Kierkegaard and modernity: Truth and decision

This article is intended to be an interpretation to the question of truth in Kierkegaardian writings under the pseudonym of Johannes Climacus (mainly from Concluding Unscientific Postscript), and intended to present, in accordance with his insightful considerations of his time, the most essential points of what might be called a Kierkegaardian diatribe addressed to modernity. At the same time, his ideas are confronted with other thinkers in a dialectical way in order to contrast them and to delimit their meaning. The distinguished Dane suggests surreptitiously, but also directly, a vindication of what is human based on a search for Christian truth, decision-making, the passion to exist, intensive spirituality, and the convictions that give meaning to human existence. All this in the face of the characteristics of modernity, such as excessive rationality, reflection, scientific objectivity, abstract subjectivity and, in general, intellectual confusion with respect to the categories proper to the Christian religion. © 2025 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.