Kierkegaard

I first read Kierkegaard on an existentialism course at St Andrews University in the 1970s. He had a tortured personal life and allegedly drew out the last of his money the week he died in his 40s in 1855. His vision is intense and his view of Christianity radical. He inherited this intensity and anxiety from his father. He was well read in contemporary philosophy and drew on both Kant and Hegel, formulating a subjective view of truth that had a great influence on subsequent religious thinking in taking Christianity far more seriously than the church as a guide to immediate conduct, in a similar way to Tolstoy at the end of the century. This short book provides a thorough grounding in his philosophy of freedom and the self.