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Lanyon.
Ludvig Holberg was born in Bergen, Norway, and spent most of his adult life in Copenhagen, where he eventually became professor of metaphysics, then rhetoric, and finally — most fittingly — history at the University of Copenhagen. He is best known as the founder of modern Danish and Norwegian literature and as the dominant playwright in Scandinavia before Ibsen and Strindberg. Yet his philosophical significance is at least equally important, and it is this dimension of his work that will occupy us here.
Holberg was a man of the Enlightenment in the most thoroughgoing sense: anti-metaphysical by temperament as well as by principle, empiricist in his theory of knowledge, eclecticist in his method, and a committed moralist in the service of public education. His two main philosophical sources were the natural law tradition as received through Samuel Pufendorf and Christian Thomasius, and the inductive, experience-based epistemology he absorbed during his stays in Oxford and his reading of Locke and the English empiricists.
Holberg’s explicitly philosophical writing spans several genres.
His natural law treatise Morals Kierne eller Introduction til Naturens og Folke-Rettens Kundskab (1716) — “The Core of Morality, or Introduction to Natural and International Law” — was required reading for Danish law students for over two centuries (1736–1936). It presents a Pufendorfian natural law freed from theology and grounded in reason and social utility.
His moral essays and epistles are perhaps his philosophically richest and most accessible works. Moralske Tanker (1744; Moral Reflections) consists of 63 essays in the tradition of Montaigne — discursive, ironic, full of paradox, constantly testing received opinions against common sense and experience. The Epistler (published in several volumes, 1748–1754) continue this project in a lighter, more conversational register.
The utopian novel Nicolai Klimii iter subterraneum (1741; Niels Klim’s Underground Travels) deploys fiction as a vehicle for philosophical satire, subjecting European customs, prejudices, and institutions to systematic comic defamiliarisation.
Holberg also wrote an important series of autobiographical letters (Levnedsbreve, in Latin), which are unusual in combining personal memoir with explicit philosophical self-reflection.
For the purposes of this course, Holberg matters not only in himself but as a founding figure in the tradition that culminates in the Modern Breakthrough. Several threads are worth tracing:
Holberg and Kierkegaard. The connection is more than circumstantial. Kierkegaard was an avid reader of Holberg’s comedies; the Holbergian satirical tradition — the exposure of pedantry, self-deception, crowd-conformism, and abstract system-building — runs through Kierkegaard’s indirect communication and his critique of the public. Julie Allen’s essay (see below) develops this line of influence in detail.
Holberg and empiricism. Høffding saw Holberg as the first Danish representative of the empiricist, anti-speculative tradition that he himself wished to continue and that forms the backbone of his account of Danish philosophy. Aall makes a similar point about Holberg’s foundational role in den dansk-norske individualisme — a philosophical sensibility defined by its resistance to German system-philosophy and its insistence that philosophy must proceed from experience.
Holberg’s religious position. Holberg was broadly deist — sceptical of revealed theology, open to biblical criticism, resistant to pietism, but not irreligious. His treatment of religion is cautious and ironic rather than polemical. This positioning is important context for understanding both the relative restraint and the philosophical seriousness of later figures in the Scandinavian tradition.
Holberg’s Works Online The complete critical edition of Holberg’s works is freely available at holbergsskrifter.dk. This is the standard scholarly reference text for all the works mentioned above, with introductions and commentary.
Høffding, Harald. “Ludvig Holberg.” In Mindre Arbejder, Anden Række. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1905.
Høffding’s essay on Holberg — collected alongside other shorter philosophical studies in this second volume of his Miscellaneous Essays — is an important statement of how the great synthesiser of Danish intellectual history understood Holberg’s place in the tradition. Høffding stresses Holberg’s empiricist epistemology and his role as the first Danish philosopher to make the Lockean principle of experience into a genuine methodological commitment.
Høffding, Harald. Danske Filosoffer. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1909.
A compact survey of Danish philosophy from Holberg through to Høffding’s own time, intended for a general educated readership. Høffding opens with a programmatic statement on Holberg as “den første herhjemme, der på selvstændig måde tager stilling til tankens problemer” — the first to engage independently with the problems of thought on Danish soil — and proceeds to Grundtvig, Steffens, Ørsted, Sibbern, and Kierkegaard. Unusual (and useful for this course) in treating figures like Ørsted and Grundtvig explicitly as philosophers. Available as an inexpensive reprint and as an e-book.
Høffding, Harald. Udvalgte Stykker af dansk filosofisk Litteratur. Med Indledninger af Harald Høffding. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1910.
An anthology of Danish philosophical writing with editorial introductions by Høffding. A valuable companion to Danske Filosoffer and a practical guide to the primary texts of the tradition. The introductions provide Høffding’s considered assessments of each figure. (Note: sometimes referred to by the abbreviated title Dansk Filosofisk Literatur.)
Aall, Anathon. Filosofien i Norden: til oplysning om den nyere tænknings og videnskaps historie i Sverige og Finland, Danmark og Norge. Kristiania: i kommission hos J. Dybwad, 1919. (Skrifter utgit av Videnskapsselskapet i Kristiania. Hist.-fil. Klasse. 1918, nr. 1.)
A large-scale survey of philosophy across the Nordic countries by the Norwegian philosopher and psychologist Anathon Aall (1867–1943), professor at the University of Kristiania (Oslo). The section on Danish philosophy (Den danske filosofi) includes a substantial treatment of Holberg as “grundlæggeren av den dansk-norske individualisme” (Part III, ch. 2), and devotes extensive attention to Høffding and Georg Brandes. Aall’s perspective, coming from the Norwegian side of the tradition, is a useful corrective to purely Copenhagen-centric accounts. The full text is freely available at Project Runeberg.
