"By far the most profound thinker of the 19th century" --Ludwig Wittgenstein "Kierkegaard's great contribution to Western philosophy was to assert, or to reassert with Romantic urgency, that, subjectively speaking, each existence is the center of the universe." --John Updike, The New YorkerThe New Yorker Harper Perennial Modern Classics presents the rediscovered spiritual writings of S�ren Kierkegaard, edited and translated by Oxford theologian George Pattison. Called "the first modernist" by The Guardian The Guardian and "the father of existentialism" by the New York TimesNew York Times, Kierkegaard left an indelible imprint on existential writers from Sartre and Camus to Kafka and Derrida. In works like Fear and TremblingFear and Trembling, Sickness unto DeathSickness unto Death, and Either/OrEither/Or, he by famously articulated that all meaning is rooted in subjective experience--but the devotional essays that Patterson reveals in Spiritual WritingsSpiritual Writings will forever change our understanding of the great philosopher, uncovering the spiritual foundations beneath his secularist philosophy.
Kierkegaard left the task of discovering the meaning of his works to the reader, because "the task must be made difficult, for only the difficult inspires the noble-hearted". Scholars have interpreted Kierkegaard variously as an existentialist, neo-orthodoxist, postmodernist, humanist, and individualist.
Crossing the boundaries of philosophy, theology, psychology, and literature, he is an influential figure in contemporary thought.... Show more