The present volume features articles that employ source-work research in order to explore the individual Danish sources of Kierkegaard's thought. The volume is divided into three tomes in order to cover the different fields of influence.Tome I is dedicated to exploring the sources that fall under the rubrics, Philosophy, Politics and Social Theory. With regard to philosophy, Kierkegaard read the works of all the foremost Danish thinkers of the time and their German antecedents, in particular Cont, Schilling and Hegel. While he was sympathetic to individual ideas offered by this tradition, he was generally keen to criticise the German model of philosophy and to propose a new paradigm for philosophical thought that was more in tune with lived existence. Kierkegaard also experienced the dynamic period in history that saw the great upheavals throughout Europe in connection with the revolutions of 1848 and the First Schleswig War. While it has long been claimed that Kierkegaard was not interested in politics, recent research supports a quite different picture. To be sure, he cannot be regarded as a political scientist or social theorist in a traditional sense, but he was nonetheless engaged in the issues of his day, and in his works one can certainly find material that can be insightful for the fields of politics and social theory.

The period of Kierkegaard's life corresponds to Denmark's "Golden Age," which is conventionally used to refer to the period covering roughly the first half of the nineteenth century, when Denmark's most important writers, philosophers, theologians, poets, actors and artists flourished. Kierkegaard was often in dialogue with his fellow Danes on key issues of the day. His authorship would be unthinkable without reference to the Danish State Church, the Royal Theater, the University of Copenhagen or the various Danish newspapers and journals, such as The Corsair, Fædrelandet, and Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, which played an undeniable role in shaping his development. The present volume features articles that employ source-work research in order to explore the individual Danish sources of Kierkegaard's thought. The volume is divided into three tomes in order to cover the different fields of influence. Tome I is dedicated to exploring the sources that fall under the rubrics, "Philosophy, Politics and Social Theory." With regard to philosophy, Kierkegaard read the works of all the foremost Danish thinkers of the time and their German antecedents, in particular Kant, Schilling and Hegel. While he was sympathetic to individual ideas offered by this tradition, he was generally keen to criticize the German model of philosophy and to propose a new paradigm for philosophical thought that was more in tune with lived existence. Kierkegaard also experienced the dynamic period in history that saw the great upheavals throughout Europe in connection with the revolutions of 1848 and the First Schleswig War. While it has long been claimed that Kierkegaard was not interested in politics, recent research supports a quite different picture. To be sure, he cannot be regarded as a political scientist or social theorist in a traditional sense, but he was nonetheless engaged in the issues of his day, and in his works one can certainly find material that can be insightful for the fields of politics and social theory.

The present volume features articles that employ source-work research in order to explore the individual Danish sources of Kierkegaard's thought. The volume is divided into three tomes in order to cover the different fields of influence. Tome I is dedicated to exploring the sources that fall under the rubrics, Philosophy, Politics and Social Theo

The period of Kierkegaard's life corresponds to Denmark's "Golden Age," which is conventionally used to refer to the period covering roughly the first half of the nineteenth century, when Denmark's most important writers, philosophers, theologians, poets, actors and artists flourished. Kierkegaard was often in dialogue with his fellow Danes on key issues of the day. His authorship would be unthinkable without reference to the Danish State Church, the Royal Theater, the University of Copenhagen or the various Danish newspapers and journals, such as The Corsair, Fædrelandet, and Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, which played an undeniable role in shaping his development. The present volume features articles that employ source-work research in order to explore the individual Danish sources of Kierkegaard's thought. The volume is divided into three tomes in order to cover the different fields of influence. Tome I is dedicated to exploring the sources that fall under the rubrics, "Philosophy, Politics and Social Theory." With regard to philosophy, Kierkegaard read the works of all the foremost Danish thinkers of the time and their German antecedents, in particular Kant, Schilling and Hegel. While he was sympathetic to individual ideas offered by this tradition, he was generally keen to criticize the German model of philosophy and to propose a new paradigm for philosophical thought that was more in tune with lived existence. Kierkegaard also experienced the dynamic period in history that saw the great upheavals throughout Europe in connection with the revolutions of 1848 and the First Schleswig War. While it has long been claimed that Kierkegaard was not interested in politics, recent research supports a quite different picture. To be sure, he cannot be regarded as a political scientist or social theorist in a traditional sense, but he was nonetheless engaged in the issues of his day, and in his works one can certainly find material that can be insightful for the fields of politics and social theory.

Kierkegaard is no doubt a philosopher whose focus is inwardness and irreducible individuality. On the surface, he therefore seems to have little to teach us about the sphere of the political: not only was this dimension never explicitly addressed in the writings of the Danish philosopher, but also the positions he took with regard to such a domain where always marked by a strong critical attitude. Moreover, he appeared to be a conservative with regard to any movement towards democratization and equality, opposing liberal democracy as well as socialism, while not refraining from taking up explicitly misogynous positions. With this in mind, one could easily dismiss Kierkegaardian philosophy as exclusively relevant to the private domain of individual existence and irremediably unable to speak to wider concerns such as those encountered in the public dimension. However, in spite of his emphasis on singularity, or perhaps precisely because of it, over the years Kierkegaard’s philosophy has given rise to interpretations that recognise its relevance for the political. For instance, the crucial importance of such ideas as self-choice, earnestness and subjective passion are easily imported from the individual sphere into the realm of the political, coming to have a bearing on notions such as responsibility and commitment. In addition, Kierkegaard’s accent on the irreducibility of the individual to the universal resonates interestingly in those forms of thinking that, from the margins, call into question the domination of an exclusionary model of reason. Furthermore, his ethical writings on love are directly relevant to the political sphere. This book seeks to draw out, from a range of perspectives, some of the ways in which Kierkegaard’s ideas are not only relevant, but highly significant for political thought.

Interpreting Kierkegaard in the general context of Golden Age Denmark, this interdisciplinary anthology features articles which treat his various relations to his most famous Danish contemporaries. It aims to see them not as minor figures laboring in Kierkegaard's shadow but rather as significant thinkers and artists in their own right. The articles illuminate both Kierkegaard's influence on his contemporaries and their varied influences on him. By means of the analyses of these various relations, aspects of Kierkegaard's authorship are brought into new and insightful perspectives. The featured essays treat some of the most important figures from the time, representing the fields of philosophy, theology, literature, criticism and art.

Søren Kierkegaard's radical protestant philosophy of the individual—in which a person's leap of faith is favored over general ethics—has become a model for many contemporary political theorists. Thinkers such as Slavoj Žižek and Alain Badiou have drawn on its revolutionary spirit to position truth above the constraints of political systems. In Kierkegaard and Political Theory, contributors from a wide range of disciplines—including theology, sociology, philosophy, and aesthetics—examine just how crucial Kierkegaard's anti-institutional thinking has been to such efforts and to modernity as a whole. The contributors convincingly position Kierkegaard's radical philosophy as the starting point for contemporary political theory. They show how he pioneered a modernity defined as an argument— an experience—of the impossibility of rationally comprehending a system of thinking. They show how religious and aesthetic experiences function as a response to this impossibility, how their coherence in politics must always be questioned, especially in history's extreme example: totalitarianism. Engaging this and many other subjects, they provide a compelling new line in Kierkegaard studies that illuminates new contours of our political thought. Armen Avanessian is founder of the research platform Speculative Poetics at the Free University Berlin. Sophie Wennerscheid is professor of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Ghent.