-Climacus, Victor Eremita

1813 – 1855 · Copenhagen

Traditions: Modern European

Schools: Existentialism

In brief

Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) was a Danish philosopher and religious writer who lived almost his entire life in Copenhagen. Writing many books under invented authors, he described different ways of living, the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious, and asked what it means for an individual to become a self. Against the confident systems of the Hegelians and the comfortable Christianity of the Danish church, he stressed passionate commitment, anxiety, despair and faith that cannot be secured by argument. He is often called the father of existentialism, though the label is misleading, and he influenced theology, psychology and literature as well as philosophy.

In depth Last reviewed

Connections

Places
Berlin studiedCopenhagen born
Tradition
Modern EuropeanExistentialism
Influences
6 sourced relationships
Conversations
Kierkegaard calls preferential love a disguised self-love. Was he unfair to lovers and friends?

Life

Kierkegaard was born in Copenhagen on 5 May 1813, the youngest of seven children of Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard and Anne Lund. He studied theology at the University of Copenhagen and in 1841 gained the Magister degree with a dissertation, On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates. In 1840 he became engaged to Regine Olsen, but broke the engagement the following year, an event that haunts much of his writing. He then spent time in Berlin, where he attended Schelling’s lectures. From 1843 he produced a remarkable series of books, many under pseudonyms: Either/Or, Fear and Trembling and Repetition in 1843, Philosophical Fragments and The Concept of Anxiety in 1844, Stages on Life’s Way in 1845 and Concluding Unscientific Postscript in 1846. In 1845–46 the satirical paper The Corsair mocked him, and he gave up his plan to become a pastor and devoted himself to writing. He was never ordained, though he sometimes preached. In his last years he waged a public attack on the Danish state church, notably in his broadsheet The Moment. He collapsed in the street, was taken to hospital and died there a few weeks later, on 11 November 1855.

Problems

  • What it means to become a self
  • How the aesthetic, ethical and religious ways of life relate
  • Whether faith can be justified by reason
  • What anxiety and despair reveal about freedom
  • How to communicate truths that must be lived, not just understood

Core ideas

Spheres of existence

Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms describe three ‘spheres’ or ‘stages’ of existence. The aesthetic life seeks interesting experiences and avoids commitment; the first volume of Either/Or gives the papers of a nameless young aesthete, ending with the ‘Seducer’s Diary’. The ethical life, voiced in the second volume by Judge William, commits to duties, marriage and a public role, and so gives the self continuity. The religious life places the individual before God, beyond what social morality can fully express. The spheres are often read as a ladder, each higher than the last, but the SEP notes that they may be better seen as rival ways of life, none of which can be reached by argument alone.

Faith and the suspension of the ethical

Fear and Trembling, by ‘Johannes de silentio’, retells God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Ethically, Abraham is a would-be murderer; yet he is honoured as the father of faith. The author asks whether there can be a ‘teleological suspension of the ethical’, a higher purpose that overrides universal ethical duty. If so, faith cannot be explained or justified to others, and Abraham must remain silent. The book does not settle the question; it insists that faith is harder and stranger than comfortable believers suppose. Critics worry that the argument could excuse any fanatic who claims a divine command.

Truth as subjectivity

In Concluding Unscientific Postscript, the pseudonym Johannes Climacus distinguishes objective truth, which concerns what is believed, from subjective truth, which concerns how it is held. For questions that bear on one’s existence, such as whether to become a Christian, what matters is passionate, inward appropriation, not detached inquiry. Climacus argues that the Incarnation is a paradox that offends reason, and can be embraced only by a ‘leap of faith’. This has led to charges of irrationalism. The IEP notes that ‘truth is subjectivity’ is Climacus’s phrase, not necessarily Kierkegaard’s, and the SEP argues that ‘contradiction’ here means something closer to incongruity.

Anxiety and despair

The Concept of Anxiety describes anxiety as ‘the dizziness of freedom’: the unsettling awareness, before any choice, that one can choose, which precedes sin. The Sickness unto Death, by ‘Anti-Climacus’, presents the self as a relation that relates itself to itself, but which can do so only by relating to another, the God who established it. Despair is the failure to be that self truly. It takes forms such as the despair of possibility, which loses touch with necessity, and the despair of necessity, which has lost hope. The cure, for Anti-Climacus, is faith, in which the self is grounded in God. These analyses influenced existential philosophy and psychotherapy.

