What Søren Kierkegaard Actually Said About Death
All 3 Søren Kierkegaard passages on death, in full — what each one claims, what holds them together, and who argues the other way.
Søren Kierkegaard returns to death three times in thinkr's library — more often than to almost anything else. Danish thinker often called the first existentialist. Explored anxiety, despair, and the leap of faith — what it costs to become a self before God.
What follows is every one of those passages, in full, with what each is actually claiming. The language is of its period, but the question underneath is not: what is death for, and what does it ask of you?
Every Søren Kierkegaard passage on death
“Death cannot explain itself. The earnestness consists precisely in this, that the observer must explain it to himself.”
“Since my earliest childhood a barb of sorrow has lodged in my heart. As long as it stays I am ironic — if it is pulled out I shall die.”
“The tyrant dies and his rule is over; the martyr dies and his rule begins.”
What holds these together
Read in sequence rather than one at a time, the passages stop being separate aphorisms. Søren Kierkegaard is not offering three opinions about death; the lines are facets of one position, and the repetition is the argument. The shortest of them — “The tyrant dies and his rule is over; the martyr dies and his rule begins” — is the version you can carry, and the longer ones are what it unpacks into.
Søren Kierkegaard applied to a real decision
Quotation is the easy part. The harder test is what the position actually does when it meets a situation where every option costs something. thinkr puts two such cases to Søren Kierkegaard.
Your workplace rewards a version of you that feels false.
Argued as existential responsibility: You are taking ownership of your participation. The risk is confusing every constraint with oppression.
You have to decide before you feel certain.
Argued as existential choice: You are accepting that action often precedes proof. The danger is dressing impulse as courage.
Work through these yourself
- Your workplace rewards a version of you that feels false. — argued from existential responsibility and several competing positions
- You have to decide before you feel certain. — argued from existential choice and several competing positions
Who disagrees
Albert Camus, Bertrand Russell, Buddha and Carl Jung all address death too, and they do not converge. Reading Søren Kierkegaard alone gives you a coherent position; reading Søren Kierkegaard against Albert Camus shows you what the position is actually choosing against.