KIERKEGAARD, SOREN AABYE

(1813-1855) Danish existentialist philosopher and theologian; attacked organized Christianity in Denmark; grandfather of neo-orthodoxy ; wrote 1. The Concept of Dread , 2. Philosophical Fragments , 3. Either/Or , 4. Fear and Trembling , and 5. Concluding Unscientific Postscript . "The individual is the category through which this age, all history, the human race as a whole must pass." The particular existing individual is the primary category. The real is the particular (not the rational or universal, as in Hegel ). Kierkegaard's opposition to Hegel is shown in his theory that the existing particular self is prior to any concept of a universal self. For Hegel , each self is an instance of the universal by virtue of which the particular is a self (i.e., what is thought to be a self). Essence (what is thought and is universal) precedes existence (i.e., what is concretely lived by the particular subject). Thought is the universal essence of things in Hegel ; Kierkegaard reverses the priority of thought and existence. For him, to think is to act. To think about death meaningfully, for example, is to experience and to accept the finitude of one's own particular existence not to refer to the general concept of death. It is to know that one must die his own death. Conceptual thinking is abstract, impersonal, and passive; existential thinking is concrete, personal, and passionate (i.e., subjective). Existential.