Soren Kierkegaard — "To be a man is to be spirit."
To be a man is to be spirit.
To be a man is to be spirit.
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"The greatest danger, that of losing one's own self, may pass off as quietly as if it were nothing at all."
"Dread is an adventure that every man has to undergo."
"The infinite resignation is the last stage before faith, so that anyone who has not made this movement has no faith; for only in the infinite resignation does one become conscious of one's eternal val…"
"The greatest good is not to be born, the second is to die soon."
"Despair is the sickness unto death."
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.
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