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The history of Hegelianism in Denmark would scarcely have drawn the attention of the rest of the world were it not for the attack on Hegel and all his works by one single individual: S0ren Kierkegaard (1813–1855). This attack would earn Kierkegaard the reputation of being dissimilarly twinned with Marx as one of the two most significant not to say epochal critics of Hegel in the post-Hegelian generation. Both could be said to agree on Hegel's idealism leading to a neglect of the concrete historical reality of human life, but whereas the one interprets this historical reality in terms of social and economic conditions, the other interprets it in relation to the individual's existential concern for the meaning of his or her unique life and death. Equally, it could be said that Kierkegaard's own significance for the history of ideas was, for much of the twentieth century, intertwined with his attack on Hegel and that this tended to put other aspects of his work in the shade. It is not to the purpose of this chapter to address other aspects of Kierkegaard's work, merely to flag that he should not be reduced to the role of a critical reader of Hegel. It is, however, relevant to look beyond Kierkegaard himself and to see how his attack related to the wider context of the Danish reception of Hegel's thought. Therefore, this chapter falls into three sections. In the first, I examine some of the main features of Kierkegaard's attack, which will be largely familiar, if only secondhand, to many readers.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137309228_6

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