David F. Swenson
Swedish-American philosopher and translator (1876–1940)
David Ferdinand Swenson (October 29, 1876 – February 11, 1940) was a Swedish-born American translator and an authority on the life and writings of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard.
Work
Swenson is best known as the first of the translators of the works of Danish writer Soren Kierkegaard into the English language. He was born in Kristinehamn, Sweden and moved to Minnesota with his parents in 1882, when he was 6 years old. He was educated in the public schools of Minneapolis and in 1894 entered the University of Minnesota. Upon graduation he was offered a position as assistant professor in the department of philosophy at that same university. By 1917 Swenson had progressed to the rank of full professor.
His interest in Kierkegaard began in 1901 when he was looking through the books in the city library and came across a thick book about the size of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and decided to read it. The book was Soren Kierkegaard's 1846 book Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments in Danish. Swenson enjoyed it so much that he devoted the rest of his life to making Kierkegaard's writings available to the English reading public. Most Kierkegaard scholars read Swenson's translations before Howard V. and Edna H. Hong translated Kierkegaard again and started the Hong Kierkegaard Library.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18658482. VIAF identifies the subject as 48133108. The Library of Congress control number is n83021300. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1876, 1940, 1882 and 1894.
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This entry incorporates text from “David F. Swenson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.