Kierkegaard and Phenomenology

An examination of Kierkegaard as phenomenologist and of how phenomenologists have used him.

This Element seeks to examine the question of whether Kierkegaard's writings are in any way phenomenological and the various uses to which phenomenologists have put this work.Is Kierkegaard a phenomenologist? Much depends on what we take 'phenomenology' to mean, since the word has been stretched in all possible directions since Edmund Husserl wrote his major works. What have phenomenologists made of his writings? This question is easier to answer: he has been a constant reference point for many of them, although there is little agreement about his significance. This short book argues that he is a phenomenologist in the context of discovery, not justification. One finds attention to attunements in Kierkegaard, and one also finds modes of bracketing and reduction. Even so, his styles of thinking phenomenologically differ from those of most writers in this philosophical school. His phenomenology takes a theological path, one that leads from 'world' to 'kingdom,' and one that often turns on what he calls 'the moment.'