Soren Kierkegaard

Peri Chapman

Dr. Oliver

CoPhil #9

First Installment

Soren Kierkegaard

            Soren Kierkegaard was a very well known Danish philosopher who came from a very wealthy family. From the beginning of life he was surrounded by many loving people but death seemed to follow him. By a young age, all of his 7 siblings except for one brother had passed. He had a lot of work on many different subjects, including morality, psychology and the “single individual”. Kierkegaard is also believed to be the first existentialist philosopher, which branches into a lot of his beliefs. In this paper I am going to discuss many of his beliefs and philosophy’s.

            Kierkegaard’s journals were shown to be the most informational regarding his philosophy; they were a key to understanding his overall philosophy. Throughout all of his journals he talked about many different aspects of his life. A lot of his work dealt with his individual self and the importance of it. He believed that to understand ourselves we must contemplate individually and not conform to others. Many people find it overwhelming to be their own self, resulting in conformity. He was very focused on his individual self and his own thoughts as a philosopher. Here is a quote of Kierkegaard regarding individuality, “Nobody wants to be this strenuous thing: an individual; it demands an effort. But everywhere services are readily offered through the phony substitute: a few! Let us get together and be a gathering, then we can probably manage. Therein lies mankind’s deepest demoralization.” In reality, he believes the arrogance with living up to our individuality is the fact of denying it, and denying the individuality of others. William James and Kierkegaard had a common belief that a crowd is made up of individual people, therefore there is nothing preventing them from being their own individual selves, except for fear and denial. To find peace and meaning, Kierkegaard’s states that you must know yourself before you can understand anything else.

            Another belief of Kierkegaard’s was that “subjectivity is truth” and “truth is subjectivity”. This is something I have thought of a lot as an individual. Although you may have the same ideas or believes as someone else, you may relate to those believes differently. No one person is the same. This goes back into individuality of each person and the importance of being aware of your individuality.

            The leap of faith is something that is mentioned a great deal in the works of Kierkegaard. It is his concept of how one may believe in god and how one may love. He said that to have faith you must have doubt. Without doubt there would be no reason to have faith, there would be no other option or comparison. The doubt side of having faith is the weighing option that gives you faith. Kierkegaard once wrote "doubt is conquered by faith, just as it is faith which has brought doubt into the world".

 In my next installment I will continue to talk about Kierkegaard’s faith and philosophies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9JCwkx558o

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Søren_Kierkegaard#Philosophy_and_theology
https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/11/26/kierkegaard-individual-crowd-conformity-minority/