Søren Kierkegaard: A Biography

joakim garff bruce h. kirmmse

"The day will come when not only my writings, but precisely my lifethe intriguing secret of all the machinerywill be studied and studied." Soren Kierkegaard's remarkable combination of genius and peculiarity made this a fair if arrogant prediction. But Kierkegaard's life has been notoriously hard to study, so complex was the web of fact and fiction in his work. Joakim Garff's biography of Kierkegaard is thus a landmark achievement. A seamless blend of history, philosophy, and psychological insight, all conveyed with novelistic verve, this is the most comprehensive and penetrating account yet written of the life and works of the enigmatic Dane who changed the course of intellectual history.

Garff portrays Kierkegaard not as the all-controlling impresario behind some of the most important works of modern philosophy and religious thoughtbooks credited with founding existentialism and prefiguring postmodernismbut rather as a man whose writings came to control him. Kierkegaard saw himself as a vessel for his writings, a tool in the hand of God, and eventually as a martyr singled out to call for the end of "Christendom." Garff explores the events and relationships that formed Kierkegaard, including his guilt-ridden relationship with his father, his rivalry with his brother, and his famously tortured relationship with his fiancee Regine Olsen. He recreates the squalor and splendor of Golden Age Copenhagen and the intellectual milieu in which Kierkegaard found himself increasingly embattled and mercilessly caricatured.

Acclaimed as a major cultural event on its publication in Denmark in 2000, this book, here presented in an exceptionally crisp and elegant translation, will be the definitive account of Kierkegaard's life for years to come.

Genres biographyphilosophyhistorynonfictiontheologyreligionbiography memoirchristianitychristian

896 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,2000

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This edition

Format: 896 pages, Paperback
Published: April 23, 2007 by Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691127880
ASIN: 0691127883
Language: English

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Søren Kierkegaard

Søren Kierkegaard

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was a prolific 19th century Danish philosopher and theologian. Kierkegaard strongly criticised both the Hegelianism of his time and what he saw as the empty formalities of the Church of Denmark. Much of his work deals with religiou...