Søren Kierkegaard’s writings have long entranced me since I first ran across it as a teenager. He brought a thoughtful and philosophical approach towards the Christian life that didn’t center around being merely “churchy.” Indeed, as this biography testifies, he ran into conflicts with the institutional church throughout his life. Clare Carlisle details how Copenhagen received this eccentric bachelor before his eminence grew after his death.
She particularly focuses on his love life as the key to his writing. While a student, he was engaged to be married to a young lady named Regina. However, without much clear thinking, he broke off the engagement and poured himself into a writer’s life. He eventually grew famous, but she was cast off and stigmatized. It’s a poor look for someone who supposedly valued purity of heart, and Carlisle maintains that these events haunted Kierkegaard, to some degree, until his death.
Kiekegaard brought an existentialist approach into Christianity. Instead of asking dogmatic questions or supporting a pro-family life, he asked questions about how a character related to God. Did Mary feel it all-for-naught at the cross? What did Sarah think about Abraham’s almost-sacrifice of Isaac? What would have happened if Abraham didn’t hear God? These penetrating questions serve as profound thought experiments that test our own character today. In his time, they scandalized the established authorities, however, and provoked backlash and paranoia.
Kiekegaard’s writings, when read alone, can be excruciating to interpret. I found Carlisle’s biography enlightening so that I can see the situational context of them – to think of the readers he helped or the demons that haunted him. “Christianity’s Socrates” remains a provocative figure within Christian and philosophical history, worthy of study. I’m grateful to have done a bit more of that self-reflective study through this well-penned biography.
Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard
By Clare Carlisle
Narrated by Simon Vance
Text copyright (c) 2020
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Audio copyright (c) 2020
Tantor Audio
ASIN B08FCWVB7H
Length: 10:11
Genre: Biography, philosophy
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