Homebrewed Christianity -
Walking with Soren Kierkegaard,
Part 4
Faith, Doubt and Kierkegaard
with J. Aaron Simmons
November 3, 2021
This week, J. Aaron Simmons joins me to discuss philosopher/theologian Soren Kierkegaard. Although Kierkegaard died in 1855, his message has deep resonance and relevance today. Enjoy!
NOTE: Those into process theology like myself should also listen to the podcast with Catherine Keller which is next in line after Aaron's Kierkegaarde podcast. - re slater
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SHORT TAKES, RESOURCES, AND MORE
NOTE: Pay especial attention to Stephen Backhouse below. - re slater
Søren Kierkegaard on Reintroducing Christianity into Christendom
by Stephen Backhouse
Sep 20, 2017
Christendom, rather than being an official connection between a government and a religion, is most often found in attitudes and mistaken assumptions. In today's Seven Minute Seminary, Dr. Stephen Backhouse demonstrates how Søren Kierkegaard can be appropriated to challenge our core assumptions about identity and allegiance.
PHILOSOPHY - Soren Kierkegaard
Jun 26, 2015
Soren Kierkegaard is useful to us because of the intensity of his despair at the compromises and cruelties of daily life. He is a companion for our darkest moments.
Greatest Philosophers In History | Søren Kierkegaard
Aug 18, 2020
Søren Kierkegaard was a profound and prolific 19th century writer and philosopher in the Danish Golden Age of intellectual and artistic activity. He wrote about how we choose to live and what it means to be alive, centred in the individual or “existing being”. He is regarded as the father of Existentialism. The stress of subjectivity is one of Kierkegaard’s main contributions.His concept of anxiety or angst is one of the most profound pre-Freudian works of psychology. His most popular work includes the leap of faith, the concept of angst, the three stages on life (aesthetic, ethical, religious), among others.
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| Amazon Link |
The Essential Kierkegaard Paperback
May 30, 2000
by Søren Kierkegaard (Author),
Howard V. Hong (Editor), Edna H. Hong (Editor)
This is the most comprehensive anthology of Søren Kierkegaard's works ever assembled in English. Drawn from the volumes of Princeton's authoritative Kierkegaard's Writings series by editors Howard and Edna Hong, the selections represent every major aspect of Kierkegaard's extraordinary career. They reveal the powerful mix of philosophy, psychology, theology, and literary criticism that made Kierkegaard one of the most compelling writers of the nineteenth century and a shaping force in the twentieth. With an introduction to Kierkegaard's writings as a whole and explanatory notes for each selection, this is the essential one-volume guide to a thinker who changed the course of modern intellectual history.The anthology begins with Kierkegaard's early journal entries and traces the development of his work chronologically to the final The Changelessness of God. The book presents generous selections from all of Kierkegaard's landmark works, including Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, Works of Love, and The Sickness unto Death, and draws new attention to a host of such lesser-known writings as Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions and The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air. The selections are carefully chosen to reflect the unique character of Kierkegaard's work, with its shifting pseudonyms, its complex dialogues, and its potent combination of irony, satire, sermon, polemic, humor, and fiction. We see the esthetic, ethical, and ethical-religious ways of life initially presented as dialogue in two parallel series of pseudonymous and signed works and later in the "second authorship" as direct address. And we see the themes that bind the whole together, in particular Kierkegaard's overarching concern with, in his own words, "What it means to exist; . . . what it means to be a human being?Together, the selections provide the best available introduction to Kierkegaard's writings and show more completely than any other book why his work, in all its creativity, variety, and power, continues to speak so directly today to so many readers around the world.
Quick Facts
Birthday: May 5, 1813
Girlfriend: Regine Schlegel (Ex)
Died At Age: 42
Sun Sign: Taurus
Also Known As: Søren Kierkegaard
Born Country: Denmark
Born In: Copenhagen, Denmark
Famous As: Philosopher, Theologian & Religious Author
Father: Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard
Mother: Ane Sørensdatter Lund Kierkegaard
Siblings: Peter Christian Kierkegaard
Died On: November 11, 1855
Place Of Death: Copenhagen, Denmark
Who was Soren Kierkegaard?
- Soren Kierkegaard was a famous Danish philosopher, theologian and religious author.
- He was well known for his criticism of the philosophies of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel.
- His philosophical work generally deals with the issues of living as a “single individual” and giving priority to concrete human reality over abstract thinking.
- His work in theology focuses mainly on Christian ethics and institution of the Church. It also deals with the difference between the purely objective proofs of Christianity and a subjective relationship to Jesus Christ.
- Kierkegaard was also interested in human psychology and his psychological work explores the emotions and the feelings of individuals when facing situations in life.
- His intellectuality was influenced by Socrates and the Socratic Method.
- Kierkegaard’s earlier works were mainly written under various pseudonymous characters, presenting their own distinctive viewpoints and interacting with each other.
Childhood & Early Life
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was born on 5 May 1813, in Copenhagen. His father, Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard, a wealthy hosier, was a self-made man; he was intelligent, but melancholic. Søren’s mother, Ane Sørensdatter Lund, was his second wife. His first marriage to Kirstine Nielsdatter was childless.
Raised as a shepherd boy, Michael experienced great hardship in his childhood. One day, while alone on the heath, he cursed God for his adversities and loneliness. In later years, he believed that he had earned God’s wrath because of that, successfully transmitting his belief to his children.
Before her marriage, Ane Sørensdatter, a cheerful but uneducated woman, was a housemaid with the family. After Kirstine’s death, she found herself pregnant with Michael’s child, which compelled him to marry her. That he got his maid pregnant soon after his wife’s death also added to Michael’s burden of guilt.
Born the youngest of his parents’ seven children, Søren had three sisters and three brothers, out of whom five died young. While Michael was convinced that all his children would die young because of his sin, Søren and his brother, Peter Christian, later a renowned bishop, lived to experience adulthood.
As a child, Søren idolized his father, quickly developing a bond with him, going out with him on imaginary walks during bad weather. During these walks, taking place within the confine of the study, his father would describe the make-believe sights, helping him to develop his power of imagination.
During this period, he probably also inherited from his father his heavy burden of guilt and a belief that his father’s long life and wealth was actually God’s revenge. It often made the young boy depressed and gloomy.
In 1821, after finishing his education at an elementary school, Søren was enrolled at Østre Borgerdyd Gymnasium, a well-regarded “School of Civic Virtue” in Copenhagen. Here, he had a classical education, excelling in Latin and history, finally graduating in 1830.
In 1831, he entered the University of Copenhagen with theology. But he soon lost interest in that, instead being drawn towards literature and philosophy, especially studying fictitious literary figures like Don Juan and Faust, trying to find an existential model that he could follow.
Although he was aware about his father’s sense of gloom since his childhood, quite often becoming depressed because of that, it was only in 1834 that he came to know the reasons. It came as a shock, making him leave home, abandoning the Christian faith in which he was brought up.
Estranged from his father, living with mental turmoil, he began a new search. In 1835, he wrote, “The thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die.… What is truth but to live for an idea?”
In 1838, Søren returned home, being reconciled not only with his father, but also with Christianity, deciding to live by its tenets. Also after his father’s death in the same year, he decided to complete his formal education, financing it with his inheritance of approximately 31,000 rigsdaler.
In June 1841, he completed his dissertation, ‘Om begrebetironi med stadigthensyntil Socrates’ (On the Concept of Irony, with Constant Reference to Socrates), defending it in September. Finally on 20 October 1841, he graduated from the University of Copenhagen with a Magister Arutim.
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