What Kierkegaard tells us about Bridget Jones

The scene is a well-appointed drawing room in Copenhagen in September 1840. A fresh-faced girl in her late teens is playing the piano in an attempt to soothe the troubled spirit of her boyfriend, a slender, bouffant-haired philosopher in his late 20s by the name of Søren Kierkegaard. Suddenly, he grabs the score from her and claps its pages shut before exclaiming, ‘Oh! What do I care for music? It’s you I want!’ Upon which, he proposes marriage, and soon after, the young Regine Olsen accepts.

Immediately, Kierkegaard has second thoughts. Being an existentialist, he doesn’t deal in casual doubts. His are devastating. When Regine bumps into him in the street a few days later, he is so physically altered that she doesn’t recognise him. He agonises in his diary. Is marriage really for him? Will it get in the way of his vocation, which is to write world-changing philosophical tomes? It takes him a full 13 months to make up his mind.