Download or read book Kierkegaard and His German Contemporaries: Philosophy written by Jon Bartley Stewart and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This first tome treats the German philosophical influences on Kierkegaard. The dependence of Danish philosophy on German philosophy is beyond question. In a book review in his Hegelian journal Perseus, the poet, playwright and critic, Johan Ludvig Heiberg (1791-1869) laments the sad state of philosophy in Denmark, while lauding German speculative philosophy. Moreover, Kierkegaard's lifelong enemy, the theologian Hans Lassen Martensen (1808-84) claims without exaggeration that the Danish systems of philosophy can be regarded as the disjecta membra of earlier German systems. All of the major German idealist philosophers made an impact in Denmark: Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and most significantly, Hegel. Kierkegaard was widely read in the German philosophical literature, which he made use of in countless ways throughout his authorship.