The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard

Reviewing the book ‘Philosopher of the Heart‘ By Clare Carlisle

I’ve read the book Sickness Unto Death by Kierkegaard, which I really enjoyed. However, while I took a lot out of it, it was incredibly hard to read. It was a huge effort, and it was completely incomprehensible to me in many passages. The Sickness Unto Death was mostly about the individual, but I wanted to dive deeper into his concept of Christian faith, which is explored in his book Fear and Trembling. However, I’m somewhat afraid of diving into it from how hard Sickness Unto Death was.

I decided that I would read a biography from him first. I had seen Carlisle’s book mentioned before, but I thought it was mostly a summary and introduction. I later discovered it was a biography, which was exactly what I was looking for.

The biography deals with his entire lifespan, which isn’t very long as he died at the age of 42. It was a life lived in melancholy, and driven by a desire to answer the deepest question he could think of: What does it mean to be human? And that question had other ones lurking around the corner, which seemed to be different and yet part of the same pursuit. How can one live as an individual? And what does it mean to be a Christian?

In addition to pursuing these questions, he was also one of the greatest attackers of “Christendom”, the term he used for the Christian culture he lived in. Often directed at Copenhagen but applying to Denmark and beyond. He argued that we live in a Christian age, but no one is a Christian. The doctrine had been intellectualized, but not followed. It was taken for granted and never a center of one’s life. He felt that just like Socrates was exposing the sophists in Athens, he had to expose the Christians of his age that did not follow a Christian life.

What so attracts me to Kierkegaard and his Christianity is how it seems the exact antidote for the modern age. In a culture where we look at religion as making scientific and historical claims that have been proven false, Kierkegaard insisted that Christianity is not about facts. But rather, the deepest of human truths, beyond rationality, that needs to be lived.

Besides his religious and existential problems, he was plagued by his relationship with Regine, whom he was engaged with but later broke off a year later. He thought that his melancholy disposition would make both him and Regine unhappy as a married couple. And thus he decided that his life should be lived as an author alone. But he always loved Regine, and this decision, while he did not regret it, created angst in his life until the very end. She was always in his thoughts, and he dedicated his entire life of work to her.

He was also deeply plagued by anxiety. While he had a fair bit of admirers in his lifetime, he was always an outcast. Both for the scandal of his broken engagement with Regine and his writing. While he often wrote with pseudonyms, his work as a whole was known in his city. He was constantly worried about how his work would be received by the public.

His life story of struggle is incredible, and I really enjoyed reading it. While sometimes I found some events to jump around too harshly which was confusing, it was generally well written. I seldom felt bored, and the author’s commentary was superb. I didn’t get an increased understanding of Kierkegaard regarding his philosophy to the degree that I expected. A lot of it is biographical in a sense that does not really touch in his philosophical work directly.

Nevertheless, the biography is interesting in its own right, regardless of Kierkegaard’s ideas. And given how personal his philosophy is, maybe the biography will help me understand his ideas better in a way that I can’t even tell right now. If you’re interested in Kierkegaard, I would recommend this book, and even more so if you’re curious about his philosophy but know very little. It serves as a good introduction while being enjoyable to read.

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