A Short Life of Kierkegaard

Abstract

A small, insignificant-looking intellectual with absurdly long legs, Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) was a veritable Hans Christian Andersen caricature of a man. A strange combination of witty cosmopolite and melancholy introvert, he spent years writing under a series of fantastical pseudonyms, lavishing all the splendor of his mind on a seldom-appreciative world. He had a tragic love affair with a young girl, was dominated by an unforgettable Old Testament father, fought a sensational literary duel with a popular satiric magazine, and died in the midst of a violent quarrel with the state church for which he had once studied theology. Yet this iconoclast produced a number of brilliant books that have profoundly influenced modern thought. This classic biography presents a charming and warmly appreciative introduction to the life and work of the great Danish writer. It tells the story of Kierkegaard's emotionally turbulent life with a keen sense of drama and an acute understanding of how his life shaped his thought. The result is a wonderfully informative and entertaining portrait of one of the most important thinkers of the past two centuries.

Living within the Sacred Tension: Kierkegaard's Climacean Works as a Guide for Christian Existence

“…Often times, however, these themes lend themselves well to either Fragments or Postscript , but not necessarily to both. A second reason is that rather than engaging the works with a keen eye for their dissimilarities, readers often simply adopt Climacus' own claims concerning the congruity of the works . Although there is nothing inherently wrong with these two approaches, they nevertheless still carry certain consequences for how one interprets the Climacean works.…”