Where does one begin when delving into the perplexing world of Søren Kierkegaard’s concept of subjectivity? To approach it with the tone of a dispassionate academic would be to betray the essence of Kierkegaard’s philosophical vision. We must cast aside lofty pretensions and instead embrace the anguished, inward-turning passion that lies at the heart of Kierkegaard’s thought.

Kierkegaard was no mere armchair philosopher, content to spin abstract theories about the nature of reality. He was a man possessed, driven by an intense, almost manic desire to understand human existence. At the very core of this quest lay his radical rejection of the Hegelian pursuit of absolute, objective knowledge. In Kierkegaard’s view, such a quest is a futile attempt to escape the fundamental subjectivity of the human condition.

This concept of “truth as subjectivity” finds its most poignant expression in the worlds of literature and cinema, where the anguished, inward-turning passion of the individual is writ large. Take, for instance, the seminal 1989 film Dead Poets Society, where the charismatic English teacher, John Keating, implores his students to “seize the day” and to embrace the transformative power of poetry and the subjective pursuit of truth and beauty—“You must strive to find your own voice, boys, and the longer you wait to begin, the less likely you are to find it at all.”

Like Kierkegaard, Keating recognizes that the path to genuine meaning and fulfillment lies not in the detached, objective analysis of the world but rather in the passionate, inward-turning embrace of one’s own lived experience. In........

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