Works

Influences and relationships

6 sourced relationships. Open one to read why, and the source.

Shaped or answered Søren Kierkegaard 3

Søren Kierkegaard shaped or answered 3

Reception

Outside Denmark, Kierkegaard became known mainly through German translations; he even reached Japanese readers, via German, before English ones, and Nishida Kitarō shows his influence. Phenomenological and existential thinkers, including Heidegger, Jaspers, Sartre, Marcel and Levinas, took up his analyses of anxiety, the self and existence, though the SEP calls the ‘father of existentialism’ label misleading. Wittgenstein called him a ‘saint’ and judged him by far the deepest thinker of the nineteenth century. Writers including Kafka, Unamuno, Auden and Updike, the film-maker Dreyer and psychotherapists such as Ludwig Binswanger and Rollo May drew on him. Recent scholarship reads him as a careful philosopher of selfhood and religion, not an irrationalist.

Disputed interpretations

How should the pseudonyms be read?

Kierkegaard asked readers to attribute the pseudonymous books to their fictional authors, not to him. Some scholars therefore treat each pseudonym as a distinct viewpoint that Kierkegaard need not share; others think the pseudonyms are thin masks for his own views. A middle view sees Anti-Climacus as only ‘weakly’ pseudonymous. How one decides affects every interpretation of his doctrine.

Irrationalist or critic of reason’s limits?

Critics read the ‘leap’, the ‘paradox’ and the ‘absurd’ as a rejection of reason in favour of blind commitment. Many recent interpreters argue that Kierkegaard instead marks the limits of what reason can establish about existence and faith, while using careful argument to do so. The SEP holds that, for him, offence at Christianity is no more rationally justified than faith.

Primary texts

  • Selections from the Writings of Kierkegaard Free to read · Project GutenbergLee M. Hollander’s early translation, including parts of Fear and Trembling; free on Project Gutenberg. The standard scholarly edition is Kierkegaard’s Writings, translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton).

Sources

Scholarly sources and reference works, free to read online.

Guides

In the Book corner

  • Either/Or 1843 · Intermediate
    Kierkegaard's first major pseudonymous work, presented as papers found in a second-hand writing desk by an editor called Victor Eremita. The first…
  • Fear and Trembling 1843 · Intermediate
    Published under the pseudonym Johannes de Silentio, who claims he cannot understand faith, this book circles around the story of Abraham being…
  • Concluding Unscientific Postscript 1846 · Advanced
    A long, often comic book published in 1846 under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus, as a 'postscript' many times longer than the Philosophical…
  • The Sickness unto Death 1849 · Advanced
    A short, dense work published in 1849 under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus, with Kierkegaard named as editor, and described on its title page…

In the conversation

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Cite this page

Written and kept up to date by the Coordinates of Thought editors. Each statement was checked against the sources listed above before publishing; this page is not peer-reviewed. Last updated 26 October 2026. How to cite this site.

APA (7th edition)

Coordinates of Thought Editors. (2026, October 26). Søren Kierkegaard. Coordinates of Thought. Retrieved [date accessed], from https://coordinatesofthought.com/thinker/soren-kierkegaard/

MLA (9th edition)

“Søren Kierkegaard.” Coordinates of Thought, 26 Oct. 2026, coordinatesofthought.com/thinker/soren-kierkegaard/. Accessed [date accessed].

Chicago (17th edition)

Coordinates of Thought Editors. “Søren Kierkegaard.” Coordinates of Thought. Last modified October 26, 2026. https://coordinatesofthought.com/thinker/soren-kierkegaard/.

BibTeX

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  author       = {{Coordinates of Thought Editors}},
  title        = {Søren Kierkegaard},
  howpublished = {Coordinates of Thought},
  year         = {2026},
  month        = oct,
  url          = {https://coordinatesofthought.com/thinker/soren-kierkegaard/},
  note         = {Last updated 26 October 2026}
}

RIS

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T2  - Coordinates of Thought
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For reference managers (Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote): BibTeX file · RIS file

Where next

  1. In the conversationKierkegaard calls preferential love a disguised self-love. Was he unfair to lovers and friends?

Tradition: Modern European philosophyThinkers A–Z