Why Existential Courage and Authenticity Are the Same

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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 a pivotal scene, Keating declares to his students, “We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race, and the human race is filled with passion.”

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I sense some echo of this ethos in Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of J.D. Salinger’s 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye. Haunted by a deep sense of alienation and disillusionment, Holden rails against the phoniness and hypocrisy of the adult world, seeking refuge in the purity of his own subjective experience. Like Keating’s students, Holden is driven by a fierce desire to cast aside the stifling conformity of society.

Indeed, the parallels between Holden’s quest for authenticity and Kierkegaard’s concept of subjectivity are striking. Both recognize that the path to truth and meaning lies not in the detached, objective analysis of the world but rather in the passionate, inward-turning embrace of one’s own lived experience. And both are driven by a profound sense of anguish and responsibility as they confront the trembling anxiety of their own individual existence and the weight of choice that comes with it.

This theme of subjective, existential rebellion is further explored in the character of John Ames, the aging Congregationalist minister at the heart of Marilynne Robinson’s 2004 novel Gilead. Through Ames’s deeply personal, first-person narration, the reader is drawn into the anguished, inward-turning world of a man grappling with the weight of his own life and the nature of faith and the divine.

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Ames’s letters to his son are a profound exercise in self-examination that reflects Kierkegaard’s view that subjective truth is paradoxical, unable to be grasped through objective reason alone but requiring the whole self. Ames writes how he can no longer discern what is objectively beautiful yet finds profound meaning in seemingly mundane scenes, perceived through the lens of his subjective experience. His reflections evoke Kierkegaard’s notion of the “knight of faith” who embraces the paradoxical nature of religious truth through radical subjectivity.

Ames ponders deep theological mysteries like predestination not as abstract concepts but as intensely personal quandaries tied to his own life and relationships. At the same time, Ames’s subjectivity is not self-centered but oriented towards ethical responsibility—toward his son, his friend Boughton, the prodigal Jack. This ethical dimension resonates with Kierkegaard’s view of subjectivity as fundamentally about how one exists and relates to others.

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A series of lectures that Marilynne Robinson gave at Yale in 2009 formed the basis for her book, Absence of Mind, in which she lamented how modern Western thought has tended to exclude subjective experience from crucial domains like science, leading to our conception of humanity being shrunk. Robinson (2010) said, “It may have been perverse of destiny to array perception across billions of subjectivities, but that fact is central to human life and language and culture, and no philosophy or cognitive science should be allowed to evade it” (p. 8). Like Kierkegaard, Robinson sees subjectivity not as an obstacle but as the very lens through which the deepest realities are perceived, and an intrinsic element of truth is found.

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Yet, be mindful of the pitfalls that lurk along the path of subjective truth. Kierkegaard was no stranger to the dangers of subjectivism, the temptation to retreat into the solipsistic cocoon of the self and to lose sight of the broader, intersubjective fabric of human existence. True, authentic subjectivity, he would argue, is not a retreat from the world but rather a passionate engagement with it.

It is in this delicate balance between the individual and the universal that Kierkegaard’s concept of subjectivity shines, not in solitary, self-indulgent acts but as a profoundly ethical and religious undertaking. By embracing anxieties involved in facing one’s own life with responsibility in a way that only an individual person can, the individual becomes more open to the transformative power of spiritual humility that, paradoxically, is transcendent.