Søren Kierkegaard

Today is the birthday of the great Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard. (5 May 1813 - 11 November 1855).

Kierkegaard is one of my favourites as in his writings I see the foundation of the austere (some would call it bleak) "scandinavian" existentialism that I came to love and admire initially through Ingmar Bergman's films.

In the first place, however, I came to reflect upon Kierkegaard's writings not because of Bergman's existentialism but because of a comment by Umberto Eco, about the Vatican's excessive reaction against Roger Peyrefitte's ridiculous accusations. I had in mind at the time the Corsaren (corsair) affair as an exemplary handling of bad and injust critics by the writer. When I looked deeper into it, one of Kierkegaard's article responses, The Activity of a Traveling Esthetician and How He Still Happened to Pay for Dinner ( En omreisende Æsthetikers Virksomhed, og hvorledes han dog kom til at betale Gjæstebudet ), locked me irrevocably into the thinking process of an intelligent writer/critic.

Indeed, it is my firm belief that in Foucault's Pendulum (by Umberto Eco), Jacopo Belbo's views about intelligent reading and editing instead of attempting to write are deeply Kierkegaardian in nature. Besides that, there are other unveiled references to Kierkegaard in that book: Belbo, in an imaginary anachronism, suggests - as a potential editor to a young William Shakespeare - to move Hamlet's plot from Italy to Denmark, because of the spectre of kierkegaardian austerity that looms above that land.

Another matter that makes Kierkegaard unique in his point of view regarding the human nature is his love for Regine Olsen. The words he addressed to her (quoted from Wikipedia's selection from his Journals) are indicative:

"Thou sovereign of my heart treasured in the deepest fastness of my chest, in the fullness of my thought, there ... unknown divinity! Oh, can I really believe the poet's tales, that when one first sees the object of one's love, one imagines one has seen her long ago, that all love like all knowledge is remembrance, that love too has its prophecies in the individual. ... it seems to me that I should have to possess the beauty of all girls in order to draw out a beauty equal to yours; that I should have to circumnavigate the world in order to find the place I lack and which the deepest mystery of my whole being points towards, and at the next moment you are so near to me, filling my spirit so powerfully that I am transfigured for myself, and feel that it's good to be here."

However, in self-destructive drama he broke their engagement and tried to alienate Regine because he believed that his calling and their relationship were incompatible things. He tried to appear cool and measured saying that he would marry: "in ten years, when I have begun to simmer down and I need a lusty young miss to rejuvenate me."

He never did.



The scribbling modern philosophy holds passion in contempt; and yet passion is the culmination of existence for an existing individual—and we are all of us existing individuals.

Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift til de philosophiske Smuler
(Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments)

ΥΓ: Εαν δοθεί ξανά η ευκαιρία για μακρά συζήτηση, Τάσο, θα σου αναλύσω την κιρκεγκάρντια, κατά βάση, άποψη περί συγγραφής που έχω. Απλώς χθές διακόπηκε η συζήτηση λόγω χαρμόσυνων οικογενειακών νέων. Till next time.

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