“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813- 1855)
Often described as the Father of Existentialism, Kierkegaard, a Dane, was highly critical of the established church in his native country, finding it more concerned with politics than with the divine. During his short life he kept a 7,000 page journal in which his philosophy and theology are minutely explained. Kierkegaard observed that self-examination is the only road to self-awareness. His insistence that one should tirelessly question for oneself how best to live influenced philosophers from Camus to Heidegger, Sartre, and Niebuhr.