menu

Thinkers

Søren Kierkegaard

Existentialist · Europe · 1813 to 1855

Danish thinker who stressed individual choice and commitment, and the leap of faith that reason cannot supply.

What it is

Søren Kierkegaard (1813 to 1855) was a Danish philosopher and writer who held that the most important truths are about how to live, and that a person reaches them by passionate personal commitment and not by following a system. He wrote about anxiety, despair and Christian faith, often under invented names, and he is often called the father of existentialism, though the label is a loose one.

He was born in Copenhagen on 5 May 1813 and spent most of his life in and around the city. Most of his writing was done in the 1840s, and it is hard to place in one category. It mixes philosophy, theology, psychology, literary criticism and religious writing. He died in 1855.

The main ideas

  • Against systems. He distrusted philosophy that tries to explain everything in one grand system, and he is known as a sharp critic of Hegel and Hegelianism. For him, how one lives is the prime test of being in the truth.
  • Socrates as a model. He took Socrates as his hero. Like Socrates, he wanted to wake people up to their own lives, not to hand them finished answers.
  • Indirect communication. Many of his books appeared under invented names, each speaking from a different point of view. His view was that ethical and religious truth cannot simply be handed over. The reader has to be drawn in and become involved.
  • Anxiety and despair. He gave lasting analyses of anxiety and despair as part of what it is to be a human being who has to choose. The Concept of Anxiety (1844) and The Sickness Unto Death (1849) are the best-known books on these subjects.
  • Three ways of living. He described the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious as three spheres of existence, which he treats as different ways a life can be lived.
  • Faith and Abraham. In Fear and Trembling (1843) he retells the story of Abraham and Isaac to ask what a life of faith demands, and shows that it cannot be reduced to following ethical rules.
  • Christendom. Late in life he attacked the established church of Denmark, arguing that it had put the values of the surrounding culture, which he called Christendom, in the place of Christianity itself.

What it looks like in practice

Picture someone who has done everything expected of them, with a good job, a decent record and a settled routine, and who realises one evening that they have never really chosen any of it. Kierkegaard would not hand them a theory. He would ask what it would mean to take one of these things as their own, and what they would be afraid of if they did. The aim is to make the question personal. This is an illustration of the attitude, not a quotation.

Books and moments

  • Either/Or (1843) is the work with which he began his main authorship, and it was published under an invented name.
  • Fear and Trembling (1843) is his book on Abraham and the nature of faith.
  • The Concept of Anxiety (1844) and The Sickness Unto Death (1849) deal with anxiety and despair.
  • The attack on the church came in his last years.

Questions and criticism

  • Father of existentialism? The title is common, but a label can mislead. He drew strongly on the Bible, on Luther and on Socrates, and much of what he wrote is about Christian faith.
  • Which voice is his? Because so much was published under invented names, it is hard to say which opinions are his own and which belong to the characters. Readers still disagree.
  • Is a personal leap enough? If truth about how to live is found in commitment, it is fair to ask how a person can tell a wise commitment from a mistaken one.

Close neighbours

Among his influences were Plato, Luther and Hegel, and the page on Hegel shows the thinker he is most often set against. The page on existentialism describes the movement he is often said to have begun.

Written by epchē in our own words, and checked against independent sources on 9 October 2026. The sources are listed below.

Philosophies they belong to or are close to

Who they connect to

Influenced

  • Albert Camus · Camus responded to Kierkegaard's leap of faith and refused it.
  • Gabriel Marcel · He took up Kierkegaard's stress on the single person facing what lies beyond.
  • Karl Jaspers · He named Kierkegaard and Nietzsche as the two thinkers who shaped his work.
  • Martin Buber · He took up the stress on the single person in relation to what is beyond.
  • Martin Heidegger · Heidegger's analysis of anxiety and death was shaped by his reading of Kierkegaard.
  • Miguel de Unamuno · He learned Danish to read Kierkegaard and took up his stress on the single person facing faith and doubt.

Influenced by

  • Blaise Pascal · Kierkegaard read Pascal and shared his sense of the limits of reason in matters of faith.
  • F. W. J. Schelling · Kierkegaard attended Schelling's Berlin lectures on freedom and revelation.
  • Socrates · Kierkegaard wrote his dissertation on Socratic irony and took Socrates as a model of indirect teaching.

Reacted against

  • G. W. F. Hegel · Kierkegaard attacked Hegel's system for having no room for the existing individual.

Other Existentialist thinkers

Sources we used

See where you stand Find them on the map

Something wrong or missing on this page? Tell us.