It should be well known that the philosophy of soren Kierkegaard exerted considerable inflence upon Ibsen the playwright, despite the latter's reluctance to admit as much. When Ibsen's play Brand was first published in Copenhagen, in 1866, it was hailed as a dramatic representation of Kierkegaar's philosophy, and subsequent critics have also indicated in a general way the Kierkegaardian concepts with which this play abounds. The earlier Love's comedy is also vibrant with Kierkegaardian undertones, and the fact that something of (...) this same quality is echoed and re-echoed throughout the playwrite's entire corpus suggest something more than a merely literary influences: it indicates a temperamental affinity between the two authors. (shrink)

In order to do anything intelligently a certain degree of reflection is necessary. This is particularly obvious with regard to any practical activity or occupation. Take, for example, the case of a naїve bricklayer. Let us assume that this man never reflects upon the nature of his occupation, but simply looks upon it as a more or less mechanical procedure of laying one brick upon another for a certain period of time during the day. He does not relate his occupation (...) with the occupations of his fellow–workmen, or even with the purpose of erecting buildings. If such a man were left to his own devices on a desert island with a plentiful supply of bricks and mortar, we could imagine him erecting a gigantic pinnacle of bricks, without purpose or meaning, where a more intelligent man would have endeavoured to construct a shelter against the rigours of the climate. (shrink)