Kierkegaard: A Single Life

Kierkegaard: A Single Life is the 2016 biography written by Canadian author and educator Stephen Backhouse. The biography tells the personal and professional story of Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, theologian, poet, and social critic who was born in 1813 and died in 1855. Hailed as the godfather of existentialism, Kierkegaard’s life, work, influence, romance and riot-causing controversies are presented by Backhouse through a wealth of new information, offering readers a fresh understanding of Kierkegaard’s indelible influence on the world. While many are still unfamiliar with the scope of Kierkegaard’s reach, Backhouse contends that Kierkegaard continues to affect your daily life whether you know it or not. In vivid prose that reads like a novel, Backhouse provides a historical context to explore Kierkegaard’s robust lifework.

Backhouse begins the biography with Kierkegaard’s controversial funeral, during which a riot nearly breaks out. He notes the undecided reactions of Kierkegaard’s death by the esteemed dignitaries of Copenhagen, including the various clerical authorities of the Danish state church, as well as public Danish citizens. When Minister Dean Tryde offers a few kind words for the deceased, he is interrupted by painter Henrik Lund, who decries the hypocrisy of the church’s attempt to eulogize Kierkegaard under their patronage. Backhouse gives a background of Kierkegaard’s early life and schooling, which included the awkward but brilliant boy getting teased quite often. Despite his teachers recognizing his brilliance, Kierkegaard becomes bored and unchallenged at school. A severe depression would take hold of Kierkegaard in earnest in 1835 following the Great Earthquake, when he learned of his father’s blasphemy over the Holy Spirit and sensuality. As Kierkegaard grows into a gregarious public figure, his private life was so secluded that he secretly wrote in his journals that he “wanted to shoot myself.”

Kierkegaard’s view on philosophy and theology changes drastically when he meets Regine Olsen. Kierkegaard falls in love with Olsen and the two become engaged. However, as a means of saving Olsen from his family curse and his residual melancholy, Kierkegaard ends the engagement. It’s this profound decision that became the basis for Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, as well as Stages on Life’s Way. In the subsequent chapter, Backhouse chronicles the production of the aforementioned volumes, which are written between 1841 and 1846. Afterwards, Backhouse details the Corsair Affair, during which Danish literary critic P.L. Moller writes a scathing review of Stages on Life’s Way. In response, Kierkegaard writes two pieces; one impugning Moller’s integrity, the other lambasting the Corsair, Denmark’s satirical newspaper. Over the course of the next year, the Corsair writes a series of inflammatory articles and draws insulting cartoons of Kierkegaard, which lampoon him as a crippled little man who only found success by exploiting Olsen. Despite the Corsair’s attacks, Kierkegaard manages to pry its new editor, Meir Aron Goldschmidt, away from the paper, as well as deny Moller a reputable academic position. The scandal becomes such a big deal that Danish parents forbid their sons to be named Soren.



The continuation of Kierkegaard’s attack on the church, also referred to as “armed neutrality,” is further explored. Following the Corsair Affair, Kierkegaard starts to feel comfortable in the role he thinks God wants for him, which is denouncing Christendom on the grounds that biblical Christianity has ceased to be. Kierkegaard posits that baptism and raising children in religious environments are not the ways to become Christian, but that individuals can only find salvation and true meaning as human beings through an existential encounter with Christ. By doing so, Kierkegaard rejects the notion of basing one’s faith on the depiction of Jesus’ life on earth as seen throughout history up until the 1800s.

Kierkegaard places importance on individualism as a means of thinking for oneself, rather than adhering to the herd mentality fostered by organized Christian practice. In this vein, Kierkegaard also rejects the group identities based on nationalism, patriotism, racism and the like. Backhouse expounds on Kierkegaard’s rebuking of modern Christian practices as he demotes them from religiously important to superficially aesthetic. As his death nears, Kierkegaard’s final works are delayed in their publication due to a number of factors in timing. For example, Kierkegaard’s reluctance to disparage Bishop Jakob Peter Mynster caused him to wait a year to publish his critical 1854 Fatherland article “Was Bishop Mynster ‘a witness to the truth’ - is this the truth?” Kierkegaard was so antagonistic of the church that he denied a final Communion before his death one year later.

Instead, he demanded that a layperson present his Communion rather than have a disingenuous priest do it. This upset the church even further and caused greater public uproar.
Following his death, Backhouse traces the grand influence Kierkegaard had on such publicly celebrated figures as Karl Jaspers, Franz Kafka, Karl Barth, Hannah Arendt, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, T. S. Eliot, Thomas Merton, Albert Camus, Henry Miller, Richard Wright, Martin Luther King Jr., Mike Tyson, and many others. The end of the biography lays out Kierkegaard’s body of work, detailing each in chronological order. Throughout the biography, Backhouse emphasizes Kierkegaard’s view that religion is not a philosophy, and that existence cannot be totally comprehended by rational human thought. For Kierkegaard, truth must be found on an individual basis through an inward existential journey that requires a leap of faith that logic simply cannot articulate. In outlining the six pillars of existentialism, Backhouse cements Kierkegaard’s legacy as the godfather of the philosophical movement. The six tenets of existentialism include anti-essentialism; prioritizing the individual over the group; existence as becoming; liberty as the foundation for human becoming; separation, pain, and death as catalysts for becoming; and truth as rationalization rather than communication.



Backhouse is the Lecturer in Social and Political Theology at St. Mellitus College, London. He is also the Director and primary teacher of Tent Theology. In 2018, Backhouse was named Dean of Theology for the Local Church for the Westminster Theology Centre. He has written several books and essays on religion, history, identity, and Kierkegaard.