Our age reminds one of the dissolution of the Greek city-state: Everything goes on as usual and yet there is no longer anyone who believes in it. The… - Søren Kierkegaard
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Our age reminds one of the dissolution of the Greek city-state: Everything goes on as usual and yet there is no longer anyone who believes in it. The invisible spiritual bond which gives it validity, no longer exists, and so the whole age is at once comic and tragic — tragic because it is perishing, comic because it goes on.
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855) was a Danish Christian philosopher and theologian, considered to be a founder of Existentialist thought and Absurdist traditions. He wrote critical texts on organized religion, Christendom, morality, ethics, psychology and philosophy of religion, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony and parables.
Biography information from
Wikiquote·
Portrait adapted from
Wikimedia Commons, La Biblioteca Real de Dinamarca (Public domain / CC0)
Also Known As
Pen Names:
Victor Eremita
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A
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Judge William
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Johannes de silentio
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Constantine Constantius
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Young Man
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Vigilius Haufniensis
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Nicolaus Notabene
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Hilarius Bookbinder
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Johannes Climacus
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Inter et Inter
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H.H.
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Anti-Climacus
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B
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Johannes de Silentio
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Constantin Constantius
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P. CH. Kierkegaard
Native Name:
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard
Alternative Names:
Kierkegaard
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Climacus
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Sören Aaby Kierkegaard
Imagine a lover who has received a letter from his beloved – I assume that God's Word is just as precious to you as this letter is to the lover. I assume that you read and think you ought to read God's Word in the same way the lover reads this letter.
When I was young, I forgot how to laugh in the cave of Trophonius; when I was older, I opened my eyes and beheld reality, at which I began to laugh, and since then, I have not stopped laughing. I saw that the meaning of life was to secure a livelihood, and that its goal was to attain a high position; that love’s rich dream was marriage with an heiress; that friendship’s blessing was help in financial difficulties; that wisdom was what the majority assumed it to be; that enthusiasm consisted in making a speech; that it was courage to risk the loss of ten dollars; that kindness consisted in saying, “You are welcome,” at the dinner table; that piety consisted in going to communion once a year. This I saw, and I laughed.
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Out of love, God becomes man. He says: Here you see what it is to be a human being; but he adds: Take care, for I am also God — blessed is he who takes no offense at me.
