Kierkegaard's famous criticisms of the Hegelians, Schlegel, and Schelling has led many to view him as anti-German. As Stewart shows, however, he offered high praise for other German thinkers, including Johann Georg Hamann, Gotthold Lessing, and Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg. Stewart traces the many points of contact between Kierkegaard and a range of German thinkers, and ultimately he argues convincingly that were it not for the influence of German culture, Kierkegaard would have been a very different, and less lasting, philosopher.
Jon Stewart is associate research professor at the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre at the University of Copenhagen.