Kierkegaard Books: A Beginner’s Guide to the First Existentialist
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) is where existentialism begins: the first thinker to insist that truth must be lived, not merely known, and that each of us faces existence alone, in fear and trembling. He is also genuinely difficult — he wrote under a crowd of pseudonyms, each arguing a different position. This guide, part of our best books on existentialism series, gives you a path through.
Two tips before the list. First, do not read Kierkegaard cover to cover; he rewards sampling. Second, a good secondary source is not cheating — even scholars lean on one. That’s why a short introduction sits at #1.
- The first existentialist A century before the term existed, Kierkegaard mapped anxiety, despair, and the leap of faith.
- Use a guide The pseudonyms and irony are deliberate traps — a short introduction saves months of confusion.
- Anxiety as teacher The Concept of Anxiety calls it “the dizziness of freedom” — the direct ancestor of Yalom’s view.
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#1: Kierkegaard: A Very Short Introduction — START HERE
Patrick Gardiner
A hundred small pages that map the pseudonyms, the stages of life, and the quarrel with Hegel. An hour here saves ten hours of confusion later.
- A reliable 120-page map of a deliberately confusing authorship — the pseudonyms, the irony, the order
- Gardiner was an Oxford philosopher who spent a career on this material; the guidance is sound
- Saves months of misreading; the single best money-to-clarity ratio on this list
- Denser than ‘very short’ suggests — it is philosophy-first, biography-second
- The prose is dry; this is a tool, not a pleasure read
#2: Fear and Trembling — THE ESSENTIAL
Søren Kierkegaard
Abraham raises the knife over Isaac, and Kierkegaard asks what faith actually costs. Short, dramatic, and the single most influential thing he wrote — the leap of faith starts here.
- The leap of faith explored through Abraham’s ordeal, retold four ways — his most read book for good reason
- Short, and Hannay’s Penguin translation with its long introduction is the standard student edition
- The clearest single dose of what made Kierkegaard the first existentialist
- Written under a pseudonym (Johannes de silentio) — first-time readers who take it as Kierkegaard’s own view misread it, and the introduction explains why
- The ‘Attunement’ retellings feel repetitive until the design clicks
- Problema III is long and loses many readers
#3: Either/Or — THE BIG ONE
Søren Kierkegaard
Two life-views argued by two invented authors — the pleasure-seeker and the judge — with the “Seducer’s Diary” hiding inside. Sample it; don’t march through.
- The aesthetic and ethical lives staged against each other through invented documents — his most inventive book
- Contains The Seducer’s Diary, the most famous section in his authorship
- Hannay’s Penguin translation reads smoothly
- The Penguin edition is abridged — significant material is cut, and buyers regularly discover this after purchase; the complete text is the two-volume Princeton/Hong edition
- Still 600+ pages even abridged, and the ethical letters of part two are a documented slog
- The structure bewilders readers who expect a treatise
#4: The Sickness unto Death — MOST PSYCHOLOGICAL
Søren Kierkegaard
Despair anatomized: the despair of not knowing you have a self, and of refusing to be the self you have. Startlingly modern — therapists still recognize every page.
- The anatomy of despair — the direct ancestor of existential psychology’s account of the self
- Short, and the famous opening definition of the self repays the effort it demands
- The Kierkegaard book with the straightest line to Yalom and May
- The opening pages are notoriously convoluted — the most common abandonment point in his entire authorship
- Written as Anti-Climacus, a pseudonym ‘above’ Kierkegaard himself — the standpoint confuses unguided readers
- Needs slow rereading; a chapter a day is realistic pacing
#5: The Concept of Anxiety — Best for the roots of existential psychology
- ‘Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom’ — the sentence existential therapy is built on comes from this book
- Hannay’s 2014 Liveright translation is the clearest the text has ever been in English
- Short in pages, and the direct ancestor of May’s and Yalom’s accounts of anxiety
- Widely regarded as his hardest book — technical, Hegelian vocabulary throughout
- The pseudonym parodies an academic treatise, so the dryness is deliberate but real
- Emphatically not for Kierkegaard beginners despite its therapeutic relevance
#6: Works of Love — THE WARMEST
Søren Kierkegaard
Written under his own name, no masks: what it means to love your neighbor when love is a duty, not a feeling. The book that shows why he called himself a religious author.
- His mature ethics of neighbor-love, written in his own name — no pseudonymous games to decode
- Devotional and rigorous at once; many readers call it his most personally affecting book
- The natural counterweight to the despair books
- The Harper edition reprints an older translation; the Hongs’ Princeton edition has fuller notes if you want apparatus
- The deliberations circle and repeat — it is built for slow devotional reading, not straight-through
- The explicitly Christian frame limits it for secular readers
From Kierkegaard to the therapy room
Kierkegaard’s anatomy of anxiety and despair is the direct ancestor of existential psychotherapy — Rollo May’s and Irvin Yalom’s debt to him is explicit. If you want to see these ideas applied to living clients, step over to What Is Existential Therapy? and Yalom’s Existential Psychotherapy.
How to choose a Kierkegaard edition
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A guide before the textsThe pseudonyms are deliberate traps; unguided first readings usually misfire.Look forA short introduction read before any primary textAvoidGoing straight into the pseudonymous works cold
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Translation and completenessPenguin's Hannay versions read well but Either/Or is abridged; Princeton's Hong editions are complete with heavy notes.Look forHannay for readability, Hong when you need the full textAvoidDiscovering the abridgment after purchase — check the cover copy
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Pseudonymous or signedThe pseudonymous books argue positions Kierkegaard doesn't hold; the signed ones speak directly.Look forWorks of Love for Kierkegaard in his own nameAvoidQuoting the pseudonyms as his settled views
How we chose these books
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Firsthand reading
Rankings start from our editors’ full reads of every title on the list — including the slow middles and the failed first attempts — not from publisher copy.
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Reader-review analysis
We mined verified-purchase reviews, Goodreads consensus, and Reddit reading threads for recurring, specific complaints: print size, abridgments, translation quality, abandonment points.
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Edition comparison
Where multiple translations or editions exist, we compared them and linked the printing most readers should actually buy — and flagged the known trade-offs.
Why did Kierkegaard use pseudonyms?
To let rival life-views argue at full strength without his own authority settling the question — he wanted readers to choose, not to obey. Books signed with his own name state his actual position.
Is Kierkegaard religious reading?
He is a Christian thinker through and through, but secular readers have always found the psychology — anxiety, despair, becoming a self — fully portable.
Bottom line
Kierkegaard is where existentialism begins. Take him slowly, use a guide, and his ideas about anxiety and despair echo through everything Yalom writes.