The Educational Theory of Soren Kierkegaard

Analyst: Carol Myers

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edited 1/4/08

1. Theory of Value: What knowledge and skill are worthwhile learning? What are the goals of education?

We cannot look about for values, we must look inward (S, 26) Truth: boundary between human and Christian ontology is difference between knowledge and faith (M,70)

Experience is the "empirical mass" of knowledge like Kant and unlike Descartes and Hegel, knowledge is more than experience alone (M,70)

Human knowledge and its objective reality subordinate to subjective actuality as a woman giving her hand in marriage to take her husband's name is not equality but subordination (M, 125)

2. Theory of Knowledge: What is knowledge? How is it different from belief? What is a mistake? A lie?

Knowledge is by no means higher than faith (M, 160) K disagreed with Hegel and Descartes that knowledge begins without presuppositions or with doubt (M, 63)

Through his experience of anxiety (brought on by guilt), which are the distinguishing marks of freedom, the individual moves away from the original "immediate unity with his natural condition," where he lived in innocence and ignorance, and moves in the direction of knowledge and guilt. (M, 260)

Kierkegaard fully appreciates purely "human knowledge"and its objective reality, but through his concentration on the subject he has arrived at a different higher kind of knowledge (M, 125)

3. Theory of Human Nature: What is a human being? How does it differ from other species? What are the limits of human potential?

People are torn apart by envious discontent. Envy and resentment result in leveling playacting of roles.Resentment poisons the will and hinders people from making decisions (S, 27)

Each individual has his or her own inner history. The individual chooses for the future (S, 108)

From birth, we each have our own given personality. At the beginning, each personality is merely potentialityThe body is the sensuous, the soul is the mind. The spirit brings the two together (S, 109)

4. Theory of Learning: What is learning? How are skills and knowledge acquired?

Dialectical method, cognitive, part within the whole. (M, 116) Precocious children are lonely children growing up with loving parents guiding and guarding their every step. ... Children learn by observing others and experimenting rather than being told information (S,32)

5. Theory of Transmission: Who is to teach? By what methods? What will the curriculum be?

Indirect communication produces an expanded awareness resulting in a rebirth of a personality (S,58)

To be open to God was to be concealed to others, (S, 29)

Dialectical Method the ideal in all spheres of

Scholarship is to reach a scientifically and scholarly correct treatment of the subjects investigated through consistency (M, 106)

Kierkegaard pursues given resolutions of problems and arrives either at a verification or rejection of each one. Kierkegaard constructs new viewpoints to establish correctness, places subjects into the new context (M, 108)

6. Theory of Society: What is society? What institutions are involved in the educational process?

Kierkegaard wanted the kind of honesty he saw among the (common) people, but not among the educated (S, 30)

Alongside the educated, there were servants, the farmers, the lower middle class and

the majority of the women. All of these people had little or no education. Their world view was that of the Bible. The educated rich do not apprehend biblical messages in the same manner as the common man. The educated (clergy) translate it. (S, 25)

7. Theory of Opportunity: Who is to be educated? Who is to be schooled?

Kierkegaard found the growing feminist movement comical. (S, 54)

If we had statistical tables of the consumption of intelligence from generation to generation, we should be astounded by the enormous amount of scruples and deliberation consumed by small, well-to-do families living quietly, and at the amount which the young, even children use (S, 25)

8. Theory of Consensus: Why do people disagree? How is consensus achieved? Whose opinion takes precedence?

... agrees with majority. No individual can withstand such abstract power. The majority will not accept such persons (S, 28)

Malantschuk, Gregor. Kierkegaard's Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971)

Stendahl, Brita K. Soren Kierkegaard (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1976)

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