ShareThisWelcome back readers! Today, we’re going to jump right in with another personality spotlight – we’re celebrating the birthday of that great modern philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard.
A Danish thinker and a religious man, Kierkegaard was a Protestant who lavished criticisms on his nation’s clergy. Kierkegaard placed a huge importance on the role of each person in his or her own faith (as opposed to the importance of an organization, like the Danish National Church). He argued that science and faith were not at odds, but different ways to understand different things.
Science showed facts and truths necessary for practical life; he argued it didn’t (and couldn’t) shine any light on an “objective faith.” For Kierkegaard, faith gave meaning, but that meaning was always “subjective,” or different depending on each person who held it. The later years of his life were characterized not by a struggle between science and faith, but between personal faith and faith-as-explained-by-the-church. He is counted often among the existentialists – part of his argument for embracing faith was his conviction that life was better with than without it.
If you’d like to learn more about his fascinating ideas, laid out in a concise, easy-to-read format, take a look at Kierkegaard For Beginners, one of our many philosophy For Beginners titles. You can even take a primer on philosophy itself, with Philosophy For Beginners – a survey of many great minds through history, and a great way to make starting this difficult subject easier.
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