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Karl Heinrich Marx (1818–83), a German philosopher, sociologist, economist, and political theoretician, was the creator of historical materialism. “Marxism” was named after him. Marx was the son of a lawyer of Jewish lineage who converted to Protestantism. In 1835, after a carefree bourgeois youth, he passed the Abitur (secondary school examination) in his hometown of Trier. From 1836 he studied philosophy and history in Bonn and Berlin, where he was strongly influenced by Hegel’s philosophy (Hegelianism) and initially felt drawn to the left-…

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), a German philosopher and classical philologist, profoundly influenced generations of theologians, philosophers, psychologists, and writers through his attempt to expose the roots and motives of traditional Western religion, moral thinking, and philosophy. After the death of his father, who was a pastor, Nietzsche grew up surrounded by women and by the spirit of Protestant piety. While studying classical philology in Bonn and Leipzig from 1864 to 1868, he became f…

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813–55), Danish philosopher of religion and critic of rationalism, can be viewed as one of the founders of existentialism. The seventh child of a well-to-do wool merchant, he attended secondary school and studied theology and philosophy in his hometown, Copenhagen. He successfully concluded these studies in 1840 with his theological examinations and in 1841 with a master’s degree in philosophy (a degree equivalent to today’s Ph.D.). His dissertation, “The Concept of Irony, with Continual Reference to Socrates,” introduced several theme…