While there has been considerable interest in the writings of Søren Kierkegaard and Fyodor Dostoevsky, both of whom are considered seminal existential thinkers, relatively little has been said about similarities in their thought. In this paper, I propose to read their philosophical and literary works together as texts that offer an elaborate model of an existential religious transformation. Both Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky sketch a path leading from the inauthentic, internally fragmented and egotistic self to the authentically Christian, humble and loving (...) individual. By examining the underlying structure of this transformative process, I try to show that its portrayal is in many ways similar in the account of both writers. Furthermore, I maintain that they set out not only to describe the inner workings of the existential religious transformation, but that their effort constitutes a direct appeal to the reader to initiate the transformative process herself or himself. (shrink)

Søren Kierkegaard is often considered to be one of the most vocal critics of German idealism. The present paper analyzes the philosophical similarity between Friedrich Schelling ’s early idealistic work and Kierkegaard ’s existential writings, endeavoring to display Schelling ’s epic 1809 publication Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom as a possible forerunner to Kierkegaard. This juxtaposition reveals concrete similarity that supports the thesis that Schelling ’s work could have been of great inspirational value for Kierkegaard, especially Kierkegaard (...) ’s core concepts such as freedom, morality and God. However, Schelling ’s early work is primarily appreciated as a philosophy of nature, and therefore fundamentally different from Kierkegaard ’s theistic-psychological writings. The present paper tentatively opposes this distinction, concluding that if Schelling really is a forerunner to Kierkegaard, then we ought to appreciate Kierkegaard ’s writings as conveying more than a theological message. The conclusion suggests that Kierkegaard ’s writings should be interpreted in a broader philosophical context, closer to the metaphysical idealism he is often assumed to resist. (shrink)