Soren Kierkegaard — "My life is an inexplicable contradiction. I am one who has been made to smile by…"
My life is an inexplicable contradiction. I am one who has been made to smile by the thought of hanging myself.
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More from Soren Kierkegaard
"To be a man is to be spirit."
"A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that's just how the worl…"
"The self-assured believer is a greater sinner in the eyes of God than the troubled disbeliever."
"I can sum up in one sentence what directly led to my break with the established order of things: it was the complete and utter lack of seriousness, and that Christianity was being turned into a game."
"The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen, but, if one will, are to be lived."
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.