The Philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard

By: Daniel Evans

Narrated by: Kevin Theis

One of the most often quoted and unread authors of his time, Søren Kierkegaard had dense and complex writings that overwhelmed most readers. His dense style of writing and the complexity of his thoughts made reading his writings and journals a chore for many. Born May 5, 1813, in Copenhagen, Denmark, Søren Aabye Kierkegaard had a major influence in the development of 20th-century existentialist and postmodernist philosophies. Many go as far as to call him the “Father of Existentialism”.

His life was seen by some as being uneventful, as he rarely left his hometown of Copenhagen. He traveled abroad only a handful of times and mostly walked the streets of Copenhagen talking with ordinary people. It was at the Copenhagen university where he first studied philosophy.

Kierkegaard regarded himself as a religious poet above everything else. His Christian writings emphasized Lutheran pietism and explored sin, guilt, suffering, and responsibility for oneself. In his writings, Kierkegaard proposed that everyone passed through three stages of life on the way to “[B]ecoming a true self”. The phases he proposed are the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious.

©2018 Daniel Evans (P)2018 Flaneur Media

Excellent, accessible guide to Kierkegaard

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

Kierkegaard is brilliant, but tremendously difficult to access with casual reading. I thought an audiobook would be an easier way to read the text, and it definitely has been.

This is an excellent guide to Kierkegaard's philosophy. The narrator is clear and well-spoken, and I've very much enjoyed the book so far.

The Philosophy of Siren Kierkegaard

I enjoyed this book although the recording is flawed. Kierkegaard is worth the struggle to get through it an I appreciate the production in fairly inexpensive and brief offerings. Worth it.

Best audio intro to Kierkegaard!

Start here in your journey into the study of Kierkegaard, whose difficulty to understand is well known. Really liked the introductions to a couple of his more well known works and enough biographical information to be helpful in assessing his writings.
This would be a good primer to listen to all the way through and then as an abbreviated cliffsnotes before each of the works covered before and after reading the original works themselves.

The narrator did a great job.

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

A worthwhile read

In a short time this Book gives you an overview of the ideas of a great thinker.


The Narrator handles difficult material well and makes it a worthwhile listening experience.



This book was given to me for free at my request and I provided this voluntary review.

The Complex Philosophy of Kierkegaard

This brief audiobook gives an overview of the work of Kierkegaard, a brilliant but difficult to understand thinker.

Kierkegaard is considered by some to be the "Father of Existentialism". Born into a wealthy Danish family, Kierkegaard’s position gave him the time to develop his thinking and philosophy. Kierkegaard presented his work under different pseudonyms in order to present different perspectives. His beliefs as a Christian impacted his philosophy; some of his work deals with Christian love and Christian faith, for example. Kierkegaard was also influenced by the philosophy of Socrates, in that both concerned themselves with the issue of how one exists. Kierkegaard is responsible for giving us the concept of “angst” (originally a Danish world) or unfocused fear.

Kierkegaard wrote about the distinct stages that a person can move through in their lifetime: the aesthetic stage, the ethical stage, and the religious stage. The “aesthetic” stage is characterized by the pursuit of pleasure. The “ethical” stage is characterized by the pursuit of society’s rules and laws. In the highest stage, what Kierkegaard calls the “religious” stage, we pursue something greater than ourselves or society’s norms, like God, love or something similar.

The narrator takes material that is intellectually challenging and does a great job making it an enjoyable experience for the listener.

I was provided this audiobook at no charge by the author, publisher and/or narrator in exchange for an unbiased review.