Kierkegaard on the reconciliation of conscience

Abstract

Many authors have interpreted Kierkegaard’s thought as a dialectical tragedy whose inevitable outcome is the sinking of the self in the despair of an unreconcilable consciousness. It cannot be denied that there are in Kierkegaard certain intentional excesses that may seem to support this interpretation. However, there is also in his thought a totalizing intuition and a harmonic vision of human existence that unify the dialectical struggle of the self. The deepest intention of free becoming is personal identity that does not remain as a mere unattainable end but has its concrete fulfilment in the presence of the self before God and alongside others, through the unifying force of love.