Soren Kierkegaard — "The greatest good for a human being is to be able to choose himself."
The greatest good for a human being is to be able to choose himself.
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More from Soren Kierkegaard
"To be a human being is to be in a state of eternal becoming, and that is why no one can capture himself in a definition."
"The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen, but, if one will, are to be lived."
"Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth— look at the dying man's struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intende…"
"The paradox of faith is that the individual is higher than the universal."
"The truth is a snare: you cannot have it, without being caught."
About Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
Danish philosopher and theologian considered the founder of existentialism; Either/Or (1843) and Fear and Trembling (1843) explored the leap of faith. Closely associated with Friedrich Nietzsche (his existentialist successor working in the opposite theological direction) and Fyodor Dostoevsky (literary parallel exploring faith-and-despair). For an intellectual contrast, see G.W.F. Hegel, German Idealist of the totalizing system — Kierkegaard called Hegel's system a 'palatial residence' that nobody could actually live in — his entire authorship is structured against Hegelian abstraction in favor of the existing individual's inwardness.
The standard scholarly entry points to Soren Kierkegaard's work: Joakim Garff (University of Copenhagen, Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre) — Søren Kierkegaard: A Biography (2000); Walter Lowrie (Princeton, his major postwar English translator) — A Short Life of Kierkegaard (1942); C. Stephen Evans (Baylor University, philosophy of religion) — Kierkegaard: An Introduction (2009). These are the works graduate seminars cite when teaching Soren Kierkegaard.