Philosopher · Modern
Søren Kierkegaard
1813–1855 · Christian existentialism
A Lutheran who ended his life attacking the Danish state church as “Christendom” and refusing its communion.
Kierkegaard wrote, often under pseudonyms, of the three stages of life (aesthetic, ethical, religious), of faith as a passionate leap before the paradox of the God-man, of anxiety and despair as the sickness of the self before God, and of the “single individual” against the crowd. He attacked a comfortable established Christianity and insisted that truth, for an existing person, is subjectivity.
Why he matters: Marcel, Guardini, Przywara, Balthasar and Ratzinger all drew on him; he is the Protestant counterpart of Pascal, and the Church's reading of faith as personal commitment (Dei Verbum 5) is enriched by him, so long as reason keeps its due.
Where to be careful
His opposition of faith to reason tends to the fideism censured in Dei Filius ch. 3–4 (faith is “consonant with reason”); his Lutheran doctrine of justification and his “teleological suspension of the ethical” sit against Trent and Veritatis Splendor; his individualism has little room for the Church as mother and teacher.
Reading
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Fear and TremblingSøren Kierkegaard · Abraham and the teleological suspension of the ethical.
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The Sickness unto DeathSøren Kierkegaard · Despair as sin; the self before God.
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Kierkegaard and the Catholic Tradition: Conflict and DialogueJack Mulder Jr. · A Catholic philosopher's fair reckoning.
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each question the test asks.