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1813–1855 Denmark
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855) was a Danish Christian philosopher and theologian, considered to be a founder of Existentialist thought and Absurdist traditions. He wrote critical texts on organized religion, Christendom, morality, ethics, psychology and philosophy of religion, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony and parables.
Denmark Novelists Philosophers Poets Theologians Also known as: Kierkegaard, Kierkegaard, Søren, Kierkegaard, Søren Aabye, Soren Aabye Kierkegaard, Soren Kierkegaard, Soren kierkegaard
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209 quotes
The self-deceived person may even think he is able to console others who became victims of perfidious deception, but what insanity when someone who himself has lost the eternal wants to heal the person who is extremely sick unto death!
This distinguished corruption will teach the distinguished person that he exists only for the distinguished, that he is to live only in the alliance of their circles, that he must not exist for other people, just as they must not exist for him.
Works of Love (1847)
No question is here raised as to the true content of this; the question is if one will give assent to the God’s having come into existence, by which the God’s eternal essence is inflected in the dialectical determinations of coming into existence.
Philosophical Fragments (1844)
For the happy individualities, the first love is also the second, the third, the last; here the first love has the qualification of eternity; for the unhappy individualities the first love is the instant; it acquires the qualification of the temporal.
There is only one thing I do not want to fail to stress, that as soon as the ethical person’s gymnastics become an imaginary construction he has ceased to live ethically. All such imaginary constructing is equivalent to sophistry in the realm of knowledge.
Woe to the Christian Church when it will have been victorious in this world, for then it is not the Church that has been victorious but the world. Then the heterogeneity between Christianity and the world has vanished, the world has won, and Christianity has lost.
Practice in Christianity (1850)
Someone can conquer kingdoms and countries without being a hero; someone else can prove himself a hero by controlling his temper. Someone can display courage by doing the out-of-the-ordinary, another by doing the ordinary. The question is always-how does he do it?
Knowledge can in part be set aside, and one can then go further in order to collect new; the natural scientist can set aside insects and flowers and then go further, but if the existing person sets aside the decision in existence, it is eo ipso lost, and he is changed.
Things are simply so arranged that not all men can have money. Prometheus and Epimetheus, you say, were undeniably very wise, but all the same it is incomprehensible that when in other respects they endowed men so gloriously it did not occur to them to give them money also.
To be able to fall down in such a way that in the same second it looks as if one were standing and walking, to transform the leap of life into a walk, absolutely to express the sublime in the pedestrian – that only the knight of faith can do – this is the one and only prodigy.
Fear and Trembling (1843)
This fact, that the opposite of sin is by no means virtue, has been overlooked. The latter is partly a pagan view, which is content with a merely human standard, and which for that very reason does not know what sin is, that all sin is before God. No, the opposite of sin is faith.
The Sickness unto Death (1849)
To become sober is: to come to oneself in self-knowledge and before God as nothing before him, yet infinitely, unconditionally engaged. P. 104
Judge For Yourselves! 1851 (1876)
What does it mean to live esthetically, and what does it mean to live ethically? The esthetic in a person is that by which he spontaneously and immediately is what he is; the ethical is that by which he becomes what he becomes.
You wanted God's ideas about what was best for you to coincide with your ideas, but you also wanted him to be the almighty Creator of heaven and earth so that he could properly fulfill your wish. And yet, if he were to share your ideas, he would cease to be the almighty Father.
Upbuilding Discourses (1843)
These two essays probably will essentially be able to interest only theologians. (Preface)
Two Ethical-Religious Minor Essays (1849)
What is asked of a man that he may be able to pray for his enemies? To pray for one's enemies is the hardest thing of all. That is why it exasperates us so much in our present day situation.
I stick my finger in existence — it smells of nothing. Where am I? Who am I? How came I here? What is this thing called the world? What does this world mean? Who is it that has lured me into the world?
Repetition (1843)
Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth — look at the dying man’s struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment.
Imagine a lover who has received a letter from his beloved – I assume that God's Word is just as precious to you as this letter is to the lover. I assume that you read and think you ought to read God's Word in the same way the lover reads this letter.
For Self-Examination (1851)
I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations — one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it — you will regret both.
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