"Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth - look at the dying man's struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment"
About this Quote
The subtext is aimed at the complacent optimism of his age: the bourgeois Copenhagen Christianity that preached comfort, respectability, and the idea that the world ultimately makes sense as a neat moral package. Kierkegaard’s rhetorical trick is to choose examples that even the most secure worldview can’t domesticate. Labor and dying are threshold experiences: you can’t outsource them, you can’t fully narrate them afterward, you can’t convert them into a self-help lesson while they’re happening. They expose the fraud in a life-philosophy that equates meaning with pleasure.
Context matters. Writing against Hegelian system-building and the era’s confidence in progress, Kierkegaard keeps insisting on the “single individual” and the cost of being a self. This passage is a miniature version of his larger project: to puncture the fantasy that Christianity is a cultural accessory and that happiness is the measure of truth. If you insist that existence is designed for enjoyment, he implies, you haven’t looked hard enough at what existence actually demands.
Quote Details
| Topic | Meaning of Life |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Kierkegaard, Søren. (2026, January 15). Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth - look at the dying man's struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/listen-to-the-cry-of-a-woman-in-labor-at-the-hour-10008/
Chicago Style
Kierkegaard, Søren. "Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth - look at the dying man's struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/listen-to-the-cry-of-a-woman-in-labor-at-the-hour-10008/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth - look at the dying man's struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/listen-to-the-cry-of-a-woman-in-labor-at-the-hour-10008/. Accessed 11 Feb. 2026.
