Problem of Becoming One’s Self in work of Søren Kierkegaard

Buljan, Ivana. (2008). Problem of Becoming One’s Self in work of Søren Kierkegaard. Filozofska istraživanja, 28(2). pp. 277-302. ISSN 1848-2309

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Abstract

Kierkegaard’s philosophical inspiration was motivated by two displeasures: The first one concerns speculative philosophy and its incapability to grasp the reality of an individual in their existential givenness, and the second one has to do with the contemporary bourgeois-Christian world that had been falling apart and in which the “individual” was quite abrogated by the domination of the “crowd”. How to become one’s self, or a “single individual”, is the question Kierkegaard places into the center of his philosophical interest. The path from a common survival to a real existence, i. e., from the “crowd” to the “individual” is realized in three stages, through the esthetic, ethical, and the religious stages of existence. This paper primarily analyzes their key constituents and their interrelation with an analysis of three of Kierkegaard’s works: Either/Or, The Sickness unto Death, and Fear and Trembling. While the relation between the esthetic and ethical stages is a dialectical one, the religious is in a supradialectical relation to the esthetic and the ethical. This supradialectical relation is the key to the interpretation of Kierkegaard’s thought.

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