ABSTRACT
Kierkegaard has been an elusive presence in the culture of the United States ever since the early twentieth century. A major impetus to the broader reception of Kierkegaard was the discovery of his work in 1898 by David F. Swenson, a young professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota. After the Second World War the international vogue of existentialism spread to the United States and carried a particular interpretation of Kierkegaard with it. Kierkegaard was coupled with Nietzsche as an ancestor of the existentialist revolt against all ideologies of essence. As existentialism and neo-orthodoxy began to be challenged by other philosophical and theological perspectives, Kierkegaard's work began to be examined through other lenses, with other concerns and questions coming to the fore. Many authors read Kierkegaard as a philosopher of religion or philosophical theologian. A final category of approaches to Kierkegaard attempts to synthesize the content-focused and the literary-oriented styles of interpretation.
