SOREN KIERKEGAARD

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was born on May 5, 1813 in

the city of Copenhagen, the last of seven children. His
father, Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard came from
humble backgrounds from the plains of western
Jutland; While still a teenager, he moved to
Copenhagen to work in a textile store. He knew how to
make his way as a merchant until he achieved
economic success, accumulating a large fortune. He
also knew how to relate to an intellectual sector of that
city; With a strong inclination towards religious
problems, he organized evenings – which little Søren
attended – in which they discussed the arguments of
rationalist philosophy and many questions of Lutheran
theology. He married Ana Sørensdatter Lund, one day
he decided to abandon his life as a merchant to
dedicate himself more intensely to religious life and to
the care of his children, especially that of his youngest
son Søren, trying to awaken in him an imagination and dialectical capacity. which soon
had results.

Nytorv Square where Søren Kierkegaard was born and lived for many years
Søren Kierkegaard grew up in this paternal environment. Between the years 1819 and
1834 his mother and five siblings died. These events, added to his melancholic and
reflective temperament, instilled in him the suspicion that a curse weighed on the family,
condemned to disappear from the earth. . He made a first attempt to reconcile himself
with the world, to fight against the melancholy aggravated by that suspicion, and
although he was enrolled in theology studies at the University of Copenhagen, he
neglected them due to his aesthetic and literary interests, he joined with his companions
in the carefree life of cafes, of dressing in fashion and multiplying his walks through that
small city. As a consequence of this and due to a certain rivalry with his brother Peter, at
the age of 23, he and his father argued until reaching an agreement that he would stop
living in his father's house, receiving an annual amount of money from his father.

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 A year later he reconciled with his father, who confessed that as a child he had cursed
God and that he had lived with his wife before marriage. Full of compassion, Kierkegaard
became closer to his father, but a few months later, in August 1838, his father died. From
these events, he experienced a fuller conversion to religious life, carefully completing his
university studies in theology and philosophy. In 1841 he received his Master 's degree in
philosophy with the thesis On the concept of irony , in which he made an interesting
study on that topic, comparing Socratic irony with the romantic rise of that time and the
Hegelian position on the matter.

Ana Sørensdatter Lund and Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard, parents of Søren

Kierkegaard
A few years earlier, in the Spring of 1837, Kierkegaard met Regina Olsen, she was 15
years old and the daughter of a state councilor Terkel Olsen. From their first meeting,
Kierkegaard was pleasantly impressed and very soon fell in love with her, for more than
three years. years Kierkegaard courted her and in September 1840, they became engaged,
having ousted another suitor with whom Regina already had a certain commitment made.
However, that dream for which he had fought for so long and which would serve – along
with the reconciliation of his father and the completion of his studies – as a normal and
responsible way to direct his life; All this was broken in a short time, already with the
courtship in tow, he realized that he could not get rid - even if he wanted to - of his
melancholy, nor could he imagine leading a life accommodated to the marital
circumstances, he ended up becoming convinced that the disproportion between his body
and His spirit would end up destroying Regina, whom he loved so much. A year after the
engagement, Kierkegaard definitively broke off his marital engagement, although he did
not want to explain the true reasons to Regina, as that would have increased her pain and
she could even have prevented the breakup; On the contrary, Kierkegaard appeared
frivolous and somewhat indifferent, with the intention that she could reject him more
easily. All this caused Kierkegaard great pain that lasted his entire life. In his works there
are continuous references to both his father and Regina.

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 Regina Olsen
A few days after the breakup with Regina Olsen, Kierkegaard left for Berlin, where he
attended a course by the famous philosopher Schelling; although his fundamental task
was to write his first great work The Alternative . Back in Copenhagen Kierkegaard
dedicated himself fully to his task as a writer, in less than a year and a half, until the
publication of his first works, he wrote around a thousand pages published in 3
pseudonymous works and nine edifying speeches, all of them published in 1843, among
which are, in addition to The Alternative , the famous writing Fear and Tremor and The
Repetition . Also in the following years he worked a lot, he did not need a paid job that
would prevent him from concentrating on his ideas due to the large inheritance received
from his father. In these years he developed a vast world of pseudonyms, literary forms,
various philosophical, aesthetic and religious themes, and all of this within an original
proposal of thought. This intensity as a writer extends until 1845, the year in which he
published Etapas en el camino de la vida and wrote the definitive and non-scientific Post-
scriptum to the philosophical crumbs , both works very extensive in content.