Allen, Julie K. “Ludvig Holberg: Kierkegaard’s Unacknowledged Mentor.” In Kierkegaard and the Renaissance and Modern Traditions. Tome III: Literature, Drama and Music, edited by Jon Stewart, 99–115. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 5.)
The most focused and scholarly treatment in English of the Holberg–Kierkegaard relationship. Allen argues that Holberg functioned as a genuine intellectual model for Kierkegaard — above all in his deployment of irony, indirect communication, and comic defamiliarisation as philosophical tools — even though Kierkegaard rarely acknowledges this debt explicitly. Essential reading for anyone interested in the longer arc of the course.
Haakonssen, Knud, and Sebastian Olden-Jørgensen (eds.) Ludvig Holberg (1684–1754): Learning and Literature in the Nordic Enlightenment. London and New York: Routledge, 2017. ISBN 978-1-4724-5070-8.
The most comprehensive modern treatment of Holberg’s work in English. Essays cover his natural law theory (Haakonssen), his moral essays and religion (Sejersted), his autobiographical writings (Skovgaard-Petersen), his comedies (Holm), and his historical works (Olden-Jørgensen), among other topics. An excellent entry point into the international scholarship.
Rossel, Sven H. (ed.) Ludvig Holberg: A European Writer — A Study in Influence and Reception. Amsterdam/Atlanta: Rodopi, 1994. (Brill)
A multi-author collection placing Holberg in his European context — examining both the Continental influences on him (Montaigne, Pufendorf, the French moralists) and the reception of his work in Germany, France, and beyond. Contributors are drawn from several countries, and the volume is unusual in taking seriously both the philosophical and the literary dimensions of his achievement. A useful complement to the Haakonssen–Olden-Jørgensen volume for students wanting the European picture rather than the specifically Anglophone one.
Billeskov Jansen, F.J. Holberg som Epigrammatiker og Essayist. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard, 1938–1939.
The foundational work of modern Danish Holberg scholarship, originally submitted as a doctoral dissertation. Billeskov Jansen reads Holberg above all as a master of the epigram and essay forms — literary-philosophical genres of wit, judgment, and observation — and situates him in the European tradition running from Montaigne through the French moralists. For sixty years the organising framework for Danish Holberg study, and still indispensable.
Maurseth, Anne Beate. “Falske og ekte filosofer: Holbergs posisjon i en europeisk 1700-tallsdebatt.” Edda 109, no. 3 (2022), pp. 156–169. DOI: 10.18261/edda.109.3.2
In Norwegian. The title translates as “False and genuine philosophers: Holberg’s position in a European 18th-century debate.” Situates Holberg within a broader European discussion about what distinguishes the genuine philosopher from the pedant, the sophist, and the mere system-builder — a distinction that lies at the heart of Erasmus Montanus and recurs throughout the Moralske Tanker and Epistler. Recent and philosophically oriented; probably the closest thing available to a dedicated philosophical reading of the play’s central concerns.
Undheim, Inga H. “‘De vanskeligste Verk nogen kand foretage sig’: Om Holbergs og Pierre Bayles betenkninger over historier.” In Historikeren Ludvig Holberg, edited by Jørgen Magnus Sejersted and Sebastian Olden-Jørgensen, pp. 181–205. Oslo: Scandinavian Academic Press, 2014.
In Norwegian. The title translates as “‘The most difficult works anyone can undertake’: On Holberg’s and Pierre Bayle’s reflections on histories.” A comparative study of Holberg and Bayle as thinkers about historical writing and historical knowledge — part of the broader volume on Holberg as historian, but illuminating for the philosophical relationship between the two as well. Confirms that the Holberg–Bayle connection is taken seriously in the scholarly literature, and is a useful starting point for anyone wanting to pursue it further.
Hammer, Leif Bjarne. “Curiosity in Holberg’s Erasmus Montanus and Urban Education in 18th-Century Norway.” Available at Academia.edu.
Takes Erasmus Montanus seriously as a document in the history of ideas about education and intellectual curiosity, reading it against the background of Enlightenment debates about urban vs. rural learning and the social function of the university. More educational-historical than strictly philosophical in orientation, but useful for contextualising the play’s satire of scholastic pedagogy.
Koch, Carl Henrik. Dansk oplysningsfilosofi : 1700–1800. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2003.
A scholarly survey of Danish Enlightenment philosophy from 1700 to 1800 by the leading Danish historian of philosophy. Koch devotes extended discussion to Holberg — situating him within the broader currents of European Enlightenment thought and attending carefully to his epistemology, his natural law theory, and his moral philosophy. An authoritative and philosophically rigorous treatment, and the natural first stop for anyone wanting a thorough scholarly account of Holberg’s place in the Danish intellectual tradition.
The readings above are weighted toward Holberg as philosopher — toward the Moralske Tanker, the natural law writings, the epistles, and his place in the history of ideas — rather than toward the comedies, though the comedies are philosophically rich and overlap with several of these interests (irony, the ridicule of pedantry, the critique of convention). Students interested in the theatrical dimension of Holberg’s work can begin with the holbergsskrifter.dk editions of the comedies and with the essay by Bent Holm in the Haakonssen–Olden-Jørgensen volume.