Kierkegaard’s whole persona was built to throw people off their comfortable stride

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. At intervals, though, he would go out to take ‘people baths’ around the streets of Copenhagen, buttonholing acquaintances and dragging them with him for long philosophical walks. … Kierkegaard considered it a matter of principle to throw people off their stride. He wrote that he would love to sit someone on a horse and startle it into a gallop, or perhaps give a man in a hurry a lame horse, or even hitch his carriage to two horses who went at different speeds — anything to goad the person into seeing what he meant by the ‘passion’ of existence. Kierkegaard was a born goader. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 58

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Kierkegaard deliberately provoked people into feeling existence’s passion rather than abstraction — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 58

Broader Connections

• Kierkegaard deliberately provoked people into feeling existence’s passion rather than abstraction #corroborates (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 58