ABSTRACT
John A. Bain’s work aims to provide a general introduction to the life and thought of Soren Kierkegaard to an English speaking audience. Bain does this in a straightforward historical manner, setting the Danish context in which Kierkegaard was writing, moving to his early life followed by a step-by-step exposition of major works in his corpus, and concluding with his death. He situates Kierkegaard in relation to the reception his writings enjoyed since his death: in German Biblical Theology from the 1860s to 1880s under the Beck School, the “radical-liberal” camp under Schrempf followed by Theodor Haecker, as well as the emerging school of phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and others. He even notes the interest in Kierkegaard by Roman Catholic circles, namely by Erich Przywara. The reception history extends also to the standard Danish treatment of the time by Hirsch and to the influences Kierkegaard had on Ibsen and the Spanish writer Unamuno.
