Søren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher whose influence and reception varied widely and may be roughly divided into various chronological periods. Reactions were anything but uniform, and proponents of various ideologies attempted to appropriate his work quite early.
Kierkegaard's reputation as a philosopher was first established in his nativeDenmark with his workEither/Or.[1] Henriette Wulff, in a letter toHans Christian Andersen, wrote, "Recently a book was published here with the titleEither/Or! It is supposed to be quite strange, the first part full of Don Juanism, skepticism, et cetera, and the second part toned down and conciliating, ending with a sermon that is said to be quite excellent. The whole book attracted much attention. It has not yet been discussed publicly by anyone, but it surely will be. It is actually supposed to be by a Kierkegaard who has adopted a pseudonym...."[1]
Kierkegaard's fame in Denmark increased with each publication of his philosophical works, includingFear and Trembling andPhilosophical Fragments, and culminating in hismagnum opus, theConcluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments. However, Kierkegaard's attack uponChristendom, represented by theDanish National Church near the end of his life, did not endear him to many in the clergy and theological circles. After his death, his original manuscripts were bequeathed by his one-time fiancée,Regine Olsen for posterity. She later donated most of his writings to theDanish Royal Library where they continue to be stored.
Kierkegaard's thought gained a wider audience with the translation of his works intoGerman,French, andEnglish.
Many20th-century philosophers, both theistic and atheistic, drew concepts from Kierkegaard, including the notions of angst, despair, and the importance of the individual. His fame as a philosopher grew tremendously in the 1930s, in large part because the ascendantexistentialist movement pointed to him as a precursor, although later writers celebrated him as a highly significant and influential thinker in his own right.[2] Since Kierkegaard was raised as aLutheran,[3] he was commemorated as a teacher in theCalendar of Saints of theLutheran Church on 11 November and in theCalendar of Saints of theEpiscopal Church with afeast day on 8 September.
Philosophers and theologians influenced by Kierkegaard includeHans Urs von Balthasar,Karl Barth,Simone de Beauvoir,Niels Bohr,Dietrich Bonhoeffer,Emil Brunner,Martin Buber,Rudolf Bultmann,Albert Camus,Martin Heidegger,Abraham Joshua Heschel,Karl Jaspers,Gabriel Marcel,Maurice Merleau-Ponty,Reinhold Niebuhr,Franz Rosenzweig,Jean-Paul Sartre,Gilles Deleuze,Joseph Soloveitchik,Paul Tillich,Malcolm Muggeridge,Thomas Merton,Miguel de Unamuno.[4]Paul Feyerabend'sepistemological anarchism in the philosophy of science was inspired by Kierkegaard's idea of subjectivity as truth.Ludwig Wittgenstein was immensely influenced and humbled by Kierkegaard,[5] claiming that "Kierkegaard is far too deep for me, anyhow. He bewilders me without working the good effects which he would in deeper souls".[5]Karl Popper referred to Kierkegaard as "the great reformer of Christian ethics, who exposed the official Christian morality of his day as anti-Christian and anti-humanitarian hypocrisy".[6]
Kierkegaard had a profound influence onpsychology. He is widely regarded as the founder ofChristian psychology and ofexistential psychology andtherapy.[7] Existentialist (often called "humanistic") psychologists and therapists includeLudwig Binswanger,Viktor Frankl,Erich Fromm,Carl Rogers, andRollo May. May based hisThe Meaning of Anxiety on Kierkegaard'sThe Concept of Anxiety. Kierkegaard'ssociological workTwo Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age critiquesmodernity.[8]Ernest Becker based his 1974Pulitzer Prize book,The Denial of Death, on the writings of Kierkegaard,Freud andOtto Rank. Kierkegaard is also seen as an important precursor ofpostmodernism.[9]
Kierkegaard influenced19th-century literature writers as well as20th-century literature.August Strindberg (1843-1912) found inspiration in Kierkegaard and the famous Norwegian dramatist and poetHenrik Ibsen (1828-1906) clearly seems to have been inspired by the Dane in famous works such asBrand. The other great Norwegian national writer and poetBjornstjerne Bjornson (1832-1910) was also deeply inspired by Kierkegaard.[10] Finally the celebrated Norwegian artistEdvard Munch (1863-1944) closely studied key concepts such as anxiety, and this influence is notable in some of his iconic paintings such as The Scream.[11]
Other figures deeply influenced by his work includeW. H. Auden,Jorge Luis Borges,Don DeLillo,Hermann Hesse,Franz Kafka,[12]David Lodge,Flannery O'Connor,Walker Percy,Rainer Maria Rilke,J.D. Salinger andJohn Updike.[13] Kierkegaard's workThe Diary of a Seducer has been re-published several times, including Princeton University Press' translation with John Updike's foreword andPenguin Books' seriesGreat Loves.
Kierkegaard's present stature in the English-speaking world owes much to the exegetical writings and improved Kierkegaard translations by the American theologian Walter Lowrie, theUniversity of Minnesota philosopher David F. Swenson, and the Danish translatorsHoward and Edna Hong.Anthony Rudd's bookKierkegaard and the Limits of the Ethical andAlasdair MacIntyre's discussion of Kierkegaard inAfter Virtue andA Short History of Ethics did much to facilitate Kierkegaard's legacy in ethical thought inanalytic philosophy.
