The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin is a philosophical work written by Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in 1844.
Danish title page to The Concept of Anxiety
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776–1841)
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was a Danish theologian, philosopher, poet, social critic, and religious author who is widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher. He wrote critical texts on organized religion, Christianity, morality, ethics, psychology, and the philosophy of religion, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony, and parables. Much of his philosophical work deals with the issues of how one lives as a "single individual", giving priority to concrete human reality over abstract thinking and highlighting the importance of personal choice and commitment. He was against literary critics who defined idealist intellectuals and philosophers of his time, and thought that Swedenborg, Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, Schlegel, and Hans Christian Andersen were all "understood" far too quickly by "scholars."
Unfinished sketch of Kierkegaard by his cousin Niels Christian Kierkegaard, Royal Library, Copenhagen, c. 1840
When Michael (Mikael) Kierkegaard died on 9 August 1838 Søren had lost both his parents and all his brothers and sisters except for Peter who later became Bishop of Aalborg in the Danish State Lutheran Church.
From left to right: Wolff, Holberg, Hamann, Lessing, Plato and Socrates
Regine Olsen, a muse for Kierkegaard's writings