Introducing Kierkegaard: A Graphic Guide (Graphic Guides)

by Dave Robinson

For Kierkegaard, discovering the “truth” is not just about finding out how things are. It’s more a matter of making a commitment and taking specific kinds of action. Philosophy has to be more than just a calm search for objective truth.

Deciding upon which individual characters to admire and condemn is a more engaging exercise than arbitrating between abstract ideas.

The aesthetic life is, in the end, a series of repetitive experiences that gradually lose their allure, because every individual has a sense of the eternal which this sort of self-indulgent life can never satisfy.

the ethical life does not preclude an enjoyment of beauty and the good things in life – it is just that they are no longer the sole reason for living.

Everyone has to make a dramatic “leap” to another stage – usually because they are forced to do so by overwhelming psychological feelings of inadequacy and despair.

It’s easy to be nostalgic and believe that things were always better in the past. Or to hope that the future will be better than now. Both are common strategies that people use to avoid being “present to themselves”. They end up indecisive, in a constant state of unspecific melancholy and regret.

The choice of a way of life can be made only by the person who has to live it – which is what Kierkegaard means by his puzzling and famous phrase: “Truth is Subjectivity.”