Kierkegaardian

[keer-ki-gahr-dee-uhn, keer-ki-gahr-]

adjective

1. of, relating to, or resembling the philosophy or religious views of Kierkegaard.

noun

1. an adherent of the views of Kierkegaard.

Other Word Forms

• Kierkegaardianism noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of Kierkegaardian¹

First recorded in 1940–45; Kierkegaard + -ian

Example Sentences

She conceives of her book as “a Kierkegaardian biography of Kierkegaard,” following “the blurry, fluid lines between Kierkegaard’s life and writing, and allowing philosophical and spiritual questions to animate the events, decisions and encounters that constitute the facts of a life.”

From New York Times

In fact, “Lucky Per” emerges as a savage critique of the persistence, in Danish culture, of a certain Kierkegaardian masochism, in which all choices are made religious rather than secular, purifyingly negative rather than complicatedly affirmative.

From The New Yorker

She is striving, in the Kierkegaardian tradition, to create a majority of one.

From The New Yorker

Tux is philosophically speculative, delivering aphoristic riffs that reveal Kierkegaardian abysses in such daily trivialities as a campfire, and mini marshmallows in cocoa.

From The New Yorker

Last year, a visitor to the Serralves museum in Porto jumped with Kierkegaardian heedlessness, into another of Kapoor’s works, a 2.5-metre circular hole called Descent Into Limbo, fell eight feet and had to be taken to hospital.

From The Guardian