Kierkegaard as a theological resource for Guardini’s resilience in his time and ours

Abstract

The 19th c. Danish philosopher and Protestant theologian Søren Kierkegaard (1813–55) had a great impact on Romano Guardini’s intellectual formation and proved to be an important theological resource for Guardini’s resilient spirituality. Guardini owned many copies of Kierkegaard’s books in his personal library and Kierkegaard’s influence on Guardini spanned four decades, leaving a distinctive lifelong trace across Guardini’s signature ideas – both philosophical and theological. Between 1925 and 1927, Romano Guardini taught a course on Kierkegaard in Berlin that examined the relationship between Christianity and Culture, which formed the basis for Guardini’s interpretation of Kierkegaard’s writings.