The Search for Meaning Humans encounter mystery about their being, and about what is meaningful. Compare religious literalists, with material realists. Those with unquestioning faith in science might believe that we can completely understand nature. Kierkegaard satirized attempts by philosophers, most notably Hegel, to completely explain away existence, or reduce it to confusing terms and systems, as in this passage from Kierkegaard s The Sickness Unto Death.
Man is spirit.
Spirit is the self. Man is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, or freedom and necessity, in short, it is a synthesis. A synthesis is a relation between two factors. So regarded, man is not yet a self. Birth and death, lobe and hate, sin and sanctity, joy and tragedy these remain as they were in the days of Troy or the fall of Rome.