Kierkegaard: A Biography [Hardcover]

Alastair Hannay (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 5, 2003

Written by one of the world's preeminent authorities on Kierkegard, this biography is the first to reveal the delicate imbrication of Kierkegard's life and thought. To grasp the importance and influence of Kierkegaard's thought far beyond his native Denmark, it is necessary to trace the many factors that led this gifted but (according to his headmaster) 'exceedingly childish youth' to grapple with traditional philosophical problems and religious themes in a way that later generations would recognize as amounting to a philosophical revolution. Although Kierkegaard's works are widely tapped and cited they are seldom placed in context. Nor is due attention placed to their chronology. However, perhaps more than the work of any other contributor to the Western philosophical tradition, these writings are so closely meshed with the background and details of the author's life that knowledge of this is indispensible to their content. Alastair Hannay solves these problems by following the chronological sequence of events and focusing on the formative stages of his career from the success of his first, pseudonymous work ^Either/Or through to The Sickness Unto Death and Practice in Christianity. This book offers a powerful narrative account which will be of particular interest to philosophers, literary theorists, intellectual historians, and scholars of religious studies as well as any non-specialist looking for an authoritative guide to the life and work of one of the most original and fascinating figures in Western philosophy. Alastair Hannay is Professor Emeritus in the department of philosophy at the University of Oslo. He is the co-editor of The Cambridge Companion of Kierkegaard (1998) and is also translator of several works by Kierkegaard in Penguin Classics.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Kierkegaard: A Biography traces the evolution of a character who himself was made up of many characters of his own creation. Søren Kierkegaard's writings, published under various pseudonyms, were made in response to "collisions" with significant individuals (including his father, his brother, a fiancé whom he rejected, and a prominent Danish bishop). The development of these pseudonymous characters reflect Kierkegaard's growing sense of self, and his discovery of that self as being essentially religious. With considerable mastery of the political, philosophical, and theological conflicts of 19th century Europe, Alastair Hannay's biography also serves as an excellent introduction to Kierkegaard's philosophy and faith. From sentence to sentence, the book is full of small pleasures, particularly Hannay's judiciously employed, humanizing vernacular phrases. (As a young man, "Søren," like so many people, "blamed his father for messing up his life.") And like his subject, Hannay is a shrewd observer of the often-misleading relationship between appearance and reality. For instance, he suggests that "it does seem plausible to suppose that a main motivation behind the huge effort that writers put into their poetic products stems often from a sense of lacking in themselves the very substance that their works appear to convey." --Michael Joseph Gross --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Kierkegaard wrote publicly, under a variety of inventive pseudonyms simultaneously revealing and concealing aspects of his self-scrutinizing personality, and privately, in his journals, under an increasingly paradoxical sense of self challenging any would-be biographer to faithfully render his life. And yet, like the writer of a mystery novel, he does drop clues to the puzzle of himself, for which veteran Kierkegaard scholar Hannay (professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Oslo) has a keen detective's eye. Kierkegaard saw his life as a series of "collisions" with a few key individuals, and over the course of his life, he gradually realized a persona that was fundamentally religious. Hannay traces that dramatic unfolding through his sustained counterpoise of Kierkegaard's journal entries with his published oeuvre. In Hannay's hands, Kierkegaard's treatises, novels and journalistic essays are brilliant literary reflections of troubled personal encounters with an imperious father (Michael), a self-divided older brother (Peter), a rejected fianc?e (Regine Olsen) and a complacent bishop (Jacob Mynster), who embodies, for Kierkegaard, the established church of Denmark. The infinitely interpretable Kierkegaardian themes of irony and despair, seduction, the exceptional individual, paradox and life alternatively inflected by aesthetics, ethics or religion become newly accessible under this rigorous biographic gaze. For instance, Kierkegaard's efforts to justify the exceptional individual by excusing him from universal norms (in his own case, marriage) appear less as proto-existential heroism than as a sophisticated intellectual's attempt to protect a simple faith (such as Michael Kierkegaard's) from the pretensions of Hegelian philosophy to subsume it. Hannay's judiciously selected quotes from Kierkegaard will surely seduce those who are not already in thrall to this master stylist into reading at least some of his works firsthand. 8 pages of photos. (Sept.)
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 522 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (May 5, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521531810
• ISBN-13: 978-0521531818
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,123,817 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #88 in Books > History > Europe > Denmark

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent biography, April 8, 2005

By 

J. PORTER - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Kierkegaard: A Biography (Hardcover)

Well written, comprehensive and compelling reading.

It's a little overly technical in places (although this may suit some readers). It also seems to focus a little to much on Kierkegaard's early works- the chapters on his later works e.g. Practice in Christianity, Sickness... and that part of his life feel somewhat more compressed than earlier ones (perhaps it's actually a case of the earlier chapters being too long?)

If you are new to Kierkegaard I would suggest reading Penguin's edition of Kierkegaard's Paper and Journals (edited by Alistair Hannay) first, and then this biography.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kierkegaard ideas are timeless, May 14, 2010

By 

Dag Stomberg (St. Andrews, Scotland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kierkegaard: A Biography (Hardcover)

Alastair Hannay may help us develop some of the ways of understanding the philosophy of religion as purported by
Kierkegaard. The accomplishments are many in this definitive
biography. Only an author who has combined his erudite study
of the subject with probing decisive language skills is
capable of producing such a book.

Soren Kierkegaard's concepts are very timeless!

At times, it is necessary to look to a well qualified interpreter,
to help us on our way to realize the meaning of quite a number
of edifying discourses.

Do explore where ethical issues arise!

Dag Stomberg
St. Andrews, Scotland

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars KIERKEGAARD'S LIFE, September 17, 2010

By 

James L. Park "James Leonard Park" (Minneapolis, MN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Kierkegaard: A Biography (Hardcover)

Alastair Hannay
Kierkegaard, A Biography

(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 496 pages
(ISBN: 0-512-56077-2; hardcover)
(Library of Congress call number: B4376.H36 2001)

Alastair Hannay is a long-time scholar
and translator of Kierkegaard's works.
He puts his deep understanding of SK
into this comprehensive story of SK's life.
References is made to the writing and publishing of each book,
but Hannay do not concentrate on the content of SK's thought
as much as on the events of his life and relationships.

I recommend reading this biography alongside
Søren Kierkegaard: Papers and Journals: A Selection,
which is organized chronologically
---selected and translated by Alastair Hannay.

James Leonard Park, existential philosopher