Kierkegaard

Abstract

Kierkegaard Soren Aabye is a Danish religious author, preacher and philosopher, forerunner of existentialism and the inspirer of religious modernism. Kierkegaard’s ideas are discussed in the biographical sequence starting with a journals and notebooks of his early years (1838‒1840) and his master thesis “On the Concept of Irony” (1841). The second period (between “Either/Or”, 1843 and “Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments”, 1846) is represented mostly by his works published under pseudonyms and governed by the principle of “indirect communication”. In the analysis of the texts of third period, which began after the conflict with the journal “Corsair” (1846), emphasis is placed on the reflections of Kierkegaard about his author strategy and the possibility of direct expression of Christian truths. Some sections are devoted to Kierkegaard’s final months (1854‒1855) and his posthumous reception from the 1860s to the present. Religious and philosophical aspects of Kierkegaard’s thought are covered in the context of the crisis of speculative systems of the mid-nineteenth century. A requirement for modern interpretation of Christian dogmas together with repeated attempts to implement Hegelianism in politics, theology and ethics are considered as polemical background for Kierkegaard’s reflection on God and man.