There is one more 19th century philosopher I want to draw our attention to: the Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855). When Kierkegaard died in 1855, Darwin had not yet published Origin of Species, Nietzsche was merely 11 years old, and Marx, still smarting from the failure of a full-fledged proletariat revolution in 1848, had been living in London a mere five years, having accomplished nothing. That’s right, Kierkegaard came before Darwin, Marx, or Nietzsche had even begun to make their mark on history.
Kierkegaard is often called the father of existentialism, but that is somewhat misleading. Modern existentialism should be traced to Jean-Paul Sartre in the 20th century—and Kierkegaard really was nothing like Sartre. Kierkegaard lived in early 19th century Denmark, in which Christianity, specifically Lutheranism, was the “state religion,” and the institutionalized church was as shallow and dead as could be. If you want to think of it this way: what Kierkegaard experienced in the State church of Denmark was a result of Luther’s Reformation.
As we discussed earlier, when Luther revolted against the Catholic Church, he appealed to the secular leaders of various kingdoms and countries to support him. The result was that various states ended up not only sponsoring a particular religion—or more precisely, a particular denomination or branch of Christianity—but actually enforcing that particular strain of Christianity on its subjects. This resulted in the “wars of religion” throughout the 16th and 17th centuries.
By Kierkegaard’s day, though, those tensions had calmed down, and people were largely fine with the idea of state-sponsored religion. Of course, by the 19th century (again, as we’ve seen in earlier posts), Christianity was being fashioned into more of a deistic, rationalistic, proper sort of tame religion that could “benefit” society. Many people are well-aware how Nietzsche savaged that notion; but the fact is, so did Kierkegaard. Although both men were sickened by such a tepid form of Christianity, the answers each man gave could not be more far apart. Nietzsche wanted to destroy Christianity; Kierkegaard wanted to remind people what the heart of Christianity really was.
The heart of Christianity, Kierkegaard argued, was not “reasonable.” The heart of Christianity was living, passionate faith-filled relationship with the living God…and the choices that stem from such a faith-filled relationship often will not seem “reasonable” or even “moral” to the prim and proper, deistic, rationalistic, liberal theologians (and institutionalized church) of early 19th century Europe.
Now as it turns out, as with Nietzsche, I have already written a number of posts on Kierkegaard. I think my posts do a very good job crystalizing just what Kierkegaard was about. And so, this post really functions as the doorway to these other posts. I hope you take the time to read them.
- Getting Naked with Soren Kierkegaard: Yes, You Should be Self-Conscious!
- KIERKEGAARD: The War Between Faith and Reason
- KIERKEGAARD: The Nature of Faith (Part 1)
- KIERKEGAARD: Academia, Idolatry, and the Nature of Faith (Part 2)
- KIERKEGAARD: Aesthetics, Demoniacs, Ethics, and Religion
