The strongest reaction to both Kant and Hegel in the nineteenth century was made by the Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855). Kierkegaard lived a tragic life--all his brothers and sisters died; he learned of an illegitimate relation between his parents and subsequently left the ministry; he felt that God had lodged a "veto" against his engagement to Regina Olson, and regretted her loss the rest of his life. His major controversy was his attack on the Lutheran Church of Denmark. Finding it cold, dead orthodoxy, he wrote viciously against it and was castigated by Danish society as a result. His was a life of deep alienation.

His central tenet was simple: truth is subjectivity. Theological speculations move us not one step closer to faith. Faith is not intellectual assent, but the total commitment of our lives to something. Such commitment is subjective, for its results are not known before they are experienced. Truth is chosen and acted upon.

Kierkegaard believed that we move through three stages in life. First, the aesthetic, an empty seeking after pleasure and beauty; second, the ethical, seeking to do our duty but experiencing the despair of failure; and third, the religious, when we choose to trust completely in God.

This passion for the individual's choice and life made Kierkegaard the "father of existentialism." The philosophy attributed to him stresses personal identity and choice as the basis for life. Tragically, there is no place for the community of faith in Kierkegaard's thought, or in the school he "founded." Existentialism will be dominant in Western thinking from Kierkgaard to the present.