Long 19th c. · 1813–1855
Who influenced Søren Kierkegaard?
Influences and legacy
The anxious father of existentialism — truth is subjectivity, leap over proof.
Søren Kierkegaard was influenced by Socrates, Blaise Pascal, Johann Georg Hamann, Georg W. F. Hegel, Friedrich Schlegel and F. W. J. Schelling, and went on to influence Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Jean-Paul Sartre. That is 10 lines of the 448 documented lines of influence between the 279 thinkers on this map.
Read on Wikipedia Portrait: La Biblioteca Real de Dinamarca, Public domain See the whole map
Who was Søren Kierkegaard?
A Danish philosopher, theologian and religious author, Kierkegaard is widely considered the first existentialist. His work asks how to live as a "single individual" and puts concrete human reality, authenticity, personal choice and commitment above abstract thought. Many of his early books came out under pseudonyms whose views argue with one another.
His theology stresses the infinite qualitative distinction between man and God and the individual's relation to Christ through faith, and he attacked Christianity as a state religion, as in the Church of Denmark. He also wrote about the knight of faith, angst and the three stages on life's way. Read at first only in Scandinavia, he was translated widely around 1900 and became a major influence on 20th-century thought.
Summarized from the lead of the Wikipedia article.
Who influenced Søren Kierkegaard?
6 direct influences on this map, earliest first.
- Socrates c. 470–399 BC
- Blaise Pascal 1623–1662
- Johann Georg Hamann 1730–1788
- Georg W. F. Hegel 1770–1831
- Friedrich Schlegel 1772–1829
- F. W. J. Schelling 1775–1854
Who did Søren Kierkegaard influence?
4 thinkers on this map draw directly on Søren Kierkegaard.
- Karl Jaspers 1883–1969
- Martin Heidegger 1889–1976
- Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889–1951
- Jean-Paul Sartre 1905–1980
The line of teachers behind Søren Kierkegaard
The longest documented line of influence ending at Søren Kierkegaard runs 23 generations back, to Thales of Miletus.
- Thales of Miletus
- Anaximenes of Miletus
- Anaxagoras
- Socrates
- Antisthenes
- Diogenes of Sinope
- Crates of Thebes
- Zeno of Citium
- Seneca
- Tertullian
- Augustine of Hippo
- Anselm of Canterbury
- Peter Lombard
- Thomas Aquinas
- René Descartes
- Thomas Hobbes
- Baruch Spinoza
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- Christian Wolff
- Immanuel Kant
- Johann Gottlieb Fichte
- F. W. J. Schelling
- Georg W. F. Hegel
- Søren Kierkegaard
Two steps away from Søren Kierkegaard
Indirect influences
- Through Georg W. F. Hegel: Heraclitus, Baruch Spinoza, Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottfried Herder
- Through Socrates: Anaxagoras, Aspasia, Prodicus
- Through Blaise Pascal: Epictetus
- Through Friedrich Schlegel: Johann Gottlieb Fichte
The second generation
- Through Martin Heidegger: Herbert Marcuse, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Emmanuel Levinas, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida
- Through Ludwig Wittgenstein: Gilbert Ryle, J. L. Austin, G. E. M. Anscombe, Michael Dummett, Bernard Williams, Richard Rorty
- Through Jean-Paul Sartre: Simone de Beauvoir, Frantz Fanon
- Through Karl Jaspers: Hannah Arendt
Contemporaries of Søren Kierkegaard
Thinkers on this map born within 25 years of Søren Kierkegaard, with no direct line between them.
- Mikhail Bakunin 1814–1876
- Alexander Herzen 1812–1870
- Charles Darwin 1809–1882
- Pierre-Joseph Proudhon 1809–1865
- Rudolf Hermann Lotze 1817–1881
- Karl Marx 1818–1883
- Harriet Taylor Mill 1807–1858
- Friedrich Engels 1820–1895
Søren Kierkegaard by the numbers
- Direct influences
- 6
- Direct followers
- 4 — #28 of 279 on this map
- Thinkers upstream
- 93
- Thinkers downstream
- 24
- Wikipedia languages
- 115 — #8 of 47 among 19th-century philosophers
- Card rarity
- Legendary
Schools and lineages
- Existentialists: Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus
Questions about Søren Kierkegaard
- Who influenced Søren Kierkegaard?
- Socrates, Blaise Pascal, Johann Georg Hamann, Georg W. F. Hegel, Friedrich Schlegel and F. W. J. Schelling.
- Who did Søren Kierkegaard influence?
- Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Jean-Paul Sartre.
- When did Søren Kierkegaard live?
- 1813–1855. The map files Søren Kierkegaard under the long 19th century.
- How rare is the Søren Kierkegaard card?
- Wikipedia carries an article on Søren Kierkegaard in 115 languages, which makes it a Legendary card. Legendary starts at 100 languages, Epic at 50 and Rare at 25.
More 19th-century philosophers
- Karl Marx 1818–1883
- Charles Darwin 1809–1882
- Leo Tolstoy 1828–1910
- Fyodor Dostoevsky 1821–1881
- Friedrich Nietzsche 1844–1900
- Georg W. F. Hegel 1770–1831
- Friedrich Engels 1820–1895
- Arthur Schopenhauer 1788–1860