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"Affliction is able to drown out every earthly voice … but the voice of eternity within a man it cannot drown. When by the aid of affliction all irrelevant voices are brought to silence, it can be heard, this voice within."

"My life is one great suffering, unknown and incomprehensible to all others." And it was out of this suffering that Søren Kierkegaard laid siege to the reigning European philosophy and the comfortable Christianity of his day.

Kierkegaard was born in Copenhagen, into a strict Danish Lutheran home. He inherited a melancholy disposition from his father and suffered through an unhappy youth. His frail and slightly twisted frame made him an object of mockery throughout his life. Still, his father was sufficiently wecaptionhy that Kierkegaard never had to hold down a job but was free to spend his life as a writer and philosopher.

He attended the University of Copenhagen to prepare for the Lutheran ministry, but it took him ten years to earn his degree, and he never was ordained. It was philosophy, not theology, that captured his imagination.

And Regine Olsen captured his heart. They became engaged, but Kierkegaard had doubts and quickly broke off the engagement, though he admitted he was still deeply in love. He was weighed down by his unusual consciousness of the complexities of the human mind, which he would never be able to communicate to Regine. As he wrote in his diary: "I was a thousand years too old for her." Years later he compared that painful decision with Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac, and some of his books were written "because of her."

His first book, Either/Or (1843), was a brilliant, dialectical, and poetic discussion in which he sought to justify his break with Regine, and in which set forth a basic tenet of his philosophy: each individual must choose—consciously and responsibly—among the captionernatives life presents.

He followed this up with other philosophical works: Fear and Trembling (1843), Philosophical Fragments (1844), The Concept of Dread (1844), and Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragment (1846).

His target was the "system" (as he mockingly put it) of G.W.F. Hegel, the great philosopher of idealism. He attacked Hegel's attempt to systematize all of reality; Hegel, he said, left out the most important element of human experience: existence itself. Kierkegaard felt that no philosophical system could explain the human condition. The experience of reality—the loss of a loved one, the feelings of guilt and dread—was what mattered, not the "idea" of it.

Hegel emphasized universals; Kierkegaard argued for decision and commitment. Hegel sought an objective theory of knowledge upon which everyone could agree; Kierkegaard believed in the subjectivity of truth—meaning that truth is understood and experienced individually.

Existence, he believed, is actual, painful, and more important than "essence" or "idea." The authentic person wrestles with fundamental questions that cannot be answered rationally. As Kierkegaard once wrote, "My life has been brought to an impasse, I loathe existence…. Where am I? What is this thing called the world? What does this word mean? Who is it that has lured me into the thing and now leaves me there? Who am I? How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted, why not made acquainted with its manners and customs? … How did I obtain an interest in it? Is it not a voluntary concern? And if I am to be compelled to take part in it, where is the director? Whither shall I turn with my complaint?"

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