"The highest pitch of every passion is always to will its own downfall; and so it is also the supreme passion of the Reason to seek a collision, though this collision must in one way or another prove its undoing. The supreme paradox of all thought is the attempt to discover something that thought cannot think."
Born: 1813
Died: 1855
Best known as the melancholy Dane, the first great existentialist
Principal work: Concluding Unscientific Postscipt, The Concept of Dread, Philosophical Fragments
Principal opponent: G. W. F. Hegel (Berlin, 1770-1831)
Lecture Notes from Philosophy 151.
International Kierkegaard Information
Stanford Encycolpedia of Philosophy entry on Kierkegaard.