The notion that Søren Kierkegaard is the “father of existentialism” is so widespread in popular culture that it requires little introduction. Less obvious, perhaps, is what this tagline might mean. This study focuses on five central themes in the existential tradition, comparing and contrasting Kierkegaard's treatment of them with those thinkers who inherit his thought: the self as a synthesis, despair as an imbalanced self‐interpretation, freedom and anxiety, the dialectic of recognition, and the autonomous choice of values.

Arnold Come draws on Kierkegaard's major works, journals, and papers to reveal the humanist dimensions of his thought, highlighting the importance of the self as the central theme of all his writings.