Søren Kierkegaard

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books What does love fear? Limitation. Johannes stealthily pursues Cordelia through the streets of Copenhagen, and through an intricate, manipulative courtship contrives to possess her. Motivated not by love or sex but by sensation and experiment, he seeks to make the object of his desire desire him - and then to retreat....

Brilliantly synthesising human insights with Christian dogma, Søren Kierkegaard presented, in 1844, The Concept of Anxiety as a landmark "psychological deliberation," suggesting that our only hope in overcoming anxiety was not through "powder and pills" but by embracing it with open arms. While Kierkegaard's Danish prose is surprisingly rich, previous translations—the most recent in 1980—have marginalised the work with alternately...

First published in 1843 under the pseudonym Johannes de silentio ("John of Silence"), Søren Kierkegaard's richly resonant Fear and Trembling has for generations stood as a pivotal text in the history of moral philosophy, inspiring such artistic and philosophical luminaries as Edvard Munch, W. H. Auden, Walter Benjamin, and existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. Now, in our era of immense uncertainty, renowned...

A comprehensive anthology of Kierkegaard's writings that offers an unmatched introduction to one of the most original and influential modern philosophers. This is the most comprehensive anthology of Søren Kierkegaard's works ever published in English. Drawn from the volumes of Princeton's authoritative Kierkegaard's Writings series by editors Howard and Edna Hong, these carefully chosen selections represent every major aspect of...

First published in 1843 under the pseudonym Johannes de silentio ("John of Silence"), Søren Kierkegaard's richly resonant Fear and Trembling has for generations stood as a pivotal text in the history of moral philosophy, inspiring such artistic and philosophical luminaries as Edvard Munch, W. H. Auden, Walter Benjamin, and existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. Now, in our era of immense uncertainty, renowned...

The "greatest psychologist of the spirit since St. Augustine" (Gregory R. Beabout), Søren Kierkegaard is renowned for such richly imagined philosophical works as Fear and Trembling and The Concept of Anxiety. Yet only The Sickness unto Death condenses his most essential ideas—on aesthetics, ethics, and religion—into a single volume. First published in 1849 under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus, The Sickness unto...

Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions was the last of seven works signed by Kierkegaard and published simultaneously with an anonymously authored companion piece. Imagined Occasions both complements and stands in contrast to Kierkegaard's pseudonymously published Stages on Life's Way. The two volumes not only have a chronological relation but treat some of the same distinct themes. The first of the...

In his praise for Part I of Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, the eminent Kierkegaard scholar Eduard Geismar said, "I am of the opinion that nothing of what he has written is to such a degree before the face of God. Anyone who really wants to understand Kierkegaard does well to begin with it." These discourses, composed after Kierkegaard had...

First published in 1847, Works of Love is among Søren Kierkegaard's most explicitly religious works. Intended to awaken rather than convince—to replicate "the stinging, impatient character of a 'gadfly,'" as translator Bruce H. Kirmmse writes—the book consists of a series of fifteen deliberations on love. Contrasting romantic love and love for one's friends with the selfless Christian love—agape—of the New...

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First published in 1843 under a pseudonym, Fear and Trembling is written in a quasi-dialogue form in which different facets of Kierkegaard's thought are presented to the reader. Without disclosing his own beliefs, Kierkegaard confronts the reader with various ethical and religious attitudes, but leaves the responsibility of choice open. This new edition provides a chronology of the author's life...

Seen as the original Existentialist, Kierkegaard transformed philosophy with his conviction that we must all create our own nature. Fear and Trembling, his great work of religious anxiety portraying Abraham's sacrifice of his son Isaac, argues that true understanding can only be attained by making a personal 'leap of faith'. In Fear and Trembling, Søren Kierkegaard's infamous and controversial work...

The Sickness Unto Death is famed for the depth and acuity of its modern psychological insights. Writing under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus, Kierkegaard explores the concept of 'despair', alerting readers to the diversity of ways in which they may be described as living in this state of bleak abandonment—including some that may seem just the opposite—and offering a much-discussed formula for...

Either/Or is a brilliant exploration of the conflicts inherent in life between living aesthetically and living morally. In Either/Or, using the voices of two characters—the aesthetic young man of part one, called simply 'A', and the ethical Judge Vilhelm of the second section—Kierkegaard reflects upon the search for a meaningful existence. He contemplates subjects as diverse as Mozart, drama, boredom,...

A companion piece to The Concept of Anxiety, this work continues Søren Kierkegaard's radical and comprehensive analysis of human nature in a spectrum of possibilities of existence. Present here is a remarkable combination of the insight of the poet and the contemplation of the philosopher. In Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening, Kierkegaard moves beyond...

A masterful new translation of one of Kierkegaard's most engaging works. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells his followers to let go of earthly concerns by considering the lilies of the field and the birds of the air. Søren Kierkegaard's short masterpiece on this famous gospel passage draws out its vital lessons for readers in a rapidly modernising...

In the vast literature of love, The Seducer's Diary is an intricate curiosity—a feverishly intellectual attempt to reconstruct an erotic failure as a pedagogic success, a wound masked as a boast, observes John Updike in his foreword to Søren Kierkegaard's narrative. This work, a chapter from Kierkegaard's first major volume, Either/Or, springs from his relationship with his fiancée, Regine Olsen....

Walter Lowrie's classic, bestselling translation of Søren Kierkegaard's most important and popular books remains unmatched for its readability and literary quality. Fear and Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death established Kierkegaard as the father of existentialism and have come to define his contribution to philosophy. Lowrie's translation, first published in 1941 and later revised, was the first in English, and...

In Philosophical Fragments, the pseudonymous author Johannes Climacus explored the question: What is required in order to go beyond Socratic recollection of eternal ideas already possessed by the learner? Written as an afterword to this work, Concluding Unscientific Postscript is, on one level, a philosophical jest, yet on another, it is Climacus's characterization of the subjective thinker's relation to the...

Early Polemical Writings covers the young Kierkegaard's works from 1834 through 1838. His authorship begins, as it was destined to end, with polemic. Kierkegaard's first published article touches on the theme of women's emancipation, and the other articles from his student years deal with freedom of the press. Modern readers can see the seeds of Kierkegaard's future career in these...

Why I so much prefer autumn to spring is that in the autumn one looks at heaven; in the spring, at the earth. — Søren Kierkegaard The father of existentialism, Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) was a philosopher who could write like an angel. With only a sentence or two, he could plumb the depths of the human spirit. In this collection...

The "greatest psychologist of the spirit since St. Augustine" (Gregory R. Beabout), Søren Kierkegaard is renowned for such richly imagined philosophical works as Fear and Trembling and The Concept of Anxiety. Yet only The Sickness unto Death condenses his most essential ideas on aesthetics, ethics, and religion into a single volume. First published in 1849 under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus, The...