Soren Kierkegaard was born into an extremely wealthy Dutch family. His father, Michael, was a successful, smart, faithful, but, also, very quiet and sad businessman. Like father like son, Kierkegaard would inherit his father's qualities, but he would not use his intelligence to pursue financial rewards. Instead, he used his wits to found a new school of philosophy: Existentialism.
Kierkegaard is often credited for making philosophy "personal." Before him, philosophers focused on humanity as a whole, the world as it is, the fundamental truths of the universe, the nature of God, and so forth. Unlike the philosophical "world-view" prior to his time, Kierkegaard's philosophical point of view starts at the individual, human level.
Kierkegaard started on a path to self-discovery. He discovered many truths, truths about himself and the human condition. Kierkegaard hated, and therefore rejected, traditional pieties and systematic answers of philosophy and the Christian church of his time.
Kierkegaard created a new, sort of, version of faith. He claimed that faith is not grounded in reason or rationality. Rather, faith is a real, personal choice, one that cannot be validated or justified by reason. He coined what is now called "the leap of faith."
What did he mean by this? Kierkegaard asserts that reasoned calculations or heavenly church commandments cannot answer questions about life, about how to live, about what to believe, about what to do, and so on. Answers to these sort of questions are found in one's self. One must answer these questions in the deepest chasms of one's individual soul.
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