The beginning of 1846 is marked by one of the most painful events in his activity as a
writer. A few days before the beginning of the year, the yearbook of aesthetic themes G æ
a was published. In that issue a writing by Peder Ludvig Møller, a year younger than
Kierkegaard, writer, poet and critic, appeared; His article entitled A Visit to Søro was a
criticism in derogatory terms of Kierkegaard's pseudonymous work Stages on the Path of
Life , published in April 1845, his review mixed aspects of the content with comments on
Kierkegaard's person and peculiarities. Our author responded with an article published in
F æ drelandet, to which The Corsair in response to Kierkegaard, starting on January 2,
began a series of articles to satirize his person and his writings; several of them were even
accompanied by caricatures showing Kierkegaard in ridiculous positions or shapes, or
making fun of his writings. The articles followed one another over four months. The
problem for Kierkegaard worsened when some people, upon recognizing him on the
street, mocked him. What worried him most was that “the public” had no interest in
understanding the coherence that pseudonyms contained in his work as a writer, and who,
on the contrary, encouraged by The Corsair, considered all of Kierkegaard's writings to
be tremendous gibberish.

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 Caricature by Søren Kierkegaard appearing in El Corsari

With the edition of the definitive and non-scientific Post-scriptum to the philosophical
crumbs, in February 1846, Kierkegaard considered that a stage of his work as a writer
was ending; he had been considering for some time the possibility of being a rural
shepherd and stopping writing, or at least , stop writing major works under pseudonyms.
Indeed, during that year he only published one literary review and worked on a work
about Adler. On the other hand, if we consider the works of the following years, the
religious-edifying nature of most of his writings is obvious, only interrupted by some
reviews of aesthetic themes and, at the end of his life, by the open controversy against
representatives of the Danish church. In this period there are the Edifying Discourses with
Various Points of View (written in 1847 and published posthumously), The Works of Love
, published in September 1847, and Christian Discourses , published in April 1848.

In the years 1849 and 1850 he published two works under the same pseudonym Anti-
Climacus, The Mortal Disease and Exercise of Christianity . The first deals with the
desperate ways in which the ego of many individuals tries to adjust their lives by
rejecting God in one way or another, that is, despair considered as sin. A few months
earlier, Kierkegaard had published – under his name – The Lilies of the Field and the
Birds of the Sky , one of his edifying works best achieved for its strength and simplicity;
Its content refers to Christian hope in the face of the disappointments and difficulties that
life can offer. In the second work Exercise of Christianity , he takes occasion of Christ's
invitation "Come to me, all you who are troubled and burdened, and I will give you
relief." The book is about "the cure" to that despair through faith in Christ, a faith that
must be differentiated from the diluted and undemanding Christianity of the church
established in the world as a “triumphant church.” As can be seen, these three works form
a group about hope and despair, despair ( The Mortal Disease ) is well delimited – before
( The Lilies of the Field ) and after ( The Exercise of Christianity ) – by the hope of the
sincere Christian attitude, far from the vision that is sometimes had of Kierkegaard's
thought, as if it were loaded with anguish and despair. Likewise, if we include The Works
of Love , also from this time, another trilogy is completed, this time of specific works on
the fundamental virtues of Christianity: faith (explained in Exercise of Christianity ),
hope ( The Lilies of the Field and the Birds of the heaven ) and charity ( The Works of
Love ). These works also have continuous points of contact with his first set of works,

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which helps to see the continuity and strategy of Kierkegaard's indirect communication
and objectives. Kierkegaard stopped publishing in the years 1852 and 1853; The entries
in his diary and loose notes intensified, the most recurrent themes continued to be
considerations on Christianity, he returned once again to his reflections on Abraham and
Fear and Trembling , he retrospectively analyzed his vocation as a writer; The diaries
also record a renewed fervor and memory of Regina Olsen, as if she accompanied him
during those difficult years.

