Subjectivity is truth.

Subjektiviteten er Sandheden.

Søren Kierkegaard

Philosophers

Søren Kierkegaard

Born in 1813 in Copenhagen, Denmark, Kierkegaard challenged Hegel's grand system-philosophy from the standpoint of the 'single individual,' placing subjective experiences — anxiety, despair, the leap of faith — at the center of philosophy. Through polyphonic works published under pseudonyms, he delineated three stages of existence: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. Widely called the 'father of existentialism,' he prepared the ground for twentieth-century existentialist thought.

View this figure's profile

Source: Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift (非学問的あとがき), 1846年Verified

Søren Kierkegaard's Other Quotes

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily; not to dare is to lose oneself.

Despair is a sickness of the self, a sickness unto death.

Related Quotes

Imagine prisoners chained underground since childhood, seeing only shadows on a wall and taking them for reality.

-- Plato

Life is an unfoldment, and the further we travel the more truth we can comprehend.

-- Hypatia

We discover our fudo (climate and culture) as an expression of our own self-understanding.

-- Tetsuro Watsuji

The true is the whole.

-- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

-- Søren Kierkegaard

Man is condemned to be free.

-- Jean-Paul Sartre