Soren Kierkegaard — "The absurd is the essential factor in faith."
The absurd is the essential factor in faith.
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More from Soren Kierkegaard
"The presence of irony does not necessarily mean that the earnestness is excluded. Only assistant professors assume that."
"Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, you will regret both. Laugh at the world’s follies, you will regret it; weep over them, you will also regret …"
"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use."
"The more a man is himself, the more he is an offense."
"The ethical individual is the one who chooses himself, and thereby chooses the universal."
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.