Kierkegaard
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.In 1840 a young Danish girl called Regine Olsen got engaged to her sweetheart - a modish and clever young man called Soren Kierkegaard. The two were deeply in love but soon the husband to be began to have doubts. He worried that he couldn’t make Regine happy and stay true to himself and his dreams of philosophy. It was a terrible dilemma, but Kierkegaard broke off the engagement - a decision from which neither he nor his fiancee fully recovered. This unhappy episode has become emblematic of the life and thought of Soren Kierkegaard - a philosopher who confronted the painful choices in life and who understood the darker modes of human existence. Yet Kierkegaard is much more than the gloomy Dane of reputation. A thinker of wit and elegance, his ability to live with paradox and his desire to think about individuals as free have given him great purchase in the modern world and he is known as the father of Existentialism.
Guests
- Jonathan Ree
8 episodes
Visiting Professor at Roehampton University and the Royal College of Art - Clare Carlisle
2 episodes
Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Liverpool -
John Lippitt No other episodes
Professor of Ethics and Philosophy of Religion at the University of Hertfordshire
Related episodes
-
Schopenhauer
29 Oct, 2009 190 Modern Western Philosophy -
Existentialism
28 Jun, 2001 100 Philosophy -
Sartre
7 Oct, 2004 840 French and related literatures -
Phenomenology
22 Jan, 2015 190 Modern Western Philosophy -
Socrates
27 Sep, 2007 180 Ancient, medieval, and Eastern philosophy -
Spinoza
3 May, 2007 190 Modern Western Philosophy -
Hegel’s Philosophy of History
26 May, 2022 900 History -
Montaigne
25 Apr, 2013 800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism -
Camus
3 Jan, 2008 840 French and related literatures -
Kant’s Copernican Revolution
3 Jun, 2021 100 Philosophy -
Nihilism
16 Nov, 2000 190 Modern Western Philosophy -
Bertrand Russell
6 Dec, 2012 190 Modern Western Philosophy -
The Examined Life
9 May, 2002 100 Philosophy -
Wittgenstein
4 Dec, 2003 190 Modern Western Philosophy -
Bergson and Time
9 May, 2019 110 Metaphysics -
Al-Ghazali
19 Mar, 2015 210 Philosophy and theory of religion -
The Ontological Argument
27 Sep, 2012 100 Philosophy -
Al-Kindi
28 Jun, 2012 190 Modern Western Philosophy -
Deism
8 Oct, 2020 210 Philosophy and theory of religion -
Scepticism
5 Jul, 2012 100 Philosophy
Programme ID: b009fycc
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b009fycc
Auto-category: 193 (Philosophy of Germany and Austria)