Abstract

Sören Kierkegaard died aged 42 in 1855. After comparative obscurity his writings achieved European circulation in a German version, and in 1920 he was presented by Jaspers as the Socratic precursor of Existentialism. Kierkegaard had formally posed the question of existence on the intensely human plane, emphasizing the anxious but problematic question of existence after death, whose solution can be known, not in any objective science but in the personal belief of a responsible choice whose sincere devotion creates an individual subjective truth.