Soren Kierkegaard — "I see it all, I understand it all, I grasp it all, but I do not want to obey."
I see it all, I understand it all, I grasp it all, but I do not want to obey.
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More from Soren Kierkegaard
"The present age is an age of reflection, an age of calculation, an age of thought, an age of analysis, an age of observation, an age of experimentation, an age of invention, an age of discovery, an ag…"
"If I am to love God, I must be able to recognize him; if I am to recognize him, then he must be visible; if he is visible, then he is not God."
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"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."
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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.