Polemika Sørena Kierkegaarda z Georgiem Heglem - początki egzystencjalizmu

Abstract

Søren Kierkegaard, the nineteenth-century Danish philosopher is described by contemporary scholars as the precursor of existentialism. The philosopher, knowing the system of Georg Hegel’s idealism, analyzes in his works the interior of man and man’s deep experiencing the everyday life. Thereby he exposes the weaknesses of monumental Hegelian system, which at that time was enjoying resounding success in the West. The Danish thinker in his polemical works emphasizes that Hegelian individuai is plunged in the realm of thought, that is the possibilities, while the real existence is immersed in reality and makes meaningful choices. Moreover, Kierkegaard notes a real danger of complete subordination of the individual and his objectives to the state, which in his opinion, essentially undermines individuai autonomy against unspecified crowd. In the Danish philosopher’s thought, the existence engaging in the world, realizing through making choices, suspended between the finite and thè infinite, towering far above the “blurred” individuai, “wedged” in the rigid framework of the Hegelian idealism, was the inspiration for the next existentialists.