Never Disregard Kierkegaard

Relax

There is a trend in our culture to be proud of how busy one is – and this approach to busyness isn’t a good attitude. Instead, we should look to Søren Kierkegaard the Danish existentialist who advocates for reflection on what one is doing and not how much one is doing. This can be hard in a world in which people are prideful of not taking vacation time.

You can begin positive change in your life today – just take a few minutes and think about what really matters.

Stephen Evans, a philosophy professor at Baylor University, explains that Kierkegaard saw busyness as a means of distracting oneself from truly important questions, such as who you are and what life is for. Busy people “fill up their time, always find things to do,” but they have no principle guiding their life. “Everything is important but nothing is important,” he adds.

Without answering crucial and terrifying questions about life, without deciding on a unified purpose, Kierkegaard believed that one could not develop a self. He called those with without one unified purpose “double minded,” and argued that this mindset causes busyness.

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2 thoughts on “Never Disregard Kierkegaard

  1. Luckily for him, Kierkegaard was independently wealthy so he had a lot of free time on his hands, though the point is still well taken. Bertrand Russell (also someone who didn’t have to get out there and shovel dirt of a living) made a similar point, though with more political consciousness than good old Soren K. On a related subject, I can’t help but wonder if the great Kierkegaardian mystery (of why he broke it off with Regine Olsen) was perhaps motivated by his desire to have more free time than married life would afford.

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