Contrasting Heroic Ideals: Kierkegaard versus Nietzsche

A hero is generally understood to be a noble individual that is known for their admirable qualities or actions. The characteristics that make up the concept of a hero differ according to the ideas of the philosophers Soren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche. While a hero’s connection to religion and faith is extremely important in Kierkegaard’s eyes, Nietzsche believes that an individual who seeks the truth and enlightenment should be considered a hero. In Soren Kierkegaard’s book, Fear and Trembling, he describes the values that his idea of a hero would possess. It is clear that God is very important to him as he writes, “If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the foundation of all there lay only a wildly seething power which writhing with obscure passions produced everything that is great and everything that is insignificant… what then would life

Knights and heroes are known to be noble and loyal, and Kierkegaard believes the knight of faith would have complete loyalty to God. Like Abraham, the knight of faith lives by virtue of the absurd and has taken the leap of faith. Kierkegaard refers to the act of choosing to place one’s complete faith in God without rationality or reason the leap of faith. The knight of faith is someone who resigned himself from the finite things of the world, and instead, judges things by his sense of the infinite. Most people judge the quality of their life by what happens on Earth, but the knight of faith is aware of the infinite and its value. He incorporates his sense of the infinite into his daily life and “He constantly makes the moves of infinity, but he does this with such correctness and assurance that he constantly makes the movements of it, and there is not a second when one has a notion of anything else.” Like Abraham, the knight of faith has given up his Earthly desires, but regains them by virtue of the