Soren Kierkegaard — "The aesthetic existence is despair, whether it knows it or not."
The aesthetic existence is despair, whether it knows it or not.
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More from Soren Kierkegaard
"The present age is an age of reflection, an age of calculation, an age of prudence, an age of prudence in its highest degree."
"The greatest good for a human being is to be able to choose himself."
"All communication is indirect communication."
"The only thing I am afraid of is that I shall not remain a humorist."
"Freedom's possibility is not to be able to do this or that, but to be able to do this and that."
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.