Concluding Unscientific Postscript

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was born in 1813 in Copenhagen, Denmark, and lived there his entire life. He attended the University of Copenhagen originally intending to study theology but eventually concentrating on philosophy and literature. Although for a time Kierkegaard became estranged from the stern Lutheran faith his father imparted to him, he eventually reembraced it. His life’s work would be chiefly devoted to the question of how to be a Christian and to the need to live and die for the sake of an “idea.”

A series of “collisions,” or key emotional crises, marked Kierkegaard’s life. One was his decision to break off his engagement to the young woman with whom he was in love, Regine Olsen. The failure of this relationship would wound Kierkegaard for the rest of his life, intensifying his melancholic and introspective nature. Another “collision” occurred between Kierkegaard and the leaders of the Danish Lutheran Church. Kierkegaard had come to believe that Christianity as practiced and preached in his country was inauthentic, and he attacked two of Denmark’s bishops in his writings. A popular satirical newspaper attacked Kierkegaard in turn, adding to his emotional wounds.

Kierkegaard’s first works come from the mid-1840s and include Either-Or: A Fragment of Life, Fear and Trembling, The Concept of Anxiety, and Stages on Life’s Way. Although he subsequently intended to retire from writing and become a country pastor, he instead followed up with a second and final group of writings from 1847 to 1855. These include Sickness unto Death, Works of Love, and Concluding Scientific Postscript. Kierkegaard wrote most of his works under pseudonyms, allowing him to express a variety of opinions under the distancing device of various imaginary “characters.”

Kierkegaard collapsed in a street in Copenhagen in 1855 and died a month later at the age of 42. Although little known at first, his work would become highly influential in 20th-century philosophy and theology. With his emphasis on becoming an authentic human self, he has been called the father of existentialism. As a Christian philosopher, his works have attracted analysis as part of the prophetic tradition, which criticizes the practices of a religious community from the standpoint of the religion itself.