“We may as well begin with a question that is at the heart of Kierkegaard’s philosophy: what does it mean to exist? In his 1846 book Concluding Unscientific Postscript – which, at over 600 pages, is surely one of the lengthiest postscripts ever written – he suggests that “people in our time, because of so much knowledge, have forgotten what it means to exist”. Even though all sorts of things exist, for Kierkegaard the word “existence” has a special meaning when applied to human life. This meaning arises from the fact that we always have a relationship to ourselves. For example, we can be more or less self-aware; we can wish to be other than how we are; we can trust or mistrust, like or dislike ourselves. Perhaps we can even make decisions about who we will become.”

— Clare Carlisle, The Guardian