Although the ideas of Soren Kierkegaard played a pivotal role in the shaping of mainstream German philosophy and the history of French existentialism, the question of how philosophers should read Kierkegaard is a difficult one to settle. His intransigent religiosity has led some philosophers to view him as essentially a religious thinker of a singularly anti-philosophical attitude. In this major new survey of Kierkegaard's thought, George Pattison addresses this question head on to show that although it would be difficult to claim a "philosophy of Kierkegaard" as one could a philosophy of Kant, or of Hegel, there are nevertheless significant points of common interest between Kierkegaard's central thinking and the questions that concern philosophers today. The most important of these is what it is to be a self or person and what might be the best form of life for a self thus constituted. Pattison shows that the challenge of self-knowledge in an age of moral and intellectual uncertainty lies at the heart of Kierkegaard's writings and his ideas have much to offer contemporary philosophy.