How much do you know about Søren Kierkegaard?

Not much unfortunately, I do remember he was a believer in God and a writer, other than that, not much I’m afraid.

The things I remember from the early and mid 1960’s was that he was a strong Christian philosopher and theologian.

He was a Danish philosopher. He said ‘truth is subjectivity’ which is about all I know.

Edit: Not that most people in his home country know that much about him, anyway.

I know he dumped his one true love and spent the rest of his life moaning about it.

A few years ago I read Fear and Trembling which I found to be good, but flawed, worthwhile but overly obscurant, interesting but infuriating and insightful yet dumb. I got a lot of milage out of bitching about Kierkegaard at parties, particularly with this one dude that insisted I just needed to read Either Or. So I gave the Dane another shot and found Either Or hopelessly remote, probably because Kierkegaard tries there to write in a familar manner but, as a woman, he made me feel more like an object to be talked about than the audience (male!) he was trying to be chummy with. I didn’t get very far with that one. On the other hand I gave Kierkegard two whole chances and I don’t regret it. Hegel ain’t getting that.

He’s been discussed and read in four or five of the philosophy courses I’ve taken over the years. Even before that, his name came up at the dinnertable from time to time in my family of origin.

My experience with him has been similar to the above, except that a while back I was going through some books that were given to me when I was around 4 years old, and was surprised to find a story by S.K. in the pile! It was about a lily who was perfectly happy where she was until a bird told her about what he had seen when he went south for the winter. I won’t say how it ends.

@submariner, “There’s no place like home”?

I always think of Kierkegaard, rightly or wrongly, as an existentialist. I am not impressed with his views on Christians, or morality in general.

@filmfann Some think of him as the first existentialist.

I know very little about Kierkegaard. I am not ashamed.

@Dr_Lawrence I can one-up ya, before reading this thread I’ve never seen the name before. I am not ashamed.

@Dr_Lawrence @uberbatman Why would you be ashamed? I merely asked this question out of curiosity.

I take considerable pride in being knowledgeable in a faily wide (but not unlimited) range of areas and disiplines. I try to keep expanding my range but not everything attracts the same amount of interest in me.