What is the difference between Kierkegaard and Nietzsche?

Kierkegaard's religiousness emphasizes faith that is in its tension with doubt. The truth in subjectivity is not something that simply exists for all time, but must be wrestled and eventually submitted to. Nietzsche prefers to make truth submit to the will of greatness. Kierkegaard gives over to God.

How are Nietzsche and Kierkegaard similar?

Abstract. Soren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche both felt that life is irrational. They were problem thinkers who chose not to follow the systematic approach to philosophy as their predecessors did. In this regard, they stood on common ground.

Does Nietzsche agree with Kierkegaard?

There's no evidence that Nietzsche read Kierkegaard; the latter had not been translated into German. However, there is strong evidence that Nietzsche knew of Kierkegaard through the secondary literature; furthermore, Georges Brandes was a clear link between the two of them.

What would Kierkegaard think of Nietzsche?

Kierkegaard agrees that life can be absurd and that meaning could be hard to come by. As opposed to Nietzsche, who said the death of God caused this, Søren argued that, in the present age, meaning is sucked out of concepts by abstraction and a tendency to view things with too much rationality.

What is the individual according to Kierkegaard and Nietzsche?

Kierkegaard and Nietzsche

Søren Kierkegaard is generally considered to have been the first existentialist philosopher. He proposed that each individual—not reason, society, or religious orthodoxy—is solely tasked with giving meaning to life and living it sincerely, or "authentically".

Kierkegaard and Nietzsche | Giants of Existentialism

What did Kierkegaard and Nietzsche contribute to existentialism?

Kierkegaard and Nietzsche provided the basic foundations of 19^th century Existentialism. It is a philosophy that emphasises the existence of the individual as a free and responsible agent determining their own development.

What did Kierkegaard believe?

For his emphasis on individual existence—particularly religious existence—as a constant process of becoming and for his invocation of the associated concepts of authenticity, commitment, responsibility, anxiety, and dread, Søren Kierkegaard is generally considered the father of existentialism.

What did Nietzsche believe?

In his works, Nietzsche questioned the basis of good and evil. He believed that heaven was an unreal place or “the world of ideas”. His ideas of atheism were demonstrated in works such as “God is dead”. He argued that the development of science and emergence of a secular world were leading to the death of Christianity.

Was Kierkegaard a nihilist?

Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855): The nineteenth century Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard—who many academics regard among the first existentialist philosophers—wrote about nihilism, calling it “leveling.” Kierkegaard felt that leveling was not a positive thing, because the problem of nihilism was that it meant ...

Why is Nietzsche the father of existentialism?

Nietzsche's contribution to existentialism was the idea that men must accept that they are part of a material world, regardless of what else might exist. As part of this world, men must live as if there is nothing else beyond life. A failure to live, to take risks, is a failure to realize human potential.

What did Kierkegaard say about God?

Kierkegaard believed that Christianity was not a doctrine to be taught, but rather a life to be lived. He considered that many Christians who were relying totally on external proofs of God were missing out a true Christian experience, which is precisely the relationship one individual can have with God.

Did Dostoevsky read Kierkegaard?

Although Dostoevsky wrote after Kierkegaard, it is him that defined existentialist philosophy the best. Kaufmann declares "It is as if Kierkegaard had stepped right out of Dostoevsky's pen”, adding that “part one of Notes from Underground is the best overture for existentialism ever written”.

Was Kierkegaard religious?

Kierkegaard styled himself above all as a religious poet. The religion to which he sought to relate his readers is Christianity. The type of Christianity that underlies his writings is a very serious strain of Lutheran pietism informed by the dour values of sin, guilt, suffering, and individual responsibility.

Who did Kierkegaard influence?

Jerry Fodor has written that Kierkegaard was "a master and way out of the league that the rest of us [philosophers] play in". Kierkegaard has also had a considerable influence on 20th-century literature. Figures deeply influenced by his work include Walker Percy, W. H. Auden, Franz Kafka, David Lodge, and John Updike.

What did Kierkegaard mean by repetition?

The book Repetition is essentially about temporality, about how time flows unceasingly onward, wresting from us every precious moment of our existence like an irresistible tidal force that consigns them immediately to the unrecoverable ocean of the past.

Was Nietzsche an existentialist or nihilist?

Among philosophers, Friedrich Nietzsche is most often associated with nihilism. For Nietzsche, there is no objective order or structure in the world except what we give it. Penetrating the façades buttressing convictions, the nihilist discovers that all values are baseless and that reason is impotent.

Is Nietzsche a nihilist?

Summary. Nietzsche is a self-professed nihilist, although, if we are to believe him, it took him until 1887 to admit it (he makes the admission in a Nachlass note from that year). No philosopher's nihilism is more radical than Nietzsche's and only Kierkegaard's and Sartre's are as radical.

What is Kierkegaard most famous for?

In addition to being dubbed “the father of existentialism,” Kierkegaard is best known as a trenchant critic of Hegel and Hegelianism and for his invention or elaboration of a host of philosophical, psychological, literary and theological categories, including: anxiety, despair, melancholy, repetition, inwardness, irony ...

What was Nietzsche's main point?

As the title of one of his books suggests, Nietzsche seeks to find a place “beyond good and evil.” One of Nietzsche's fundamental achievements is to expose the psychological underpinnings of morality. He shows that our values are not themselves fixed and objective but rather express a certain attitude toward life.

Is Nietzsche's philosophy evil?

Nietzsche believes that the concept of evil is dangerous because it has a negative effect on human potential and vitality by promoting the weak in spirit and suppressing the strong.

What is Nietzsche most known for?

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche is known for his writings on good and evil, the end of religion in modern society and the concept of a "super-man."

What are Kierkegaard main ideas?

Kierkegaard proposed that the individual passed through three stages on the way to becoming a true self: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. Each of these “stages on life's way” represents competing views on life and as such potentially conflicts with one another.

What are the 3 stages of existence in Kierkegaard?

In the pseudonymous works of Kierkegaard's first literary period, three stages on life's way, or three spheres of existence, are distinguished: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious.

What did Kierkegaard believe existentialism?

Basically, Kierkegaard believed there were three spheres of existence. First there was the aesthetic, or superficial; then there was the ethical, in which values inform behavior; and finally there was the religious, in which the leap of faith supersedes all other considerations.