Søren Kierkegaard
The complete, plain-English guide: where to start, every major book in order, his ideas, his most famous lines, and the misreadings to avoid.
Fast facts
- Born
- May 5, 1813 · Copenhagen, Denmark
- Died
- November 11, 1855 · Copenhagen (aged 42)
- Nationality
- Danish
- Roles
- Philosopher, theologian, poet, social critic
- Best known for
- The father of existentialism · the leap of faith · anxiety
- Most famous book
- Fear and Trembling (1843)
- Best first book
- Fear and Trembling — or a good anthology
- Method
- Wrote under many pseudonyms ('indirect communication')
Where to start with Kierkegaard
Do not start with the giant systematic works. Start with Fear and Trembling — short, gripping, and his most famous book — or with a good anthology like Provocations or The Essential Kierkegaard, which lets you sample the range without drowning. Then The Sickness Unto Death, then Either/Or, and only much later the dense Concluding Unscientific Postscript.
- 1
Fear and Trembling
Find it on Amazon· affiliateHis most famous and most accessible major work: Abraham, asked to sacrifice Isaac, becomes the 'knight of faith.' Faith as a leap beyond reason and ethics.
- 2
An anthology (The Essential Kierkegaard / Provocations)
Find it on Amazon· affiliateThe fastest way to meet his range — edited selections with context, so you can find which Kierkegaard you want to read in full.
- 3
The Sickness Unto Death
Find it on Amazon· affiliateHis piercing analysis of despair as the sickness of a self that refuses to be itself. Short, and unforgettable.
- 4
Either/Or
Find it on Amazon· affiliateThe big one: the aesthetic life versus the ethical life, dramatized through two opposed voices. Long, but his masterpiece.
- 5
Concluding Unscientific Postscript
Find it on Amazon· affiliateRead it last. His longest, hardest argument — 'truth is subjectivity' and the case against turning faith into a system.
The Hong & Hong translations (Princeton) are the scholarly standard; Penguin Classics editions are excellent for a first read. A good anthology first will save you from starting in the deep end.
Every major book, in order
His major works — most of them from an astonishing creative burst in the 1840s, many under pseudonyms. The shorter ones make the best first reads.
- 1843
1. Either/Or
HardHis breakthrough: a vast two-part work setting the 'aesthetic' life of pleasure and possibility against the 'ethical' life of commitment — through two voices that never quite meet.
- 1843
2. Fear and Trembling
Moderateshortbest first readAbraham is commanded to sacrifice Isaac. Kierkegaard uses it to define the 'knight of faith' and the leap faith makes beyond what ethics or reason can justify.
- 1843
3. Repetition
ModerateshortA strange, witty exploration of whether anything in life — love above all — can truly be 'repeated.' Published the same day as Fear and Trembling.
- 1844
4. The Concept of Anxiety
HardHis psychology of anxiety (angst) as 'the dizziness of freedom' — the vertigo we feel facing our own possibility. A founding text for existential thought.
- 1845
5. Stages on Life's Way
HardA richer reworking of the aesthetic / ethical / religious 'stages' of existence. Difficult, but the fullest map of his picture of a human life.
- 1846
6. Concluding Unscientific Postscript
HardHis longest argument, under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus: 'truth is subjectivity,' and why faith cannot be a finished system of results.
- 1847
7. Works of Love
ModerateWritten under his own name: a demanding meditation on Christian love as duty and action, not feeling.
- 1849
8. The Sickness Unto Death
ModerateshortUnder the pseudonym Anti-Climacus: despair anatomized as the imbalance of a self that will not be itself before God. Short and devastating.
His big ideas, explained simply
The concepts that made him the father of existentialism — in plain English.
The leap of faith
Reason can carry you to the edge of belief, but not across. Faith is the passionate leap you make anyway — not blind belief, but a wholehearted commitment that no proof can make safe.
Anxiety (angst)
'The dizziness of freedom.' Anxiety isn't fear of a thing; it's the vertigo of standing before your own infinite possibility, knowing you must choose. The price, and the proof, of being free.
Despair
In The Sickness Unto Death, despair is the deepest condition of a self at odds with itself — and most people are in it without knowing. The cure is becoming, before God, the self you actually are.
The three stages of existence
The aesthetic (living for pleasure and possibility), the ethical (living by commitment and duty), and the religious (living before God). Not a ladder you climb once, but ways of existing you can fall back into.
