Philosophically, Soren Kierkegaard was the `bridge' that led from Hegel to Existentialism. Kierkegaard abhorred Hegel's abstract, know-it-all idealism that tried to capture reality in a few words. Kierkegaard's attack on social and religious complacency and his single-handed assault on traditional Western philosophy generated a crisis that produced a radically new way of philosophising and made him the founder of the school that would later be called Existentialism. Kierkegaard For Beginners explains, plainly and simply, this great thinker.