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Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, the youngest
child of middle-aged parents. His father, Michael, had been an impoverished serf
in a bleak area of northern Denmark. While still a boy, Michael had cursed God
for the dreariness of his life and from that point on considered himself and his
descendants to be under God’s condemnation. The external events of Michael’s
life gave little indication of such a curse, however, as he worked his way to great
wealth as a merchant in Copenhagen. Following the death of his first wife, and
before the period of mourning was over, Michael was forced to marry his first
wife’s maid, Anne Lund, and five months later she bore the first of their five
children.
Michael was already 56 and retired from business when Søren was born in- Like James Mill, Michael educated Søren at home and also put his son
through rigorous intellectual endeavors. But unlike his predecessor, Michael also
communicated to his son a strong religious sentiment and deep, though perhaps
warped, emotional feelings. Michael often took Søren on “trips of fantasy” while
conversing in the family library.
In 1830, at his father’s urging, Kierkegaard entered the University of
Copenhagen to study theology. While there, he encountered the work of Hegel
and reacted strongly against it. Kierkegaard objected to the implicit optimism
and the “swallowing up” of contradictions in Hegel’s dialectic. But more
important, Kierkegaard claimed that even though Hegel’s “System” was an
impressive philosophical tour de force,it did not relate to the lived existence
of the individual—it did not give any guidance as to what a person should do.
A famous entry from Kierkegaard’s journal at this time is worth quoting at
length:
SØREN KIERKEGAARD
1813–1855