Discover a new understanding of Kierkegaard’s thought and his life, a story filled with romance, betrayal, humor, and riots.

Søren Kierkegaard indeed lived an extraordinary life. His story is filled with romance and betrayal, family curses against God and acts of grace toward others, humor, drama, quiet observations, and riot-inducing polemics. He died in the midst of his fierce “attack upon Christendom”: alone, misunderstood, and infamous. Søren never saw the fruits of his work in his lifetime. It would be almost 100 years after Kierkegaard’s death that others would unleash his words onto the wider world, gaining him the reputation as a profound thinker and saint that he enjoys today.

The Danish philosopher, theologian, social critic, and writer is now widely recognized as one of the world’s most profound writers and thinkers. His influence on philosophy, literature, and on secular and religious life and thought is incalculable. He is known, amongst other things, as “the father of existentialism” and as the man who introduced the ideas of anxiety and the leap of faith to the modern imagination. Philosophers and theologians influenced by Kierkegaard include Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Thomas Merton, and numerous others. His attack on Christianized nationalism helped inspire the pastor and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer to resist the Nazis. He has inspired novelists such as Mann and Kafka and poets like Eliot and Auden.

Yet one is hard pressed to find a biography that explains simply what Kierkegaard's life was like or gives a straightforward overview of his books … until now. Kierkegaard: A Single Life highlights the interesting and controversial aspects of Kierkegaard’s life, telling a story that few today know, and provides brief, straightforward overviews of his key works.

And yet an educated reader would be hard pressed to find a biography that explains simply what Kierkegaard's life was like or gives a straightforward overview of his books.

Søren Kierkegaard lived an extraordinary life. His story is one filled with romance and betrayal, family curses against God and acts of grace to each other, humor, drama, quiet observations, and riot-inducing polemics. A scurrilous newspaper devoted two years of its life to mocking him weekly. A mob formed at his funeral. Two generations of Danish boys were not called “Søren” because of him. He died in the midst of his fierce “attack upon Christendom”: alone, misunderstood, and infamous.

Søren never saw the fruits of his work in his lifetime. It would be almost one hundred years after Kierkegaard’s death that others would unleash his words onto the wider world, gaining him the reputation as a profound thinker and saint that he enjoys today.

This biography covers the main periods of Kierkegaard’s life, taking as its theme different aspects of the “Single Individual” as found in Kierkegaard’s thought. It also offers short overviews of each of Kierkegaard’s works. Uniquely among his biographies, this book extends the story of Kierkegaard’s life to include how his works became known outside of his native Denmark to influence insane wandering prophets, Austrian elites, German Nazi resistance fighters, the Black Power movement in America, and the Inklings of Oxford. A glossary of names appears at the end, briefly explaining who the key people are and what their relationship was to Kierkegaard.

Stephen Backhouse