Reviews for Short Life of Kierkegaard

The average rating for Short Life of Kierkegaard based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-10-20 00:00:00 Joel Cason A nice biography about the Danish gadfly - who lived a life of melancholy, and love, and love lost, and much more. SK was a genius, undoubtedly. And learning about many of his experiences from early childhood, his father, and personal journals, and strict religious upbringing, and Regina (his love whom he decided not to marry), as well as how those experiences influenced some of his apparently neurotic and heartbreaking decisions as an adult, was very enlightening for someone such as myself who is slowly but surely reading through the Kierkegaardian corpus. I recommend this biography for those who wish to learn about the experiences behind the pseudonymous writings. Such knowledge certainly does not solve the riddle of his authorship, but it nevertheless adds, so it seems to me, important and noteworthy depth to his writings. As someone interested in literary theory, knowledge of the SK's personal history and experiences can in this instance be extremely enlightening when reading his texts because so many of the themes within them can be found in his life. He was a melancholy man, a passionate genius, a witty jokester, a critic of the masses, a devout Christian, an existentialist (as he has been called by historians).

Review # 2 was written on 2020-03-15 00:00:00 Nick Mutascio "Having been so indiscreet as to admit that I am a lover of Kierkegaard, I would have it known that this is the Kierkegaard I love - not the dissolute and despairing youth, nor the returning prodigal, nor the unhappy lover, not the genius who created pseudonyms, but the frail man, utterly unfitted to cope with the world, who neverthless was able to confront the real danger of penuary as well as the vain terros his imagination conjured up, and in fear and trembling, fighting with fabulous monsters, ventured as a lone swimmer far out upon the deep, where no human hand could be streched out to save him, and there, with 70,000 fathoms of water under him, for three years held out, waiting for his orders, and then said distinctly that definite thing he was bidden to say, and died with a hallelujah on his lips. I could not love him as I do unless I could venerate him, and I learned to venerate him only when I saw that he had the courage to die as a witness for the truth." - Walter Lowrie "As a skillful cook says with regard to a dish in which already a great many ingredients are mingled, 'It needs just a little pinch of cinnamon' (and we perhaps could hardly tell by the taste that this little pinch of spice had entered into it, but the cook knew precisely why and precisely how it affected the taste of the whole mixture)... so it is with divine governance... A little pinch of spice! That is to say: Here a man must be sacrificed, he is needed to impart a particular taste to the rest... Humanly speaking, what a painful thing to be thus sacrificed, to be the little pinch of spice! But on the other hand God knows well the man whom He elects to employ in this way, and so He also knows how, in the inward understanding of it, to make it so blessed a thing for him to be sacrificed, that among the thousands of diverse voices which express, each in its own way, the same thing, his also will be heard, and perhaps especially his, which is truly de profundis, proclaiming: God is love. The birds on the branches, the lilies in the field, the deer in the forest, the fishes in the sea, countless hosts of happy men, exultantly proclaim: God is love. But underneath all these sopranos, supporting them as it were, as the bass part does, is audible the de profundis which issues from the sacrificed one: God is love." - Soren Kierkegaard