Soren Kierkegaard — "Despair is the sickness unto death."
Despair is the sickness unto death.
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More from Soren Kierkegaard
"The most dangerous of all delusions is that you are not deluded."
"The most common deception is when a person deceives himself; the next most common is when he deceives others; the least common is when he deceives himself into believing that he is deceiving others."
"Of all ridiculous things the most ridiculous seems to me, to be busy – to be someone who is brisk about their food and work. Therefore, whenever I see a fly settling, in the decisive moment, on the no…"
"The task is to understand myself, to understand what I am to do, to see what God really wishes me to do; the point is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I can live and d…"
"The objective truth is not for me, for I am a subject, and as a subject I must exist."
About Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
Danish philosopher and theologian considered the founder of existentialism; Either/Or (1843) and Fear and Trembling (1843) explored the leap of faith. Closely associated with Friedrich Nietzsche (his existentialist successor working in the opposite theological direction) and Fyodor Dostoevsky (literary parallel exploring faith-and-despair). For an intellectual contrast, see G.W.F. Hegel, German Idealist of the totalizing system — Kierkegaard called Hegel's system a 'palatial residence' that nobody could actually live in — his entire authorship is structured against Hegelian abstraction in favor of the existing individual's inwardness.
The standard scholarly entry points to Soren Kierkegaard's work: Joakim Garff (University of Copenhagen, Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre) — Søren Kierkegaard: A Biography (2000); Walter Lowrie (Princeton, his major postwar English translator) — A Short Life of Kierkegaard (1942); C. Stephen Evans (Baylor University, philosophy of religion) — Kierkegaard: An Introduction (2009). These are the works graduate seminars cite when teaching Soren Kierkegaard.