ABSTRACT
Anthony Giddens (b. 1938) is a strong voice in British sociology. Connecting insights from a broad spectrum of other thinkers he has managed to give birth to a popularization of key modern sociological terms. In the following, I trace the influence of Kierkegaard’s thought on Giddens’ treatment of the self and society in Modernity and Self-Identity.1 Giddens mentions Kierkegaard explicitly only a few times. The aim of the present work is to track parallels which might indicate a more thorough-going inheritance than acknowledged in Giddens’ exploitation of Kierkegaard’s thought. This is done, however, with caution since what might look like unacknowledged inheritance is a representation of a conglomerate of ideas, which for all its striking similarities does not allow the critic to draw any conclusion.
