Kierkegaard for the 21st century

The monograph Kierkegaard for the 21st Century: Essays on Aesthetics, Ethics, Religion, and Politics offers an interdisciplinary reinterpretation of Søren Kierkegaard’s philosophy in the context of contemporary social, cultural, and psychological crises. The authors, Leo Stan and Martina Pavlíková, examine the continued relevance of Kierkegaard’s thought as a critical tool for analyzing modern phenomena such as existential emptiness, identity fragmentation, digital distraction, status anxiety, and the culture of performance.

At the same time, the publication develops Kierkegaard’s conception of individuality and “the single individual” as an alternative to the pressures of mass society, technological mediation, and ideological polarization. In the ethical and religious dimension, it emphasizes the importance of personal responsibility, faith, and existential decision, while in the political and educational context it analyzes the limits of the modern state and the risks of the over-politicization of education. Overall, the book presents Kierkegaard as a still highly relevant thinker whose work can function as a “Socratic correction” of modernity as well as a therapeutic framework for understanding the contemporary crisis of meaning.