Soren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher born in 1833. He was raised in an incredibly wealthy family, but was ravaged by sickness and ill health. By the time he was 32, only one of his 7 siblings had survived. His father believed that his children would be plagued and pay karma for his sins, so this may have played a role.

Throughout his life, he was obsessed with death and viewed life as a constant series of paradoxical experiences conflicting with one another. He didn’t believe in a vast array of societal expectations and laughed at the notion of benchmarks marked by modern-day civilization. He believed that passion through expression for others and aspiration to work towards a human-defined hierarchical position like a judge or high-ranking person within the economic structure was a synthetic stimulant to attain the true core emotion.

He was engaged at one moment in time, but called it off because he believed that committing to her forever would kill the initial drive of love that first connected them to each other. He struggled to find an explanation for various paradoxes in human existence like this.

He was deeply connected to Christianity and the profound connection to Jesus and the values, morals, and expectations put forward by the church. He embraced the idea of a "Leap of faith." He argued that faith required an individual to make a leap beyond rationality and accept the existence of the transcendent without objective evidence. This created a devotion beyond our own perception of reality and thus found purpose and fulfillment in life, in the never-ending aspiration for faith's approval.

A huge part of who I believe Kierkegaard is, is that he is actually an incredibly sad and pessimistic person. It’s almost like he manifested darkness and negativity into his life. However, one of the most profound aspects of his philosophy is existentialism, in which he is often referred to as the father of. He believed that each person must make authentic choices even in the face of existential angst and uncertainty. His perspective on life and individualism was that all people should try to be themselves and through authenticity, we can find freedom within our minds and express ourselves universally.

Although my perspective of how his mind worked was fundamentally hindered by his expectation of darkness, I think his focus on individualism, authenticity, and subjectivity towards life can provide a defensive and reflective perspective in the search for happiness. Understanding ourselves, always maintaining our fundamentals of who we are as individual universal energies is vital, and our ability to manage the inevitability of anxiety is a fundamental stepping stone in our growth. He promoted self-reflection and deeply believed that our ability to understand ourselves was a vital component in self-discovery and fulfillment.

“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use”

Thanks,

Dean