Kierkegaard: A Single Life
By Stephen Blackhouse
Published by Zondervan, 2016
Print: $24.99
Ebook: $12.99
Right off the bat, I'll just come out and say it. I have not read any of Kierkegaard's works. There. It's done. Kierkegaard is someone I've always HEARD about. Or I've read some snappy and wise saying from his diaries or seen some of his writings quoted by another author. And one of my friends back in my college days, who majored in philosophy, was always going on and on about Kierkegaard. He just seems to be one of those authors that you learn about or hear about but never actually read. Don't get me wrong. I own some of his books. I just haven't read them. This biography sounded interesting so I thought reading it would serve as a catalyst for finally reading some of his books.
Soren Kierkegaard as a young man attending the University of Copenhagen was what we would today call a "slacker" or a professional student. During most of his college life, he spent a lot of money on clothes and luxuries (thanks to his rich merchant father) and spent very little time attending classes. His dad finally had to kick him out of the house and give him a yearly allowance just to get him out of his hair. Until his father died and Soren inherited his wealth, he had to supplement his income by teaching Latin.
Kierkagaard also fell in love with a young woman named Regine Olsen and to all appearances, she was the great love of his life. They became engaged but Soren had a crisis of identity. Either he could marry Regine and become a clergyman or retired aristocrat or he could dedicate his life to writing. To Soren, at least in his mind, he couldn't become a husband and live a normal life. He felt that writing or whatever he dedicated his life to becoming could not abide the presence of a wife. Or maybe it was just that there was no room in his self absorbed ego to allow room for another. Or maybe he was just trying to live up to some Romantic ideal of a tortured poet, like a Childe Harold brought to life. For whatever reason, he decided not to get married to Regine, who went on to become the muse that haunted his waking life.
From that point on, Kierkegaard began to produce the works that have made him famous the world over. He went from being a lazy gadabout to being a highly prolific author in spurts under numerous pen names.
One thing that I found shocking was how much Soren got involved in the mudslinging in various newspapers and pamphlets of the time. He had almost a Donald Trumpish need to attack his critics in the various media and to me, it just served to distract him from what he really should have been doing. In fact a lot of the cultural milieu in the book reminded me of the internet today. It was just done in print media and oral rumor instead of Facebook or Twitter. For example, Soren attacks a priest in a tabloid using an anonymous name and the priest's allies in turn attack Soren and the spat spreads virally all over the city to the extent that people on the street from the highest to the lowest bully Soren and call him names and ridicule him as he walks by. It just seems like he was lowering himself to roll with the swine a lot in his life when he didn't have to. He should have let his books handle his engagement with the world.
The whole Regine thing disgusted me. He loved her. She loved him. But for some reason, he just had so little opinion of himself, or maybe too MUCH of one, that he believed that to save Regine, they could never marry. She would be dooming herself to a life of unhappiness if she married him, so he had to break it off. In my opinion, his problem was that he was just an asshole. He set about spreading rumors of women, wine, and song to make her think he never cared for her and that he had forgotten about her. His wish came true. She moved on and married another. He NEVER moved on and thought about her every day for the rest of his life. Idiot. There's no "law" of writing that says you can't be happy and marry the woman you love. Ugh.
Something I did not like about the format of the book was that the author, Stephen Backhouse, deliberately separates the life of Kierkegaard from discussion of his works. After the biography section of the book, there is a separate section for summation and discussion of each of his works. To me, this shows the weakness of the writing. If you are skilled enough, you should have been able to merge the two sections together. I am not going to read any of the "Overviews" because if Backhouse is too lazy to blend it in with the biography, I'm too lazy to read them. I'd rather just read the original writings.
Even though I didn't like the separation between Soren's life and writings, I did enjoy the biography portion a lot. At times, Backhouse tries to write in a more novelistic manner which works most of the time, even though it makes me question how reliable the sources are when you use actual dialogue in quotation marks. I mean, how do you know their exact words? Overall, a good intro to Kierkegaard's life for newbies and a gateway to reading his work.
My Grade: B
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