THE CAPTAIN'S METHOD™
Søren Kierkegaard
Where this shows up in the Captain’s Method
Kierkegaard stands at the center of the Personality pillar. The Adventure Personality is agency under constraint, and his account of choosing oneself is its oldest root; the Cause layer, self-betrayal, is what happens when a person turns that choice down. In the Focus section he prepares The Choice lesson and its closing line, I choose my stimuli with my focus. His pseudonyms, each arguing a view at its best, are the working model for the Debate Stage.
- Personality
He makes the self a choice a person commits to and owns, the ground the Adventure Personality stands on.
- Focus
He studies the moment of decision when no rule settles the matter and a person must still act.
- Environment
He warns that the crowd lets each person hide from answering for themselves, a pull the Focus section meets again in the Inner Ring lesson.
Kierkegaard was born in Copenhagen in 1813, the son of a wealthy wool merchant, and died there in 1855 at 42. In 1841 he broke off his engagement to Regine Olsen, and in the years that followed he published a stream of books under invented names, each pseudonym arguing its own view of life at full strength. After 1845 the satirical paper The Corsair mocked his looks, voice and habits, and he kept writing. Later thinkers called him the first existentialist.