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 most dangerous of all delusions is that you are not deluded."
"The greatest good is not to be born."
"I am a living demonstration of the fact that a man can remain a virgin until he is 30, and yet be a man."
"The true lover is the one who loves the beloved for what he is, not for what he has."
"My life is an inexplicable contradiction. I am one who has been made to smile by the thought of hanging myself."
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.