Søren Kiekergaard on Existentialism, Despair.

In the modern era, humans stumble upon religion in two major ways.

The most common way is by traditional imposition. That is, you believe in and worship whatever your family and forefathers believed in. You regard it as your culture and take pride in it. You may follow that traditional religion whole-heartedly or may be lukewarm and agnostic about it.

The second path by which people encounter religion is by independent seeking, with a motive to know the cause of human suffering, mysteries of life and death, etc. This religious journey isn't guided by family beliefs or fear/greed from God's power etc. It is an all-rational inquiry for Truth, not necessarily a "God".

From the East, from India especially, we've seen countless numbers of such people for whom religion wasn't a mere hobby or a traditional affair - but an earnest method to reach the Ultimate.

We here at Impulsum not only study the philosophies of East but of the West too.

Like India's very ancient Hinduism fabricated culture, West saw Abrahamic religions reign its people's minds. Both East and West alike, had that orthodoxic religious inheritance.

Just as in Ancient India, even after long time of religious establishment, mighty spiritual minds kept arising like Shankaracharya, Buddha and as recent as Ramama Maharishi and Swami Vivekananda etc, we see that West too has kept itself rejuvinating from time to time.

Today's blog presents to you all Søren Kiekergaard - an important philosopher to study the growth of "Existentialism" in Europe and West.

What is Existentialism?

 

CultureBiographies

Søren Kierkegaard - The Story Behind the Existentialist Philosopher and Writer

6 minutes

Did you know that Søren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher, writer, and critic? He had a major influence on existentialism and Protestant theology. Intrigued? Read on to learn much more about this prolific figure.

Søren Kierkegaard - The Story Behind the Existentialist Philosopher and Writer

Laura Llorente

Written and verified by the philosopher Laura Llorente.

Last update: 21 December, 2022

Søren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher, theologian, writer, and cultural critic. He was born in 1813 in Denmark and died in 1855. He had a major influence on existentialism and Protestant theology in the 20th century. Secondly, he was a profound writer of intellectual and artistic activity. His work crossed the boundaries of philosophy, theology, psychology, literary criticism, devotional literature, and fiction. 

Søren Kierkegaard’s powerful speeches socially criticized and renewed Christian faith within Christendom. At the same time, he made many original conceptual contributions. Likewise, his contributions to modernism development are as important as his stylistic experimentation. Besides, his vivid representation of biblical figures brings out their modern relevance.

Most importantly, the key concepts he invented have been explored by thinkers worldwide. Since then, his interventions in contemporary Danish church politics and his fervent attempts revitalized the Christian faith. Did you know that Søren Kierkegaard was an outsider in philosophical history? In fact, the world now considers this religious author the first existentialist philosopher. 

He wrote critical texts on religion, Christendom, morality, ethics, psychology, and religious philosophy. Of course, Kierkegaard’s innovative pieces display a fondness for metaphor, irony, and parables. Moreover, much of his philosophical work deals with the issues of how one lives as a “single individual”. 

It prioritizes concrete human reality over abstract thinking and highlighting the importance of personal choice and commitment. The existentialist was utterly against literary critics defining idealist intellectuals and philosophers of his time. 

Most importantly, he attacked the literary, philosophical, and ecclesiastical establishments of his day for misrepresenting the highest task of human existence. Namely, becoming oneself in an ethical and religious sense as something so easy, seeming accomplished. Positively, the heart of Søren Kierkegaard’s work lies in the infinite requirement and strenuous difficulty of religious existence.

Soren Kierkegaard.

What exactly is existentialism?

Existentialism refers to various philosophies, most influential in continental Europe from about 1930 to the mid-20th century. Believe it or not, Søren Kierkegaard was the first to mention such theories one century ago. It’s no surprise that the world knows him as the “father of existentialism”.

These philosophies discuss an interpretation of human existence in the world, stressing its concreteness and its problematic character. According to existentialism, existence is always particular and individual. Existence is always my existence, your existence. Most importantly, existence is primarily the problem of existence or its mode of being. 

Therefore, it’s also the investigation of the meaning of Being. 

Kiekergaard's Struggle with himself.

Kierkegaard called his melancholy “the most faithful mistress I have known.”

Imagine an educated, affluent European in his late twenties, seemingly one of fortune’s favored, who suffers from crippling feelings of despair and guilt. For no apparent reason, he breaks up with the woman everyone thought he was going to marry—not because he loves someone else but out of a sudden conviction that he is incapable of marriage and can only make her miserable. He abandons the career for which he has been studying for ten years and holes up in his apartment, where a kind of graphomania compels him to stay up all night writing at a frantic pace. His activity is so relentless that, in a few short years, he has accumulated many volumes’ worth of manuscripts.

Kiekargaard couldn't supress that weird uneasiness that is inside all of us - an uncomfortness of uncertainty, pointlessness.

For Kierkegaard, the spirt and the self are one and despair is a sickness in them — one exposing the gap between the self that is, the self that keeps us small, and the self that can be, the vast eternal self of full potentiation. With an eye to this spiritual sickness, he writes:

The self is a relation which relates to itself… A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity… A synthesis is a relation between two terms. Looked at in this way a human being is not yet a self.

Despair is the imbalance in a relation of synthesis, in a relation which relates to itself.

Kierkegaard observes that, on the surface, you always feel yourself despairing over something. But beneath that is really the self’s relation to that something, fomenting a desire to rid yourself of your self in order to expunge the negative feeling — which, Kierkegaard cautions, is an existential impossibility and, as such, sunders the spirit with despair:

Despair is an aspect of spirit, it has to do with the eternal in a person. But the eternal is something he cannot be rid of, not in all eternity.

If there were nothing eternal in a man, he would simply be unable to despair… Having a self, being a self, is the greatest, the infinite, concession that has been made to man, but also eternity’s claim on him.

Traditionally despair has been defined as the absence of hope, yet according to Kierkegaard a more encompassing definition of despair is that it is a developmental failure of the self.

“Kierkegaard, like Nietzsche a half-century later, sees the human self not simply as a finished product, a kind of entity, but as a developing process. A self is not simply something I am but something I must become…To be a self is to embark on a process in which one becomes something…Essentially, a person is in despair if they fail to be fully a self. An awareness of the emptiness of self results in that feeling we normally call despair….”

Stephen Evans, Kierkegaard

“To be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I am to know, except in so far as a certain understanding must precede every action. The thing is to understand myself…the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die".

Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts.

God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners.

Thanks,

Daksh Parekh.