In 1835, the young Kierkegaard wrote in his journal that social life estranges us from true human interconnectedness, leads us to become lost in “the pettiness that so often causes offence in life, the many misunderstandings (Misforstaaelser) that so often separate persons of different temperament, who, if they understood one another properly, would be tied together with indissoluble bonds.” Misunderstanding, here, appears to be more than a mere failure of communication, discourse, knowledge or reason —as Philippe Grosos has pointed out, “misunderstanding” in Kierkegaard’s works takes on an existential and ethical dimension. One might suggest that misunderstanding is the expression for the limits of empathy between humans: the inability to recognize or acknowledge others’ differences of temperament or situation, to connect with the concrete particularities of others’ lived experience where these differ from our own. In this paper, I aim to sketch out how Kierkegaard portrays misunderstanding as a defining feature of human interpersonal relationships and social reality. Misunderstanding plays an important role in Kierkegaard’s oeuvre, from the opening passages of Either/Or where he asks: “What if everything in the world were a misunderstanding; what if laughter really were weeping?” , to his multiple claims that he himself and his writings have been misunderstood, through the multiple depictions of unhappy lovers who cannot understand one another, and Works of Love where Kierkegaard writes that “in connection with the dissimilarities of earthly life, through misunderstanding there are conflict and agreement simultaneously” which prevents true recognition of unconditionally every human being as the neighbour. More than a problem of reason or knowledge, interpersonal misunderstanding arises according to Kierkegaard “wherever the heterogeneous are brought together [despite] the possibility of a relation.” Misunderstanding thus occurs not when understanding is impossible, but rather where situational features incite individuals to project erroneous interpretations onto others’ behaviour or expression, where their life-views, dispositions or other lived differences get in the way of effective communication and relationality. A fundamental feature of social or public reality, misunderstanding estranges us from others (and ourselves) and provokes misrelation; despite this negativity, however, Kierkegaard notes that we “must beware of misunderstanding—that is, one must beware of wanting to prevent it entirely,” perhaps because misunderstanding is precisely what reveals the distinctiveness and particularity of the individual, and the heterogeneity of the social.