Søren Kierkegaard

Søren Kierkegaard was born in Copenhagen in 1813, the seventh child of a wealthy merchant, a stern and melancholy man tormented all his life by religious guilt, who left a deep mark on him. He studied theology at the University of Copenhagen, and at twenty-seven became engaged to the seventeen-year-old Regine Olsen, only to break off the engagement a year later, an act that remained a painful source of his thought for the rest of his life. He then lived on his father's legacy and in little more than a decade published a great many books under various pseudonyms, attacking Hegel's abstract system and stressing the choice and faith of the solitary individual before God. In his last years he declared open war on the Danish state church, accusing it of turning Christianity into a comfortable custom. At forty-two he collapsed in a Copenhagen street and died soon after. He is regarded as the father of existentialism.