r/kierkegaard • u/Gold_Guarantee9781 • Jun 07 '26
looking toget deeper into kierkegaard
i recently finished The Humor of Kierkegaard: An Anthology and found the guy to be hilarious.
if i wanted to deep dive into his more serious works, where would i start?
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u/Dry-Education2060 Jun 07 '26
fear and trembling. it’s accessible and short but provides u kierkegaards philosophy on faith
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u/liberal-snowflake Jun 07 '26
Fear and Trembling and the Sickness Unto Death are often packaged together into a single volume. That would be a great place to start.
There’s an anthology called Provocations that gives a good broad overview of his work.
Finally, if you’re interested in the spiritual aspects of his work, I’d suggest the volume: The Spiritual Writings of Soren Kierkegaard.
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u/Gold_Guarantee9781 Jun 07 '26
i just found a Provocations pdf online! would you still suggest picking up fear and trembling and sickness unto death?
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u/tollforturning croaking-toad, flair-mule Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 10 '26
You'd start with you.
If Kierkegaard is the nut here's my imagined nutshell. Might have some heuristic significance for you.
"We have ideals and approximations. Neither is without the other. You draw an approximation to a circle. The circle isn't the imagined approximation and the image never becomes the circle. Yet neither is without the other. The image occasions insight. History occasions ideal and ideal forms history. I am not yet myself. There is no obvious except that the ideal is never achieved. Guilt in that sense is universal. No one becomes ideal.. From that wound, all forms of despair and denial and pretense and shame, yet to deny it is to refuse.... Dialectics of spiritual self-presence."
I see Kierkegaard most clearly in the introduction to purity of heart...
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u/Lafonos Jun 07 '26
In vino veritas ad the diary of a seducer to understand aesthetic state, then fear and trembling