In this article I want to spend time with Søren Kierkegaard. I’ve been interested in his ideas because he occupies an unusual place in the history of thought. He’s considered a pioneer of existentialism, and yet he was also a man of faith.

Most of the existentialist thinkers who followed him, including Jean-Paul Sartre, built their philosophies around radical freedom and human responsibility without any reference to faith at all. Kierkegaard stands in the middle of this tension. He writes from a position of uncertainty and responsibility, but he also lets faith shape his understanding of what it means to be human. This combination gives his work a kind of depth that’s difficult to classify. It also gives us a set of ideas that speak directly to the act of thinking, especially when we try to “think in systems.”

Thinking in systems is often presented as an attempt to arrange the world into a coherent whole. We’re encouraged to draw maps, diagrams, and loops that claim to show how everything is connected. These maps have their value, but they also create the illusion that understanding is a matter of fitting pieces together. They invite us to believe that if we only had the right model, the right picture, or the right mission statement, then clarity would follow. But the thinking domain is not the physical domain. Thoughts aren’t puzzle pieces, and ideas don’t snap together neatly. There’s no final picture on the box to guide us. There’s only the ongoing work of trying to understand a world that will not hold still long enough to be captured by a diagram.

Kierkegaard seems to have understood this difficulty quite well. He believed that the greatest danger in human life is self-deception. We long for the comfort of clarity, so we often rush to declare purposes and principles. For Kierkegaard, becoming a self isn’t a matter of adopting a slogan. It’s a lifelong task shaped by inwardness, responsibility, and the willingness to face ambiguity without trying to escape it. Our authenticity comes from this attempt. This is why Kierkegaard would be deeply suspicious of systems that claim to explain everything. For him, such “systems” flatten the complexity of human experience. They offer a kind of intellectual reassurance, but they don’t help us live.

One of Kierkegaard’s most striking ideas is that life can be understood only by looking backward, but it must be lived forward. Understanding in this regard is a retrospective act. It’s something we do when we look back and discover patterns in what has already happened. But living is always forward. It takes place in a stream of uncertainty where choices must be made without guarantees and where the meaning of those choices often remains unclear until much later.

This observation challenges the entire idea of systemic coherence. Systems maps work backward. They create a picture of causality after the fact. They explain what has been, but they don’t show us how to live into what’s unfolding. They provide a sense of structure, but this structure is largely retrospective.

This backward-forward tension reveals why the search for a perfectly coherent system is misguided. Human life doesn’t unfold according to a diagram. Thinking doesn’t progress by assembling pieces into a single whole. We understand our experiences only after we’ve lived through them. The clarity we draw from models and mission statements can therefore be misleading. It can be useful as a reflection, but it shouldn’t substitute for the lived experience of confronting ambiguity in the moment. Kierkegaard’s insight makes the entire project of declaring a mission or a golden why feel somewhat naive. These declarations claim to give direction, but direction isn’t something that can simply be proclaimed. Direction must be discovered through the way we participate in the world.

Another of Kierkegaard’s central ideas is that truth becomes meaningful only when it’s appropriated inwardly. Truth isn’t something imposed from above. It must be taken up, lived, wrestled with, and made one’s own. A beautifully crafted mission statement doesn’t create meaning. A polished systems map doesn’t create understanding. These are only starting points. Understanding arises only when individuals confront their own limitations, their own anxieties, and the tensions that shape their experiences. For Kierkegaard, this inward appropriation is the essence of responsible living. It’s also the key to responsible thinking.

Kierkegaard’s view of anxiety deepens this idea. Anxiety isn’t simply fear. It’s the feeling of realizing that one must freely choose. It’s the dizziness of possibility. In the context of thinking, anxiety shows up when we face the limits of our understanding, when we recognize that we must choose what matters, and when we realize that there’s no system neat enough to relieve us of that responsibility. Many organizational declarations are attempts to soothe this anxiety. They create a picture of direction that allows people to avoid the discomfort of thinking for themselves. But Kierkegaard would say that this discomfort is precisely where thinking begins.

This gives us a different language for cognitive blindness. Blindness isn’t only a matter of not seeing. It’s often a refusal to see, a retreat into the comfort of prefabricated clarity. Thinking asks us to approach our blindness with curiosity rather than defensiveness. It invites us to engage with the friction that reveals what we had overlooked. Systems thinking, when practiced responsibly, isn’t about drawing neat maps. It’s about cultivating the openness required to encounter what doesn’t fit, and the humility to revise our sense of the world when confronted with surprise.

Final words

Ultimately, Kierkegaard helps us see that thinking isn’t the work of fitting pieces together. It’s the work of becoming a self, which requires inwardness, responsibility, and the willingness to live with ambiguity. He reminds us that life unfolds forward, while understanding works backward. This simple observation exposes the limitations of any attempt to impose a coherent system on a world that’s always in motion. Mission statements and golden whys can be helpful beginnings, but they often promise clarity without cultivating the character and perception that make clarity meaningful.

The point isn’t to reject purpose or systemic awareness. It’s to hold our purposes lightly, to allow our thinking to be shaped by our experiences, and to accept that ambiguity isn’t a failure of insight but a condition of life. Systems thinking, when grounded in Kierkegaard’s lessons, becomes a stance rather than a diagram. It becomes a way of approaching the world with patience, honesty, and a readiness to see differently. This path is demanding, but it’s also the one that keeps us awake to the depth and complexity of being human.

Stay curious and always keep on learning....

Published Nov. 22, 2025, in Harish Jose’s blog.