Abstract

This article offers a philosophical account of the so-called journal of Gilleleje. I would like to argue that in this text from 1835 one can trace the early philosophical musings of Kierkegaard on the existential question of the discovery of the self and the development of selfhood, one of the main motifs in the authorship of the Dane. Additionally, I discuss the literary trends of the 1830s in Golden Age Denmark, particularly the boom of the Danish short novel and Heiberg’s admiration of Goethe, analyzing in what way this local context impacted Kierkegaard’s ideas in the journal of Gilleleje.