Desk on which Kierkegaard wrote most of his writings.

The last period in Kierkegaard's life as a writer has as its chronological reference the
death of Bishop Mynster, which occurred on January 30, 1854. Mynster had been a friend
of his father; When Kierkegaard was little he heard many discussions in his paternal
home on various philosophical and theological topics between his father and Mynster.
Before Mynster's death, Kierkegaard had already begun a more direct and insistent
criticism of the official church in his writings; As already noted, in The Exercise of
Christianity Kierkegaard makes a continuous criticism of the church that has mitigated
the demands of Christianity and, instead, has proclaimed itself triumphant, as if it had
already defeated evil in the world once and for all. life of his faithful.

Within these critical antecedents there are also the writings For an examination of
conscience recommended to contemporaries (September 1851) and Judge yourselves!
(beginning 1852, posthumous publication). In both works the attack is direct to the
church that has made a pact with worldly temporality, falsely presuming to be united to
Christ, dissociating faith and works; in the second writing Judge yourselves! , the attack
was already directed against the person of Mynster. His completely open criticism
originated on the occasion of Mynster's funeral, officiated by what would be his
successor Hans Lassen Martensen, Kierkegaard's professor at the university, a disciple of
Hegel and his introducer in Denmark. At the funeral, Martensen praised the figure of
Mynster again and again, his dedication to the service of truth and Christianity, and
invited everyone to follow his example. Kierkegaard's indignation was immediate, the
time had come for a direct confrontation; However, he had to wait until December – it

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was not so simple to publish a frontal attack on a personality as renowned as Martensen.
When Kierkegaard found the opportunity, he began publishing 21 articles in F æ
drelandet, from December 18, 1854 to May 25 of the following year. The very titles of
the articles show the force of his attacks: The first, making a direct allusion to
Martensen's praise, was titled: “Bishop Mynster was a witness to the truth”, “one of the
authentic witnesses of the truth” ; Are these statements true? In the fourth, the heading is
the following: The dispute with Bishop Martensen; The Christianization that is decisive
for the established church is not in accordance with the Christian point of view. In the
sixteenth, in response to Dean Victor Bloch's proposal to sanction Kierkegaard
ecclesiastically, he responded in a challenging manner with the article entitled: What
cruel punishment! The last one, after which it was no longer prudent to publish in F æ
drelandet, had as its heading: Bishop Martensen's silence is 1° an unsustainable
Christian point of view; 2nd ridiculous; 3° foolishly prudent; 4° for more than one
negligible consideration . The defense of Martensen and the Danish church was not long
in coming from many ecclesiastical and civil authorities; Grundtvig himself raised
accusations against Kierkegaard. The atmosphere around this controversy became
increasingly tense, for the following responses Kierkegaard stopped publishing in F æ
drelandet and began, autonomously, the printing of some booklets under the title The
Instant . Nine issues appeared between May and September 1855; When he fell ill,
number ten had already been written.

Jakob Peter Mynster Hans Lassen Martensen

Possibly due to the great tension that all these events caused in him, combined with his
weak physical constitution, Kierkegaard was attacked by paralysis on October 2, 1855
and fell senseless in the middle of the street. A few weeks later, Kierkegaard died on
Sunday the 11th. November at 42 years old.

We can hardly imagine what would have happened if Kierkegaard had not lost his
strength and died that year, if he had lived a few more years. The situation was extremely
critical, since he was also at enmity with his brother and was practically without money.
Although, on the other hand, he was convinced of the need to raise his voice against the
established church, he considered that this situation represented martyrdom and was
willing to sacrifice.

“It is death, pray for me so that it comes quickly and is good. I have been an instrument

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in the hands of Providence, which has put me in the world to serve it. I have lived a few
years and then suddenly, Providence has stretched out its hand to make me enter its ark.
A little more and I will certainly be in the choir singing Hallelujah, hallelujah.”

Søren Kierkegaard a few days before his death.