14-XIV. A Fragment on Kierkegaard (1952)

Authors

Heinrich Blücher, Bard College

Files

Description

This fragmentary 1952 lecture, transcript edited by Alexander Bazelow, offers Heinrich Blücher’s critical interpretation of Søren Kierkegaard as a pivotal but deeply ambiguous figure in modern thought. Blücher portrays Kierkegaard as the first to enact radical individual sovereignty through total withdrawal into the private self, a move that anticipated modern analytic psychology while courting psychological self-destruction. Distinguishing Kierkegaard from earlier mystics and from thinkers such as Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, Blücher argues that Kierkegaard reversed the traditional relation between faith and withdrawal, retreating into the self before God and ultimately risking the identification of self with the divine. He characterizes Kierkegaard’s methods as inquisitorial and experimental, exposing the nihilistic dangers of obsessive self-reflection and psychological provocation. The fragment concludes by questioning Kierkegaard’s philosophical status and cautioning against modern inwardness as a path that leads not to selfhood but to self-loss.

Publication Date

1952

Recommended Citation

Blücher, Heinrich, "14-XIV. A Fragment on Kierkegaard (1952)" (1952). Bazelow Transcripts. 14.
https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/blucher-bazelow-transcripts/14