Kierkegaard's influence oncontinental philosophy increased dramatically after the First and Second World Wars, especially among the German existenz thinkers and French existentialists.Jean-Paul Sartre,Emmanuel Levinas, andKarl Barth all owe a heavy debt to Kierkegaard.Paul Ricoeur andJudith Butler wrote monographs drawing new attention to Kierkegaard's work, and a 1964UNESCO colloquium on Kierkegaard inParis ranks as one of the most important events for a generation's reception of Kierkegaard, which included a keynote speaker, Sartre who gave his lectureThe Singular Universal, which solidified Kierkegaard's influence over existentialism.[14] In America, interest in Kierkegaard was revived from the 1980s onwards, particularly by the American philosopher and curator of the Kierkegaard Library atSt. Olaf College Gordon Marino, who has devoted several books and essays to Kierkegaard. In Kierkegaard's native Denmark, the Danish people hosted his 200th anniversary of Kierkegaard's birth inCopenhagen in May 2013.[15]
Kierkegaard has also influenced members of theanalytical philosophy tradition, most notablyLudwig Wittgenstein, who considered Kierkegaard to be "the most profound thinker of the [nineteenth] century. Kierkegaard was a saint."[16] To some degree, Kierkegaard can be seen as one of the few philosophers to whom the simple analytic/continental divide does not fully apply.
Kierkegaard predicted his posthumous fame, and foresaw that his work would become the subject of intense study and research. In his journals, he wrote:
"What the age needs is not a genius—it has had geniuses enough, but a martyr, who in order to teach men to obey would himself be obedient unto death. What the age needs is awakening. And therefore someday, not only my writings but my whole life, all the intriguing mystery of the machine will be studied and studied. I never forget how God helps me and it is therefore my last wish that everything may be to his honour."[17]
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Kierkegaard's relationship tofeminism is a troublesome one, Kierkegaard has been described as misogynistic, making "snide comments about woman’s nature, mocking with utmost irony her “great abilities” and sneering at the possibility of her emancipation" although Dera Sipe ofVillanova University states that viewing Kierkegaard as a "straight misogynist is highly problematic".[18]
In her paper Kierkegaard and Feminism: A Paradoxical Friendship, Sipe commends Kierkegaard for taking "a hammer to the cold foundations of traditional Western philosophy" and introducing existentialism which feminism has adopted andthrived in.[18] She then states that due to Kierkegaard's rampant use of Pseudonyms one must separate Kierkegaard from his Pseudonyms.[a] Sipe argues that it "would be of more benefit to feminism not to read Kierkegaard in search of his own personal stance on the woman question, but rather to read him in an exploratory manner as one who has exposed new avenues of thought, new ways of examining the woman question".[18] Sipe, after examining his essay on the suffragette movement and the seducer's diary and their misogynistic content, then pivots towards Kierkegaard's view on the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus, the young daughter of Raguel and Edna both of whom Kierkegaard considers to be knights of faith.[18] She states that from these examples it is clear that Kierkegaard (or at least Johannes de Silentio) did hold great respect for women.[18]
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Kierkegaard was first mentioned in a French publication in 1856 inRevue des deux mondes (English:Review of the Two Worlds) in an article detailing the state of Danish politics and culture which described his influence on the Danish church as having "bewildered many minds and troubled many weak or fearful consciences". The article also detailed the controversy around his funeral.[19]
The first translation of Kierkegaard into French was published in 1886 by Johannes Gøtzsche, with a preface by the theologian Hans-Peter Kofoed-Hansen. The work translated wasTwo Minor Ethical-Religious Essays (French:En quoi l'homme de génie diffère-t-il de l'apôtre? Traité éthique-religieux).[19]
Subsequent translations of Kierkegaard into French include those produced byPaul Petit, who produced a French translation of theConcluding Unscientific Postscript in 1941, as well as a translation of thePhilosophical Fragments, published posthumously in 1947.[19]
The earliest mentions of Kierkegaard's work in German publications were written byAndreas Frederik Beck, himself Danish and one of the attendees at Kierkegaard's oral dissertation defence. There was an anonymous German review ofPhilosophical Fragments published in 1845 which subsequent scholarship believes was written by Beck. Kierkegaard responded to Beck's criticisms in a footnote published in the followup to theFragments, theConcluding Unscientific Postscript. Another early mention of Kierkegaard in German is fromJohann Georg Theodor Grässe, who included Kierkegaard briefly in an 1848 review of European literature.[20]
In 1856, the Bavarian-born conservative politician and historianJoseph Edmund Jörg wrote an article discussing religious movements and events in Scandinavian history. The Catholic Jörg praised Kierkegaard's relentless attack on the Danish Lutheran Church, but suggests that Kierkegaard should perhaps have seen Catholicism as a final step in his religious development.[20]
Early translations of Kierkegaard into German were restricted to his post-1850 material (The Moment, the attack on the Lutheran Church) and appeared in the 1860s. The Tübingen-trained pastor,Albert Bärthold, studied Kierkegaard underJohann Tobias Beck and published translations of a number of Kierkegaard's works.[20]
Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen (1848-1895) recognized Georg Brandes article on Soren Kierkegaard, as well asThe Corsair in his March, 1888 articleScandinavian Literature inThe Chautauquan. He notes that bothEither/Or andStages on the Path of Life had already been translated into German by that time.[21]
The most significant translation work was conducted byChristoph Schrempf, another student of J.T. Beck. Schrempf's first translations appeared in 1890 and by 1922, he had completed translations of the entire set of Kierkegaard's published writings. His translations have been criticised repeatedly as unreliable: Heiko Schulz referred to them as "repeatedly revised, highly idiosyncratic, and at times breathtakingly free renditions of the Kierkegaardian texts". Schrempf also spread a view of Kierkegaard significantly out-of-step from the mainstream, interpreting Kierkegaard's "subjectivity as truth" as a justification for his own religious disbelief.[20]
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