Kierkegaard’s bodily irregularity and religious torment shaped his existence philosophy
Evidence
Kierkegaard was well placed to understand the awkwardness and difficulty of human existence. Everything about him was irregular, including his gait, as he had a twisted spine for which his enemies cruelly mocked him. … Tormented by religious questions, and feeling himself set apart from the rest of humanity, he led a solitary life much of the time. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 58
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Kierkegaard and Nietzsche were deliberately provocative contrarian precursors to existentialism — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 56; Kierkegaard deliberately provoked people into feeling existence’s passion rather than abstraction — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 58; Embodied practice constitutes a precondition for religious experience (+3 more)
Broader Connections
- Kierkegaard and Nietzsche were deliberately provocative contrarian precursors to existentialism
#expands(0.80) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 56 - Kierkegaard deliberately provoked people into feeling existence’s passion rather than abstraction
#expands(0.78) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 58 - Existentialism holds that philosophy grows out of concrete lived experience
#corroborates(0.78) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 54 - Existentialism sought lived experience rather than explaining it away through abstract systems
#expands(0.75) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 1025 - Existentialism is by nature applied to real individual lives
#expands(0.72) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 687 - Embodied practice constitutes a precondition for religious experience
#expands(0.70)