Week 25 · western

Søren Kierkegaard

Søren Kierkegaard was a 19th-century Danish philosopher who wrote under fake names, broke off the engagement that meant everything to him, and picked fights with the most powerful institution in Denmark...the state church. He was brilliant, lonely, and absolutely convinced that the comfortable Christianity of his time was a betrayal of everything Christ actually taught. He died at 42 and was mostly ignored until the existentialists rediscovered him a century later.

“"Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards." He wrote that in his journal as a young man. It's one of the truest sentences ever written, and it gives you absolutely no comfort when you're in the middle of it.”