Søren Kierkegaard

Kierkegaard hated Hegel. He hated systematic philosophy as such — the pretense that you can fit a human life inside a logical structure. The individual, the singular, the deciding self, cannot be captured in concepts. To exist is to choose, to risk, to commit, often without sufficient reason. Faith, he writes in Fear and Trembling, is a "leap" precisely because reason cannot make it for you.

He published most of his major works under elaborate pseudonyms — Johannes de Silentio, Constantin Constantius, Climacus — each representing a different existential stance. He fell in love with Regine Olsen, broke off the engagement, and wrote about it obsessively for the rest of his short life. He attacked the established Danish church for replacing Christianity with respectability. He died exhausted at forty-two.

The 20th century rediscovered him. He is the unmistakable ancestor of every existentialist, every theology of the absurd, and a great deal of modern psychology.