Søren Kierkegaard

About Søren Kierkegaard

Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) was a highly influential Danish philosopher, theologian, and social critic, widely considered the first existentialist philosopher. His primary historical contribution centered on his profound critique of objective reason and systematic philosophy, emphasizing instead the passionate, subjective, and deeply personal nature of human existence, faith, and the individual's encounter with the absolute. This foundational work in modern philosophy secures his position at an HPI Rank of #475 among the most influential figures in history.

Kierkegaard currently experiences an attention level remarkably close to his historical standing. In 2025, his Wikipedia pages accrued 741K annualized views, resulting in an Attention Gap of approximately 1x, indicating near-perfect alignment between global cultural impact and modern internet visibility. To provide context, this is significantly less attention than other philosophers in our comparison pool, such as Rajneesh (HPI #568) who garnered 1.7M views, or Swami Vivekananda (HPI #734) with 1.2M views.

Despite this stable attention level, the interest shows minor signs of waning, with a Year-over-Year Change of -1.8% in pageviews. However, recent engagement remains resilient, as evidenced by a +2% positive momentum shift when comparing Q1 to Q3 2025 engagement figures.