Kierkegaard’s Upbuilding Discourse for Education

Despite many attempts, Kierkegaard’s philosophy has been less than well-received in education. The Kierkegaardian themes of irony, indirect communication, subjectivity, stages of existence, despair and seduction have proven difficult to translate into educational praxis. Several factors drive this state including the lack of curricular reasoning, curricular frameworks and depth of the reading of Kierkegaard. These factors can be deduced from a thorough review of the past efforts to bring Kierkegaard into the educational dialogue from which conclusions about model educational praxis can be made that are related to the fast growing field of noncognitive education.