Truth is subjectivity
Not 'truth is whatever you feel.' Kierkegaard means the truths that matter most — how to live, what to believe — can't be held at arm's length as objective facts; they're only true as you stake your life on them.
The single individual
Against 'the crowd' and the system, Kierkegaard insists that what is decisive happens to the single individual, who cannot hide in a majority. 'The crowd is untruth.'
Famous quotes — and what they actually mean
“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”
Freedom isn't only liberating — it's vertiginous. To face that you could become anything, and must choose, is the root of existential anxiety.
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
Meaning arrives in hindsight, but you have to act before you have it. The central predicament of a life lived in time.
“Faith is the highest passion in a human being.”
Not a lukewarm assent but the most intense commitment a person can make — which is why so few, he thought, truly reach it.
“The crowd is untruth.”
Responsibility and truth attach to individuals, not majorities. A crowd lets each person off the hook — and that, for Kierkegaard, is its lie.
Translations of Kierkegaard vary; wordings above follow the most widely cited English renderings, with the source named.
His life, in five minutes
Søren Kierkegaard was born in 1813 in Copenhagen, the youngest of seven children of a wealthy, severe, and deeply melancholic father whose guilt and gloom marked the whole family. Most of his siblings and his mother died young; Søren grew up half-convinced the family was under a curse. He was a brilliant, sharp-tongued student who could have done anything — and chose to write.
In 1841 he broke off his engagement to Regine Olsen, the love of his life, for reasons he never fully explained — a wound that runs under almost everything he wrote. An inheritance let him write full-time, and between 1843 and 1846 he produced an astonishing run of books, often several a year, under a gallery of pseudonyms. In 1846 the satirical paper The Corsair made him a public laughing-stock.
He spent his final years in a ferocious, very public 'attack on Christendom' — not on Christ, but on the comfortable official church he thought had betrayed real faith. In October 1855 he collapsed in the street; he died that November, aged forty-two, his fortune nearly spent. Almost unknown beyond Denmark in his lifetime, he was rediscovered in the twentieth century as the father of existentialism.
Common misreadings to avoid
Kierkegaard is borrowed by people who skip his faith and flattened by people who skip his irony. Four corrections.
The myth: Kierkegaard was a secular existentialist.
What is true: He was a fiercely committed (if unconventional) Christian. The later atheist existentialists — Sartre, Camus — inherited his categories of anxiety, despair, and the individual, but not his faith.
The myth: The 'leap of faith' means believing without thinking.
What is true: The leap is precisely because reason can't make faith safe — but it's a passionate, deliberate commitment, not anti-intellectual credulity. Kierkegaard was one of the most rigorous thinkers of his century.
The myth: His pseudonymous books simply state his own views.
What is true: He wrote under many masks on purpose ('indirect communication'). You cannot just attribute Johannes de Silentio's or Climacus's positions to Kierkegaard himself — sorting that out is part of the work.
The myth: He hated Christianity.
What is true: He attacked 'Christendom' — the cosy, automatic religion of the official Danish church — precisely because he took being a genuine Christian so seriously that he found the comfortable version a fraud.
Frequently asked questions
Where should I start with Kierkegaard?
Start with Fear and Trembling — short, gripping, his most famous book — or with a good anthology like The Essential Kierkegaard or Provocations, which samples his range with context.
In what order should I read Kierkegaard?
Fear and Trembling → an anthology → The Sickness Unto Death → Either/Or → Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Save the dense Postscript for last.
Why is Kierkegaard called the father of existentialism?
Decades before Sartre and Camus, he put the existing, choosing individual — anxiety, despair, freedom, faith, the single self against the crowd — at the centre of philosophy. The later existentialists built on his categories.
Why did Kierkegaard write under pseudonyms?
He called it 'indirect communication': presenting whole life-views from the inside, without preaching, so the reader has to do the work of judging them — rather than simply receiving his opinion.
What is Kierkegaard's most famous book?
Fear and Trembling (the leap of faith) is the most famous; Either/Or is his largest; The Sickness Unto Death is his sharpest on despair and the self.
How do you pronounce Kierkegaard?
In English, roughly 'KEER-kuh-gard' (or 'KEER-kuh-gor'). The Danish is closer to 'KEER-kə-gor.'
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Researched and written by the Read Stacks editorial team. Last verified June 28, 2026. Facts on Kierkegaard's life and works follow the standard scholarly record; quotations name their source.